Dear SMART Leadership -
Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me today. It was very empowering to be able to share my story with you.
I felt some eggshells around some of the defensiveness I sensed, but overall I appreciate your receptiveness.
I have one tip for listening empathically to someone who is sharing a difficult story with you: Pause and think before responding. Ask yourself, do I want to be right or do I want to be kind? Often, it is impossible to be both.
I know you’re very busy people, but it pains me to hear that the SMART program hasn’t focused more on becoming “trauma-informed”. This concept has been around for years. Why is it taking practitioners so long to get themselves informed? In 2023 this should be a mandatory part of the curriculum for every single “helping profession” — including teachers, police, social workers... What are you waiting for?
We all experience trauma. It’s part of being human — the common humanity aspect of compassion. Every single one of SMART’s participants signs up because they are struggling with trauma responses. If you don’t believe me, please watch this 26 minute video. This therapist explains unhealthy (negative) stress responses (“overreacting”, being triggered, suffering from complex-PTSD), far better than I can.
As someone who has struggled greatly to recover from CPTSD, I suggest you worry less about “triggering” people and more about helping them understand their triggers. Bypassing takes people around their trauma, which just buries it deeper in our souls. Effective programs encourage people to recognize and understand their trauma responses, before providing them with tools to help in the healing. The fact that people attend SMART more than once is not a good sign at all — that’s like jumping from one 12-step meeting to another trying to find the solution when you haven’t even identified the real problem.
The problem isn’t the addiction (or the hypertension, or the IBS, or the anxiety, or the depression…) — the problem is the trauma.
We heal by feeling seen, heard and understood.
We can’t share our stories if we don’t feel safe. We can’t heal until we can share our stories in a safe space without fearing rejection or fearing that we might trigger our teachers/therapists/doctors… We need that “bigger, stronger, wiser and KIND” person to help us feel safe. We need compassion.
I didn’t feel very safe in the meeting today, but I stuck with it because I had my own self-compassion as my guide. I’m a rare breed. Healing our broken system has become my passion. I want to help all those without my privileges. I want to be the voice for those who have been silenced for far too long, often unknowingly by well-meaning people.
Those of us with trauma need to know that you have the courage to get into the arena with us. P.B. did that today. We had a powerful conversation after the meeting. I believe it was an important growth experience for both of us. I am grateful.
With kindness -
Tara
This is an email I wrote to leadership of the SMART Program at the Benson-Henry Institute in January 2023. It was a follow-up to a virtual conversation I’d had with them the day before. Unfortunately, my concerns seem to have fallen on deaf ears. After refunding my tuition and a brief response from the instructor of the course, there has been silence. I doubt that any significant changes have been made to the program. I’m afraid they will continue to inflict harm on unsuspecting people who are struggling.
Like so many others, these well-meaning professionals will continue to operate as they have for the past 40 years. They should have the wisdom to choose to change what they can, but perhaps they don’t have the courage to do so?
I’m taking Kristin Neff’s advice and digging deep on my fierce self-compassion. I have already changed myself. Now I am choosing to try to change the systems that are causing me harm.
