Your Oxygen Mask First: A Trauma-Informed Approach to Overcoming Abuse
A trauma-informed approach is the start of the road to wholeness and the path of empathy in action.
Do you remember the first time you witnessed hatred, cruelty, or violence? Did it occur in your personal environment or did it affect the world around you? Chances are that at some point, from birth onward you were exposed to something that stole your innocence and shaped your worldview. These large and small traumas define us as humans. For many people, these experiences begin in childhood. Perhaps witnessing domestic violence in the home or being abused by a parent or caretaker. By the time a child goes to school, he or she may have endured multiple traumas.
Children who’ve endured early traumas are ripe to be picked on by bullies and as they get older often choose unsafe relationships. Domestic and sexual violence, racial, religious, gender violence, and child abuse are just a few of the early traumas humans endure that create a lens from which the world is seen. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, (DVAM), and a time to reflect upon how oppression and violence are learned first in the home.
