7 Trauma-Informed Strategies

In the interconnected world between Canada and the USA, changes in policies, economics, and social issues can feel much like the invisible yet unsettling shifts of tectonic plates beneath the earth’s surface.

Are we bracing for a catastrophic event much like an earthquake? Or is it a tremor with no known prediction for what’s yet to come? Geologic forces gradually create pressure, and when pressures mount within the political landscape, the tension builds anxiety over time.

For many clients, this pressure or escalating anxiety can build up until a breaking point releases energy like an earthquake. Political changes can activate anxiety that triggers memories of previous traumas, bringing fear back to the surface. Clients often struggle to identify and manage this fear, particularly when navigating trauma-informed approaches to therapy and understanding trauma-informed care.

The voices of our clients who have experienced trauma can struggle with uncertainties that play out in our perpetual news feed. Their anxiety is palpable in the therapeutic room, as the layers of stress are revealed to be tied to their own personal stories of inequality, systemic racism, injustice, discrimination, and violence.

As we move together as client and helper, we can offer gentle reminders, reframes, and trauma-informed coping strategies to ground in the present and shift from feeling powerless to empowered during these uncertain times.

Political changes can activate anxiety that triggers memories of previous traumas, bringing fear back to the surface. Clients often struggle to identify and manage this fear.

Trauma-informed responses you can offer your clients:

Validate their reactions

• “You’re not ‘too sensitive’ or ‘overreacting.’ Your body and mind are trying to protect you. Anxiety, fear, anger, or even numbness are all normal responses to feeling unsafe.”
• Offer a self-talk statement: I’m feeling this way because my nervous system remembers. I am safe in this moment.

Encourage them to take breaks

• “It’s okay to turn off the news, log off social media, or set boundaries with people who want to discuss distressing topics. Limit news intake to small increments, such as 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the evening.”
• Offer a self-talk statement: I care deeply, but I need to protect my peace right now.

Teach grounding techniques

• Teach or remind your clients to check in with their own nervous system through body scans and by regulating their nervous system’s response to global unrest.
• Offer ideas for daily nervous system attunement like breathwork, walks in nature, and grounding techniques to bring them back to the here and now when emotions rise.
• Try: 5-4-3-2-1: Name five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell, and one you can taste.
• Feel your feet on the ground and take three slow, deep breaths
• Run cold water over your hands or hold an ice cube.

Help build calm and safety into their routine

Help your client’s identify small rituals that make them feel secure:

• Lighting a candle or turning on soft lighting
• Wrapping themselves in a cozy blanket
• Spending time with pets, nature, or people who help them feel calm

Promote empowerment

Trauma often makes us feel powerless. To shift to empowerment, offer ideas such as taking small, values-based actions:

• Helping someone in their community
• Writing about what matters to them
• Donating of giving such as their time, talent, or goods

Encourage them to make choices that align with their values, no matter how small. Action reduces our helplessness and promotes connection.

Taking care of oneself is not selfish, it’s survival.

Encourage rest

Remind your client’s that they don’t have to “earn” rest. Remind them that they deserve peace. Taking care of oneself is not selfish, it’s survival.

Offer the following ideas:

• Create structure for their day, establish rituals, and design calm spaces in your living environment.
• Offer a self-talk statement: “I am allowed to rest. I am allowed to protect my energy.”

Highlight their strengths

Link the past survival to the present. Trauma often filters out or distorts the survival parts of the story.

Offer your client a self-talk statement:” You’ve survived so much already. The same strength that got you through before is still in you now. Let’s make space for hope, healing, and your whole story—not just the painful parts.

By facing the anxiety, we offer clients pathways through the uncertain terrain and teach them that the human condition seeks stability, and safety.

The human response to change often includes an undercurrent of both fear and resilience. My role as a therapeutic helper is to offer perspectives for consideration – to be perched on a sound foundation that offers safety while traversing the tumultuous terrain of anxiety and trauma. By facing the anxiety, we offer clients pathways through the uncertain terrain and teach them that the human condition seeks stability, and safety. In surviving the inevitable shifts and upheavals, we find growth and resilience.