Mindfulness: trauma-sensitive practices

Mindfulness is a term which encompasses practices, such as grounding, attuning to our inner world, recognizing the environment around us, etc. 

One purpose of mindfulness practices include noticing what is happening within us (emotions, physical sensations, etc.) as well as noticing details about the world around us in an effort to help us ‘get out of our own minds’. 

Mindfulness practices are often recommended as a coping technique for emotional distress. 

Because of this, we want to be…mindful…of how we approach these practices so they do not unintentionally cause additional emotional distress.

The origins of mindfulness are often credited to Buddhism alone, however Indigenous tribes and various religions have been practicing mindfulness all across the globe for many centuries.

Trauma and Mindfulness 

In order to begin understanding why a trauma-sensitive approach needs to be taken when using mindfulness approaches with folks living with trauma - we must first recognize how people living with trauma (especially complex trauma) often require a level of dissociation in order to safely exist in the world.

When a person who must dissociate in order to feel safe as a means to continue existing it makes sense that the same person suddenly forgoing this level of dissociation by engaging in mindfulness practices may experience distress.

By encouraging a person living with trauma to attune to their inner world, or to concentrate on their environment - each with the purpose of accessing the ability to be more connected with onself, we can inadvertently induce severe distress, panic and trauma reactions such as flashbacks, or Fight/Flight, etc.

Challenges in Assessing for Trauma

It is there are people living with trauma who would never think this could be true for them. Unfortunately not all people recognize they are living with trauma, and/or complex trauma. 

The reason this matters is if someone seeks therapy (or another service) where mindfulness practices are utilized - it is essential for the practitioner to proceed with caution when it comes to mindfulness practices. 

Ultimately, every practitioner who uses mindfulness in their work needs to be as trauma sensitive in providing instruction on mindfulness as possible.

Mindfulness Can Help People living with Trauma 

Mindfulness practices can be helpful and effective for those of us living with trauma, and/ or complex trauma.  

This is where the responsibility of the trauma- sensitive practitioner to be educated, trained and experienced and how to best recognize and support people living with trauma in accessing mindfulness practices.

A trauma-sensitive practitioner will assess:

• Which types of mindfulness practices are most likely to activate our nervous system based on past experiences with similar practices. 

• Which mindfulness practices help to regulate our nervous system based on past experiences with similar practices. 

Trauma Modalities Integrating Mindfulness

Many trauma therapies rely on somatic experiencing, grounding, visualization, compartmentalization, controlled dissociation and other techniques meant to help us cope with, and regulate our nervous system and thereby our emotional state.

The challenge working with someone living with trauma becomes knowing which specific practices are appropriate for what the client needs in that moment.

Practitioners using mindfulness need to be taking a full assessment of: 

• sensory needs

• access needs

• support needs

• trauma history (as applicable by modality and service)

• experiences with mindfulness practices up to that point

• current capacity

• current headspace

• physical needs/ abilities

• current emotional state (as can be assessed - recognizing Alexithymia and interception differences) 

and more before proceeding with mindfulness techniques.

Because so many trauma modalities rely heavily on the ability to create pictures in our minds through the use of “visualization” techniques for use as coping skills, we need to have an understanding of the clients experience of visualization.

Mindfulness techniques not accounting for Aphantasia (the inability to form pictures in one's mind) or the opposite experience for those of us who have such vivid imagery in our brains that it can cause distress, exhaustion, confusion, and more due to the nature of the intensity of the pictures our mind creates (Hyperphantasia).

Self-Directed Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness Practices 

For those of us who seek to learn how to best support our needs, as people living with trauma, and /or complex trauma it can be genuinely challenging to find accurate information which represents our lived experience as the vast majority of information out there does not account for the different ways, our brains and bodies react and receive mindfulness practices.

To learn more, I recommend the book:

• Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing by David A. Treleaven

As well as the books listed on this blog:

• Reading List Understanding trauma, healing and mindfulness by Indigenous & BIPOC authors

https://www.jessicabarudin.com/blog/reading-list-unpacking-trauma-healing-indigenous-authors