\The American Psychological Association (APA) defines trauma as “Any disturbing experience that results in significant fear, helplessness, dissociation, confusion, or other disruptive feelings intense enough to have a long-lasting negative effect on a person’s attitudes, behavior, and other aspects of functioning.”
Judith Herman in her book “Trauma and Recovery; the aftermath of violence – from domestic abuse to political terror, 1992er said further that “trauma is also a wordles story our body tells itself about what is safe and what is a threat. Our rational brain cant stop it from occurring and it cant talk our body out of it. Trauma can cause us to react to present events in ways that seem wildly inappropriate, overly charged or otherwise out of proportion. Whenever someone freaks out suddenly or reacts to a small problem as if it were a catastrophe its often a trauma response. Something in the here and now is rekindling old pain or discomfort, and the body tries to address it with the reflexive energy that’s still stuck inside the nervous system.”
A trauma informed lawyer is one that acknowledges the role of trauma in a client’s experience. There’s methods that we employ to try to help clients deal with the trauma by using a trauma informed approach.
Trauma-informed practice is a strengths based framework which understands symptoms of trauma as a protective human response. It is founded on five guiding principles, to ensure that systems don’t retraumatize people or contribute to their experience of powerlessness.
These include:
1) ensure physical and emotional safety in your interactions
2) establish trust through respect, transparency and consistency
3) offer the person choice where possible
4) collaborate and share power where possible
5) prioritize their empowerment and sense of self- efficacy.
However, no method works with all people the same and we want you to feel comfortable asking us for the accommodations you may need to assist with protecting your safety. Although there are some things we can do nothing about such as the behavior of others or the mechanisms of the court system, wherever we can make accommodations that enable you to feel safer and protect you from triggers, we will.
This is a practice not an expertise and we acknowledge our humanness. We also need to protect ourselves and our staff from being vicariously traumatized or harmed – clients whose trauma causes them to lash out at the people trying to help them are a tough situation for us because while we acknowledge that their anger may be a symptom of their trauma, we also need to maintain safety and boundaries for our attorneys and staff. That being said, even when we have to end a representation because of that kind of reaction, we will endeavor to do so with respectful boundary setting.
For the most part, however, our clients experiencing trauma just need some extra time and empathy, some additional information and a listening ear. We offer that and anything else we can to make the legal experience less traumatic.