POST # 11: "THE FUTURE OF HEALING" SHAWN GINWRIGHT

 "The Future of Healing: Shifting from Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement" 

Shawn Ginwright

Argument

In this week's assigned reading, the author Shawn Ginwright opens our minds to a discussion that the public has not really placed a great deal of focus on. Ginwright argues throughout his text about misconceptions regarding trauma healing and the ways that people who are victims of traumatic events are perceived. The author's initial views and methods of helping those who have undergone trauma are those that most people would think to enact: focus on the the traumatic event and help the victim to overcome it. This is more focused toward trauma informed care, meaning that it is viewed that someone's emotional stability is being jeopardized directly by a traumatic incident. Ginwright explains this method of healing as focusing on "healing the whole person and not specific symptoms or behaviors." This type of care is usually enacted in the form of therapy or counseling. 

    After explaining the method of trauma informed care, Shawn Ginwright then explains where the logic is flawed. He started to realize the downside of this type of healing after an encounter with one man in the care group that he was leading. This man made a statement describing that he was more than just his trauma. As a response, Ginwright started to think on the ways that trauma informed care actually neglects the contextual factors of a person, only boiling someone down to the worst thing that ever happened to them. 

    To combat the use of trauma informed care, Ginwright is now a strong advocate for another method of trauma care called "healing centered engagement." This method, unlike the previous, recognizes that trauma can be a collective experience that happens over time and not just a product of one individual incident. The real healing cannot occur from only treating the one who experiences trauma, but must be achieved through changing the traumatic environment. The author describes healing centered engagement as focusing not only on what is wrong with a person, but also what is right with them as well. In addition to promoting this practice, Ginwright explains four key elements in understanding healing centered engagement:

• healing centered engagement is explicitly political rather than clinical
• healing centered engagement is culturally grounded and views healing as the restoration of identity
• healing centered engagement is asset driven and focuses on well-being rather than symptoms we want to suppress
• healing centered engagement supports adult providers with their own healing