About the Trauma Response Institute
Guiding Principles
- Collaborative In all its activities, the institute seeks to collaborate with service organizations, government agencies, schools, faith communities and traumatology experts from a variety of professions committed to a trauma-informed response in its care for individuals and communities.
- Ecosystemic The ecosystemic orientation of the institute embraces a holistic approach to understanding human experience and functioning. Educational programs focusing on a biological, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual inquiry into the impact of traumatic events set the stage for the application of a context-sensitive multi-modal response based on the needs identified by the affected individual or relational system.
- ResiliencyThe guiding feature of the institute is its embrace of resiliency of individuals and communities to survive and thrive in the face of adversity. All activities of the Trauma Response Institute are grounded in the belief that each person, relational system, and/or community impacted by a traumatic event has the capacity to find hope, purpose and meaning as it rebuilds, with trauma-informed services intending to facilitate this process of recovery.
Why Trauma-Informed Counseling Training Matters
Every mental health professional works with individuals and relationship systems (e.g. couples, families) whose lives have been touched by stress, grief and trauma. So in many ways, all counselors and therapists are trauma counselors.
Over the years, research has helped us understand more specifically how trauma impacts us neurologically, which impacts how we think, feel and physically react. Typical or common therapeutic interventions do not always “fit” what is needed when a person is experiencing specific types of stress and trauma.
So, the courses in the TRI program teach professionals what trauma-informed practice actually means. It is the integration of advancements in neurobiology and attachment theory, combined with best-practice data on what is most effective to help persons overwhelmed by particular types of stress and trauma. We think this body of knowledge and skills is imperative in addition to the basics of most mental health degree programs.