Jane Stevens, Dr. van der Kolk and Dr. Covington
“I thought it was hyperbole,” said one participant, “’The Titans of Trauma’, but the speakers were phenomenal.”
Admittedly, we were a few titans short at Echo Parenting & Education’s Changing the Paradigm conference last week at The California Endowment in Los Angeles. Dr. Vincent Felitti, co-principal investigator of the CDC/Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, had terrible back pain, poor man, and couldn’t face the train journey from San Diego to be with us. Then, calamitously, we received a call from Dr. Dan Siegel’s office to say he had been called away to an emergency and wouldn’t be able to make the conference.
My job, after learning that two of our seven panel speakers had fallen by the wayside, was to break the news to the 300 or so people crowded into the auditorium. Luckily for me, and for the audience, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, founder and medical director of the Trauma Center and author of the new book, The Body Keeps the Score, turned out to be all the titan we needed. And with help from speakers Dr. Stephanie Covington, Jane Stevens of ACES Connection Network, Heather Forbes, and our founder, Ruth Beaglehole, there was plenty of expertise to go around.
The conference was sold out, which is testimony to the growing interest and understanding about childhood trauma and how the effects of toxic stress in one’s lifetime, plus the epigentic effect of trauma carried down the generations, can prime the body for greater susceptibility to illness (mental and physical), drive people to unhealthy coping mechanisms like alcohol or drugs, and amp up emotional responses to swing between extremes of rage and paranoia or depression and inward collapse.
My co-director, Diana Ayala, and I closed the conference with a workshop entitled “Finishing the Sentence” to explain why Echo Parenting & Education, and why a conference on childhood trauma. Our answer? Every time trauma experts like Dr. van der Kolk and Dr. Felitti are asked the question, “What can prevent childhood trauma?” they always reply, “Parenting.” But unlike Echo and our nonviolent approach, not all parenting is able to maintain the essential connection between caregiver and child - the safe, stable nurturing relationship that research proves heals and protects against trauma. If the parenting model focuses on controlling behavior, it will miss the mark.
Diana did an excellent job in conveying the message. As for me, I choked up telling the story of my son and his travails, and his avowal that having experienced unconditional love he will also raise his children nonviolently. A little incoherent, a little emotional, but perhaps the perfect ending for a conference that was all about healing ourselves, protecting our children, and eradicating childhood trauma, which is, as Dr. Robert Ross, president and CEO of The California Endowment remarked, “the number one health care issue of our time.”
Dr. van der Kolk, Dr. Ross, Louise Godbold and Jane Stevens
Comments (1)