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From Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University, March 11, 2020 What is “serve and return”? What does it mean to have a “responsive relationship” with a child? How do responsive relationships support healthy brain development? And what can parents and caregivers do in their day-to-day lives to build these sorts of relationships? This episode of The Brain Architects podcast addresses all these questions and more! [ Please click here to listen to the podcast and for more resources .]

https://medium.com/@AutieTraumaGeek/neuroception-and-the-3-part-brain-b38f482c34b0

Well, after a while of trying, I'm grateful to be able to share our organisation has some community education project funding to share ACEs to residents of our town. The aim is to engage non-professionals (ie people not connected to the themes of ACEs in a professional capacity). I would be grateful to connect with others who have done similar to learn and share.

The Traumatic Stress Institute (TSI) is hosting a FREE webinar for leaders in health, trauma, and trauma-informed care (TIC) to preview the new Online ARTIC, a cutting-edge online tool for measuring TIC. March 31st event is now full. Register today for April 7 or 9 event at this link . The Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale is one of the only validated measures of TIC. It measures professional and para-professional attitudes toward TIC, has been used globally by over 200...

In the last few articles, we have explored together how childhood trauma negatively impacts the ability to form lasting and loving relationships with a partner. We’ve studied the impact that having trust issues, flashbacks, loneliness, body image problems and hypervigilance play in our avoidance of allowing closeness to others. In this article, let’s talk about ways to overcome the deep-seated and devastating effects of childhood trauma, and our greatest ally, compassion. Overcoming the Fear...

By Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil, California Health Report, March 9, 2020 Several weeks ago Carl Chan went to a store in Oakland. Chan felt like he had to cough — he suffers from serious allergies — and raised his arm to cover his mouth. He then saw another customer standing near him bolt out of the shop. “That hurt,” said Chan, who is also president of Oakland’s Chinatown Chamber of Commerce. “I’ve seen people coughing that are not Chinese, and it’s no problem. But any time you see myself or...

By Sharon Jayson, Kaiser Health News, March 10, 2020 Alec Murray was 13. He enjoyed camping, fishing and skiing. At home, it was video games, movies and books. Having just completed middle school with “almost straight A’s,” those grades were going to earn him an iPhone for his upcoming birthday. Instead, he killed himself on June 8 — the first day of summer break. Caleb Stenvold was 14. He was a high school freshman in the gifted and talented program. He ran track and played defensive...

By Noel Hunter, Mad in America, March 8, 2020 An all too common experience of trauma survivors is hearing the suggestion, “Why don’t you just get over it?” The idea is that, well, it happened in the past, so it shouldn’t still be affecting you now. It’s as if each moment in life exists in a vacuum, separate and untouched by anything that happened prior to this moment. The thing is, everything that’s happening right now is impacted by everything that has preceded it. Our brain filters each...

By Steve Jansen, Youth Today, March 8, 2020 With some time to kill the day before the 2018 Thanksgiving break, William Soules, a math and social studies teacher at Oñate High School in Las Cruces, N.M., taught a group of about 30 advanced placement psychology students about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). The landmark national research study, published in 1998, was the largest investigation into how child abuse and neglect manifests into adult health and well-being. “I thought it would...

By Amy Dworsky, Colleen Schlecht, Gina Fedock, et al., Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, March 2020 The dramatic increase in the number of women in state and federal prisons in recent decades has led to calls for gender-responsive policies and practices that address the needs and circumstances of incarcerated women and recognize the central role that motherhood plays in many incarcerated women’s lives. This brief describes the results of a project undertaken by researchers from...

Santa Rosa, CA, resident Lisa Marden watches her 15-month-old baby gleefully play with magic markers and relays how she’s been coping with feeling anxious. (We're using a pseudonym to protect the family's privacy.) “I’m just super stressed out with everything, and as soon as I eat anything, I get nauseous, so I’ve been eating snacks instead of meals,” she explains to Liz George, a field nurse with the Maternal/Child Field Nursing team of Sonoma County, CA, who has been seeing Marden on home...

By Alanna Dancis, Santa Fe New Mexican, March 7, 2020 My husband and I have spent the last two years fostering a little boy. He had been abused and neglected and over those two years we worked hard to heal his emotional and physical wounds. We straightened out some medical issues he had, cheered him on as he learned to walk and talk, and wove him into the fabric of our family life. He was raised as the brother to our biological son. With 10 days of notice, he was removed from our home and...