I wanted to give the heads up to our ACESConnection friends about Dr. Monique Marrow who is one of the keynotes at Echo's March 21 & 22nd  Frontiers of Resilience conference. Dr. Marrow will be speaking on “Addressing Trauma in System-Involved Youth," drawing on her extensive experience as a child psychologist in the juvenile justice system. 

She talks about the 'invisible suitcase' that system-involved youth carry - a suitcase full of thoughts and perceptions about the world that have been formed by trauma. 

“Criminal justice work focuses on 'criminogenic thinking patterns,' meaning that we have worked really hard to let kids know that their thoughts are wrong and that they need to change those thoughts to 'socially appropriate' thoughts. These kids have persistent distorted blame of others and blame of self. We think it is 'distorted,' but actually, this is untrue because their view has been constructed in the soup of trauma that has been their lives.

The 'invisible suitcase' guides the way we interact with others and behave in the world. The case that juvenile justice kids carry often contains thoughts such as, "it’s all my fault, I’m bad, I’m stupid, you’re going to hurt me, no one loves me, get them before they get you, you’re paid to care, and I’m no sucker."

There’s a difference between saying “Your thought is a bad thought” and “I understand where your thought came from but it still puts you at risk. Let’s figure out if we can help with that. Either I need to do something, the community needs to do something, or we need to do something to help with that thought.”"

Click to register for the conference if you would like to hear more from Dr. Marrow about youth impacted by complex trauma histories and how to develop the core components necessary to develop trauma-responsive environments and practices, especially for youth in the juvenile justice setting.