Trauma-informed skills. Better mental health.
Navigating trauma and intensity
In environments of strong emotion and uncertain pathways, personal skills determine the outcomes. Those skills include, most fundamentally, self-awareness and empathy: how we stay in touch with ourselves and how we respond to others. These abilities require constant attention, reinforcement, and renewal.
Explore skills trainingTrauma-Informed Museums
Well-being, resilience, and healing
Museums help us navigate complex problems. The opportunities are endless—so are the risks.
Addictions and Recovery
Skills for support, compassion, and care
Addictions are everywhere, yet we fail to address them effectively. We can do better.
Finding the Human
Beyond screens, distraction, and social media
We evolved to roam the landscape. Our well-being might be rediscovered there.
Deepening capacity and skill
How can we feel more comfortable and confident in navigating challenging situations? How might we help colleagues and community members work toward emotional health and well-being? How can we prevent ourselves — or those we work with — from sliding into trauma or deep distress? These are foundational questions, and they require serious answers.
Essentials of trauma-informed practiceA foundation of self-awareness
Our ability to assist others in emotional distress depends on how well we understand and can manage our own emotional challenges and reactivity. Self-awareness is the most important factor in situations of intensity and trauma.
Learn about my approach
Cultivating mentorship and relationship
We need to be consistent, congruent, and ethical in how we apply personal strategies and tactics in situations governed by the emotional reactions of people (which is, actually, most situations). Getting it right is hard. The skills of interpersonal communication and empathy are deep and complex. Those skills start with us — but they extend to everyone.
A primer on empathy
When Movement Maintains the Pattern
The Shadow Side of Physical Activity in Recovery
A runner circles the park at dawn, feet striking pavement with metronomic precision. Five miles, then seven, then ten. The endorphins rise, the mind quiets, and for those precious hours the static …
Addressing Mental Health in the Workplace
A Framework for Leaders
Over the past few years, I’ve found myself doing more training with people in leadership positions. Something has shifted. The requests aren’t just about implementing trauma-informed practices or s…
How Early Experiences Shape Who We Become
The Developmental Foundation of Mental Health and Addiction
Pick up a stone from any beach and turn it in your hand. Notice its shape, its smoothness, the way light catches the striations of mineral deposits laid down perhaps millions of years ago. This sto…
Running as Nervous System Medicine
Trauma Responses and the Power of Movement
Trauma is an experience that exceeds our ability to manage stress. It disrupts our emotional containment: we lose our capacity for self-regulation, become drawn into instinctive coping, and often r…
Belonging, Not Steps
What Actually Heals in Recovery
One of the most common conversations in my work is about the pathways of recovery that people choose. Clients in addiction treatment have often participated in a variety of programs, many of which …
Why We Resist What Works
Movement, Mental Health, and the Nervous System's Need for Real Challenge
The research is unequivocal, even monotonous in its consistency: physical activity outperforms pharmaceutical interventions for most mental health conditions. It rivals or exceeds the efficacy of p…
Essentials of Trauma-informed Practice
Considerations for recovery, healing, and well-being
Trauma is an experience that exceeds our ability to manage stress. Clinically, it disrupts containment: we lose our capacity for self-regulation, become drawn into instinctive coping, and often rem…
Working with Grief, Trauma, and Related Challenges
Museums Offer Much Potential for Healing Work — But Safety Must be a Primary Concern
Adapted from Museum Objects, Health and Healing , by Brenda Cowan, Ross Laird, and Jason McKeown. New and powerful museum exhibition trends include a greater focus on emotional engagemen…
Beyond the Alphabet Soup
Trauma Responses, Uncertainty, and the Limits of Models
The Parade of New Models In recent years, trauma terminology has proliferated at an extraordinary rate. What began as the familiar fight-or-flight response has expanded to include freeze, fawn, fl…
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