What is Trauma Informed Care?
The 4 R’s and 5 Principles of Trauma Informed Care
It’s 2024, the world is so incredibly complicated, interconnected, and confusing.
It’s 2024, the world is so incredibly traumatic.
From global war to domestic violence to second-hand pain and suffering experienced through social media, we are all continuously exposed to various forms of trauma.
The reality is that it’s more common to come across someone who has experienced trauma than someone who hasn’t.
The ultimate goal of Trauma Informed Care (TIC) is to avoid retraumatizing people by triggering psychological or physiological memories. These memories can be triggered by smells, sounds, textures, emotional feelings, words, and environments.
Neurotoned follows this goal by working on healing the vagus nerve, regulating the nervous system, and building the mind-body connection not by bringing up painful memories.
What is Trauma?
Trauma is a multi-layered thing, it rarely happens by itself and almost always overlaps with other forms of trauma.
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Individual trauma affects a person on a physical, psychological, or emotional level that causes long-lasting damage such as medical or accident-related trauma.
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Interpersonal trauma affects a person as a direct result of another person’s actions such as domestic violence and hate crimes.
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Collective trauma affects individuals and communities across countries or the world such as war, human trafficking, and poverty.
That’s where Trauma Informed Care comes in, understanding that almost every human has been touched by some form of trauma and should be treated by keeping the 4 R’s in mind.(1)
What are the 4 R’s?
The 4 R’s are four terms to keep in mind when caring for someone with trauma in order to do no harm and help them heal.(2)
Neurotoned has taken extreme care to make sure our programs use the 4 R’s in our approach to trauma and self-healing.
1. Realization
Healthcare professionals, centers, and programs must realize that trauma is multi-layered and affects people on an individual, interpersonal, and collective level.
2. Recognize
Programs and professionals need to be able to recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in order to help those who have been traumatized.
3. Respond
Programs and professionals should respond with effective methods of treatment to help heal trauma.
4. Resist
All efforts must be made to resist retraumatizing a person through triggering events or memories of the trauma.
What are the 5 Principles of TIC?
The 5 Principles of TIC are guides used by healthcare professionals, healthcare centers, and programs.(3) These Principles ensure the method of treatment follows the 4 R approach.
1. Safety
The emotional and physical safety of the person must be ensured. In a physical setting, this means giving the person space, not standing over them, and ensuring they have access to a place to retreat to.
The Neurotoned Programs practice safety by giving you the tools to heal yourself from the physical safety of your home. In terms of your emotional safety, our videos and written communication are all analyzed for triggering content.
2. Trustworthiness
All efforts should be taken to ensure the trustworthiness of the organization, program, professional, or institute that offers health care to traumatized people.
Neurotoned attempts to build this trustworthiness with our client base by being in constant communication with them and offering a 60-day money-back guarantee. We believe we’re doing a good job and always welcome our client’s feedback.
3. Choice
Choice is an important part of any kind of recovery. Choosing to take part in a program, choosing to commit your time, and choosing to commit yourself to your future mental health are all ways to ensure success.
4. Collaboration
Many people feel helpless when they start any kind of mental health program. In order to ease you into the program to feel comfortable and create the best environment for you to heal, we collaborate.
We collaborate with you by giving you the education and explanation of our exercises and methods instead of just telling you what to do. We constantly ask for feedback and testimonials in order to improve our programs to benefit you and others.
5. Empowerment
People on their mental health journey are often in a disempowered and vulnerable state. It’s important to make them feel empowered and help them be active participants in their own healing.
Neurotoned does this by providing you with tools you can use for the rest of your life to heal yourself as well as maintain a regulated nervous system in the future.
Wrapping Up on Informed Care
The 4 R approach guided by the 5 Principles of Trauma Informed Care, puts the health and wellbeing of the traumatized person first and everything else second.
Neurotoned’s mission is to empower every single one of our clients by providing them with the tools to help them heal themselves in a space where they are safe and comfortable to maximize their success.
Our Recommended Reading:
- Grossman, S., Cooper, Z., Buxton, H., Hendrickson, S., Lewis-O'Connor, A., Stevens, J., Wong, L. Y., & Bonne, S. (2021). Trauma-informed care: recognizing and resisting re-traumatization in health care. Trauma surgery & acute care open, 6(1), e000815. https://doi.org/10.1136/tsaco-2021-000815
- https://www.nchv.org/images/uploads/Research_Brief_61_-_SAMHSA_Trauma_Care.pdf
- https://www.thewalkercenter.org/blog-posts/what-are-the-5-principles-of-trauma-informed-care
Heal The Mind Body Connection With 10-Minute Vagus Nerve Toning Exercises
Discover the only at-home program that offers daily exercises for healing the Vagus nerve and nervous system after trauma, guided by world-renowned therapist Dr. Kim DiRe'
