Shift Our Frame and Change the Lens

We have looked at how starting with ourselves by reflecting on our beliefs and expectations and checking our stress responses can help create relationships that promote resilience. Providing responsive services is the next level of our roadmap.

Responsive services can be thought of in different protective environments such as community services, medical services, education system, justice system, workplaces, communities, neighborhoods, and other environments.

The first step is to create responses that promote safety and healing. It is important to avoid responses that may cause harm. We can start by shifting our frame and changing the lens in which we do our work — then work to promote healing and foster well-being in all that we do.

Nadine Burke Harris (she/her) proposes we shift our frame with an understanding that trauma, toxic stress, and/or other adversities are: 

  1. highly prevalent, and 

  2. can significantly impact lifelong health and interconnected social issues (1).  

Recognizing the prevalence of adverse experiences, we can incorporate a lens of a healing-centered approach that builds empathy and takes a collective view of healing. Shawn Ginwright (he/him) shares the following elements of a healing-centered approach (2):  

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A resilience-oriented and healing-centered frame opens up ways for all people to define their experiences and identities in a more humanizing and dignified way. 

When we view young people and their behaviors as “the problem” we neglect to see them in the context of their lived experiences and unique paths to creating powerful identities, meaning, and well-being (3). When we are able to shift our frame and change the lens, we can work together to promote healing and well-being.

 

Sources:

  1. Nadine Burke Harris (2018). The Deepest Well. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  2. Shawn Ginwright (2018). The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement. https://medium.com/@ginwright/the-future-of-healing-shifting-from-trauma-informed-care-to-healing-centered-engagement-634f557ce69c

  3. Kristin Bodiford (2012). Choppin' it Up: Youth-led dialogues for positive change.