From Values to Impact: The Importance of Trauma-Informed Practices in Tango Spaces
/Hi folks! It’s been awhile since the last entry–going into this year I’m aiming for a loose quarterly frequency. And! If there’s anything you want to hear about, explore, discuss, or ask questions about, you can submit your queries here and they’ll go into the topics that get considered each quarter.
Whew, it’s been awhile. I know we left off on our way to exploring how tango spaces cultivate resilience. I promise we’ll get to that. But I realized I’d be remiss if I didn’t first address a few more things. In previous articles, we discussed stress and the different ways that different people experience it in the context of different cultural norms in tango spaces. What I want to do next is explain what it means for a space to have trauma-informed practices before speaking on the beneficial impact of those practices.
I recently completed training through Lumos Transforms to become a facilitator of their trauma-informed, evidence-based Resilience Toolkit modality–a practical and responsive framework for navigating stress and cultivating inner resilience in a way that accounts for and transforms the external systems causing stress in the first place.
It’s honestly what’s been driving my exploration of why I miss dancing but not the “dance scene.”
What I’ve learned (and am continuing to learn) in this realm has been a huge inspiration for continuing this series.
I first learned about the Resilience Toolkit via an acquaintance back in 2020. Many of my loved ones and I were still reeling from the public execution of George Floyd. I’d just been part of a mass employee walkout at the pole dance studio over their entirely performative and hypocritical response to it. I was fresh out of an extremely harmful, anti-Black institution that made the majority of their money selling retraumatization experiences as “feminine empowerment.”.
And, I’d been a student at this studio for about 5 years, and a teacher for the 6 months before the walkout. I knew I had so much to unlearn if I wanted to still facilitate dance and embodiment spaces with integrity. I didn’t want to accidentally bring in any harmful habits/norms/practices into any space ever again as far as I could help it–particularly any practices that had been responsible for retraumatizing people who’d come in looking for connection, camaraderie, and empowerment (myself included). A friend recommended the Toolkit to me as both an embodied modality for helping to cope with the sudden loss of community, as well as an in-depth course on what it means to have trauma-informed practices.
Nowadays, “trauma-informed” is a popular buzzword–it gets slapped on to many ads and Instagram carousels and courses as more of a way to tick a box than as the actual ongoing practice that it should be. On top of that, conflations of trauma with harm and discomfort also run rampant.
So let’s start with a few definitions.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) defines trauma as something that results from
“an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”
Trauma is experiential. It depends entirely on how it was experienced by a person (not any outsider’s perception of “how bad” something was) and the presence of lasting adverse effects on individuals functioning/well-being. What may cause ongoing trauma in one person may be a jarring but less impactful flash in the pan for another. One way of conceptualizing trauma is the experience of intense overwhelm or harm from a stressor that is too much, too fast, and/or too soon–something that is beyond someone’s ability to cope in that moment and after. It’s the “lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning” that makes trauma distinct from harm–in that trauma is a potential effect of harm.
In fact, there is a correlation between stress and recovery time when it comes to the likelihood of trauma developing from harm (Ndefo). The more quickly someone is able to return to a state of settledness, the less chance there is for trauma to ensue. This in no way means to minimize someone’s experience or to tell someone to “shake it off” in the moment. Rather, it highlights the importance of having resources, practices, and infrastructure already in place to help someone return to that baseline through a genuine sense of felt safety.
So what does it look like to have “trauma-informed practices”? We’ll again refer to SAMHSA:
Effective trauma-informed practices operate from a place of
“Realizing the widespread impact of trauma and understanding potential paths for recovery;
This doesn’t mean you are directly helping someone with their recovery in the way that a mental health professional would. But it could look like a variety of ways to minimize harmful experiences that might interrupt or hinder that recovery. It can also look like crafting your environment in a way that makes your space easier to navigate for people who are recovering from or have experienced trauma.
2. Recognizing the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved with the system;
Again, this is less about being an expert in treating the symptoms of trauma and more about creating environments and norms where staff, teachers, and maybe even community members can notice someone in need and feel competent in knowing what they can (and can’t) do to help.
3. Responding by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices;
Knowledge and wisdom here doesn’t necessarily have to mean “expertise.” Integrating knowledge about trauma into your policies, procedures, and practices absolutely means understanding what you’re able to handle, and when it’s better to have more experienced help on hand. Incorporating it into your policies and procedures means having that knowledge distributed in a way that makes the most relevant information easily accessible for every role in your community–from participant to teacher to organizer to any other possible stakeholders.
4. Seeking to actively resist re-traumatization.”
This is a big one, especially since it ties back to the systems of oppression that cause long-term trauma. You can’t be resisting re-traumatization if you aren’t actively dismantling the ways in which things like racism, sexism, misogyny, transphobia, white supremacy, etc. are at unchecked in your space. This is where many spaces have fallen short in my experiences. And while these four qualifiers have a lot of overlapping ways to implement them, this one in particular directly speaks to reducing the instances of harm and trauma that occur in your space, not just responding to them after the fact.
I split up the original quote this way to emphasize that a certification doesn’t make your space “trauma-informed” unless you and your space is in an active practice of doing these things–realizing, recognizing, responding, resisting. In fact, many of the places I left because of their re-traumatizing practices were easily able to slap the word “trauma-informed” into their marketing materials. And I’ve definitely seen people wave around a certification while still continuing to operate in ways that directly oppose all four of these listed goals.
You don’t need to be a therapist to realize that women may experience heightened stress or triggers in navigating the intimacy of partner dancing while living in a world where men are the main perpetrators of domestic abuse, stalking, and violent behavior towards women.
You don’t need to be a social worker to recognize when someone is not ok on the sidelines of the dance floor.
You don’t need to be a crisis mediator to provide support to someone who has had a terrible experience over the course of the night.
And you definitely don’t need to be a psychology professor to integrate infrastructure that minimizes the chance that people become traumatized in the inevitable instances of harm that will happen.
This is also why all places benefit from practicing trauma-informed ways of crafting spaces, even if (and I would say especially if) they’re not therapy spaces or counseling or spaces for processing trauma. We can never guarantee that our spaces will be “safe,” and there’s no way to avoid all harm in a space no matter how many courses we’ve taken. But we can ensure that we are doing everything we can to minimize the chances for harm to occur, and maximize the quality of support we can offer when harm does happen.
In fact, a huge part of trauma-informed practice is knowing where your expertise ends (yay for consultants, community skill-sharing, and reputable external resources!). There is a very important distinction between triaging a potentially traumatic instance of harm and processing trauma. If you are a dance studio, you almost certainly should not be helping someone process their trauma (please leave that to therapists and licensed professionals).
For me personally and what I wanted to do, this happened to look like going and getting a certification–both as a deep unlearning of harmful practices and deeper understanding of what to replace them with. If you’re a dance teacher or an events facilitator, you don’t necessarily need to go out and get some type of certification or degree.
You can, however
have some referrals to qualified resources on hand to give to someone should they experience harm or trauma in your space.
offer to stay with them to help them access those resources, such as a hotline, if that’s what the moment calls for.
attend shorter classes/training/workshops around emotional intelligence, communication, anti-racism, etc.
There’s a lot of stuff you can do preemptively to reduce the likelihood of harm happening in the first place such as:
a new member orientation for anyone coming into the space for the first time, whether that looks like an in-person session before they’re admitted into a class, or a list of contacts, values, and community expectations on your registration form
having a mediation or transformative justice go-to consultant that you keep on speed dial should you want to reconcile harms between community members that you don’t feel equipped to mediate.
implementing info sessions or presentations on trauma-informed practices into your regular programming
incorporating a brief segment in every class about the ways in which the social and close-contact nature of tango can be more stressful for people recovering from common types of trauma, and best practices for honoring that reality on the dance floor with strangers
having a code of conduct posted very visibly in your dance space
This is nowhere near an exhaustive list.
Ultimately, centering the person who has been harmed and helping them in the ways they deem helpful is a great starting point. Anyone who helps produce events or teach classes should at least have a system to discern what they can handle and how to get someone the resources they need if you aren’t qualified to provide that. There are less extensive trainings that do teach some basic mental/emotional triaging skills.
And, it’s ok to start small, as long as you keep practicing and building what this looks like for your specific space. A small start could look like:
taking an inventory of your skills and resources available to you as a teacher or facilitator and noting any gaps in coverage.
noticing what you wish you’d had in times where you didn’t feel adequately supported through harm or trauma in a tango space.
polling your community to see if anyone is passionate about offering a workshop on building the skills you’re working on
asking for recommendations from your members on resources they’ve found helpful (particularly members whose practices are having the impact that you are looking to create in your space)
I’ve included a list of resources below that are great places to look further into what it means to be trauma-informed.
Stay tuned for next quarter’s subject matter, which will introduce specific trauma-informed principles, discerning your own values, and exploring what those look like together.
Have a topic you want to see us explore? Comment below or send your suggestions here!
Citations:
Ndefo, N. (2017). Unit 1.7 Resilience. The Resilience Toolkit Certification.
Resources for further learning on trauma-informed practices
Lumos Transforms - https://lumostransforms.com/
The Resilience Toolkit - https://theresiliencetoolkit.co/
Trauma-Informed Los Angeles - https://traumainformedla.org/
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration - https://www.samhsa.gov/
SAMHSA’s Concept of Trauma and Guidance for a Trauma-Informed Approach - https://traumainformedla.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/sma14-4884.pdf
Therapist Resources
The Loveland Foundation - https://thelovelandfoundation.org/
(all of the following resources are directly from The Loveland Foundation’s list of partnerships)
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline - https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
Crisis Text Line - https://www.crisistextline.org/
Therapy for Black Girls - https://www.therapyforblackgirls.com/
National Queer & Trans Therapists of Color Network - https://www.nqttcn.com/directory
Talkspace - https://www.talkspace.com/
Open Path Collective - https://openpathcollective.org/
Black Female Therapists - https://www.blackfemaletherapists.com/directory/
Zencare - https://blog.zencare.co/zencare-x-the-loveland-foundation-therapy-fund-information-for-clients/
Psychology Today - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/
