Week 02 • Trauma Integration

25 Jan. - 31 Jan. 2021

Trauma, when not processed, continues to grow and expand. It manifests itself in addictions, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and the denial of reality. The graphic above shows how the specific point of trauma is hardly ever the end of the experience.

This past week, I focused on the typical journey of the user before and after a traumatic event. With information found from Expressive Trauma Integration (ETI) led by Dr. Odelya Gertel Kraybill, undergoing a traumatic event can be sorted into 6 stages.

1. Routine : Life before trauma.

2. The Event : The traumatic event takes place.

3. Withdrawal : This stage can be the longest + hardest. One withdraws from the world as a survival strategy, cycling through many emotions with an overall feeling of instability.

4. Awareness : One becomes aware of the dynamics of what has happened to them and has a sense of self + context.

5. Action : Deciding to take action and explore different coping mechanisms.

6. Integration : One has the ability to reflect on their trauma while acknowledging personal strengths needed to survive.

My concept will be focusing on getting users from stage 3 to stage 6. Helping children / teens with the hardships of withdraw, guiding them through awareness + action, and integrating the traumatic event into their lives as a source of resilience and strength.

This coming week will be focused on brainstorming for each point of intervention. By utilizing matrices and categories of the integration framework, I am hoping to find the best points of intersection between something that will be usable for children / teens and seamless to their current lifestyle.

To ease ideation, I have decided that my setting for this resource will be inside public schools. I came to this decision because of the interviews I did in the research phase. As I interviewed both a school counselor and a teacher at a trauma-informed public school, I saw the impact they had on their students and the potential to be their trusted adult in times of hardship.

During my interview with the school counselor, she mentioned how sometimes students didn't feel comfortable talking to their caregivers about traumatic events because they may have unconsciously or consciously been the cause of this trauma. Because of this, the caregiver might not be receptive to the child's feelings or feel guilt for playing a part in their child's trauma (causing the child to also feel guilt/shame for bringing it up).

With the school as the point of introduction for this resource, it remains neutral ground for processing and eliminates the need for caregiver buy-in. This decision sets a firm stakeholder in which I can also refer back to during the ideation phase.

That's all for this week, onto the next!

Week 01 • Framing the Problem + Making the Case

18 Jan. - 24 Jan. 2021

“Trauma is anything that was too much, too soon, and too fast for us to process and integrate.”

Trauma is almost universal, it happens to almost everyone at some point in their lives. The ACE landmark study reports that 2/3 children recall having a traumatic experience. And with trauma’s definition consistently questioned, it’s hard to even understand the experiences one associates with trauma.

A lot has happened in the past couple of months with my capstone – I have gone down rabbit holes researching traumatic memory and climbed mountains to search for the full effects of movement meditation. With all of this movement and knowledge hunting, I decided to go back to my initial deep dive into this topic and reframe the environment of the problem to make the case for my new concept.

I started by looking into definitions of trauma to see what experiences it defined. Knowing my own personal definition, it was interesting to see the broad spectrum of what it could encapsulate in other's perspectives. I wrote down some of my favorites in my notebook (pictured to the left).

I was really taken by the quote mentioning "too much, too soon, and too fast". I had heard this recently in a video and thought it perfectly explained how seemingly simple trauma can be and how hard it can be to process if not seen + integrated into one's life.

Along with traumatic experiences being felt in the moment, there can also be long-term effects associated with childhood trauma. I found this graphic (above, sourced from ChildTrends) which shows all the areas it can affect. I feel like this is important to mention to emphasize why seeing + hearing your trauma can be so valuable, especially as a child. Growing up with hurtful coping mechanisms instead of true life integration can create a lot of shame and shelter us from being vulnerable. At the time of the trauma, these were your survival tools, but now that the trauma has past, they block out the engagement with life that are rooted in being open + vulnerable to it.

This is the environment behind Dala, the new name for my concept. The name stems from amyg-dala which is the part of the brain that drives the "fight or flight" response (the body's fear and stress responses) while playing a pivotal role in memory. This seemed fitting for my concept considering the resource I plan on creating would be helping to improve traumatic memory processing, instigated by the body producing a fear or stress response.

Along with the name change, comes a narrowing down of concept. The question I am attempting to answer is: How can we help children safely process a traumatic memory?

So many times we grow up and never deal with something that activated trauma responses in us, then have to deal with processing the memory as an adult. How do we minimize the long-term impact of "not-dealt-with" traumatic memory? Is there a safe way for a child to process a memory so that they can come to terms with it better as an adult?

I started this project by looking into dissociation being the cause of low childhood memory retention, but I don’t think I solve memory retention by addressing dissociation in childhood. I think I can help combat it by helping children deal with their trauma productively; by asking them about their emotions and giving them positive coping strategies.

In the end, I don’t want this to be about simple mindfulness strategies. There are already so many things out in the health + wellness world addressing that. I want this to be about addressing the present and identifying feelings + emotions. I want this to be about simple, scientific strategies that children can use, so they don’t continue to use hurtful coping mechanisms into adulthood. But also keeping in mind that this has to be for children so that they can stay children during their childhood. I don't want this to feel like some sort of intensive therapy that they have to do because they are "broken" – it should still be fun and seamless to their current life.

There is still so much to explore here and now that I am back in class, I will begin posting my running thoughts weekly. Next week, I plan on explaining more about methodical movement and how that can play a role in processing memory. Until then!

Week 22 to 25 • User Research Sprinkled with A Little Bit of Honesty

Writing today's post on a rainy Sunday morning...

I initially wasn't go to write a post for this month, but some weird productivity spiked in me as the rain fell. As well as this being my 25th week of capstone, it also happens to be the gazillionth day of COVID-19. This past month has seemed harder than most, cases rising and thanksgivings cancelled. I haven't had much of a heart to open my laptop on the weekends or after work, let alone enough heart to work on my capstone the way it deserves.

It's been really hard. To stay positive and, in turn, to stay creative. I keep making those little promises to myself of "oh, just take this weekend to yourself and next weekend you'll be ready to get back at it". It's always a nice thought, but one of the hardest things to actually follow through with.

If I'm being honest, I feel burnt-out. I've done my best to spread out the work, but a little bit of work here and there is almost worse than just staying up all night and pounding out a finished product. And the reality of all of it happens to be – it's not the work that has burned me out, it's the isolation and change this new reality brings. How do I stay creative when I draw energy from the outdoors, but now the weather has turned cold? How do I stay creative when I draw energy from the comfort and company of friends and family, but now I can't see them without being internally anxious about the outcome of my actions?

Put it all together – it's just hard. And instead of hiding that from the process, I wanted to bring it into the light. External factors should not be excluded when looking at the whole of the project. My life is not just this, it's all of it. Designers are not just their work, they bring all of their life experiences to the table. And to be able to look back on these posts as a true, real, raw process, I wanted to not downplay how challenging this time has been – for me and everyone living through the pandemic.

Long story made long, I am still getting things done. My mind is too spastic to allow me to be un-productive, but the effort takes its toll.

As for updates...

With user research done (I hope?), all the hard questions remain on the horizon. I finished my last interview with a school counselor and then finished writing all of the transcripts of my interviews. I was able to interview 8 people in the end: 4 users with childhood memory loss, a child psychologist, a social worker, a school counselor, and a teacher.

I feel really good about the interviews I did – I was able to get a lot of insights from users, experts, and (what I would consider) stakeholders in the project. I'm still wondering.... is there more user research to be done? Could I incorporate more methods (i.e. observations, journey mapping, journaling, etc.) that would prove to be helpful in the long run? I'm not sure, but I am planning on setting up a meeting with someone who knows more than I do to talk it through.

I am currently going back through the transcripts and looking for insights and common themes. There are some really great themes emerging. Some include:

• messaging received from parents (i.e. "you are fine", not asking how you are doing, not feeling safe to share emotions, etc.)

• connecting learning / playing to be used as a form of movement + meditation

• knowing what coping mechanisms you are using and deciding (every time) not to go down that path again

• grounding techniques and EMDR

• and so much more (can't give away everything in one post)

It is really exciting to see possible solutions pop-up when skimming through interview text. I've always gravitated towards interviews for insights because I love being able to talk to real people about their experiences. There is no quantitative data to analyze (although that is always helpful too), it's the qualitative information that I look for. The behaviors that are personal to each person, that they never saw until they were asked about it. I live for that stuff – that is where the project is born for me. And I love staying in that phase as long as I can.

But I do recognize it might be time to move on (from interviewing at least) and so I started to pool together what I have found. My next step involves utilizing the other side of my brain, to get it ready for brainstorming and thinking innovatively about solutions. I am planning on taking snapshots of themes that I find and collaging images based on the mood, content, and context I want to take it. I thought this would be a great pre-cursor to a moodboard and re-focusing my problem statement.

I've created my two-month plan with a list of things to complete over holiday break and before spring semester. And the funniest thing, is that as soon as I start to dig in, bury myself in the work – the whole mood changes. I feel positive and productive and full – and I know I am going to create something special.

It's hard to start, but easy to keep going.