Everyone’s experience with trauma is different but when we better understand how trauma impacts us, we begin to take control of our trauma and use it to grow. These Ted Talks will make you look at trauma in a whole new light. Each talk examines trauma through a different lens so you’re guaranteed to find one that resonates with you.
1. How Childhood Trauma Affects Health Across a Lifetime by Nadine Burke Harris
Pediatrician, Nadine Burke Harris, discusses how early adversity impacts health throughout a lifetime. The more a child is exposed to adversity the more likely they will face health problems and engage in high-risk behaviour. When she realized this correlation, she dedicated her profession to understanding the Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) - a traumatic experience in a person’s life occurring before the age of 18 that the person remembers as an adult. In this Ted Talk, Nadine shares examples of how the higher a child’s ACE score is, the higher the probability they will suffer from mental health problems and how we can make an impact.
2. Helping Survivors of Trauma Overcome by David Duncan
David Duncan shares various stories of trauma survivors who were able to overcome their trauma with the support of their community. He argues that the more a person tells their story, the more they can come to terms with their trauma and reduce the anxiety that comes with it. He mentions two simple ways we can be allies for trauma survivors:
- Listen and encourage people to tell their story, rather than trying to resolve or fix their pain.
- Go into the darkness and areas of anxiety with them and support them in facing it.
3. Breaking the Silence about Childhood Trauma by Dani Bostick
Dani Bostick sheds a light on how our society often ignores and hides our trauma instead of diagnosing it. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is often mistakenly believed to only affect veterans. This belief causes many people who suffer from PTSD to be undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, especially in children. Since PTSD can show itself in many forms such as ADHD, depression, anxiety, personality disorders, and even extreme stoicism, many people suffer without accessing effective treatment modalities.
4. What Trauma Taught Me About Resilience by Charles Hunt
Charles Hunt, the founder of The Audacity Firm, LCC, built his career and life around resiliency by giving purpose to his trauma. Growing up in a trauma-filled environment with parents suffering from addiction, he never let his struggles prevent him from achieving the life he wanted. He states that the key to resiliency is your ability to adapt to negative change. To do this you must acknowledge that you were a victim but refuse to be a victim. This Ted Talk is inspiring and reminds us that we are unbreakable, and we mustn’t let today’s pain sacrifice our future.
5. Good Relationships are the Key to Healing Trauma by Karen Treisman
Dr. Karen Treisman talks about the importance of forging supportive relationships to heal trauma. Children’s relationships with their parents and the people around them impact how they interact with the world. Our relationships can weaken and/or strengthen our brain and without safe relationships, we will be on unstable grounds. For us to better serve those who’ve faced trauma, we need to think about trauma as a public health issue that requires us to stop labeling bad behaviours as simply bad for our society and instead begin to be curious about what this behaviour is telling us.
6. Intimacy after Trauma by Kat Smith
In this Ted Talk, intimacy expert, Dr. Kat Smith, shares her story of triumph over trauma and how it’s shaped her understanding of intimacy. After childhood abuse and date rape, she was able to use her challenging life experiences to open up to the transformational power of love. She argues that we tend to erase negative memories instead of facing them, in turn preventing us from building real connections with others. Intimacy is the foundation of relationships that we need to learn to come more attuned to so we can break the cycle of trauma.
7. What Trauma Taught Me About Happiness by Lindsey Roy
Lindsey Roy, a trauma survivor who almost lost her life in a tragic boat accident, was forced to change her perspective to survive. Statistics say that trauma survivors are on average happier than lottery winners. Although that may sound crazy, Lindsey shares with us how our ability to actively force a new perspective on ourselves is a habit that can ultimately change how we feel about our situation. She describes strategies to overcome our brain’s natural negativity bias so we can create the happiness we’ve been yearning for.