Creating Conditions for Healing in the Wake of Violence: A Trauma-Informed Workshop for Communities

When mass violence shatters a community, the immediate crisis passes—but the invisible wounds persist. For educators, leaders and authorities tasked with holding space for traumatized students, staff and citizens while managing their own grief and hypervigilance, understanding the science of what's happening beneath the surface isn't just helpful. It's essential.

This workshop offers participants a framework grounded in neurobiology and trauma science to understand how trauma affects individuals, communities, and institutional systems—and more importantly, what we can do about it.

What You'll Learn

The Science Beneath the Surface
Discover how trauma lives in the nervous system and body, not just the mind. We'll explore the biological reality of threat responses, why "getting back to normal" often fails, and what your body is trying to tell you about safety, control, and connection—the three vital ingredients of human dignity that violence strips away.

Recognizing Trauma Across Three Levels

• Individual: Spotting signs of dysregulation in yourself and others—from hypervigilance to shutdown, dissociation to anger

• Community: How collective trauma manifests in fractured trust, polarization, and the erosion of social fabric

• Systems: Identifying institutional responses that inadvertently retraumatize through rigid policies, suppressed grief, or forced "resilience"

Creating Conditions for Healing
Not every intervention heals. Some common responses—however well-intentioned—can make people feel less safe, less in control, and less connected. Learn to recognize the difference between trauma-informed support and inadvertent harm, including:

• Why rushing back to "productivity" can deepen wounds

• How lack of choice in healing processes replicates powerlessness

• When institutional messaging prioritizes optics over genuine care

• The critical importance of acknowledging what happened before moving forward

Practical Tools for Your Classroom, Newsroom, Boardroom
Leave with concrete strategies to regulate your own nervous system, create genuinely safe learning and work environments, and advocate for institutional practices that honor the biology of healing rather than fight against it.

Who This Workshop Is For

People in leadership, support or helping roles who have experienced violence—whether as direct survivors or community members navigating its aftermath—and who want to understand the science behind what they're witnessing and feeling to be able to create the immediate and longterm conditions for healing.

The Problem

The news and online information move so fast — and hit so hard — that people are constantly stressed, reactive, and mistrustful. Journalists and creators feel it, too. The system rewards outrage, not understanding, which keeps everyone stuck in survival mode.

How We Help

Awareness: Learn to spot how stress and trauma shape what people can actually absorb. Why perfectly reported stories trigger defensive rage. Why audiences share misinformation even when they have facts. Why you wrote that regrettable tweet at 2am. These aren't random — they're predictable nervous system responses.

Ability: Gain skills to stay grounded covering traumatic stories without numbing out or burning out. Recognize when deadline pressure pushes you toward inflammatory framing instead of clarity. Handle difficult editorial conversations that resolve conflicts instead of creating resentment.

Action: Leave with strategies that work. A reporter covers political violence without retraumatizing sources or audience. A newsroom produces better journalism without constant crisis mode. An editor builds a culture where people disagree productively. A creator engages audiences in ways that inform rather than inflame.

The result

Journalism and communication that helps people think clearly instead of keeping them in permanent threat response.

The Problem

Public leaders and institutions are stretched thin, operating under nonstop pressure, threats, and distrust. When everyone is braced for conflict or attack, it's harder to think clearly, collaborate, or solve real problems — and democracy suffers.

How We Help

Awareness: Learn to spot what's driving the dysfunction. Why smart teams make terrible decisions under deadline pressure. Why public hearings turn into shouting matches even when there's common ground. Why you freeze when constituents attack you, then avoid town halls altogether. These aren't failures — they're nervous system responses to chronic threat.

Ability: Gain skills to shift from defensiveness to grounded leadership. Recognize when you're in threat mode and return to clear thinking in under two minutes. Stay present with angry constituents instead of shutting down or getting defensive. Lead high-stakes meetings without burning out.

Action: Leave with strategies that work. A city councilmember who froze during criticism learns to engage productively with opposition. A county manager builds a team that handles crises without constant firefighting. A mayor has the difficult conversations that actually resolve conflicts instead of avoiding them until they explode.

The result
Leaders and institutions that can think clearly, work together, and solve problems — even under pressure.

The Problem

Organizers, activists, and funders are exhausted. The urgency is real, but the constant crisis mode leads to burnout, infighting, and strategies that don't sustain. When everyone operates in survival mode — chasing the next emergency, competing for resources, reacting instead of building — movements fracture and change doesn't last.

How We Help

Awareness: Learn to spot the patterns undermining your work. Why coalition meetings collapse into turf battles when you're fighting for the same cause. Why funders default to short-term reactive grants instead of long-term strategy. Why you can mobilize thousands for a protest but struggle to sustain engagement. These aren't organizational failures — they're what happens when people operate in permanent threat response.

Ability: Gain skills to lead or support others without burning out. Learn to recognize when urgency, stress, or trauma patterns are driving distrust and division, or producing superficial fixes to deeply rooted problems. Develop the ability to stay grounded and clear amid complexity and uncertainty to see both the big picture and gradual details that can make or break coalitions and progress.

Action: Leave with strategies that sustain you and the people you’re working to uplift. Organizers are empowered to build cultures that don't sacrifice people for the cause. Funders shift from reactive grantmaking to seeing the big-picture of change, to be able to support both immediate needs and transformational work that makes legacy-building possible. Everyone has a blueprint for disrupting and transforming the cycles of harm eroding individual and collective wellbeing.

The result

Social change work that builds power sustainably instead of burning through people and resources.

The Problem

Workplace stress is at record levels. Teams are burned out, decision-making suffers, and conflicts that should take minutes to resolve drag on for months. When leaders and employees operate in constant survival mode — chasing deadlines, bracing for criticism, avoiding difficult conversations — productivity tanks and people leave.

How We Help

Awareness: Learn to spot what's actually breaking your workplace. Why your smartest team makes bad decisions in high-pressure moments. Why performance reviews trigger defensiveness instead of growth. Why that meeting about the meeting about the problem still hasn't solved anything. These aren't people problems — they're nervous system responses to chronic workplace stress.

Ability: Gain skills to lead effectively under pressure. Recognize when stress is driving reactive decisions and shift to strategic thinking. Give critical feedback that lands instead of activating defense. Navigate tense conversations without shutting down or escalating. Understand how to analyze complex problems, identify transformational solutions, and communicate both in relatable terms.

Action: Leave with strategies that work. A CEO learns to make high-stakes decisions without triggering panic throughout the organization. A manager builds a team culture where people surface problems early instead of hiding them until crisis. An HR leader creates practices that reduce burnout instead of just managing its aftermath.

The result

Organizations where people do their best work because they're not operating in constant threat response.