How Getting RAW Gets You Unstuck
Trauma Informed Decisiion- Making with KHAOS MINDSET
How Getting RAW Gets You Unstuck
BY: Sarah O’Brien WITH CONTRIBUTION BY: Candice Cox
Have you ever been in a situation and something happened or something was said, and it threw you off guard? I’m pretty sure all of us have had this experience at some point in life. Another question: how did you handle it? Oftentimes, when we’re surprised something—someone’s comment or opinion, something unexpected in the environment, a grievance someone has with us— happened, we don’t react, or respond, the way we prefer. And usually this is discovered in looking back on circumstances where you reacted or responded differently (perhaps poorly, or more poorly) than you would if you had time to think about it and prepare first.
Jumping to Conclusions
I literally cannot count how many times this has happened to me in my life—being completely thrown off my game—and almost every single time I reacted less than optimally…because of unhealed trauma. I’m quick to become defensive (due to a lifetime of being blamed for everyone else’s problems, health conditions, feelings, and choices). I become reactive, and fast (due to a lifetime of big feelings being ignored and never feeling seen or heard). I jump to conclusions, before the other has had a chance to fully explain (due to a lifetime of having to anticipate moods and outcomes to stay safe). I make assumptions about their intentions (due to a lifetime of being over-shadowed, over-looked, and/or taken advantage of). My inability to show up well during a conflict, or something difficult for me, has 100% been the result of unhealed trauma, and, therefore, I have perpetuated old patterns, that unfortunately, no longer serve me. The patterns were learned in efforts to survive abnormal and emotionally damaging environments and relationships. They are not helpful, but they make sense.
Breaking Survival Mode Patterns
Many others likely are in my same boat—perpetuating old patterns that are no longer helpful because that’s what they’ve known, or because that’s what they’ve always done, instinctually, to survive (remember that abnormal environment, yea, we have to find a way to make it through). As you can see, this leads to unhealthy conflict, ineffective communication, more pain, less resolution, and ultimately more stress and more harm for everyone involved…including me (or you), the person perpetuating the poor pattern. It harms me (or you) in that these unhealthy behaviors keep your nervous system in a heightened stress state, wreaking havoc all over your physiology and body functions, and ultimately negatively impact your health and life expectancy.
What’s the alternative? Especially if you haven’t done, or started, your healing journey? Use a tool! Or in this case, a skill in shifting mindset. What are we shifting? The automatic (negative) fight/flight/freeze/fawn response that has a hairline trigger due to past lived experiences, particularly lived trauma experiences. Remember the old pattern? Well, this is it! The old pattern is an internal response from your brain to the rest of your body when it believes its in danger. Conflict = danger for many people. Conflict = danger almost always for people with histories of developmental trauma, relational or betrayal trauma, and ongoing perpetual trauma. Why? Because conflict between people feels very much like an unsafe thing. When people feel unsafe, their protector part comes out (think F/F/F/F here). That protector is not objective, not open to new ideas, and not interested in compromise…it’s interested in keeping you safe at all costs. Conflict oftentimes makes folks feel vulnerable, and vulnerability will most certainly result in the protector emerging. Due to the vulnerability conflict and uncertainty brings up in us, and due to patterned response from the protector, unhealed people can engage in some really unhelpful behaviors, particularly if they are caught off guard (otherwise, not prepared for a nervous system activation, formerly known as a trigger). So before, during, and after, healing begins we may need assistance of a tool to move us through the old pattern that keeps us stuck receiving the same outcomes. How do we do this? Especially if we aren’t healed or healing?
KHAOS Helps You Build Self-Critical Thinking Skills
Back to the mindset shift. Dr. Candice Cox, LCSW, Founder and Clinical Director of “A&A Inspirations” and Executive Director of “KHAOS(™) Inc” has developed such a tool for assisting us all in shifting the current stuck mindset to a mindset that honors our needs and experiences as well as gets us unstuck from perpetuating old patterns. Dr. Candice Cox says, “we need to realize when we’re not operating from a place of balance, realize what’s changed, and label it.” This is the first step (and the R) in her RAW skill.
Self-Leadership with KHAOS Mindset
In general, Candice’s KHAOS(™)mindset skills were developed to assist individuals with assessing, addressing and reducing the effects of toxic and traumatic stress in their lives. And being caught off guard, in an unpleasant way, certainly kicks up stress. And if your story includes any lived experiences of trauma, this being caught off guard experience, can activate traumatic stress in your body and nervous system (as it recognizes something as a ‘threat’ based on history of it being a threat) and if we don’t learn ways to move this stress all the way through our system, we will get stuck, and effects are damaging…to mental and physical health. And, effects are damaging to interpersonal relationships. And even more damaging if you’re in a position of leadership or influence.
It's imperative to use skills like RAW in your own self-work to increase self-awareness, recognize faulty patterns, and figure out how to adjust the faulty patterned response into a more helpful, balanced response. If you have difficulty accomplishing this on your own, then seeking out a professional, maybe specifically a mental health therapist, to assist you in working through and healing from old wounds and past traumas is necessary. Great leaders are humble, admit fault, accept responsibility, work towards positive change, and understand the importance of life-long learning, of themselves, and skills. Great trauma informed leaders meet all of the above plus engage in self-work to recognize poor patterns and engage in intentional efforts towards healing, as they know this means they will be able to show up better, and rebound more easily, when caught off guard.
RAW literally helps you take a pause, move towards completing a self-inventory of your current state (emotional state, physiological state, environmental state etc.), and make intentional adjustments to carve out a pathway to a new normal, a new way of responding, effectively slicing right through the old (faulty unhelpful) patterned way of responding. All this in hopes to find nervous system balance so that you can show up (respond) in a way that you choose, rather in the way you always have (that likely puts incredible stress on your system). By getting RAW we can break old patterns that were built out of being in survival mode, increase awareness of who and what we’re giving our time and energy to, and make adjustments if we realize a negative impact from spending time and energy on those people or those things. Spending less time on people, places, and things that have a negative impact on us only creates more room for people, places, and things that have a positive impact on us. And when we get here, our nervous system is overjoyed and grateful…and we feel that difference, we feel that shift, we feel the newness of what is balance inside of us. Don’t you want that? I certainly do. Time to get RAW! So, we can be well.
Purchase our Trauma Informed Leadership Course
This transformative course is designed to empower you with the skills and mindset necessary to make a real difference in your community and beyond. Throughout this journey, you'll delve deep into the KHAOS Mindset Skills (Keep Healing and Overcoming Struggles), learning how to effectively apply these principles to drive positive change through enhanced communication and decision-making. You'll develop the ability to communicate empathetically with diverse groups, including trauma survivors, while acknowledging and respecting their individual experiences. Furthermore, you'll hone your decision-making abilities, learning to prioritize empathy and understanding to make impactful choices that foster positive social change. By the end of this course, you'll not only understand the KHAOS Mindset Skills but be able to apply them in your professional roles, demonstrating an increased capacity for interaction using RAW, Patient, Reset, and Free principles. Embark on this journey with us, and unlock your potential to drive meaningful social impact.