The Trauma-Informed SLP

Here's my truama-informed critique of the Telepathy Tapes podcast. In this episode, I unpack how telepathy claims about non-speaking autistic people intersect with facilitated communication, dehumanization, and inspiration-porn narratives. It highlights ethical and practical concerns around FC-style communication modalities, ideomotor effects, and the need for independent AAC access and ...

What does trauma-informed care actually mean in practice—and how can you tell when something isn’t trauma informed, even if it’s widely accepted?

In this episode, we're going through common green flags and red flags of trauma-informed care, including bodily autonomy, presumed competence, neurodivergent-affirming approaches, compliance-based models, masking, and how neuroplasticity is oft...

*Seinfeld voice* What's the deal with safety and empowerment???

If you've ever wondered why I go on and on about safety and empowerment, and why I don't tend to mention the other five principles of trauma-informed care very much, this episode explains it for ya!

I also explain bit about where the heck I've been with the answer: Learning how to edit videos on YouTube! (It has been...a pro...

I have had meltdowns my whole life. I didn't know that's what they were called, but I definitely had them my whole life. And they SUCK! They're uncomfortable, sometimes scary, exhausting, and disabling. But I've also noticed that many, MANY people have no idea of what it's like from a first-person POV.

Of course, this is only my experience, as any person can only talk about their own exp...

One consistent aspect of living as a neurodivergent is burnout. Whether it's ADHD, autism, depression, anxiety, OCD, trauma exposure, or literally any other brain difference, we're all burnout from, I suspect, a younger age than most neurotypicals.

But as with workplace/professional burnout, I think there's more than "just burnout" going on; so let's talk about it.

TOPICS COVERED:

1. D...

There are many, MANY redflags in this rhetoric, so let's unpack them.

Episode topics include:

• Who are the creators of the podcast?
• The "superpower" flavor of dehumanization
• Alternative explanations fo...

So here's something from my Youtube page that, in light of the 2024 election cycle, I thought would be good to post here. Genocide always seems like hyperbole...until it's not.

(The video includes images of referenced articles and quotes, so if you benefit from seeing the text on-screen, please check out the link below.)

Description from Youtube episode released May 29, 2024:

I'm not a p...

Topics covered:

• Updated episode intro ends around 8:00 (in light of the 2024 U.S. election cycle)
• Strategies (and I've time marks included below if you're wanting to find specific ones quickly)
  • Intro to strategies starts near 13:40
  • Physiological needs starts near 14:50
  • Calming strategies starts near 17:50
  • "Burning up energy stores" starts near 26:50
• What bottom-up proces...

So you've tried all the burnout strategies you can find: Mindfulness, eating better, exercising, goign to bed early ...aaaannnnnd they didn't work. Guess you'll just stay burned out forever, right? Not necessarily...

The stuff that really works to help with burnout (and trauma responses) are just not as pithy, toxic-positivity-y, and clickbait-y as the stuff we tend to hear the most abou...

Episode 3 is finally here! On this episode, we talk about secondary traumatic stress (STS), a.k.a vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, trauma exposure, etc... This is the meat...the "entrée" (if you will)...of the series because I think that the impact of being exposed to other peoples' trauma is a lot more prevalent than we tend to think. And it's what gets confounded with burnout the ...

One little thread on r/slp made me think of three major things that are part of how I process and do neurodivergent-affirming care in the case of emotional dysregulation. So I made a really informal video (using my front cam on my Macbook, so apologies for the quality) to address those things.

Outline:
1) Definition of dysregulation, it's over-use, and contrasting it with emotional upset.
...

Part 2 is finally here!! (Whew!) On this episode, we go over both systemic and interpersonal/relationship things in the workplace itself that can contribute to traumatizing experiences for employees.

TOPICS COVERED:

• Reviewing what trauma really means (like physiologically)
• Systemic issues re: Conservation of Resources, scarcity mentality, and organizational dehumanization
• Interperso...

Burnout. It seems like everyone has it! (*insert Oprah meme here* "YOU get burnout and YOU get burnout and YOU get burnout! EVERYONE GETS BURNOOOOOOUUT!!!!!") But what really is burnout? And why do so many people suffer...

So, I talked about this at my ASHA 2023 talk, made an image carousel on Instagram, and did rambly Youtube video on this, but figured I'd do a quick podcast ep on this as well, cause I've found myself using these terms more and more these days and, well, I just think it's good to clarify when we're talking about societal/social adversity vs. individual neurodivergent profiles.

References ...

Just thought I'd put out a little update on what I've been up to and what I have planned in the works.

Feel free to check out my new(ish) Youtube channel here!

And I also have a new look for my website if ya want to check that out.

 

Feel free to email me with any ideas and/or topics you'd like to hear my viewpoints on or have me do a research deep-dive into!

...

A new episode!! FINALLY!! I took a bit of time-off from this topic for my own mental health, but now I'm back, baby!

Herein lies my info-dump on dehumanization in medical (read: clinical) practice. We go through Haque &b Waytz's functional and nonfunctional causes and also some very valid counterpoints from Kalina Christoff's paper.

AND, as a bit of ADHDer magic, this whole thing end...

As the Gen-Zers say, we live in a society. And so do scientists, which means that science is never truly bias-free...despite frequent claims otherwise. To be trauma-informed, however, we have to pay attention to that man behind the curtain. Cause sometimes, research is based in dehumanizing societal biases. And treatments based in that research ends up harming people.

This episode covers...

To introduce dehumanization in medicine and science, I decided to use this fun, light-hearted* tail of "crazy" (cis?**) women and the (cis?) men who sought to figure out the source of the crazy.

On this episode, we go through:

• The study of female hysteria in the late 19th century in Paris, ...

Sorry this one took so long to get out! (Had some software snafus to deal with.) But here we go with the second episode towards becoming trauma-sensitive. Heavy topics, but super important to confront our discomfort with these if we want to truly be trauma-informed.

On this episode:

1. The three stages of historical trauma
2. A reframining of a few mass traumas (i.e., stage 1 of historica...