Trauma informed Peer Support

This paper is written to generate discussion about the importance of trauma informed peer services. We will examine how people who have experienced sexual abuse and other severe personal traumas have built their way of “seeing” the world and of “making meaning ” from their experiences, and consequently why and how they end up in the mental health system defined as “mental patients”. We will explore the ways in which peer support is the logical environment for deconstructing these trauma-based worldviews and for building relationships that are based on mutuality, shared power, and respect. Finally we will identify ways that peer support programs can offer an environment where social action becomes an integral part of people’s healing, help people to find and use voice and to build mutually empowering relationships, and to expose the cultural violence that has kept us silent prisoners in our own skins. This paper will present both a theoretical base and offer stories and journal entries in order to personalize the concepts presented. Those of us with histories of past violence often feel “other-than. ” We have bee