How Do We Solve a Problem Like Malene?

And, if my audience will have me excused while I get a little more flippant…

It is tempting to answer that question with:

“Trauma informed, or bust.”

And then just walk off.

But, Lets See –

You could have people go through the densest, most descriptive and accusatory parts of this website with a fine-tooth comb.

What do you do with all that material?

We all know I will respond to a fight with a fight. Is it worth it? Hmm. Something to consider.

I’ve also been awfully careful to be factual and accurate. The problem isn’t that I’m spreading lies. The problem, it seems to me, is that I keep saying something deeply inconvenient:

The Guidance Center harmed me.

You Harmed Me; You are Responsible for that Harm. Inconvenient – I know!

I experienced what I believe were severe ethical, moral and, potentially, legal violations at The Guidance Center. And then I committed the terrible inconvenience of being willing to tell my story honestly.

And THAT, of course, is a much bigger problem.

Now what?

Well, I’m not the marrying kind, so I won’t elope – and really I can’t sing and I won’t torture my readers ..

The problem of me speaking up has no easy answer, because the problem isn’t actually me speaking up.

The problem is what I am speaking about.

I experienced an organization that seemed profoundly top-heavy and that, when it mattered most to me as a patient, failed to demonstrate the genuine principles of trauma-informed care it claimed to value.

And I decided to speak about it (ops).

So perhaps the question isn’t:

How do you solve a problem like Malene?

Perhaps it is:

What happens when you stop trying to solve Malene and start solving the problems Malene keeps talking about?

Huh?

Nuh!

This isn’t a feel-good movie, and apparently I have just learned that the fucking edelweiss isn’t extinct. (It is a very pretty little flower, I have seen it in the wild in Switzerland, very pretty).

And “genuine” is much too high a risk.

Says those who know the most about such things.

Because genuine trauma-informed care would require something terribly dangerous:

Actually being trauma informed.

• It could mean listening to people when they tell you they have been harmed.
• It could mean examining whether your own systems contributed to that harm.
• It could mean accountability without first calculating whether accountability creates liability.

It could even mean sitting across from the troublesome person who has spent more than a year documenting your failures and asking the absolutely terrifying question:

“What would meaningful change look like to you?”

Good grief.

Someone call Legal.

Because here’s the truly irritating thing about the Problem Like Malene:

I have answers.

I have been giving you the answers.

• Train your people.
• Stop treating trauma responses as behavioral problems to be controlled.
• Stop confusing compliance with safety.
• Stop allowing power to substitute for relationship.
• Listen to peers.
• Listen to patients.
• Take complaints seriously before they become websites, grievances, board complaints, lawsuits and public-records requests. (Good Grief; Call Legal!)

And when somebody tells you that you harmed them, resist the apparently irresistible institutional urge to make:

The patient’s reaction to the harm you caused, the most important problem in the room.

I said it! Right there it is…

That’s it.

That’s the terrifying master plan.

Trauma informed, or bust.

See?

We could have walked off several paragraphs ago.