Ing Says: The Beauty of Trauma Informed Care in Practice
In February 2025, I was hospitalized at Flagstaff Medical Center’s Behavioral Health Unit.
I want to be clear about something before I get into it: this is not a complaint. This is the opposite. This is me documenting what trauma-informed care actually looks like when someone does it right — because that deserves to be on the record just as much as the failures do.
First, Some Context About My Nervous System
When my nervous system overloads, my startle reflex becomes extreme. Sudden sounds, unexpected touches, even light and movement — especially sound — can send me into a full-body jolt and a scream. It’s not dramatic. It’s not attention-seeking. It’s just what happens.
That context matters. Because what happened next happened to a person whose nervous system was already working overtime just by being in a psychiatric unit in the first place.
What Upset Me
For a while, I was lucky. They gave me the only single room on the unit, and I stayed there for about a week. It helped. It mattered more than I can fully explain — because when your startle reflex is that extreme, shared space isn’t just uncomfortable. It’s destabilizing.
Then one day, staff decided someone else needed that room more.
A nurse approached to let me know they were moving my things “now.” I argued that my needs mattered too. We went a few rounds — him repeatedly saying “Okay?” and me replying “No, not okay. I have needs too.”
That is what self-advocacy looks like from inside a dysregulated nervous system. It is not pretty. It is not articulate. It is just a person trying to hold on to the one thing that was making the environment survivable.
Eventually, he left. I tried to hide it, but the tears came anyway. Another staff member — a nurse working as a tech that day — noticed. Her approach was dismissive. That didn’t help.
How I Responded
So I did what I do when I can’t cope.
I wedged myself into a corner of the new room, clutching a soft sweater, letting the tears come.
Like a freaking two year old in a corner.
I want to name that honestly — not because it was shameful, but because it was real. That is what a trauma response looks like. It is not theatrics. It is not manipulation. It is a nervous system that has run out of other options and is doing the only thing it knows how to do. I curled up in a corner and I fell apart.
And then my assigned nurse found me.
What The Nurse Did — And Why It Was Trauma-Informed Care
She knelt down in front of me.
She met me at my level. Literally. Physically. She got on the floor.
That single choice — before she said a single word — communicated something that no amount of clinical language could have: I am not above you. I am with you.
That is Safety. Not the absence of danger. The presence of someone willing to come down to where you are.
Then she encouraged me to name my needs. Not tell me what I needed. Not assume. Not decide for me what the solution was going to be. She asked me to name them.
That is Empowerment, Voice, and Choice — inside a system specifically designed to remove all three.
They made accommodations. No roommate. Quieter surroundings. Space to let my nervous system come back online.
The message was not “We moved you, deal with it.”
The message was: “I can tell you feel less safe here. How can we help with that?”
That is Collaboration and Mutuality. Not “here is what we are doing.” Not “this is our policy.” A genuine question. An actual invitation.
And here is what I want you to sit with for a moment: the accommodations they made were not complicated. No roommate. Quieter space. These are not radical interventions. They are basic human considerations — the kind that cost nothing except the willingness to ask what someone needs and then actually respond to the answer.
That is what Trustworthiness and Transparency looks like in practice. Not grand gestures. Follow-through on the small things.
What This Proves
That nurse was working in the same system as every other staff member on that unit. The same institutional constraints. The same shift. The same policies.
She chose differently.
She chose curiosity instead of control. Compassion instead of correction. She chose to kneel on the floor next to a grown woman wedged into a corner clutching a sweater — and meet her there.
I contrast this with what happened at The Guidance Center, where Nurse Kylie Hansard — also known as Nurse Kaia Marie Manas — had that same choice available to her at every single step of an escalation that ended with seven people restraining me for asserting my legal rights.
The difference is not resources. It is not training budgets. It is not policy.
It is a choice about what kind of human being you are going to be when someone in crisis needs you to show up.
To the nurse at Flagstaff Medical Center — you know who you are. I am not using your name because I have not been able to reach you to ask permission. What you did was right, and you deserve to have that choice respected too.
Thank you.
For Anyone Working In These Systems
This kind of care is possible. I know it is possible because I experienced it.
It is deceptively simple. It takes courage. It takes re-learning. It takes institutions being willing to change — one real human interaction at a time.
And to anyone still defaulting to domination and hierarchy because that is how it has always been done: you have the same choice she did. Every single shift.
If This Mirrors Your Experience — The Failures, Not Just The Good Moments
You are not alone. What happened to you was not inevitable. It was a choice made by a provider or a facility — and choices can be documented, reported, and challenged.
File with your state’s licensing board, the Office of Civil Rights, and the Attorney General. File knowing that these bodies rarely impose meaningful consequences — because the record matters regardless.
And then come to us. Between Trust and Trauma documents what happened, names the providers and facilities responsible, and connects survivors who experienced the same pattern of harm.
One incident is enough. One person harmed is enough. We document it because it happened — not because we need a pattern to justify your pain.
“Nothing About Us Without Us.”
