A B.I.G. Publishing Project

Today, something is going to happen to an innocent child. Tomorrow, that child will walk into their school. What happens next will impact the rest of their life. What is this powerful event? Childhood trauma. Most students will experience some form of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse, neglect, family dysfunction, racism, homelessness, or poverty by their eighteenth birthday. If left untreated, their traumatic experience may have lasting implications on their physical and mental health and their success in school. Our growing knowledge of trauma is a call to action for every person that works in education and cares about the wellbeing of children in their community.  Trauma-Sensitive Early Education: Helping Pre-School & Elementary Students Thrive! explores the devastating effects that trauma inflicts on students, and how the resulting anguish manifests in the classroom as academic and behavioral struggles. Understanding the problem is just the first part of the journey taken in the book. This in-depth exploration guides educators in the process of creating trauma-sensitive classrooms and research-based instructional strategies that help students with trauma experience social and academic success.

As a follow-up to the successful Connecting Paradigms, Talking about Trauma & Change: A Connecting Paradigms’ Supplement provides analogies and models to help people understand the complexity of changing behavior and healing psychological trauma. Talking about Trauma & Change presents the approaches that Matthew Bennett has used in his training and clinical work in a format that is easily integrated into individual or group conversations. Change and trauma are sensitive and complex topics; the use of these straightforward analogies and simple models helps people see their past, the present situation, and their future in a whole new positive light.

"How do you quantify the mental, physical, social, and cognitive health of people and organizations? Heart rate variability or HRV is the answer. HRV is a biometric that measures the differences in successive heartbeats. While simple, HRV provides an incredible amount of information on the health of our autonomic nervous system and brain. In recent years, HRV variability monitors have become smaller and very affordable. A simple smartphone application takes the data from the monitors, applies algorithms, and provides users with accurate data on their mental, physical, social, and cognitive health and wellness. Heart Rate Variability explores how professionals and organizations can implement HRV to track the psychological, social, and physical health of those they serve, their staff, and the organization. While those in any industry will benefit from this book, Healing with Heart Rate Variability contains chapters specific to organizations striving to integrate trauma-informed practices and research. HRV helps demonstrate the terrible impact of trauma. Without treatment and support, trauma devastates the brain and nervous system, making emotional regulation and insight difficult. More importantly, HRV tracks the trauma healing process or post-traumatic growth, building motivation as a person sees how their work and treatment are improving their health. HRV becomes a practical and powerful tool that, with proper implementation, helps change the lives of those struggling in our communities.  HRV improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the work of professionals and organizations by providing them with daily feedback on the people they are striving to help. Even before achieving a tangible traditional outcome or reaching a goal, a person will see progress through improving HRV scores over time. This success builds motivation and confidence to take on bigger and bigger life challenges. A drop in HRV scores alerts the professional to provide support and reach out earlier than they might normally. The alert and early action that HRV allows can prevent one bad day from cycling into larger, more dangerous issues such as suicide, relapse, or harming another. Healing with Heart Rate Variability demonstrates how HRV will revolutionize how people and organizations approach self-care and staff wellness. The ability to create and maintain healthy working relationships with those in services is one of the most powerful predictors of successful outcomes. To accomplish this task for people with histories of abuse, neglect, and painful relationships take a tremendous amount of compassion, empathy, and patience. While the work of helping others is gratifying, social workers, teachers, mental-health workers, physicians, nurses, and other helping professionals dominate the top occupations for burnout in our society. Daily HRV measurements provide insight and focus on self-care. Before HRV, burnout was a relatively subjective measure. HRV quantifies burnout and demonstrates how self-care strategies improve wellness and performance. Staff turnover and high levels of burnout make creating and maintaining a high-performing helping organization extremely difficult. HRV can provide organizations with a daily measure of the health and wellness of their staff, teams, and the entire organization. It provides a quantifiable answer to the question, “What is the organization’s health today?” Getting HRV measures from staff allows managers to support staff self-care and determine the effectiveness of organizational initiatives to improve staff health and lower turnover.

Connecting Paradigms: A Trauma-Informed & Neurobiological Framework for Motivational Interviewing Implementation provides an innovative approach to helping those struggling with past trauma to make critical life changes and heal from their pain and suffering. Scientific understanding of the brain, the impact of trauma, and research around behavioral change has grown exponentially over the last several decades. This knowledge is challenging and transforming thinking around how we provide mental health and substance abuse education, medical care, criminal justice, and social work. Connecting Paradigms presents an integrated model, combining research in neurobiology, trauma, behavioral change, harm reduction, and Motivational Interviewing into a practical skillset easily implemented across a variety of settings and professions.