Simple tools for deep trauma

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, June 5th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: helping others.

More than 122 million people were displaced last year, according to the United Nations. Many fled war, terrorism, or disaster—traumas that leave deep emotional scars.

REICHARD: Most will never have access to the care they need. But in Seattle, a group of Christians is equipping a new kind of first responder. WORLD’s Jenny Lind Schmitt attended one of their workshops in Switzerland and brings us their story.

JENNY LIND SCHMITT: In a sun-filled conference room 20 people from all over Europe sway and wave colored silk scarves in rhythm to music playing on a portable speaker. The fabric floats lightly over the sunbeams flowing through big south-facing windows.

Abruptly the music changes to a peppy pop song. Participants giggle as they adjust how the scarves move, sending them jerking around to the beat.

At first, some feel awkward dancing around with scarves. That’s the point. It helps participants understand how their physical and emotional states are connected. ^ And it’s one of several activities designed for what’s known as “emotional first aid.”

Curtis Romjue leads the organization putting on today’s training. It’s called First Aid Arts.

ROMJUE: First Aid Arts is teaching lay people how to facilitate arts-based activities so that people can respond to toxic stress and post traumatic stress in healthy and effective ways.

Romjue co-founded First Aid Arts with his wife Grace in 2010.

In college, the Romjues had a band. It partnered with International Justice Mission, or IJM. At IJM projects in Latin America the Romjues saw firsthand how music helped survivors of modern slavery.

ROMJUE: And especially in non-Western cultures where talk therapy counseling is really a foreign concept, but where the arts are indigenous to every culture on the planet. Music and art and beauty can be welcoming for people that have been through unspeakable things and can't talk about it.

But art or music therapists don’t often work in the developing or war-torn countries where people experience the most trauma. Many times, those caring for former victims are lay church members. And they have no access to formal training.

As the Romjues struggled to address that problem, they met Kathy Stout-Labauve. She headed up IJM’s program to care for survivors.

ROMJUE: And what she said is, we need basically first aid, a first aid version of using music and art for mental health. And that's why our organization is called First Aid Arts. You need to make it for lay people.

The Romjues also got help from several members of their church: a former president of World Vision and Dan Allender, a pioneer in gospel-centered trauma and abuse therapy.

ROMJUE: And so it seemed like God maybe thought this was worth pursuing.

The Romjues sought out world leaders in art and music therapy and trauma care. They asked them to recommend the best activities that would be easy for lay care workers to learn and use. And of those, they then looked for exercises that could easily cross language and cultural barriers.

Now they teach them to emotional first-responders around the world. Today they’re training people who serve displaced communities across Europe.

The exercises are so simple, they’re easy to dismiss: Focused breathing while drawing the petals of a flower. Moving your body to music, alone or as part of a group. Imagining and drawing a calm place.

The exercises are fun, and the group often ends up laughing together. But trainers Laura and Bryan are careful to explain the brain science behind each activity, and how each exercise affects mental and physical states.

LAURA LANSER: What are the physical sensations in your body in your green zone?

Bryan Bedson is the lead trainer for First Aid Arts. When he first met Curtis Romjue, he was intrigued by the project. But his training in talk therapy as a family counselor made him skeptical.

BEDSON: I love the arts, but it’s too simple. It’s like coloring and drawing and simple things. How is this going to help? I just spent two years in this Master’s program…I was skeptical to say the least.

But he started using some of the exercises with children who weren’t able to talk about their situations. The simple activities brought profound behavioral change.

BEDSON: And I saw this happen so many times that I started thinking, ‘Man, these tools are effective, there’s something else going on here.’

As he dug into the brain research, Bedson became more and more convinced of how the First Aid Arts approach could work.

BEDSON: I love getting to get in and give lay care providers and people with very limited resources a tool that they can use right now in the moment to regulate, to breathe. And we know that stabilization is highly effective for preventing the potential for PTSD or other longer-term symptoms to develop too.

Back in the meeting hall, big sheets of paper cover long tables. The participants are paired off. With felt pens on the paper they play follow the leader, copying each other’s drawings. Without saying a word, participants make connections, and the room breaks into laughter.

Beth Horn is creating a PhD project focused on children and trauma. She wants to use these exercises to care for the kids participating in her research.

HORN: …we could do breathing, we could do Shake It Out. I could give them a minute to draw.

Several attendees work with refugee or disadvantaged communities. Three Christian counselors came from Ukraine. It’s part of what Curtis Romjue envisioned years ago: The global church equipped to care well for hurting people.

ROMJUE: As one of our refugee trainees said, that our experience together, engaging the arts in community, reminded her that life is still beautiful, even though she had just have had to flee her her hometown in Odessa, and doesn't know when or If she'll be able to go back. And so that's been very meaningful to me, that we get to bring light and hope and beauty into some dark places.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Lind Schmitt in Seewis, Switzerland.

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