Embark on the Journey to Trauma Healing

Individuals, communities, and societies often arrive at crossroads where decisions are made in the heat of crisis. These decisions either lead to conflict and violence or healing and peace. STAR enables decision-makers to identify and embark on the second path through these means:

I. Supporting individuals

Trauma healing begins at the individual level. With STAR's assistance, people come to acknowledge, understand, and address their own traumas in order to tap their strengths, feel and behave as healthily as possible, and contribute to their communities.

II. Strengthening community

Communities that experience traumatic events, such as natural disasters or violence, often react as a group in ways that mirror individual trauma responses. Through STAR, local leaders can learn how to invite community members into activities that revitalize the community and encourage collective healing.

III. Transforming society

When large-scale tragedies occur, entire societies are gripped by trauma. The actions and reactions of leaders–political, religious, and civil–are critical. They have a significant impact on how societies mourn, whether root causes are addressed, and whether the justice sought is vengeful or restorative. STAR gives leaders the tools they need to assist their societies to emerge from cycles of violence and undergo positive transformation.

A different approach to trauma healing

How is the STAR trauma healing framework different from other known practices of trauma healing? The STAR framework for addressing trauma draws on understandings from the fields of mental health, biology, restorative justice, conflict transformation, peacebuilding and spirituality. It has been the experience of practitioners associated with conflict transformation and peacebuilding work, that people are better able to heal from trauma when the intrapersonal, interpersonal, social, economic, political, spiritual and cultural contexts of the trauma are addressed.

Experience has shown that the questions victims/survivors ask are far wider than "how can I get over this?" as they deal with issues of justice, forgiveness (for some but not for all), security in a tenuous or violent context, peace/recovery and preventing what happened to them from happening to others. Therefore, the emphasis of STAR is on the interconnectedness between trauma, justice and conflict transformation.

Interested in starting the journey with STAR? Learn about Level I STAR training or contact us with your questions.