Across education, social care, healthcare, policing, and even politics, there is still a widespread misunderstanding of trauma. Behaviours rooted in survival are often misinterpreted as:

  • “Attention-seeking”
  • “Manipulative”
  • “Excuses”
  • “Lack of discipline”
  • “Bad attitude”

And those of us who respond with compassion are sometimes seen as soft, naïve, dismissed as ‘snowflakes’ or too forgiving.

But here is a truth many have not yet been taught:

Trauma is not psychological misbehaviour.

It is a nervous system doing its best to stay alive.

Before we go any further, we need to ask one essential question:

What does this behaviour bring up in us?

Because when we see someone dysregulated, chaotic, overwhelmed or reactive — our own nervous system responds too.

If we feel:

  • Challenged
  • Threatened
  • Disrespected
  • Out of control

…we might react from our own discomfort, rather than from understanding.

Trauma-informed practice begins here — not with how we respond to the other person, but with how we regulate ourselves in the presence of their dysregulation.

If we cannot stay regulated when someone else is not, we will always default to control, punishment, or withdrawal.

Not because we don’t care —

but because we feel overwhelmed, too.

When Safety Was Never Learned, Chaos Becomes Home

If someone has experienced adversity from birth, their nervous system did not get the chance to learn:

  • Safety
  • Trust
  • Predictability
  • Being comforted
  • Being held in distress

There is no internal anchor to return to.

So their default state is not calm.

Their default is chaos.

They may be:

  • Easily overwhelmed
  • Quick to shut down or explode
  • Drawn to chaotic people or environments
  • Creating chaos when there is none

Not because they want to.

But because chaos is what their nervous system recognises as familiar and we often mistake familiar for safe.

This is not attention-seeking.

This is attachment injury and survival physiology.

Trauma is not what happens to us — not the event — it’s what happens inside of us as a result of the event. So when someone says “Well I’ve had worse things happen to me and I’m fine. I still manage to hold down a job / stay in class / cope,” it may feel logical to them, but it is not a trauma-informed comparison. Our capacity to cope is shaped long before any “big event” — it is shaped by whether we grew up with a sense of safety or a sense of threat.

Someone who fundamentally believes they are loved, they belong, and they are safe at their very core will experience adversity differently from someone who has grown up believing they are unlovable, unsafe, or alone. One person’s nervous system has an anchor; the other does not. We are not starting from the same internal ground. Comparing the two is like comparing apples and pears — the outside may look similar, but the internal structure is entirely different.

And after all — what we believe is true, because we believe it.

Our nervous system doesn’t respond to “reality,” it responds to perceived reality.

The world we expect is the world we experience.

Punishment Does Not Switch Off the Threat Response

And yet, in so many institutions, punishment is still the primary approach.

Punishment does not regulate.

Punishment intensifies the threat response.

It teaches:

  • “I am bad.”
  • “I am alone.”
  • “I cannot be seen when I am struggling.”

And the cycle continues.

Compassion Is Not Weak. It Is Regulating.

Compassion is not the absence of boundaries.

Trauma-informed practice is:

Support + Structure

Connection + Consistency

Understanding + Accountability

Boundaries are essential.

But boundaries are not punishments.

Boundaries are anchors. They say:

“I will not abandon you.

And I will also not allow harm.”

This is the balance.

We do not remove expectations.

We support people to meet them.

We give:

  • Co-regulation
  • Predictability
  • Clarity
  • Tools
  • Time
  • Patience
  • Safe relationship

Because nobody learns in survival mode.

Safety is the foundation for change.

So the real work is this:

Not “How do we make them behave?”

But:

  • Can we stay regulated when someone else is dysregulated?
  • Can we hold boundaries without shame or power struggle?
  • Can we recognise survival when we see it?
  • Can we offer safety, even when behaviour is hard to understand?

This is the heart of trauma-informed practice.

Not softness.

Not permissiveness.

Neurobiology + compassion + boundaries.

This is how lives change.

This is how cycles break.

This is how we build safety where none existed before.