Restoring Sanctuary

This book explores the notion that organizations are living systems themselves and as such they manifest various degrees of health and dysfunction, analogous to those of individuals. Organizations like individuals are vulnerable to the impact of repetitive and/or chronic stress conditions, but since we do not recognize our systems as alive, we treat them as if they were machines, slaves to the whims of current political, social and economic forces. Becoming a truly trauma-informed system therefore requires a process of reconstitution within helping organizations, top to bottom. A system cannot be truly trauma-informed unless the system can create and sustain a process of understanding itself. Becoming trauma-informed as a system means healing as a system and that frequently necessitates the repairing of deficits in basic social and political skills that are necessary for democratic practice in any setting.