Aroha in action hui: Trauma and the brain

[Animated graphic: Aroha in Action Family Start Hui 2023 graphic]

[Text on screen: Trauma and the brain, Deb Rewiri]

[Text on screen: Maraea Teepa]

Maraea Teepa:

Nau mai, tau ti mai ki tēnei wāhanga. And I hope you had a good break, e te whānau. We’re going to go into our next section of Te Whare o Rongo. Our kaikōrero, our next kaikōrero is Whaea Deb Rewiri. He uri nō Ngāti Raumati, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Awa me Te Whānau-ā-Apanui. Whaea Deb is a Brainwave Trust kaiako who travels across the motu working with whānau, supporting them to do what they need to do to self-determine their lives.

Today, Debs will be taking us through what happens to the brain when trauma happens and trauma occurs. So we’re going to introduce you to Whaea Deb.

[Graphic: Photo of Whaea Deb]

[Text on screen: Deb Rewiri]

Kia ora Whaea.

Whaea Deb:

Kia ora Maraea.

Maraea Teepa:

This is Whaea Deb and we’re lucky she’s a stylie aunty from Ngāpuhi; comes all the way from Kororāreka.

[Text on screen: Deb Rewiri]

Whaea Deb:

E kore au e ngaro he kākano

He kākano i ruiruia mai i Rangiātea

I ruiruia mai i Rangiātea

Ah, ahiahi mārie ki a koutou katoa. Ko Deb taku ingoa. Before I begin to talk about how trauma affects the developing brain I really want to talk about the context, or the concept, of our mokopuna, our babies. This is through evidence-based research, this is through anecdotal and also practice-based research.

So when Pākehā arrived here some of their observations of our tūpuna were that our babies were well loved and cared for by the whole village. And our wāhine, some of the statements made was that neither of them had a mark upon them of violence. Samuel Marsden said in 1814, “These have to be the most amazing children in the world,” because of how they are and how they present themselves to the world.

And so, I want to build that context first before we even launch into looking at trauma, because obviously for us, our tikanga was premised off how well we cared for our mokopuna, our babies, in a way that they felt like they were part of an emergent cultural society but, also, that they were deemed to be special.

How do you think that feels for every child born into a village to be able to feel like they are first and foremost, the most important person there? So important. And I remember Te Horo, he’s a taonga pūoro expert, and he said when a baby – he found this information in the archives – and he said when a baby was born in the village they would take up the taonga and they would bang it on the ground and say, “Anei, he mokopuna anō.” So thanking Papatūānuku around the provision of another baby, because they were always accepted and wanted.

Now when you think about how Pākehā perceived us, and these are whalers, sealers, missionaries. You know Cook, when he came into the Bay of Islands, how they perceived us and how we lived was really premised off the values and belief system that they had come from, from in England that said if you were married you basically owned your wife and she was your property and so were the tamariki.

So they came here and it was a little bit discombobulating because what they saw was a whole different system. It was a system where the manaaki, to uplift the mana of the people that were there. And so uplifting the mana of our tamaiti. And if you think about it, our process of conservation, of caring for the environment, te taiao, is so closely connected to how we cared for our babies, for our mokopuna.

So you can’t have a construct that says, ‘Oh, you look after the environment but you don’t look after the tangata.’ It is just a given that that will happen too. So, it’s within that context that I want to begin this conversation because we know how colonisation and assimilation has really disoriented our people and has created huge trauma with our tūpuna, but when we think about the brain, we think about how do we genetically inherit some of those memories within our cellular structure. And that is the key thing that we are going to look at today.

One of the processes I want to do, and I always describe it like this. So, in our brain we have a seesaw, and the see-saw is called the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system. And so, when our babies are upset, okay, they elevate their stress response system as I’m describing here with my hand. When they elevate that what they need is a calm, reassuring voice to help them calm down. Okay. Babies cannot do that on their own.

And so when I describe how do babies let us know what they want, what they need, actually, babies cry. That’s their alarm system telling us that they need something. And actually, for the tangata, for the whānau, it’s about us reading their responses, if we attune to them and that just means that the māmā and the pāpā get really engaged with noticing their cues.

Now, pre-colonisation, we lived in villages. So, what you had was four adult brains looking after one little brain. But through industrialisation that created nuclear families and therefore we grew up in separate homes and we didn’t have that supportive environment around us. So, consequently, it led to a lot of stress because what you had was generally a stay-at-home māmā, and the pāpā was going out to work because industrialisation had happened, and so it began the breaking down of our normal societal structures. And then we have, once we’ve created this nuclear family.

Because I just want to say something. I remember Bruce Perry. He’s a neuro psychiatrist who works in the States. And he said, he was being interviewed, and he said indigenous cultures had it down pat because of this process of the village raising the baby. We didn’t have CYFS, Oranga Tamariki, we were that. We monitored that whole process around what was happening within that system or that construct that we’d created mai rā anō. And I just want to say this. When Captain Cook sailed in 250 years ago, he didn’t discover us, he didn’t discover this whenua, he discovered us, and we’d been domiciled here for over a thousand years. An archaeologist said to me one day, “We’ve discovered a taonga that we’ve carbon dated to 850 years.” And I said, “Well, thanks for that. Whakapapa tells us we’ve been here for a thousand years”, and he said to me, “I’ll let you have that Deb.” And I said, “Wasn’t asking for it.”

But it’s interesting for me that until we get the validation of Western science that actually uplifts and says, ‘Well, actually, this culture already knew how to behave with babies. They already knew how to create relationship that was premised off loving, nurturing, responsive, engaging whānau systems. Why I want to say that, is because quite often we look at a culture in its deficits instead of the opportunities that it creates to grow the potential.

Now our tūpuna were of a growth mindset. And I remember something that Sir Mason Durie wrote. And he said, we are “Māori are naturally centrifugal thinkers.” Interesting word isn’t it. But what he said was that we wind up and we wind down, we don’t think in a lineal way. And so, when I heard Koha speaking this morning I thought, ‘Well, that’s my kōrero, you know, what have I got to add to this.’ So, we are going to look at this trauma. We’ve got colonisation happening. We’ve got assimilation happening. The breaking down of all the structures that we had in place. So, whenua is taken, the reo is stripped away, and suddenly we become imbued into another way of thinking. That has to cause trauma, trauma that’s embedded in the very cellular structure of a brain and in the memory centres of not only our brain but our cellular system.

So, early trauma. When we think about a baby if something is happening in that household, and I always talk about this whole process of whether a baby’s growing up in a nurturing, loving environment, or whether they’re growing up in a war zone, which we can say with domestic violence, alcohol and drug addiction, any other things that they’re growing up with, obviously the brain grows within that environment. Because the first function of the brain is to actually survive that environment and so it will continue to grow.

Then what we have is, if that brain is growing in that environment, obviously it is going to attune itself to that. And so, if a baby was looking at me, and this was a loving, trusting, nurturing environment, then that’s the type of environment it will expect out there. Are they going to be let down? Of course they are. The world is not a perfect place, there are no perfect parents, and we all make mistakes.

And so, understanding that whole concept really helps us to understand human beings and human behaviour. So, remember I talked about the stress response system. The more we can help the baby to regulate their stress response system, the more we bring them back into a state of calm, the ability for them to begin to trust their environment with the people that are nurturing them and helping them to survive.

So, I want to talk about when in our memory centres, we have several but I’m going to talk about implicit memory and explicit. So implicit memory is an unconscious memory, and an unconscious memory, again the expression is, is that our babies absorb memory, but they absorb it through their sensory system. And we know that for us in te ao Māori, you know we talk about the five sensory systems but actually, we do have another one and it’s really an opportunity for us to acknowledge.

Our tūpuna talked about the activation of mauri once a baby was born. They already knew that they had wairua intact, in place, imbued inside of them. And so, when that wairua is intact and the birth process means that mauri is activated then we know that we’ve got a sensory system that has six significant things that babies are picking up through their senses.

And so, the importance of that is when you think about what they’re picking up through their environment which is actually helping to shape them. Yes, they inherit their DNA from both their parents but actually, that environment is helping to shape them too.

So, what does this mean? If the environment is helping to shape them then you as whānau workers when you’re working alongside our whānau and their tamariki,like  how do you get alongside of them? And I heard this kōrero just before we went into a break around having, first and foremost sometimes I think we focus on the problem too hard and too much. The ability to actually look at how our whānau systems have managed to survive wherever they’ve come from. If we’re respectful and responsive, if we have empathy and compassion on board then the ability for us to get alongside whānau means that they begin to trust us.

So, whānau workers, the ability of you to develop trust with the whānau is actually just your process of accepting them for where they’re at. Then you can have the courageous conversations. So we hear this term, ‘courageous conversations’, and if we know that in the neural pathways of the brain if trauma is embedded there’s a myriad of ways it gets activated. So for small babies they can’t actually get away. They may be in their cots but they can’t move.

So in terms of what happens for them they somehow shut their whole system down. So when they do that we may have babies that don’t even cry. Because if you’ve set off your alarm system that says, ‘please come to me I need help,’ and they don’t get that reciprocal feedback from the people that are supposed to care for them and love them, then basically they’ll stop setting off their alarm system.

For small children, when we think about what happens for them, you know, there might be inappropriate behaviour. We tend to notice for boys when they’re young, they might be, the term that’s used is hypervigilant or hyper aroused. And what that means is that they find it really difficult to calm themselves, because the ability to calm yourself you cannot teach 101 empathy. Empathy is modelled, it’s not taught. And so, to model empathy they have to have a repetition, repetition, repetition of this process over and over and over again. Because what that’s doing is myelinating their pathways in their brain.

When I talk about it, really what we’re trying to do is lower their stress response so that they don’t need to elevate their stress time and time again. You will never, ever, can’t do it, won’t work, spoil a baby. Because babies let us know what they want through the process of crying. And, they get to the point when we’ve attended to them, often over again and again, that they might go, eeh, and māmā says, ‘I’ll come to you.’ So that’s lowering their stress response system.

So children have a myriad of ways, there’s a whole continuum of behaviour. We know that abuse and neglect affects neural pathways. Remember I said, the brain will continue to grow. But if a child is being abused or neglected then that’s going to create some internal trauma for them, and these terms that I use around hypervigilance and hyper aroused, you know, that’s in the DSM5 that the psychopathy.

But if we think about our tūpuna, how did they deal with a tamaiti that was unsettled? Well, generally, they actually knew that that transmission of energy was not good for them. So, we had a practice and it was with a kaumātua down in Ūawa. And what he said was that, “You know Whaea Deb, I don’t know what oxytocin means.” Oxytocin is their love hormone. And he said, “But, when we work the māra kai…” So those are the village gardens. “If anyone was carrying any hara,” any bad feelings. He said they were not allowed to work in the māra kai. But he said the other thing, they were not allowed to handle the babies.

And so, what we understand from that is that our tūpuna already understood the transmission of energy. They didn’t need to be taught that, they already understood it.

So, getting back to trauma. How do you work with a whānau when you can clearly see that there’s something that’s actually interrupting that close connection that you hope to build with that whānau but also watching how the māmā and the pāpā and the whānau begin to get alongside of them. Remember I said, accepting them where they’re at. That means we might have to park up our own judgements because we will have those judgements. We put them aside. We go in there and we don’t start first with asking, you don’t ask them, you just say things like, ‘Look, I noticed when you were holding…’ just as an example, ‘…when you were holding baby and feeding her or him, that you had your phone in front of you and you were looking at the phone, and baby was looking at you. What do you think she’s trying to translate to you? What is she trying to do?’

And so what you’re always doing is building what they already have, their strengths, and then getting them to reflect upon what it is they’re doing. They are not a problem to be fixed, okay. So they have their own unique understanding of who they are and how they are. And so, be respectful, be responsive, make sure that your compassion and empathy are online, but you can’t kid a kidder. So, be real, because being real or authentic as we say is really your inroad into being able to working more effectively with whānau when they’re struggling with the issues that they may be struggling with. And that may mean, again, that we have to address our own hara. We may have to address. And I’m not saying, we work through our life’s journey trying to correct the things, the mistakes, that we’ve made as a living human being. But the ability to actually, it is a gift for you to be inside a whare. It is a real gift that the whānau let you in there. So, never, ever take that for granted. Make sure that you are uplifting everything that they see and they do.

Bruce Perry again, he said, “Neglect happens mostly from ignorance.” And if we know that, the information we give them has to actually fit where they’re at. Not that I’m going to teach you, because what, the first thing we have to say is, ‘You are the expert in your baby, not me. I might have some knowledge about neuroscience, and I might have some knowledge about how children develop and grow. I might have a huge knowledge base about that, but this is your baby. And then once you set that in an authentic space our whānau begin to understand and know that you are genuinely in there to support them.

I think that’s what I want to say. I don’t know that if there’s anymore. I’ll look at my notes. I did write some notes down, but I’ve left them off now. So, what I want you to think about as whānau workers is, what are you going to do with your new learning, with the things that I’ve shared with you today? And not only me, everybody else who’s been here and had the ability to share some of the knowledge that they have. What are you clear about now, and what do you want to put in place? So, how are you, moving forward going to support the whānau that you’re working with? How are you feeling? And reflecting on what you’ve heard, and how do you share this? How do you share it in your teams, how do you share it with your own whānau, and how do you share it when you go out and you’re working alongside whānau to uplift them?

And what opportunities and possibilities do you see that is there for you to continue in this really cool mahi? I want to say it’s the greatest gift we can have and working alongside whānau is that they actually let us in there. And I think if you remember that as being one of the key approaches, that it’s a gift that they’ve given you to allow you to come into their space.

And so, I have a poem that I want to read and it’s from Linda Tuhiwai Smith. One of our whānau, our aunties, died just recently and her mokopuna read it and I think it encapsulates. It is about wāhine Māori, but I think it encapsulates women, mans included in women, so it includes all of us.

She walks with the power

Of thousands of years in her cycles of blood

And the rhythms of her heart

She descends from the seas of Rangiātea

The never-ending source of who we are, who we can be

Don’t mess with the Māori woman who stands beside you

As she walks with the power of thousands of years in her blood and her bones

She breathes the salted air from the greatest ocean

From legendary voyagers, risk takers, story-tellers and lovers

From composers, mischief makers, scientists and warriors

From those who could intercede with the gods, our ancestors

who predicted our future and changed the course of our destiny

Don’t mess with the Māori woman who walks alongside you

As she walks with the power of thousands of years in her blood and her bones

So, kia ora tātou. Thank you again for the opportunity to allow me to speak to you today. So, kia ora tātou. I thank you again. Ka kite.

[Text on screen: Maraea Teepa, Deb Rewiri]

Maraea Teepa:

Whānau, ngā mihi nui ki a tātou, e kore e mimiti te aroha ki a koe Whaea Deb. What an awesome kōrero. I’m always learning something new every time, that you can’t spoil a baby, and the best thing we can do is just listen to our whānau and at where they’re at.

We’ve got a few pātai Whaea Deb. Our first pātai from Lena:

[Slide on screen: Pātai for Whaea Deb]

As Tauiwi, how can we respect shared mātauranga Māori with Māori whānau?

Whaea Deb:

Yeah, I think that’s a great question and that you’re reflecting upon that. Because I know that one of the key things for our whānau is that they don’t want someone from another culture telling them how their culture behaves. And so, I’d be cautious. It’s not to say don’t speak it, but ask them what they know, rather than feeling like you have to fill the space. Ask them what they know already about mātauranga Māori, and even if they say, ‘I don’t know anything,’ begin to start talking to them about, well, how was it with your grandparents? How was it with your aunts and uncles? So what you’re already doing is embedding that, yeah, they had mātauranga Māori, even if they weren’t connected to a marae, even if they didn’t have close whānau connects maybe they’ll be able to share that with you. And I think that’s where you prompt it. You take it from them rather than feeling like you have to fill this space, you let them.

Maraea Teepa:

Ka pai. And one of our kaimahi, Jo, talks about, Jo loves the kōrero around how they are the experts of their baby, yeah, and reminding them that they are the experts. You know, it’s to whakamana them.

[Slide on screen: Pātai for Whaea Deb]

Another pātai is:

What are some practical advice we can do in our practical around helping whānau who operate in a stress response the majority of the time to then be able to help pēpē calm?

Whaea Deb:

Their stress responses. Okay, this is part and parcel because you’re allowed to come into the whānau home, is that you model that behaviour so that if māmā is really stressed, you know, because baby’s picking up, remember. They’ve got six sensory processes going on for them. And so when baby comes to you and you begin to model that calming process you may pick up the baby, rock the baby, do all these things, so you’re modelling that. And then ask the māmā, ‘What did you notice? What did you notice when I picked baby up?’ ‘Oh, well she was quiet.’ So it may not work all the time, but just be persistent in doing that.

And I always say it’s sort of like, when you model the behaviour, you’re not saying to them they can’t do it, but you’re asking them what did they notice. And then, say to them, ‘Here, this is your baby, this is your pēpi.’ And so, you’re giving the mana back, well, the honour back to them because it’s not saying, I’m the only one that can do this, I can bring the baby back to calm. You model that behaviour but you always uplift the whānau.

[Slide on screen: Pātai for Whaea Deb]

Maraea Teepa:

Helen Hart says:

I agree, it’s such a privilege to be welcomed into a whānau in their home, to understand where they are at and help us better support them.

So that’s really important and that was really prominent in your kōrero Whaea Deb. 

[Slide on screen: Pātai for Whaea Deb]

And truly beautiful as always Whaea Deb, and that’s Melody Mikaere. Kia ora Melody.

And a pātai, Whaea Diane:

Is the trauma inherited by our babies through DNA, or the way we nurture them?

Whaea Deb:

It is complex, the brain is complex organ. And also, this is a term we use, ‘multi-factorial’. And so, all that means is that there’s a lot of things that play into it. And so, you think about the DNA there’s a new field of research looking at epigenetics and how memories can be transferred from one generation to another. But, we’re looking at the environment that this baby is growing up in. We’re looking at relationship between their whānau in their whānau system. We’re looking at a whole lot of different aspects. What’s the emergent personality of that particular child? How attuned is the māmā or the pāpā to the baby? Is there something else that’s going on? So you can’t just pick one thing and say, that’s what it is.

When I say it’s multiple factors that actually interact with the environment that give us a key to understanding what’s going on for the babies. Can you change it? Yes, you can. Because the brain is neuro plastic and what that means is we have the opportunity and the ability whilst they’re young to be able to support whānau to make some of those significant changes. Remember, they’re taking the lead; we’re supporting them.

And so, when you do that what the baby begins to get, or the child, is a repetition of a different way of being. The longer we wait for them to age the more challenging it becomes to change behaviour. But we have got a window of opportunity at this really foundational stage to be able to do that.

Maraea Teepa:

Another pātai, and I like this one because I think I’m the Ria, oh, not the Ria Hall, but the Maisey Rika in any of my mokopuna’s lives. 

[Slide on screen: Pātai for Whaea Deb]

A kaimahi asks:

I have a kaimahi that sings so beautifully I think her singing to whānau would be a blessing to whānau, a great regulator.

Whaea Deb:

Fantastic regulator. We draw down endorphins. These are the happy hormones, and when we draw those down, for whānau, even if you’re singing flat, like sing, does that mean my baby will sing flat? Probably. But it doesn’t matter because the fact that you’re singing. What you’re doing is actually helping them to not only draw down these happy hormones, like endorphins, but you’re also helping them to relax. I don’t see anyone who’s angry singing, unless it’s heavy metal. But, those are the things that really will help. Playing, singing, laughter, all of those things. It shouldn’t be so heavy whānau.

Maraea Teepa:

And we also know, especially when pēpi is born that, that parent or that whānau, the kaitiaki voice, are the Beyonce’s, are the Maisey Rika’s. So even if you’re flat your pēpē thinks you’ve got the best voice in the world. So, kia kaha te waiata whānau, because our babies are so clever and they think your voice is the most protective voice so they’ll be happy, eh, Whaea Deb. And that’s the one thing I learnt when I first got into this space.

[Slide on screen: Pātai for Whaea Deb]

Another pātai is connections, connecting with whānau and tamariki at a place or level where everyone is on the same page and level, we are all here for the same reason.

Whaea Deb:

Āe, kia ora. Kia kaha with that. Sometimes you may not be on the same page or the same level, but it requires us as whānau workers to actually step back and become more responsive to where they are. Remember, hold your judgements but leave them at the door when you cross the threshold, because you will begin to start to attune to them rather than thinking they’ve got to attune to you, and it’s honouring them. Ka pai

Maraea Teepa:

Another pātai Whaea Deb. What would your five tips be for growing a healthy, awesome, pēpē brain?

Whaea Deb:

So, I spoke about responsive, respectful relationships. As I said, no-one’s perfect, we all make mistakes, and the world is not a perfect place. And so, understanding what your own process around healing may be some of your early trauma is. And the more you can do that the more availability you have to your babies.

So, remember to laugh and play. Play is the unfolding of personhood. It is about connecting with our tamariki in a way. And I remember reading this Listener article and it said, a priest down in Ōpōtiki he wrote back to his Monsignor in France and he said, “What am I going to do with these natives? All they do, all day their children they run around laughing and singing”, like it was a crime. You know, the Monsignor sent him back some advice, how to get them into church. And so, I remember this. He offered them a coin. He said, “If you come to church, I’ll give you a coin.” Well this is how smart those tamariki were in Ōpōtiki. So, they walked into the church, he gave them a coin each, and then they turned around at the font and walked back out. And he said to them, “Hey, I’ve paid you to come in.” And they said, “Yeah, we came in.” Isn’t that so cute?

And so, for me it’s sort of like that’s how clever they were. You know, we think that children have to be in front of devices or things. But actually, the best learning they’re ever going to get is when they’re in front of brains that actually relate to them, that have a responsive relationship with them, that is the key. So, kia kaha, kia māia, kia manawanui.

Maraea Teepa:

E te whānau, tēnei te mihi ki a koe Whaea Deb. E kore e mimiti te aroha ki a koe. You’re always here when we need you and it’s always awesome to support our whānau that are talking to whānau, that are in homes supporting the growth of our mokopuna, supporting play, supporting whakapapa, supporting building new tīpuna for the future. It’s always about legacy Whaea Deb, every time I hear.

Whaea Deb:

It is, so much.

Maraea Teepa:

Some of the things that I heard Whaea Debs is around, first contact of European and how they saw our whānau, our fathers carrying our babies, really caring about our whānau and the love and care they had for, not just mokopuna, but for our māmās and our kuia and stuff like that. But how colonisation affected and traumatised our whānau, and that really, one that I really loved was, look at where the whānau are at, supporting whānau where they’re at, not where everyone else is at. And our tīpuna had so many strategies around care. That was really awesome to hear, and it’s a gift for us to go into the kāinga. So make sure that we’re supporting and really going in with authentic feelings and big aroha. We’ve talked about aroha all day today, and making sure that we’re leaving that space in āio, in a space of calm.

So whānau, tēnei te mihi ki a koutou, e te whaea, e kore e mimiti te aroha. Tēnā koe. Aro ki te hā.

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