An advocate and former prisoner discusses how to recognize trauma

After years of physical, emotional and mental abuse from family, manipulation from the faith she trusted and difficult, controlling personal relationships, Lisa Forbes broke down. Convicted of a violent murder, she was sentenced to fourteen years of prison. In the long aftermath the crime, Forbes eventually realized she was stuck in an endless loop of hardship: the cycle of trauma.

She then embarked on a journey to educate herself about how trauma highjacks peoples’ lives. The result is her new book, “I Can Take It from Here: A Memoir of Trauma, Prison, and Self-Empowerment,” where she outlines how she confronted and overcame the unhealed trauma that broke her to help others get their lives back.

Forbes joined CultureShift to discuss her journey, some of the lesser-known effects of trauma and how we can be more mindful of what others are going through.

“What we don’t have is that information distilled down to local communities, down to people so they can recognize trauma. For instance, some of the ways it [trauma] shows itself is as depression or anger. If we look at a person who is chronically angry… we just think they’re an angry person, they have an attitude. What we really need is trauma recognition, more people on the local levels, in our schools, in our homes… able to recognize it when they see it.” — Lisa Forbes, author and trauma survivor advocate