Program Recap: Amplifying Voices with Trauma-Informed Storytelling

Missed our recent program? Here’s a recap of key insights, tips and resources from one of our FPRA Capital Student Chapter members, Camille Hewitt.

Virtual Program: The Power of Trauma-Informed Storytelling

Speaker: Carly Shein-Lanning
November 19, 2025

About Our Speaker

Carly Lanning

Carly Shein-Lanning is the founder of Voices Editorial, a trauma-informed marketing & communication consultancy built on her 15+ years of experience in trauma-informed storytelling. She works with organizations worldwide to reduce harm and support the healing process of those who have experienced trauma. Connect with Carly on LinkedIn.

Key Takeaways

Our goal in storytelling is to share experiences. We amplify voices where they need to be heard. To make this happen, communicators need to understand the power of trauma-informed storytelling for building better relationships and crafting better narratives.

During the FPRA Capital Chapter’s most recent webinar, guest speaker Carly Shein-Lanning provided great insights on how to implement this approach. It’s more than just changing the language we’re using; trauma-informed storytelling means adapting all communication to be supportive and understanding of interviewees’ experiences. Focusing our communication on empathy and empowerment helps ensure stories are more impactful than ever.

Understanding Trauma

Trauma is very individual, so understanding its possible effects on the body, brain, and spirit is central to adapting trauma-informed storytelling. We’ve all heard of fight, flight, or freeze as the typical human trauma responses. However, Carly pointed out a fourth response, fawn, that is especially important for us to be aware of as storytellers. Fawn is a response where individuals may use people-pleasing tendencies to avoid harm or conflict, which could affect how they tell their stories.

It’s important for communicators to be aware of this and other common symptoms of trauma such as depression, anxiety, and insomnia, so we can create a safe environment for interviewees. Carly emphasized the importance of empowerment and giving agency to individuals to tell their story openly and how they choose.

Centering Around Five Core Values

There’s no “perfect roadmap” for trauma-informed storytelling in communications. Every individual has a different experience and a different response to trauma. As a guide, all interactions should be centered around safety, consent, transparency, empathy and kindness, and inclusion and identity.

All five of these core values help build trust with your interviewee. Be clear about what to expect, prioritize a comfortable environment, let your interviewee set the pace, and communicate about the process every step of the way. Carly specifies that our interactions shouldn’t just be storyteller-to-interviewee, but human-to-human.

Tell Their Story, Not Their Trauma

It’s important to show each individual as a full person, not just what they went through. This will help to craft an authentic story that respects the individual being interviewed. Trauma-informed storytelling goes beyond recounting an experience; it explores the broader impacts on the individual and their community.

Carly was clear that we must acknowledge the diversity of traumatic experiences and be flexible to provide an environment where interviewees feel safe to share (or choose not to share) their story. Honoring the humanity of every individual is crucial to successfully practicing trauma-informed storytelling.

Next Steps

So, what now? The first step is to share the trauma-informed storytelling approach with your team and begin to redesign the way you communicate.

Create a trauma-informed consent form for future interviews and evaluate any content that has already been published. Most importantly, keep learning. There’s no one right answer to trauma-informed storytelling, and best practices are constantly evolving.

Carly has provided her newsletter, Girls Got Thoughts, for more information at carlylanning.substack.com.

She also recommends these resources:

The insights shared by Carly Shein–Lanning on trauma-informed storytelling will help us craft more meaningful, authentic stories. I hope that by integrating these strategies, we can share the experiences of others while empowering them to heal and feel listened to during the entire process.

About the Author

Camille Hewitt

Camille Hewitt

PR Student at Florida State University
FPRA Capital Student Chapter Member Since 2024

Camille Hewitt is graduating in the Spring of 2026 with her B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Business. She is currently the PR coordinator at Tara Angel’s Magic, a local game store in Tallahassee, in addition to Marketing Assistant at the Challenger Learning Center of Tallahassee. Camille has been a part of the FPRA Student Capital Chapter for almost two years, through which she has found her passions in nonprofit work, entertainment, and PR for the performing arts.
Connect with Camille