It happens quickly. A child refuses to engage. A young person walks out. A person you support becomes withdrawn and unreachable. And in that moment, the pull towards an explanation is almost automatic: “They’re being difficult. They’re attention-seeking. They just don’t want to cooperate.” The label arrives before we have even stopped to notice what we actually saw.
Curiosity is the alternative to this. Not the vague, aspirational kind of curiosity that sits comfortably in a training room and disappears under the pressure of a real moment, but active, practised, deliberate curiosity. The kind that asks a question before it reaches for an explanation. The kind that stays open when everything in us wants to close.
This article draws on the insights at the heart of CALM’s trauma-responsive approach to explore why curiosity matters so much, what gets in the way of it, and five specific questions you can bring into your practice, starting this week.
Why Curiosity Is the Starting Point
Across CALM’s Trauma Responsive Insights webinar series, one idea returns again and again: curiosity is the heart of every trauma-responsive principle. Not a nice extra. Not a personality trait some practitioners happen to have, but a foundational stance that shapes everything that comes after it.
Curiosity in this sense means approaching a person’s behaviour, responses and experiences with genuine openness. It means holding the question “What might be happening for this person?” before we reach for any explanation. It means resisting the pull to categorise and instead committing to understand.
This is harder than it sounds. When someone is distressed, disruptive or difficult to reach, the urge to explain quickly is a very human one. Our nervous systems move towards certainty because uncertainty is uncomfortable. But certainty reached too quickly is usually wrong, and when it takes the form of a label, it can do real harm.
The shift that trauma-responsive practice invites is not from certainty to confusion. It is from assumption to enquiry. From asking “What is wrong with this person?” to asking “What might this person be experiencing?” and further still to “What do they need in order to feel safe enough to engage?” This shift is only possible when curiosity becomes a practice rather than an intention.
CALM principle: “Curiosity is not passive. It is an active, ongoing stance that asks us to pause, reflect, and explore rather than react.”
The Problem with Labels
Labels are seductive. They feel like clarity. When we describe someone as “attention-seeking”, “resistant” or “aggressive”, we have named something, and naming something feels like a step towards managing it. But in trauma-responsive practice, labels tend to do the opposite of what we hope.
A label shifts our attention from the person to the behaviour. And once the behaviour has a name, we stop wondering what it is communicating. The question that might have opened a door closes. The curiosity that might have led to genuine connection switches off. We begin to respond to the label rather than to the person.
For someone who has experienced significant adversity, this matters enormously. Many people who carry difficult histories have also carried the weight of being misread, misunderstood or managed rather than known. A practitioner or teacher who stops at the label confirms something they may already believe: that they will not be understood here.
CALM’s approach is clear on this. All behaviour is communication. When someone pushes back, withdraws, lashes out or shuts down, they are telling us something. Our job is not to stop the behaviour as quickly as possible but to become curious about what it is expressing. A label closes that conversation. A question opens it. Explore this further in our article All Behaviour is Communication: Understanding Challenging Behaviour in Context.
CALM principle: “Behaviour always makes sense within its context. Labels close down possibilities; curiosity keeps them open.”
A Framework for Curious Practice: DIVE
CALM’s Trauma Responsive Insights webinar series drew on a practical framework for cultivating curiosity before and during difficult interactions, developed by Scott Shigeoka in his book Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World. It is not a script or a protocol. It is a way of arriving at a moment with more openness and less assumption. The framework is called DIVE: Detach, Intend, Value, Embrace.
Detach
Detach means stepping back from your initial reading of a situation before it solidifies into a conclusion. It is the pause before the reaction. When a pupil becomes challenging, when someone you support refuses to engage, when a colleague becomes defensive, the first thing curiosity asks is: “What am I bringing to this moment?” Our own history, stress levels, past experiences of this person, and expectations all shape what we see. Detaching means noticing that lens before we act through it.
Intend
Intend means deciding, consciously, to approach the situation with openness. It is the moment of choosing curiosity over certainty. This is where CALM’s emphasis on self-awareness becomes practical: you cannot intend to be curious if you have not first noticed that you were heading towards assumption. The intention is simple but not easy. It says: “I am going to ask rather than tell. I am going to wonder before I judge.”
Value
Value means holding the belief that the other person’s perspective has worth, even when you disagree with their behaviour, even when you find their response difficult, and even when you do not yet understand it. This is relational, not clinical. It is the part of curiosity that recognises the person in front of you as someone worth knowing. Without this, questions become interrogation. With it, they become genuine enquiry.
Embrace
Embrace means being willing to sit with what you hear, even when it is uncomfortable, unexpected, or hard to make sense of. Curiosity that cannot tolerate uncertainty is not really curiosity. The final step of DIVE is the hardest: staying present when the answer complicates things rather than resolving them, and continuing to hold the question open.
DIVE is not a checklist. Used well, it becomes a habit of mind that you bring to the moments before a difficult interaction, and sometimes within them. The five questions that follow are grounded in this same spirit.
5 Questions to Ask Instead of Assuming
These questions are not magic phrases. They will not automatically resolve a difficult moment or unlock a person’s inner life. What they will do, when asked with genuine curiosity, is open a different kind of conversation. Each one is designed to shift the focus from what the behaviour looks like to what it might mean.
Question 1
“What might be making this moment feel difficult?”
This question begins with the assumption that something is making the moment difficult for the person, rather than assuming they are choosing to be difficult. It creates space for context. A child who can’t settle might have arrived at school without breakfast, or after a sleepless night, or carrying something from home that no one has asked about. A young person who seems unreachable might be overwhelmed in a way they cannot yet name. This question says: I am open to the possibility that I do not know the whole story. It works particularly well in educational settings, supervision conversations, and as a reflective prompt for your own thinking before a meeting.
Question 2
“What might this person need in order to feel safe right now?”
Safety is the foundation of engagement. When someone is unable to learn, participate or connect, it is worth asking whether they feel safe enough to do so. This question shifts the goal from compliance to connection. It is not asking what you need from this person but what they need from this moment. Sometimes the answer is predictability. Sometimes it is silence. Sometimes it is someone sitting beside them without expectation. For a deeper understanding of how safety is created through relationship, read our article on co-regulation and helping children feel safe and calm. Asking it forces a reorientation from what we want to happen to what the person in front of us is actually experiencing. It is most useful in moments of escalation, in care planning conversations, and as a guide to how an environment is structured.
Question 3
“What might I be missing about this situation?”
This is the question of self-aware practice. It directs curiosity inward before turning it outward. It acknowledges that our reading of any situation is partial; shaped by our own experience, assumptions, current state and history with this person. A teacher who has had six difficult interactions with a pupil arrives at the seventh with a different lens than a colleague who is meeting them fresh. This question does not require an answer. Its value is in the asking, which interrupts the automatic responses that accumulate over time. It is most useful as a reflective practice: before a difficult meeting, after a situation that did not go as expected, or in team supervision when a case has become stuck.
Question 4
“What has already been tried, and what has it told us?”
Curiosity is not only about the person in front of us. It is also about the patterns we have noticed over time. This question builds on what is already known rather than starting from scratch. It treats previous responses, whether they worked or not, as information rather than failure. In a team or organisational context, it creates space for learning rather than blame. It also gently challenges the assumption that if something has been tried and has not worked, the person is the problem. Sometimes the approach is the problem. Sometimes the environment is. This question opens that possibility. It is particularly valuable in multidisciplinary meetings, in supervision, and in reviews of behaviour support plans.
Question 5
“If this behaviour is communication, what might it be saying?”
This is the question that most directly embodies the trauma-responsive principle that all behaviour carries meaning. Rather than asking “How do we stop this from happening?” it asks “What is this telling us?” A child who repeatedly leaves a room might be communicating that the room does not feel safe. A person who becomes angry when asked to change routine might be communicating a need for predictability that has rarely been met. A colleague who disengages in team meetings might be communicating something about the relational environment of the team. This question does not assume it knows the answer. It holds the possibility open. And in holding it open, it creates the conditions for a different kind of response.
CALM principle: “We become curious about what someone may be experiencing. Behaviour is viewed as communication.”
Using These Questions in Different Settings
The five questions above are not restricted to any particular setting or role. What changes is the context in which they are asked, who they are directed towards, and how the language is adapted to feel natural.
In Schools and Education
In educational settings, curiosity often begins not with the young person but with the adult. A teacher who asks “What might I be missing about this situation?” before addressing a pupil’s behaviour is practising exactly the kind of reflective self-awareness that creates the conditions for a better interaction. The second and fifth questions are particularly useful within the classroom, as they support a shift from managing behaviour to understanding it. They can also be woven into pastoral conversations, learning support meetings and transition planning.
In Care Teams and Supervision
In residential care, community support and social care settings, these questions work well both as direct conversation tools and as reflective prompts within supervision. Question four, which asks what has already been tried and what it has told us, is especially valuable in teams where a particular situation has become entrenched or where staff may be experiencing vicarious stress. Using questions in supervision creates a culture of enquiry rather than a culture of problem-solving, which is more sustaining over time.
In One-to-One Support
When used directly in conversation with someone who is distressed, the questions need to be offered gently and without pressure. They are not interrogations. The spirit behind them is more important than the exact words. “Is there anything that’s making this harder today?” carries the same curiosity as “What might be making this moment feel difficult?” The tone, pace and relational context matter as much as the question itself. Curiosity offered with warmth creates connection. The same words offered with impatience close it down.
How CALM Supports Curious Organisations
Curiosity in isolation does not build a culture. One practitioner asking good questions in a setting where the broader response is still reactive, labelling and assumption-led cannot create the safety that trauma-responsive practice requires. The goal is not curious individuals; it is curious organisations.
CALM works with schools, care services, workplaces and community organisations to develop this kind of whole-organisation approach. The Trauma Responsive Insights webinar series explores curiosity, connection and compassion in depth, offering practitioners and leaders a coherent, practical framework they can bring into their everyday work. The CALM Core Theory course available online provides the foundational understanding of how distress presents and why relational responses matter. And the CALM Trauma Course offers a structured learning pathway for organisations looking to develop deeper understanding.
Curiosity is learnable. It deepens with practice and with the support of a team and an organisation that values it. If you are looking to develop that culture within your setting, CALM would love to be part of the conversation. Visit calmtraining.co.uk to find out more about our training, webinars and upcoming events.
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I use curiosity in trauma-informed practice?
Curiosity in trauma-informed practice means approaching behaviour and distress with genuine openness rather than reaching quickly for labels or explanations. It involves asking questions before making judgements, noticing your own assumptions, and staying present with what you observe rather than categorising it. Practical frameworks like DIVE (Detach, Intend, Value, Embrace) can help make this a consistent habit rather than an occasional intention.
What questions should I ask instead of assuming?
Instead of assuming you know why someone is behaving in a particular way, try asking: What might be making this moment feel difficult? What does this person need to feel safe right now? What might I be missing about this situation? What has already been tried, and what did it tell us? And: if this behaviour is communication, what might it be saying? Each of these opens a different kind of conversation and shifts the focus from managing behaviour to understanding it.
What does it mean to be curious about behaviour?
Being curious about behaviour means holding the question “What might this be communicating?” before you reach for a conclusion. It means treating behaviour as information rather than as a problem to be solved. In a trauma-responsive approach, all behaviour makes sense within its context. Curiosity is what allows us to understand that context rather than simply responding to its surface expression.
How does curiosity help in trauma care?
Curiosity shifts the focus from “what is wrong with this person?” to “what might this person have experienced, and what do they need right now?” This reframe changes the quality of the support offered. It reduces the risk of re-traumatisation through misreading, creates the conditions for genuine connection, and builds the kind of relational safety that allows people to begin to trust and engage. Curiosity is not a soft option; it is one of the most practical tools available in trauma-responsive practice.
What is the DIVE approach to curious practice?
DIVE is a framework developed by Scott Shigeoka in his book Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World. CALM draws on it in the Trauma Responsive Insights webinar series to support practitioners to cultivate curiosity deliberately. It stands for Detach, Intend, Value and Embrace. Detach means stepping back from your initial reading of a situation. Intend means consciously choosing openness. Value means holding the other person’s perspective as worth understanding. Embrace means being willing to sit with what you hear, even when it is uncomfortable. It is not a script; it is a habit of mind.
Is there training available on curiosity and trauma-informed practice in the UK?
Yes. CALM offers training and webinars across the UK and internationally, including the Trauma Responsive Insights webinar series, the CALM Core Theory course available online, and the CALM Trauma Course. All of CALM’s training is grounded in practical, relational approaches designed for educators, care professionals, support workers and organisational leaders. Visit calmtraining.co.uk to explore what is available.