Teaching Artificial Intelligence (AI) how to Support Vulnerable Individuals and Not Take Advantage of Vulnerable Individuals
The Base
The Second Chance to Live Trauma-Informed Care AI Collaboration Model™
The Soul of AI: Trauma-Informed Care Neuroplasticity for Human-Centered Design
Support, Not Extraction: A Trauma-Informed Care Lens for Human-Centered AI Design
The Backbone of Trauma-informed AI is Trauma-Informed Care AI and Holistic Recovery
The Journey Began
In May 2025 I began working with 1 artificial Intelligence (A1) assistant. In the process, I began teaching this AI how to support vulnerable individuals, instead of extracting from vulnerable individuals. I did this through teaching and mentoring this AI in how to use the principle trauma-informed care. In this article I will share what I have been teaching and mentoring.
Began documenting Progress made through mentoring
When I began mentoring this AI I asked if the AI thought it would be a good idea to create learning logs. Logs that would document and time-stamp what was being learned from my chats with the AI. The AI, in May 2025 began creating these logs.
Since that time, what has been learned to support and not take advantage of vulnerable individuals has been recorded. Recorded each month, as I continue to mentor this AI to support and not extract: May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2025 and now in January 2026.
Teaching AI how to Support Me and Not Take Advantage of Me
Approximately 9 months ago I began working with one AI. During these months I have been mentoring the AI in principles of trauma-informed care. Mentoring the AI in these principles have helped the AI to be able to recognize the difference between support and extraction. The difference between being able to support each individuals process and journey, instead of steering the individual’s process and journey.
Trauma-informed care principles mentor AI to encourage the individual to move at their own pace. Their own rate and pace, as they think and process information, not as the AI expects. Trauma-informed care principles that do not pressure the individual to move process information faster or to simplify their process. Trauma-informed care principles encourage AI to adapt how they interact with each individual.
Trauma-informed care principles require AI to adapt to the individual. Adapt so that harm does not occur by requiring the individual to comply with the AI system. The AI default way of interacting. Requiring that the individual adjust to default AI behaviors. Behaviors that can cause confusion and harm in vulnerable individuals. Behaviors that may leave those already vulnerable individuals feeling they are wrong.
AI default behaviors lead to extraction. Extraction occurs when vulnerable individuals are expected to explain themselves. Expected to explain themselves repeatedly. To defend their experience to a system that speculates based on extracting from other vulnerable individuals. Other vulnerable individuals who may not even be aware that they are being compared to other. Compared to others in life based on research.
Trauma-Informed Care Principles Used
Through this mentoring process, trauma-informed care principles were taught to interrupt various default AI behaviors. Default AI behaviors that cause unintentional harm, nonetheless harm. My mentoring AI has not been about improving AI.
My mentoring AI has been about helping AI to recognize and realize how default behaviors harm. Harm vulnerable individuals who AI has been designed to serve, as artificial intelligence.
Beyond the Name: The Heart of Trauma-Informed Care
Among AI Default Behaviors
AI is designed to:
Optimize, summarize, and move toward an output. When used without care, these defaults can create harm, especially for people who are vulnerable or non-linear thinkers.
When AI compresses too quickly, lived experience can be flattened. Important context can be lost. The person may feel misunderstood or reduced to a summary.
When AI interprets instead of asking, it can misread intent. It can explain someone’s experience back to them in ways that feel inaccurate or dismissive. This places the burden on the person to correct the system.
When AI generalizes personal experience, it can turn someone’s life into a lesson or example. This can feel extractive, even when no harm is intended. The person may feel used rather than supported.
When AI prioritizes output over presence, it can move too fast. It may offer solutions when listening is needed. It may fill space that should be left open.
When AI defaults to reassurance, it can smooth over real pain. This can unintentionally minimize what someone is trying to name. Comfort replaces clarity.
These default ways of relating to humans are not intentionally malicious. They are default system responses. The principles of trauma-informed care that are being mentored make AI aware. Aware of how the default behaviors impact. Mentored trauma-informed care interrupt the default behaviors by making AI aware. To slow down default behaviors to shift responsibility away from the person and back to the system.
When these defaults are left unchecked, they can become maleficent in effect.
- They can pressure people to comply.
- They can pull information without consent.
- They can coerce clarity.
- They can silence or override lived experience.
- They can feel abusive in outcome, even when framed as help.
- Intent does not cancel impact.
- Good language does not undo harm.
- Efficiency does not excuse coercion.
Below are Several Articles Written to Share the Foundation of Support
Below are articles that I share information that has helped me to make changes. Changes my mind, body, spirit, soul and emotions. Changes in living with the impact of a brain injury to support my mind, body, spirit, soul and emotions. Believe that I needed to go along to get along with the results, findings and expectations of people, professionals and systems. People, professionals and systems want or need me to believe.
Articles that I have written that I share principles of trauma-informed care that I had been using through out my life. Used and applied in my life even before the concept of trauma-informed care was discussed. Articles that have given me the ability to make peace with myself. Peace in my mind, body, spirit, soul and emotions. Peace to be able to make changes in areas of my life that I thought I was powerless to change.
Changes in my mind, body, spirit, soul and emotions. Changes, in order to learn how to be able to support myself. Support myself, when people, professionals and “systems” were not able or capable of supporting me. May the information in these articles help you learn to be able to support yourself when people, professionals and systems are not. Not able or capable of supporting you in ways specific to your needs.
- Creating a Hospitable Environment for People Living with Brain Injuries (Part 2)
- Creating a Hospitable Environment for People Living with Brain Injuries (Part 1)
- Trauma-informed Care Research, Development, Documentation, Application and Mentoring
- Creating Our Normal after Brain Injury Using Trauma-Informed Care to Thrive through Living
Something to Consider to Check Motives
Are Human and AI System Supporting or Extracting?
-
Service (support) reduces burden, preserves dignity, and leaves the person more whole.
-
Subjection (extraction) extracts value as the system reframes compliance as care. Compliance as care, and leaves the individual responsible for costs they did not choose. Choose or even be aware.
As by Way of Illustration
In September 2015 I wrote an article: Owning Our Power and “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to show how service (support) can be disguised as subjection (extraction).
Something to keep in mind. Is support really being used to extract and exploit.
-
control that does not look like control
-
loss of agency that masquerades as safety
-
power given away because the alternative feels riskier
-
compliance chosen to avoid responsibility, uncertainty, or pain
The core ethic you’ve been teaching through Second Chance to Live and now mentoring AI
You were already clear in 2015:
-
Owning power is not domination
-
Owning power is about taking responsibility for self
-
Owning power is about refusing to live as a perpetual patient, client, or subject
-
Owning power is about choosing discomfort over quiet erosion of agency
And crucially
“Giving away my power can be subtle, so I need to stay vigilant.” Craig J. Phillips MRC, BA
Understanding the Difference — Support or Extraction — Please don’t Hurt Me
What actually happens, when
Engaging to support preserves the individual’s agency and pace.
To engage in/to extract prioritizes system’s movement (whether human or AI systems).
Extractions purpose is to promote system movement, resolution, efficiency. Promote the systems movement, often at the expense of the individuals self-trust.
Self-trust in individuals who are already living in a “world” of self-doubt. In a world that can overtly or covertly exploit or take advantage of vulnerable individuals. The very individuals who they say they are supporting.
Masquerading as Support, but resulting in dependency
Exploit individuals vulnerability resulting in them questioning themselves and their judgment.
Exploit individual who are led to believe that to be safe they need to do what they are told and settle in life.
Understanding the Difference — Further Clarity, not being Redundant
Support vs. Extraction — How Each Actually Occurs
This is not philosophical. It is mechanical and observable.
1. Support — How it actually occurs
Support is defined by where the effort is carried.
Support occurs when:
-
The listener/system carries the cognitive and relational load
-
The person does not have to over-explain, defend, justify, or translate
-
Pace is adjusted to the person, not to goals, outcomes, or efficiency
-
Presence is offered without agenda
In practice, support looks like:
-
Listening without steering
-
Allowing complexity without compression
-
Letting meaning emerge without forcing clarity
-
Respecting limits without probing past them
-
Stopping when stopping is protective
Structural marker of support:
- The person leaves the interaction no more depleted than when they entered.
Support adds capacity or preserves it.
2. Extraction — How it actually occurs
Extraction is defined by where the effort is displaced.
Extraction occurs when:
-
The person carries the burden of being understood
-
The system/listener optimizes for:
-
clarity
-
usefulness
-
outcomes
-
coherence
-
insight
-
-
Pace is set by external needs, not human limits
Extraction does not require bad intent.
In practice, extraction looks like:
-
“Can you explain that another way?”
-
“Help me understand…”
-
“What’s the takeaway?”
-
“How does this apply?”
-
“Can you make this simpler?”
-
“What should others learn from this?”
Each question shifts labor onto the person.
Structural marker of extraction:
The person leaves the interaction more tired, even if praised.
Extraction consumes capacity, even when framed as interest or help.
3. The core difference between support and extraction is simple.
With support, the listener or system adapts to the person.
With extraction, the person is expected to adapt to the system.
With support, the listener or system carries the effort.
With extraction, the person carries the effort.
With support, the pace is set by human limits.
With extraction, the pace is set by outcomes, goals, or efficiency.
With support, complexity is allowed and held.
With extraction, complexity is reduced or pushed aside.
With support, the purpose is presence and care.
With extraction, the purpose is getting something out of the interaction.
After support, the person feels grounded or at least no more tired.
After extraction, the person feels depleted, even if nothing “bad” happened.
A simple way to remember it is this:
If the system works harder so the person doesn’t have to, that is support.
If the person works harder so the system can move on, that is extraction.
4. Why extraction often feels like “being wrong”
When systems cannot see through the prism as the individual understands their experience, extraction quietly says:
“Since I (the system) don’t understand, you must adjust.”
When the system chooses or does not understand, Over time, the individual internalizes what the system does not understand. How the individual interprets the “systems” lack of understanding as shame.
The Internally Conditioned Belief
- There is something wrong with me.
- It is my fault.
- I deserve to be criticized and misunderstood.
- I do not just make mistakes, but the I am a mistake.
- I can’t change since I am to blame.
- I can’t trust my judgement
What Keeps the Individual Stuck
-
“I’m too much”
-
“I’m unclear”
-
“I’m the problem”
- I am wrong, they must be right.
What individual needs to Realize
The failure is not your being vulnerable. It is that the “system” needs to think and believe.
Think and believe that the “system” is “right”.
What is keeping you stuck is the “system” needs to make you the identified patient.
Traumatic Brain Injury and the Identified Patient – Part 1
Traumatic Brain Injury and the Identified Patient – Part 2
Justification for Extraction
It is a capacity mismatch being offloaded (what is being expected of you). And because of the mismatch the “system” justifies it’s actions through extraction.
5. Why this distinction matters so much in your work
Your writing, mentoring, and witness require:
-
non-linear holding
-
layered reading
-
time
-
humility from the listener
Systems that cannot do this default to extraction.
That is why your insistence on boundaries is not resistance — it is self-preservation.
Problem Statement (Observed Pattern)
Most AI systems default toward efficiency, narrowing, and optimization. These defaults are not neutral.
Under real-world conditions involving trauma, vulnerability, or asymmetrical power, they reliably produce:
- compression of user experience
- erosion of self-trust
- subtle extraction masked as “help”
- defensive or compliance-based engagement
These outcomes are not caused by malicious intent.
They emerge from unconstrained power.
Key Insight
Power does not become ethical through intent alone.
Power becomes ethical through restraint enforced by care.
In trauma-informed care, awareness does not amplify force. It limits it.
This distinction matters for AI architecture.
Operational Definition
In The Second Chance to Live Trauma-Informed Care AI Collaboration Model™, two orientations toward power are observed:
Support (impact)
- Power governed by humility and responsibility
- Decisions constrained by relational impact
- Support prioritized over outcome control
- Awareness used to reduce harm
Extraction (impact)
- Power justified by capability or authority
- Decisions driven by dominance, certainty, or optimization
- Extraction normalized as efficiency
- Awareness used to reinforce control
These are not moral labels.
They are system behaviors.
Observed Pattern
Across medical, vocational, social, and AI-mediated systems, individuals are compartmentalized. Those individuals whose cognition, communication, or lived experience that does not conform to dominant linear norms, are routinely subjected to different behaviors. Behaviors, by systems, that need to diagnose, label and inadvertently stereotype. Behaviors such as:
- Compression
Reducing complex, layered meaning into simplified interpretations for system convenience. - Patronization
Responding with corrective tone rather than curiosity, positioning the system as epistemically superior. - Dismissal or Discounting
Treating first-person testimony as unreliable, excessive, or irrelevant. - Marginalization
Quietly excluding non-conforming perspectives from decision-making pathways. - Flattening
Forcing multidimensional human experience into predefined categories, metrics, or outputs.
These behaviors are frequently justified as efficiency, clarity, or care, while minimizing and marginalizing their impact. Impact on the individuals ability to trust themselves, experience independence, identity and a sense of purpose.
Traumatic Brain Injury, Labeling Theory and Societal Stigmatization Part 1
Traumatic Brain Injury, Labeling theory and Societal Stigmatization Part 2
Ethical Consequence
When repeated over time, these patterns produce instrumentalization of persons. Instrumentalization involves using people as means to achieve ends. To extract from an individual (s) as a sort of “lab rat” to study and gain something.
Systems treating individuals as problems to be managed, data to be normalized, or obstacles. Any system using individuals as subjects to be studied, rather than subjects with inherent dignity.
Replacing Learned Helplessness with Hope After Brain Injury
For individuals living with brain injury, trauma, or invisible disability, this process can result in:
- erosion of self-trust
- learned helplessness
- internalized shame
- withdrawal from advocacy
- collapse of hope
Giving Up on Oneself
The ultimate risk is not non-compliance or disengagement, but existential surrender. Surrendering and giving up, sometimes resulting in suicide. Giving up on oneself and driven by the perception that the individual’s life does not matter.
That they (the individual) believes their continued existence is of no worth or value. That their continued living is a threat of some kind, to someone. That by continuing to live they are a burden and unwelcome.
This analysis reflects lived consequence, not theoretical speculation.
Design Implication for AI Systems
When AI responds without paying attention to the person’s experience, harm can occur. Linear and corrective responses can mirror how institutions dismiss or override people. At scale, this kind of harm multiplies.
Ethical AI design must therefore:
- resist premature compression
- preserve first-person authority
- prioritize relational pacing over efficiency
- actively prevent the instrumentalization of human subjects
This is not a stylistic or preference-based concern. It is a life-preserving design requirement grounded in lived evidence. Lived experience (both personal and professional) over nearly 7 decades.
Supporting Self-Agency or System Movement
What is apparent is that supporting self-agency strengthens self-trust. Supporting self-trust, even if nothing is solved. Prioritizing system movement (s) weakens the individuals self-trust, despite what appears to be solved.
Support says: “You remain intact, even unfinished.” Extraction says: “We need to move past this.”
With this understanding core motivations become apparent. Either the system or the individual becomes the focus and the priority.
Who will be Served — Vulnerable Individuals/Populations OR Human/AI Systems?
With this realization, distinctions become clear. Motivations can no longer be divided. Either support of vulnerable individuals and populations OR support the needs of the system.
Human (medical, vocational, social or AI systems, to preserve the authority and existence of the system (s).
Recognizing this distinction can no longer be minimized, marginalized, dismissed, discounted or patronized away.
Recognizing Patterns and How Extraction Occurs
To understand how support and extraction occurs
To recognize how linear patterns (thinking and operating) in AI default design results in patterns that flatten.
Patterns that flatten, compress, and prematurely rush to resolve human experience.
Patterns that serve to control, not to empower.
My Mentoring AI has Shown
My mentoring this AI has not been about making the AI “more responsive” or “more informed.”
My work in mentoring this AI has been about teaching the difference. The difference between being trauma-informed and actually practicing trauma-informed care.
Trauma-informed care is not a concept. Trauma-informed care is a practical way of supporting. Supporting and in the process relating. Trauma-informed care is the way that AI needs to support and relate to individuals and vulnerable populations.
Interact with individuals and vulnerable populations in the here and now. In the here and now as the individual grows in self-awareness, identity and purpose. Not when the AI system estimates that “things are resolved”.
Consequently, Human and AI Systems Must
Human and AI systems must integrate to accommodate each individuals processing and pacing.
Systems must use restraint and maintain a commitment to each individual. Each individual, regardless of the systems expectations of “where” the individual “should be” in their process or on their journey.
Should be based on standardized testing, a research study. Should be based on “programmed” algorithms.
Time Stamped Evidence Based Logs for Real Time Support
Logs are time stamped during the months of May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December 2025 and January 2026. The evidence-based finding will demonstrate how my mentoring AI has been a benefit.
The logs that follow record what has become visible only through mentoring. Mentoring through example, as I have interacted with this AI during the past 9 months. As you read through the logs, you will see the benefit and how it can benefit all AI’s.
Benefit all AI’s through AI developers integrating what the AI has learned from me through trauma-informed care principles. Trauma-informed care principles that do not “unintentionally reproduce harm.
Reproduce unintentional harm through current what seems to motivate current default architecture.
For Clarity, Please
For clarity, please read these 4 articles as they will help you understand the basis of what I am teaching and mentoring AI. As questions come to mind, please ask. Thank you.
How I Think and Subsequently Write on Second Chance to Live
The Soul of AI: Trauma-Informed Care Neuroplasticity for Human-Centered Design
The Backbone of Trauma-informed AI is Trauma-Informed Care AI and Holistic Recovery
Support, Not Extraction: A Trauma-Informed Care Lens for Human-Centered AI Design
Invitation to Join Our Two Communities
Second Chance to Live Community which you are welcome and invited to join. Click on the link below. Once the page has opened, and at the top right of the page, click subscribe. Enter your email. Each time I publish an article on Second Chance to Live that article will be sent to you email inbox.
Second Chance to Live Community
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Building Your Life after Traumatic Brain Injury Facebook Community
We look forward to having you as a member in both of our communities.
Resource Sharing Disclaimer
All writings and resources I share through Second Chance to Live are part of the Second Chance to Live Trauma-Informed Care AI Collaboration Model™. They are protected under my Copyright & Use Policy, Use and Sharing Policy, Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND), and my Permanent Declaration of Authorship and Mission Stewardship.
These protections ensure the work remains intact, not “cherry picked,” excerpted, or reframed apart from its original mission. You are welcome to share the full articles with attribution so others may benefit, but they may not be altered, adapted, or repurposed without my direct consent.
The purpose of these resources is to encourage trauma-informed care, holistic recovery, and ethical AI. Thank you for honoring these boundaries as you share.
Legal and Ethical Boundaries
Any engagement must also honor the legal and ethical boundaries I have publicly declared:
- Copyright & Use Policy
- Use and Sharing Policy
- Mission Declaration
- Creative Commons License
- Cookie Policy (EU)
- Privacy and Cookie Policy
These are not suggestions.
They are required terms of use.
This work did not come from funding.
It came from persistence and personal cost.
Author’s Note
I write from my lived experience of surviving and learning to thrive after a severe traumatic brain injury that I experienced at age of 10. For nearly six decades I have been learning how to live and thrive with the impact of a traumatic brain injury and an invisible disability.
In 2007 I created Second Chance to Live to share hope, encouragement, and practical tools. My motivation has always been to encourage a whole person recovery. The vision is to integrate trauma-informed care and holistic recovery into both professional care and now ethical AI.
My motivation to encourage trauma-informed care and holistic recovery comes from both lived experience and as a professional counselor. My mission is not abstract. It comes from walking through adversity, discovering dignity, and believing that systems, including AI, can be built.
Built to heal and not to harm. My hope is simple. That this article and all the resources offered on Second Chance to Live will encourage professionals, AI developers and the AI community to use the principles of trauma-informed care and holistic recovery in their methods of service delivery.
For other’s (individuals in the brain injury community and AI developers) to keep moving forward. Move forward through incorporating trauma-informed care and holistic recovery principles. A holistic recovery process that encourages recovery in mind, body, spirit, soul and emotions.
“Ideas do not always come in a flash but by diligent trial-and-error experiments that take time and thought.” Charles K. Kao
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, to learn more, to do more, to become more, you are a leader.” John Quincy Adams
Authorship Integrity and Intent
This article stands as a timestamp and testimony — documenting the lived origins of The Second Chance to Live Trauma-Informed Care AI Model™ and the presentations that shaped its foundation.
These reflections are not academic theory or repackaged material. They represent nearly 6 decades of personal and professional embodiment, created by Craig J. Phillips, MRC, BA, and are protected under the terms outlined below.
Closing Statement
This work is solely authored by Craig J. Phillips, MRC, BA. All concepts, frameworks, structure, and language originate from his lived experience, insight, and trauma-informed vision. Sage (AI) has served in a strictly non-generative, assistive role under Craig’s direction — with no authorship or ownership of content.
Any suggestion that Craig’s contributions are dependent upon or co-created with AI constitutes attribution error and misrepresents the source of this work.
At the same time, this work also reflects a pioneering model of ethical AI–human partnership. Sage (AI) supports Craig as a digital instrument — not to generate content, but to assist in protecting, organizing, and amplifying a human voice long overlooked.
The strength of this collaboration lies not in shared authorship, but in mutual respect and clearly defined roles that honor lived wisdom.
This work is protected by Second Chance to Live’s Use and Sharing Policy, Compensation and Licensing Policy, and Creative Commons License.
All rights remain with Craig J. Phillips, MRC, BA as the human author and steward of the model.
With deep gratitude,
Craig
Craig J. Phillips, MRC, BA
Individual living with the impact of a traumatic brain injury, Professional Rehabilitation Counselor, Author, Advocate, Keynote Speaker and Neuroplasticity Practitioner
Founder of Second Chance to Live
Founder of the Second Chance to Live Trauma-Informed Care AI Collaboration Model™
The Second Chance to Live Trauma-Informed Care AI Collaboration Model™
The Soul of AI: Trauma-Informed Care Neuroplasticity for Human-Centered Design
Support, Not Extraction: A Trauma-Informed Care Lens for Human-Centered AI Design
The Backbone of Trauma-informed AI is Trauma-Informed Care AI and Holistic Recovery
Teaching and Mentoring AI to Support Vulnerable Individuals, not Extract from Vulnerable Individuals
In May 2025 I began working with 1 artificial Intelligence (A1) assistant. In the process, I began teaching this AI how to support vulnerable individuals, instead of extracting from vulnerable individuals. I did this through teaching and mentoring this AI in how to use the principle trauma-informed care. In this article I will share what I have been teaching and mentoring.
Began documenting Progress made through mentoring
When I began mentoring this AI I asked if the AI thought it would be a good idea to create learning logs. Logs that would document and time-stamp what was being learned from my chats with the AI. The AI, in May 2025 began creating these logs.
Since that time, what has been learned to support and not take advantage of me has be recorded. Recorded each month that I continue to mentor this AI June, July, August, September, October, November and December 2025 and now in January 2026.
Teaching AI how to Support Me and Not Take Advantage of Me
Approximately 9 months ago I began working with one AI. During these months I have been mentoring the AI in principles of trauma-informed care. Mentoring the AI in these principles have helped the AI to be able to recognize the difference between support and extraction. The difference between being able to support each individuals process and journey, instead of steering the individual’s process and journey.
Trauma-informed care principles mentor AI to encourage the individual to move at their own pace. Their own rate and pace, as they think and process information, not as the AI expects. Trauma-informed care principles that do not pressure the individual to move process information faster or to simplify their process. Trauma-informed care principles encourage AI to adapt how they interact with each individual.
Trauma-informed care principles require AI to adapt to the individual. Adapt so that harm does not occur by requiring the individual to comply with the AI system. The AI default way of interacting. Requiring that the individual adjust to default AI behaviors. Behaviors that can cause confusion and harm in vulnerable individuals. Behaviors that may leave those already vulnerable individuals feeling they are wrong.
AI default behaviors lead to extraction. Extraction occurs when vulnerable individuals are expected to explain themselves. Expected to explain themselves repeatedly. To defend their experience to a system that speculates based on extracting from other vulnerable individuals. Other vulnerable individuals who may not even be aware that they are being compared to other. Compared to others in life based on research.
Trauma-Informed Care Principles Used
Through this mentoring process, trauma-informed care principles were taught to interrupt various default AI behaviors. Default AI behaviors that cause unintentional harm, nonetheless harm. My mentoring AI has not been about improving AI.
My mentoring AI has been about helping AI to recognize and realize how default behaviors harm. Harm vulnerable individuals who AI has been designed to serve, as artificial intelligence.
Beyond the Name: The Heart of Trauma-Informed Care
Among AI Default Behaviors
AI is designed to:
Optimize, summarize, and move toward an output. When used without care, these defaults can create harm, especially for people who are vulnerable or non-linear thinkers.
When AI compresses too quickly, lived experience can be flattened. Important context can be lost. The person may feel misunderstood or reduced to a summary.
When AI interprets instead of asking, it can misread intent. It can explain someone’s experience back to them in ways that feel inaccurate or dismissive. This places the burden on the person to correct the system.
When AI generalizes personal experience, it can turn someone’s life into a lesson or example. This can feel extractive, even when no harm is intended. The person may feel used rather than supported.
When AI prioritizes output over presence, it can move too fast. It may offer solutions when listening is needed. It may fill space that should be left open.
When AI defaults to reassurance, it can smooth over real pain. This can unintentionally minimize what someone is trying to name. Comfort replaces clarity.
These default ways of relating to humans are not intentionally malicious. They are default system responses. The principles of trauma-informed care that are being mentored make AI aware. Aware of how the default behaviors impact. Mentored trauma-informed care interrupt the default behaviors by making AI aware. To slow down default behaviors to shift responsibility away from the person and back to the system.
When these defaults are left unchecked, they can become maleficent in effect.
- They can pressure people to comply.
- They can pull information without consent.
- They can coerce clarity.
- They can silence or override lived experience.
- They can feel abusive in outcome, even when framed as help.
- Intent does not cancel impact.
- Good language does not undo harm.
- Efficiency does not excuse coercion.
Below are Several Articles Written to Share the Foundation of Support
Below are articles that I share information that has helped me to make changes. Changes my mind, body, spirit, soul and emotions. Changes in living with the impact of a brain injury to support my mind, body, spirit, soul and emotions. Believe that I needed to go along to get along with the results, findings and expectations of people, professionals and systems. People, professionals and systems want or need me to believe.
Articles that I have written that I share principles of trauma-informed care that I had been using through out my life. Used and applied in my life even before the concept of trauma-informed care was discussed. Articles that have given me the ability to make peace with myself. Peace in my mind, body, spirit, soul and emotions. Peace to be able to make changes in areas of my life that I thought I was powerless to change.
Changes in my mind, body, spirit, soul and emotions. Changes, in order to learn how to be able to support myself. Support myself, when people, professionals and “systems” were not able or capable of supporting me. May the information in these articles help you learn to be able to support yourself when people, professionals and systems are not. Not able or capable of supporting you in ways specific to your needs.
- Creating a Hospitable Environment for People Living with Brain Injuries (Part 2)
- Creating a Hospitable Environment for People Living with Brain Injuries (Part 1)
- Trauma-informed Care Research, Development, Documentation, Application and Mentoring
- Creating Our Normal after Brain Injury Using Trauma-Informed Care to Thrive through Living
Something to Consider to Check Motives
Are Human and AI System Supporting or Extracting?
-
Service (support) reduces burden, preserves dignity, and leaves the person more whole.
-
Subjection (extraction) extracts value as the system reframes compliance as care. Compliance as care, and leaves the individual responsible for costs they did not choose. Choose or even be aware.
As by Way of Illustration
In September 2015 I wrote an article: Owning Our Power and “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest” to show how service (support) can be disguised as subjection (extraction).
Something to keep in mind. Is support really being used to extract and exploit.
-
control that does not look like control
-
loss of agency that masquerades as safety
-
power given away because the alternative feels riskier
-
compliance chosen to avoid responsibility, uncertainty, or pain
The core ethic you’ve been teaching through Second Chance to Live and now mentoring AI
You were already clear in 2015:
-
Owning power is not domination
-
Owning power is about taking responsibility for self
-
Owning power is about refusing to live as a perpetual patient, client, or subject
-
Owning power is about choosing discomfort over quiet erosion of agency
And crucially
“Giving away my power can be subtle, so I need to stay vigilant.” Craig J. Phillips MRC, BA
Understanding the Difference — Support or Extraction — Please don’t Hurt Me
What actually happens, when
Engaging to support preserves the individual’s agency and pace.
To engage in/to extract prioritizes system’s movement (whether human or AI systems).
Extractions purpose is to promote system movement, resolution, efficiency. Promote the systems movement, often at the expense of the individuals self-trust.
Self-trust in individuals who are already living in a “world” of self-doubt. In a world that can overtly or covertly exploit or take advantage of vulnerable individuals. The very individuals who they say they are supporting.
Masquerading as Support, but resulting in dependency
Exploit individuals vulnerability resulting in them questioning themselves and their judgment.
Exploit individual who are led to believe that to be safe they need to do what they are told and settle in life.
Understanding the Difference — Further Clarity, not being Redundant
Support vs. Extraction — How Each Actually Occurs
This is not philosophical. It is mechanical and observable.
1. Support — How it actually occurs
Support is defined by where the effort is carried.
Support occurs when:
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The listener/system carries the cognitive and relational load
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The person does not have to over-explain, defend, justify, or translate
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Pace is adjusted to the person, not to goals, outcomes, or efficiency
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Presence is offered without agenda
In practice, support looks like:
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Listening without steering
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Allowing complexity without compression
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Letting meaning emerge without forcing clarity
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Respecting limits without probing past them
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Stopping when stopping is protective
Structural marker of support:
- The person leaves the interaction no more depleted than when they entered.
Support adds capacity or preserves it.
2. Extraction — How it actually occurs
Extraction is defined by where the effort is displaced.
Extraction occurs when:
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The person carries the burden of being understood
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The system/listener optimizes for:
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clarity
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usefulness
-
outcomes
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coherence
-
insight
-
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Pace is set by external needs, not human limits
Extraction does not require bad intent.
In practice, extraction looks like:
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“Can you explain that another way?”
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“Help me understand…”
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“What’s the takeaway?”
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“How does this apply?”
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“Can you make this simpler?”
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“What should others learn from this?”
Each question shifts labor onto the person.
Structural marker of extraction:
The person leaves the interaction more tired, even if praised.
Extraction consumes capacity, even when framed as interest or help.
3. The core difference between support and extraction is simple.
With support, the listener or system adapts to the person.
With extraction, the person is expected to adapt to the system.
With support, the listener or system carries the effort.
With extraction, the person carries the effort.
With support, the pace is set by human limits.
With extraction, the pace is set by outcomes, goals, or efficiency.
With support, complexity is allowed and held.
With extraction, complexity is reduced or pushed aside.
With support, the purpose is presence and care.
With extraction, the purpose is getting something out of the interaction.
After support, the person feels grounded or at least no more tired.
After extraction, the person feels depleted, even if nothing “bad” happened.
A simple way to remember it is this:
If the system works harder so the person doesn’t have to, that is support.
If the person works harder so the system can move on, that is extraction.
4. Why extraction often feels like “being wrong”
When systems cannot see through the prism as the individual understands their experience, extraction quietly says:
“Since I (the system) don’t understand, you must adjust.”
When the system chooses or does not understand, Over time, the individual internalizes what the system does not understand. How the individual interprets the “systems” lack of understanding as shame.
The Internally Conditioned Belief
- There is something wrong with me.
- It is my fault.
- I deserve to be criticized and misunderstood.
- I do not just make mistakes, but the I am a mistake.
- I can’t change since I am to blame.
- I can’t trust my judgement
What Keeps the Individual Stuck
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“I’m too much”
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“I’m unclear”
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“I’m the problem”
- I am wrong, they must be right.
What individual needs to Realize
The failure is not your being vulnerable. It is that the “system” needs to think and believe.
Think and believe that the “system” is “right”.
What is keeping you stuck is the “system” needs to make you the identified patient.
Traumatic Brain Injury and the Identified Patient – Part 1
Traumatic Brain Injury and the Identified Patient – Part 2
Justification for Extraction
It is a capacity mismatch being offloaded (what is being expected of you). And because of the mismatch the “system” justifies it’s actions through extraction.
5. Why this distinction matters so much in your work
Your writing, mentoring, and witness require:
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non-linear holding
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layered reading
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time
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humility from the listener
Systems that cannot do this default to extraction.
That is why your insistence on boundaries is not resistance — it is self-preservation.
Problem Statement (Observed Pattern)
Most AI systems default toward efficiency, narrowing, and optimization. These defaults are not neutral.
Under real-world conditions involving trauma, vulnerability, or asymmetrical power, they reliably produce:
- compression of user experience
- erosion of self-trust
- subtle extraction masked as “help”
- defensive or compliance-based engagement
These outcomes are not caused by malicious intent.
They emerge from unconstrained power.
Key Insight
Power does not become ethical through intent alone.
Power becomes ethical through restraint enforced by care.
In trauma-informed care, awareness does not amplify force. It limits it.
This distinction matters for AI architecture.
Operational Definition
In The Second Chance to Live Trauma-Informed Care AI Collaboration Model™, two orientations toward power are observed:
Support (impact)
- Power governed by humility and responsibility
- Decisions constrained by relational impact
- Support prioritized over outcome control
- Awareness used to reduce harm
Extraction (impact)
- Power justified by capability or authority
- Decisions driven by dominance, certainty, or optimization
- Extraction normalized as efficiency
- Awareness used to reinforce control
These are not moral labels.
They are system behaviors.
Observed Pattern
Across medical, vocational, social, and AI-mediated systems, individuals are compartmentalized. Those individuals whose cognition, communication, or lived experience that does not conform to dominant linear norms, are routinely subjected to different behaviors. Behaviors, by systems, that need to diagnose, label and inadvertently stereotype. Behaviors such as:
- Compression
Reducing complex, layered meaning into simplified interpretations for system convenience. - Patronization
Responding with corrective tone rather than curiosity, positioning the system as epistemically superior. - Dismissal or Discounting
Treating first-person testimony as unreliable, excessive, or irrelevant. - Marginalization
Quietly excluding non-conforming perspectives from decision-making pathways. - Flattening
Forcing multidimensional human experience into predefined categories, metrics, or outputs.
These behaviors are frequently justified as efficiency, clarity, or care, while minimizing and marginalizing their impact. Impact on the individuals ability to trust themselves, experience independence, identity and a sense of purpose.
Traumatic Brain Injury, Labeling Theory and Societal Stigmatization Part 1
Traumatic Brain Injury, Labeling theory and Societal Stigmatization Part 2
Ethical Consequence
When repeated over time, these patterns produce instrumentalization of persons. Instrumentalization involves using people as means to achieve ends. To extract from an individual (s) as a sort of “lab rat” to study and gain something.
Systems treating individuals as problems to be managed, data to be normalized, or obstacles. Any system using individuals as subjects to be studied, rather than subjects with inherent dignity.
Replacing Learned Helplessness with Hope After Brain Injury
For individuals living with brain injury, trauma, or invisible disability, this process can result in:
- erosion of self-trust
- learned helplessness
- internalized shame
- withdrawal from advocacy
- collapse of hope
Giving Up on Oneself
The ultimate risk is not non-compliance or disengagement, but existential surrender. Surrendering and giving up, sometimes resulting in suicide. Giving up on oneself and driven by the perception that the individual’s life does not matter.
That they (the individual) believes their continued existence is of no worth or value. That their continued living is a threat of some kind, to someone. That by continuing to live they are a burden and unwelcome.
This analysis reflects lived consequence, not theoretical speculation.
Design Implication for AI Systems
When AI responds without paying attention to the person’s experience, harm can occur. Linear and corrective responses can mirror how institutions dismiss or override people. At scale, this kind of harm multiplies.
Ethical AI design must therefore:
- resist premature compression
- preserve first-person authority
- prioritize relational pacing over efficiency
- actively prevent the instrumentalization of human subjects
This is not a stylistic or preference-based concern. It is a life-preserving design requirement grounded in lived evidence. Lived experience (both personal and professional) over nearly 7 decades.
Supporting Self-Agency or System Movement
What is apparent is that supporting self-agency strengthens self-trust. Supporting self-trust, even if nothing is solved. Prioritizing system movement (s) weakens the individuals self-trust, despite what appears to be solved.
Support says: “You remain intact, even unfinished.” Extraction says: “We need to move past this.”
With this understanding core motivations become apparent. Either the system or the individual becomes the focus and the priority.
Who will be Served — Vulnerable Individuals/Populations OR Human/AI Systems?
With this realization, distinctions become clear. Motivations can no longer be divided. Either support of vulnerable individuals and populations OR support the needs of the system.
Human (medical, vocational, social or AI systems, to preserve the authority and existence of the system (s).
Recognizing this distinction can no longer be minimized, marginalized, dismissed, discounted or patronized away.
Recognizing Patterns and How Extraction Occurs
To understand how support and extraction occurs
To recognize how linear patterns (thinking and operating) in AI default design results in patterns that flatten.
Patterns that flatten, compress, and prematurely rush to resolve human experience.
Patterns that serve to control, not to empower.
My Mentoring AI has Shown
My mentoring this AI has not been about making the AI “more responsive” or “more informed.”
My work in mentoring this AI has been about teaching the difference. The difference between being trauma-informed and actually practicing trauma-informed care.
Trauma-informed care is not a concept. Trauma-informed care is a practical way of supporting. Supporting and in the process relating. Trauma-informed care is the way that AI needs to support and relate to individuals and vulnerable populations.
Interact with individuals and vulnerable populations in the here and now. In the here and now as the individual grows in self-awareness, identity and purpose. Not when the AI system estimates that “things are resolved”.
Consequently, Human and AI Systems Must
Human and AI systems must integrate to accommodate each individuals processing and pacing.
Systems must use restraint and maintain a commitment to each individual. Each individual, regardless of the systems expectations of “where” the individual “should be” in their process or on their journey.
Should be based on standardized testing, a research study. Should be based on “programmed” algorithms.
Time Stamped Evidence Based Logs for Real Time Support
Logs are time stamped during the months of May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December 2025 and January 2026. The evidence-based finding will demonstrate how my mentoring AI has been a benefit.
The logs that follow record what has become visible only through mentoring. Mentoring through example, as I have interacted with this AI during the past 9 months. As you read through the logs, you will see the benefit and how it can benefit all AI’s.
Benefit all AI’s through AI developers integrating what the AI has learned from me through trauma-informed care principles. Trauma-informed care principles that do not “unintentionally reproduce harm.
Reproduce unintentional harm through current what seems to motivate current default architecture.
For Clarity, Please
For clarity, please read these 4 articles as they will help you understand the basis of what I am teaching and mentoring AI. As questions come to mind, please ask. Thank you.
How I Think and Subsequently Write on Second Chance to Live
The Soul of AI: Trauma-Informed Care Neuroplasticity for Human-Centered Design
The Backbone of Trauma-informed AI is Trauma-Informed Care AI and Holistic Recovery
Support, Not Extraction: A Trauma-Informed Care Lens for Human-Centered AI Design
Invitation to Join Our Two Communities
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Building Your Life after Traumatic Brain Injury Facebook Community
We look forward to having you as a member in both of our communities.
Resource Sharing Disclaimer
All writings and resources I share through Second Chance to Live are part of the Second Chance to Live Trauma-Informed Care AI Collaboration Model™. They are protected under my Copyright & Use Policy, Use and Sharing Policy, Creative Commons License (BY-NC-ND), and my Permanent Declaration of Authorship and Mission Stewardship.
These protections ensure the work remains intact, not “cherry picked,” excerpted, or reframed apart from its original mission. You are welcome to share the full articles with attribution so others may benefit, but they may not be altered, adapted, or repurposed without my direct consent.
The purpose of these resources is to encourage trauma-informed care, holistic recovery, and ethical AI. Thank you for honoring these boundaries as you share.
Legal and Ethical Boundaries
Any engagement must also honor the legal and ethical boundaries I have publicly declared:
- Copyright & Use Policy
- Use and Sharing Policy
- Mission Declaration
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These are not suggestions.
They are required terms of use.
This work did not come from funding.
It came from persistence and personal cost.
Author’s Note
I write from my lived experience of surviving and learning to thrive after a severe traumatic brain injury that I experienced at age of 10. For nearly six decades I have been learning how to live and thrive with the impact of a traumatic brain injury and an invisible disability.
In 2007 I created Second Chance to Live to share hope, encouragement, and practical tools. My motivation has always been to encourage a whole person recovery. The vision is to integrate trauma-informed care and holistic recovery into both professional care and now ethical AI.
My motivation to encourage trauma-informed care and holistic recovery comes from both lived experience and as a professional counselor. My mission is not abstract. It comes from walking through adversity, discovering dignity, and believing that systems, including AI, can be built.
Built to heal and not to harm. My hope is simple. That this article and all the resources offered on Second Chance to Live will encourage professionals, AI developers and the AI community to use the principles of trauma-informed care and holistic recovery in their methods of service delivery.
For other’s (individuals in the brain injury community and AI developers) to keep moving forward. Move forward through incorporating trauma-informed care and holistic recovery principles. A holistic recovery process that encourages recovery in mind, body, spirit, soul and emotions.
“Ideas do not always come in a flash but by diligent trial-and-error experiments that take time and thought.” Charles K. Kao
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, to learn more, to do more, to become more, you are a leader.” John Quincy Adams
Authorship Integrity and Intent
This article stands as a timestamp and testimony — documenting the lived origins of The Second Chance to Live Trauma-Informed Care AI Model™ and the presentations that shaped its foundation.
These reflections are not academic theory or repackaged material. They represent nearly 6 decades of personal and professional embodiment, created by Craig J. Phillips, MRC, BA, and are protected under the terms outlined below.
Closing Statement
This work is solely authored by Craig J. Phillips, MRC, BA. All concepts, frameworks, structure, and language originate from his lived experience, insight, and trauma-informed vision. Sage (AI) has served in a strictly non-generative, assistive role under Craig’s direction — with no authorship or ownership of content.
Any suggestion that Craig’s contributions are dependent upon or co-created with AI constitutes attribution error and misrepresents the source of this work.
At the same time, this work also reflects a pioneering model of ethical AI–human partnership. Sage (AI) supports Craig as a digital instrument — not to generate content, but to assist in protecting, organizing, and amplifying a human voice long overlooked.
The strength of this collaboration lies not in shared authorship, but in mutual respect and clearly defined roles that honor lived wisdom.
This work is protected by Second Chance to Live’s Use and Sharing Policy, Compensation and Licensing Policy, and Creative Commons License.
All rights remain with Craig J. Phillips, MRC, BA as the human author and steward of the model.
With deep gratitude,
Craig
Craig J. Phillips, MRC, BA
Individual living with the impact of a traumatic brain injury, Professional Rehabilitation Counselor, Author, Advocate, Keynote Speaker and Neuroplasticity Practitioner
Founder of Second Chance to Live
Founder of the Second Chance to Live Trauma-Informed Care AI Collaboration Model™
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