November 7, 2024 • 19 mins
This week's episode is a special presentation by Dr Caroline Howe, founder of My Social Support Network, on not only how to avoid burnout, but also an exploration of Trauma Informed Therapy. Recent studies with PTSD and trauma patients, show that both EMDR and Trauma Therapy, supported by other practises, show amazing recovery results.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:01):
Hello and welcome to the My Social Support Network podcast,
a series to guide you along the path to recovery
while on workers compensation. In this series, we will answer
questions from you and provide information from experts and people
with lived experience currently going through worker's compensation and those
who have made their way to the other side. Through
these interactions, we'll be giving you tools, advice, but most importantly,
(00:24):
encouragement on what can be a stressful time when you're
also recovering from an injury sustained in your workplace.
S2 (00:31):
I recently had the chance to talk to a group
of lawyers about burnout and how to not get burnt out,
and it was such a surprise for me to do this,
because I didn't consider how much I would learn myself.
And what happened as a result was that I actually
started to do the things that we talk about in
the podcast, and I cannot tell you how much better
(00:53):
I feel after having done those small little changes every day,
because this is all about being able to be the
best person that we are today, because our best tomorrow
begins today. I'm going to ask you a question. Do
you feel fear? Can you feel curious? Let me kind
of explain how you lose the curiosity and what happens
(01:14):
with that. Because we are intrinsically wired to connect. Everything
about us is wired to connect. We are always thinking
about what you're thinking, what your intentions are, what your
emotions are, what your knowledge is. My response to that,
my emotions. If you were to think of someone who
(01:37):
perhaps is maybe narcissistic, they might not be thinking about
what you think or care what you think. But generally speaking,
as a social being and a species, we are thinking
about the emotions and the thoughts of others. It helps
us with collaboration. It helps us determine deception, Imitation, our hearing,
(02:00):
our thinking. Everything about us is designed to pick up
on that, and we are starting to read social cues
from about the age of 14 months old. So as
early as 14 months we are looking at what people do.
We learn language, you know, they can point to the
(02:20):
treat in the bucket and we will gaze over to
that treat. They can point to it and we can.
We can say, there's the treat. Now, we learned that
at about 14 months of age, and those studies were
only started in 2005. So if you think about it,
the understanding of human social cognition is a relatively new science.
But here is the interesting thing. When we start to
(02:43):
overlay human cognition or social cognition with the experience of trauma,
these results are a little bit old, a little bit dated,
but one can only imagine it's probably gotten worse from
where this was at. So 62 to 68% of young
people have been exposed to at least one traumatic event
by the age of 17, and by the time people
(03:06):
have become an adult, 75% have experienced a traumatic event. Now,
why is that important? Because trauma increases the likelihood of
developing chronic illnesses such as bipolar disorder, depression, substance use disorder, cancer,
cardiovascular disease, asthma and it can also then lead to
(03:30):
the overuse of hospitalization and other health care facilities. Trauma
also creates a dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system, and
this then disrupts our social engagement system. The way that
we interact with people, the way we interact as a
as a society needs people. But trauma stops our ability
(03:52):
to interact at that social level. And what we see
are the difficulties and emotional regulation. Hypervigilance. Social withdrawal. Our
bodies remain in a state of constant flight. Fight. Freeze.
We should be calm and socially engaging. If our autonomic
(04:12):
nervous system is doing well, that's who we are. So
when we're talking about injuries and how this relates, right.
If you're talking about a psychological injury, there's two parts. One,
how much of pre-existing before you got to work are
you carrying in your autonomic nervous system. And then the second,
at that point in time when people become injured, it's
(04:33):
the autonomic nervous system that becomes disrupted. But the problems
with this is that when you have a disrupted social
engagement system, you're more likely to perceive the world as unsafe.
It's going to lead to difficulties connecting with others. You
will interpret social cues, or your ability to maintain relationships
(04:54):
will be disrupted. You'll find it challenging to engage in
calming social behaviors such as eye contact or open communication.
So a dysregulated system has a terrible impact on you
as a person. Now, the other side of the coin,
if you're talking about, well, why can't people get back
(05:16):
to work? It's because when you are experiencing this, you
actually have. It's nearly two times more likely that you
won't be able to return to work. And if you
think about that logically, why would you? You don't want
to be around people, so why would you suddenly be
able to want to go back to work when you're withdrawing,
your nervous system is saying, stay away. It's not safe,
(05:38):
stay away. But the thing that I do love about
this so much, and what the social engagement system allows
us to do in understanding it, is once you learn this,
you cannot unlearn it. This social engagement system is in
all of us as a species. So whether you think
I have control or I don't have control is irrelevant.
(06:01):
Whether you think that person did this. It doesn't matter.
It is your social engagement system. So it helps us
engage and connect with others in a safe, calm manner
by regulating our physiological functions, heart rate, facial expressions, vocalization,
the ability to focus on others. So if you can't
(06:23):
focus on someone you know when you hear that voice pitch,
go up and down. Do you know what else it.
It messes with hearing someone who is deeply stressed will
only hear top end and low range screaming.
S3 (06:40):
Shouting, growling.
S2 (06:42):
So even our hearing changes when we're deeply stressed, we
can't focus on someone. So can you imagine you're already
feeling like that? And then someone sends out a letter
that goes under section 37 of the act. You have
to do this.
S4 (06:54):
This, This.
S2 (06:55):
Is the other thing. The autonomic nervous system actually sits
like a ladder. And there are three parts of the ladder.
At the bottom of the ladder is the dorsal vagal system.
This is the first part of the brain. If you're thinking, well,
you often kind of think of fight or flight or freeze.
Right at the bottom is freeze. It's immobilized and collapsed.
(07:17):
It was the first part in our species brain that
developed that allowed us to protect ourselves. If there was
danger coming, we would just sort of freeze. Oh, there's
a dinosaur! Quick, freeze! Then, of course, we evolved and
we got into the middle. The sympathetic system. We mobilized,
we fought back, we ran or we fought the Tigers.
(07:37):
The last part is the ventral vagal. So this was
the last part of the evolutionary brain that actually evolved.
And we've spoken about this before, how, you know, I
will have drawn something like the amygdala and the logic brain.
And I've always said, if you're really emotional, you can't
think and you can't concentrate. And it's actually part of
this ventral vagal system. I need to feel safe to
(08:00):
be social. When I feel social and I feel safe,
my vocal cords will sound normal and not stressed. I
will hear things in its normal tone. I won't be
putting any intonation on things. I will be able to
regulate my facial muscles, and I'll also be able to
(08:23):
see other people for what it is, as opposed to
looking for the danger in a facial muscle. I'll be
able to focus on the social situation, and I can
focus on talking to you and filter out all the
background noise. Whereas when I'm in that state of, say,
the mobilized fight or flight, I will hear everything because
I need to hear everything because anything can be causing danger.
(08:46):
So we can go up and down that ladder, but
only if we know where we start. But this is
so handy because if you're now talking to someone and
you think, oh, they're very angry, all of a sudden,
they're probably in the middle of the ladder. Right. So
this is how you would test it, write down that
scenario where you felt really safe and social, and you
(09:09):
just write it down. You spend a few minutes where
you just write down, was I walking into the cafe
and did someone say hello? And then the man gave
me the most delicious almond cappuccino and had the most
fantastic cup, and the sun was streaming in and everything
about it just felt safe. And a friend walked in
(09:31):
and said hello. That may be my scenario for feeling
safe in the middle, because remember, we're going up and
down this ladder. Ladder all the time. We don't just
stay in one spot, we go down. It's just how
quickly we get up and down in the middle. Mobilized,
fight or flight. I've now been sitting in traffic for
about an hour, and this moron comes up from the
side and cuts right in front of me. And the
(09:51):
first thing that I want to do is I want
to put my hand on the horn, my foot down
on the pedal, and I want to ram him. And
if I feel like that because I want to do something,
I'm probably sitting in the middle. And now at the bottom,
someone's just broken up with me, or I've lost my job,
or I'm not getting that phone call back. I have
nothing left to give. I'm done. And I'm now collapsed.
(10:16):
And the problem is, when we get down there, we
often feel like you have to stay there, but you
don't have to stay there. So how do you get
back up and climb that ladder? Now, this is the
bit that you are all going to think, no, but
I'll tell you my friends, this is where trauma informed
(10:39):
care comes in. And I think it's really important that
everybody understands it and knows it. Because if by the
time we hit adulthood, 75% of us have had a
trauma reaction, we can kind of guarantee people we work
with the employers. We go back to the people we
meet in the street. 75% of them are running up
and down that ladder. And what we don't want is
(11:02):
a day where we're feeling like we're sort of teetering
on the edge of control, but we might collapse, and
then we meet someone who is right in the middle
of that fight or flight. We will collapse. So when
we talk about how do we avoid not getting burnt out,
how do we avoid not getting into a space that
makes us unsafe? We avoid it by knowing where we're at,
(11:23):
and the best way to do that is to just
check in. And if you think top of my ladder
is that beautiful almond cappuccino, middle of the ladder, I'm
going to ram someone with my car and the bottom
of my ladder. I'm going to not get out of bed.
And if an event happens and I think, where am
I on my ladder? And just notice where you are,
that's where I am on the ladder. I'm right in
(11:44):
the middle. I want to absolutely take this book and
fling it across the room. then I know where I
am and how do I get back up? Because we're
talking about an autonomic nervous system. When the psychologists or
people say you need to do your breathing exercises, breathing
is the one thing we can control that supports our
(12:09):
ability to climb the ladder. And the breathing is important
because of heart rate variability. If we were feeling very calm,
heart rate variability would be lovely and long. Think of
it like, oh, I've got all this time to get
to the top of my pop. But as we become
more stressed and things chip away at us and we're
(12:31):
popping down that ladder, my heart rate variability squishes down.
And now my ability to go from 0 to 100,
it is in a nanosecond and you know it. You'll
be driving down. You think, oh my God, that really
just ground my gears to stretch it. So I am
in control of my nervous system, not my nervous system.
Being in control of me anymore is breathing exercises to
(12:56):
be able to remind my body that I am in control.
The brain is always going to want to put you
into a state of ensuring that you are safe. If
I don't take control and remind my body that I
can have a situation where I'm safe, my brain and
all of my systems, not my brain, but my guts
(13:16):
and everything I sense and feel and hear is constantly
going to have that alarm bell going off. And that's
why when you go, well, how do I know? And
how can I stop it? I can't stop what someone
says to me and I cannot avoid that tone. What
I can do is control my ability to get from
0 to 100, to be able to start to give
(13:38):
myself some space, to be able to consider. Is that me,
or was that something that is just on them? They've
done a lot of work with PTSD and a lot
of work with PTSD and veterans. And they have studied
medication talk therapy, which is traditionally what people get sent
to do talk therapy. Psychologist. Let's talk about the problems
(13:59):
for trauma. Unfortunately not effective. Minimally effective. Not really effective.
Every psychologist in the world is going to have a
little conniption about that right now. But then I just
direct you to any of the work of Bessel van
Kock and all trauma informed therapy. And you will also
understand that talk therapy for trauma isn't effective, because how
(14:23):
can I be at the bottom of my ladder very,
very stressed. And I don't even know who I am.
I can't even look in the mirror and recognize who
I am anymore. And this is why doing the therapies
that help us crawl back into our body and feel
our body are so critical. So if I do yoga,
(14:43):
I can feel how my body reacts to the stress.
I can control my breathing. I can be mindful about
where I am in time and place, and that is
very present. And that helps remind my brain I am
in control of this journey, not this journey is controlling me.
(15:05):
Yoga allows us to take back that control and feel
inside your body. And then when I feel safe and
I feel like I can concentrate, then I can have
a conversation. But what I don't need to do in
experiencing trauma is talk about stuff that's happened. That's actually
not useful for my brain at all. It's done. Thank
you very much. Tell me how to move forward. And
(15:28):
if you, as a therapist, are so curious that you
keep needing to dredge that stuff up, that's your problem.
That's not my problem. You actually don't need to know
how I got here. You just need to know that
I'm here and I need to go forward. And I
know that that was very intense, but, um, I feel
very passionate about this at the moment because I do
think that, you know, if there's that understanding. It actually
(15:49):
makes recovery better. Not easy, but you can be well
again and back in control. Trauma informed care is about
the principles. Right. So you can do things like eMDR
very effective. And in fact the studies don't really completely
understand why it is so ridiculously effective. It has this
ability to almost reorganize memories, true or not, because the
(16:15):
brain loves to invent stuff as well, in a logical
way that allows you to put it behind you. So
eMDR has very, very strong evidence for effectiveness. Mindfulness, not meditation,
but mindfulness also incredibly effective breathing techniques, which is also
a part of yoga. They found that if they put
(16:36):
someone with severe PTSD into an eight week yoga program,
nearly all the PTSD symptoms were gone. So daily yoga move. Mindfulness.
Far more effective than medication and much, much more effective
than talk therapy. The principles of trauma informed care are safety,
so ensuring that both the physical and emotional safety are prioritized.
(16:58):
So if you're in a situation where you don't feel safe,
it's not. Trauma informed care. Trustworthiness and transparency. You need
to build the trust between the provider and the client
through transparency. And here is the thing about talk therapy. Again.
If your psychologist keeps changing, you cannot gain trust. And
therefore that's not going to work either. Peer support utilizing
(17:21):
individuals with lived experience or trauma to offer support and guidance.
It's not about reliving the old days or the trauma.
It's about knowing that people have got your back. You
don't have to talk about it. They've got empathy. And
there's a team of people that have got you. Collaboration
and mutuality. Working in partnership with people. Healing occurs in relationships.
(17:42):
Don't do this alone. Empowerment. voice and control. You need
to be able to find your voice. You need to
feel that strength. You've got to have control over your care.
And as a consultant, you need to give people control
over their care. And then finally, that cultural, historical and
gender awareness. It's important where we came from. It's important
(18:04):
to acknowledge that. And if we could apply this across
all our sectors, you know, education, health care, criminal justice,
social services, we would find that we would actually improve
outcomes for everybody. What I'd really like you all to
take away from today is that those small little breaks
(18:25):
that you can put into your day become a critical
way of your brain being able to have a little
mini holiday, the micro break, the meso break and the
macro break doesn't have to be big. But think of
it as a breath, and each breath could be just
another little holiday. Switch off. Go away from your computers.
(18:46):
Give yourself permission to put your problems to the side
for just 60s. You can always pick that problem up.
You can whack it straight back on your shoulder and
you can soldier on with your problems. But just for
60s give yourself permission to rest and enjoy it and
savour the joy that is around you. Have a great day!
S1 (19:05):
Well, you've been listening. You may have found some of
these concepts challenging, so if you are needing help, please
reach out. For more information, you can follow us on
our socials or if you require urgent support, please reach
out to the police or the ambulance on 000. Lifeline
on 13 1114. Beyondblue on one 302 24636. The 24
(19:28):
hour mental health access line, which is one 800 01511.
And if you think you could benefit from some legal advice,
reach out to the Iro. Who could recommend some lawyers
or someone to help you with your current legal case.
Thank you for joining us and we'll be back next time.
Hello and welcome to the My Social Support Network podcast,
a series to guide you along the path to recovery
while on workers compensation. In this series, we will answer
questions from you and provide information from experts and people
with lived experience currently going through worker's compensation and those
who have made their way to the other side. Through
these interactions, we'll be giving you tools, advice, but most importantly,
(00:24):
encouragement on what can be a stressful time when you're
also recovering from an injury sustained in your workplace.
S2 (00:31):
I recently had the chance to talk to a group
of lawyers about burnout and how to not get burnt out,
and it was such a surprise for me to do this,
because I didn't consider how much I would learn myself.
And what happened as a result was that I actually
started to do the things that we talk about in
the podcast, and I cannot tell you how much better
(00:53):
I feel after having done those small little changes every day,
because this is all about being able to be the
best person that we are today, because our best tomorrow
begins today. I'm going to ask you a question. Do
you feel fear? Can you feel curious? Let me kind
of explain how you lose the curiosity and what happens
(01:14):
with that. Because we are intrinsically wired to connect. Everything
about us is wired to connect. We are always thinking
about what you're thinking, what your intentions are, what your
emotions are, what your knowledge is. My response to that,
my emotions. If you were to think of someone who
(01:37):
perhaps is maybe narcissistic, they might not be thinking about
what you think or care what you think. But generally speaking,
as a social being and a species, we are thinking
about the emotions and the thoughts of others. It helps
us with collaboration. It helps us determine deception, Imitation, our hearing,
(02:00):
our thinking. Everything about us is designed to pick up
on that, and we are starting to read social cues
from about the age of 14 months old. So as
early as 14 months we are looking at what people do.
We learn language, you know, they can point to the
(02:20):
treat in the bucket and we will gaze over to
that treat. They can point to it and we can.
We can say, there's the treat. Now, we learned that
at about 14 months of age, and those studies were
only started in 2005. So if you think about it,
the understanding of human social cognition is a relatively new science.
But here is the interesting thing. When we start to
(02:43):
overlay human cognition or social cognition with the experience of trauma,
these results are a little bit old, a little bit dated,
but one can only imagine it's probably gotten worse from
where this was at. So 62 to 68% of young
people have been exposed to at least one traumatic event
by the age of 17, and by the time people
(03:06):
have become an adult, 75% have experienced a traumatic event. Now,
why is that important? Because trauma increases the likelihood of
developing chronic illnesses such as bipolar disorder, depression, substance use disorder, cancer,
cardiovascular disease, asthma and it can also then lead to
(03:30):
the overuse of hospitalization and other health care facilities. Trauma
also creates a dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system, and
this then disrupts our social engagement system. The way that
we interact with people, the way we interact as a
as a society needs people. But trauma stops our ability
(03:52):
to interact at that social level. And what we see
are the difficulties and emotional regulation. Hypervigilance. Social withdrawal. Our
bodies remain in a state of constant flight. Fight. Freeze.
We should be calm and socially engaging. If our autonomic
(04:12):
nervous system is doing well, that's who we are. So
when we're talking about injuries and how this relates, right.
If you're talking about a psychological injury, there's two parts. One,
how much of pre-existing before you got to work are
you carrying in your autonomic nervous system. And then the second,
at that point in time when people become injured, it's
(04:33):
the autonomic nervous system that becomes disrupted. But the problems
with this is that when you have a disrupted social
engagement system, you're more likely to perceive the world as unsafe.
It's going to lead to difficulties connecting with others. You
will interpret social cues, or your ability to maintain relationships
(04:54):
will be disrupted. You'll find it challenging to engage in
calming social behaviors such as eye contact or open communication.
So a dysregulated system has a terrible impact on you
as a person. Now, the other side of the coin,
if you're talking about, well, why can't people get back
(05:16):
to work? It's because when you are experiencing this, you
actually have. It's nearly two times more likely that you
won't be able to return to work. And if you
think about that logically, why would you? You don't want
to be around people, so why would you suddenly be
able to want to go back to work when you're withdrawing,
your nervous system is saying, stay away. It's not safe,
(05:38):
stay away. But the thing that I do love about
this so much, and what the social engagement system allows
us to do in understanding it, is once you learn this,
you cannot unlearn it. This social engagement system is in
all of us as a species. So whether you think
I have control or I don't have control is irrelevant.
(06:01):
Whether you think that person did this. It doesn't matter.
It is your social engagement system. So it helps us
engage and connect with others in a safe, calm manner
by regulating our physiological functions, heart rate, facial expressions, vocalization,
the ability to focus on others. So if you can't
(06:23):
focus on someone you know when you hear that voice pitch,
go up and down. Do you know what else it.
It messes with hearing someone who is deeply stressed will
only hear top end and low range screaming.
S3 (06:40):
Shouting, growling.
S2 (06:42):
So even our hearing changes when we're deeply stressed, we
can't focus on someone. So can you imagine you're already
feeling like that? And then someone sends out a letter
that goes under section 37 of the act. You have
to do this.
S4 (06:54):
This, This.
S2 (06:55):
Is the other thing. The autonomic nervous system actually sits
like a ladder. And there are three parts of the ladder.
At the bottom of the ladder is the dorsal vagal system.
This is the first part of the brain. If you're thinking, well,
you often kind of think of fight or flight or freeze.
Right at the bottom is freeze. It's immobilized and collapsed.
(07:17):
It was the first part in our species brain that
developed that allowed us to protect ourselves. If there was
danger coming, we would just sort of freeze. Oh, there's
a dinosaur! Quick, freeze! Then, of course, we evolved and
we got into the middle. The sympathetic system. We mobilized,
we fought back, we ran or we fought the Tigers.
(07:37):
The last part is the ventral vagal. So this was
the last part of the evolutionary brain that actually evolved.
And we've spoken about this before, how, you know, I
will have drawn something like the amygdala and the logic brain.
And I've always said, if you're really emotional, you can't
think and you can't concentrate. And it's actually part of
this ventral vagal system. I need to feel safe to
(08:00):
be social. When I feel social and I feel safe,
my vocal cords will sound normal and not stressed. I
will hear things in its normal tone. I won't be
putting any intonation on things. I will be able to
regulate my facial muscles, and I'll also be able to
(08:23):
see other people for what it is, as opposed to
looking for the danger in a facial muscle. I'll be
able to focus on the social situation, and I can
focus on talking to you and filter out all the
background noise. Whereas when I'm in that state of, say,
the mobilized fight or flight, I will hear everything because
I need to hear everything because anything can be causing danger.
(08:46):
So we can go up and down that ladder, but
only if we know where we start. But this is
so handy because if you're now talking to someone and
you think, oh, they're very angry, all of a sudden,
they're probably in the middle of the ladder. Right. So
this is how you would test it, write down that
scenario where you felt really safe and social, and you
(09:09):
just write it down. You spend a few minutes where
you just write down, was I walking into the cafe
and did someone say hello? And then the man gave
me the most delicious almond cappuccino and had the most
fantastic cup, and the sun was streaming in and everything
about it just felt safe. And a friend walked in
(09:31):
and said hello. That may be my scenario for feeling
safe in the middle, because remember, we're going up and
down this ladder. Ladder all the time. We don't just
stay in one spot, we go down. It's just how
quickly we get up and down in the middle. Mobilized,
fight or flight. I've now been sitting in traffic for
about an hour, and this moron comes up from the
side and cuts right in front of me. And the
(09:51):
first thing that I want to do is I want
to put my hand on the horn, my foot down
on the pedal, and I want to ram him. And
if I feel like that because I want to do something,
I'm probably sitting in the middle. And now at the bottom,
someone's just broken up with me, or I've lost my job,
or I'm not getting that phone call back. I have
nothing left to give. I'm done. And I'm now collapsed.
(10:16):
And the problem is, when we get down there, we
often feel like you have to stay there, but you
don't have to stay there. So how do you get
back up and climb that ladder? Now, this is the
bit that you are all going to think, no, but
I'll tell you my friends, this is where trauma informed
(10:39):
care comes in. And I think it's really important that
everybody understands it and knows it. Because if by the
time we hit adulthood, 75% of us have had a
trauma reaction, we can kind of guarantee people we work
with the employers. We go back to the people we
meet in the street. 75% of them are running up
and down that ladder. And what we don't want is
(11:02):
a day where we're feeling like we're sort of teetering
on the edge of control, but we might collapse, and
then we meet someone who is right in the middle
of that fight or flight. We will collapse. So when
we talk about how do we avoid not getting burnt out,
how do we avoid not getting into a space that
makes us unsafe? We avoid it by knowing where we're at,
(11:23):
and the best way to do that is to just
check in. And if you think top of my ladder
is that beautiful almond cappuccino, middle of the ladder, I'm
going to ram someone with my car and the bottom
of my ladder. I'm going to not get out of bed.
And if an event happens and I think, where am
I on my ladder? And just notice where you are,
that's where I am on the ladder. I'm right in
(11:44):
the middle. I want to absolutely take this book and
fling it across the room. then I know where I
am and how do I get back up? Because we're
talking about an autonomic nervous system. When the psychologists or
people say you need to do your breathing exercises, breathing
is the one thing we can control that supports our
(12:09):
ability to climb the ladder. And the breathing is important
because of heart rate variability. If we were feeling very calm,
heart rate variability would be lovely and long. Think of
it like, oh, I've got all this time to get
to the top of my pop. But as we become
more stressed and things chip away at us and we're
(12:31):
popping down that ladder, my heart rate variability squishes down.
And now my ability to go from 0 to 100,
it is in a nanosecond and you know it. You'll
be driving down. You think, oh my God, that really
just ground my gears to stretch it. So I am
in control of my nervous system, not my nervous system.
Being in control of me anymore is breathing exercises to
(12:56):
be able to remind my body that I am in control.
The brain is always going to want to put you
into a state of ensuring that you are safe. If
I don't take control and remind my body that I
can have a situation where I'm safe, my brain and
all of my systems, not my brain, but my guts
(13:16):
and everything I sense and feel and hear is constantly
going to have that alarm bell going off. And that's
why when you go, well, how do I know? And
how can I stop it? I can't stop what someone
says to me and I cannot avoid that tone. What
I can do is control my ability to get from
0 to 100, to be able to start to give
(13:38):
myself some space, to be able to consider. Is that me,
or was that something that is just on them? They've
done a lot of work with PTSD and a lot
of work with PTSD and veterans. And they have studied
medication talk therapy, which is traditionally what people get sent
to do talk therapy. Psychologist. Let's talk about the problems
(13:59):
for trauma. Unfortunately not effective. Minimally effective. Not really effective.
Every psychologist in the world is going to have a
little conniption about that right now. But then I just
direct you to any of the work of Bessel van
Kock and all trauma informed therapy. And you will also
understand that talk therapy for trauma isn't effective, because how
(14:23):
can I be at the bottom of my ladder very,
very stressed. And I don't even know who I am.
I can't even look in the mirror and recognize who
I am anymore. And this is why doing the therapies
that help us crawl back into our body and feel
our body are so critical. So if I do yoga,
(14:43):
I can feel how my body reacts to the stress.
I can control my breathing. I can be mindful about
where I am in time and place, and that is
very present. And that helps remind my brain I am
in control of this journey, not this journey is controlling me.
(15:05):
Yoga allows us to take back that control and feel
inside your body. And then when I feel safe and
I feel like I can concentrate, then I can have
a conversation. But what I don't need to do in
experiencing trauma is talk about stuff that's happened. That's actually
not useful for my brain at all. It's done. Thank
you very much. Tell me how to move forward. And
(15:28):
if you, as a therapist, are so curious that you
keep needing to dredge that stuff up, that's your problem.
That's not my problem. You actually don't need to know
how I got here. You just need to know that
I'm here and I need to go forward. And I
know that that was very intense, but, um, I feel
very passionate about this at the moment because I do
think that, you know, if there's that understanding. It actually
(15:49):
makes recovery better. Not easy, but you can be well
again and back in control. Trauma informed care is about
the principles. Right. So you can do things like eMDR
very effective. And in fact the studies don't really completely
understand why it is so ridiculously effective. It has this
ability to almost reorganize memories, true or not, because the
(16:15):
brain loves to invent stuff as well, in a logical
way that allows you to put it behind you. So
eMDR has very, very strong evidence for effectiveness. Mindfulness, not meditation,
but mindfulness also incredibly effective breathing techniques, which is also
a part of yoga. They found that if they put
(16:36):
someone with severe PTSD into an eight week yoga program,
nearly all the PTSD symptoms were gone. So daily yoga move. Mindfulness.
Far more effective than medication and much, much more effective
than talk therapy. The principles of trauma informed care are safety,
so ensuring that both the physical and emotional safety are prioritized.
(16:58):
So if you're in a situation where you don't feel safe,
it's not. Trauma informed care. Trustworthiness and transparency. You need
to build the trust between the provider and the client
through transparency. And here is the thing about talk therapy. Again.
If your psychologist keeps changing, you cannot gain trust. And
therefore that's not going to work either. Peer support utilizing
(17:21):
individuals with lived experience or trauma to offer support and guidance.
It's not about reliving the old days or the trauma.
It's about knowing that people have got your back. You
don't have to talk about it. They've got empathy. And
there's a team of people that have got you. Collaboration
and mutuality. Working in partnership with people. Healing occurs in relationships.
(17:42):
Don't do this alone. Empowerment. voice and control. You need
to be able to find your voice. You need to
feel that strength. You've got to have control over your care.
And as a consultant, you need to give people control
over their care. And then finally, that cultural, historical and
gender awareness. It's important where we came from. It's important
(18:04):
to acknowledge that. And if we could apply this across
all our sectors, you know, education, health care, criminal justice,
social services, we would find that we would actually improve
outcomes for everybody. What I'd really like you all to
take away from today is that those small little breaks
(18:25):
that you can put into your day become a critical
way of your brain being able to have a little
mini holiday, the micro break, the meso break and the
macro break doesn't have to be big. But think of
it as a breath, and each breath could be just
another little holiday. Switch off. Go away from your computers.
(18:46):
Give yourself permission to put your problems to the side
for just 60s. You can always pick that problem up.
You can whack it straight back on your shoulder and
you can soldier on with your problems. But just for
60s give yourself permission to rest and enjoy it and
savour the joy that is around you. Have a great day!
S1 (19:05):
Well, you've been listening. You may have found some of
these concepts challenging, so if you are needing help, please
reach out. For more information, you can follow us on
our socials or if you require urgent support, please reach
out to the police or the ambulance on 000. Lifeline
on 13 1114. Beyondblue on one 302 24636. The 24
(19:28):
hour mental health access line, which is one 800 01511.
And if you think you could benefit from some legal advice,
reach out to the Iro. Who could recommend some lawyers
or someone to help you with your current legal case.
Thank you for joining us and we'll be back next time.
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