Living With Fire Podcast
Living With Fire Podcast
Trauma-Informed Communication About Wildfire
As a program coordinator for Oregon State University Extension's Natural Resources Education Program, Yasmeen Hossain, Ph.D. supports educators by providing educational resources in environmental education. Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic and destructive wildfires have been impacting the lives of many in the west, including students. Consequently, Hossain noticed that the educators she worked with were asking for tools and resources to help support students who may have personal experiences with these potentially traumatic events. To fill this need, in 2021 Hossain published the Trauma-Informed Toolkit. A Resource for Educators.
For more full episode details including the transcript, visit https://www.buzzsprout.com/1819551/episodes/11532402
“I kept wanting to have some kind of written document, like a resource document that I could give them before the workshop, or that they could come back to after a workshop. And I couldn't find one that encompassed everything I wanted them to have at their fingertips. And so at some point, I was like, Well, I guess I just got to write it myself,” said Hossain.
Wildfire can be very stressful, and it’s possible for children and adults to experience a trauma response related to wildfire, for a variety of reasons as Hossian explains. “So the topic of fire wildfire it is has a lot of potential to activate our nervous system to again create that overwhelming out of control feeling that we might have. And the reason for that is because of the magnitude and the impact that it can have on our lives.”
Hossain emphasizes that when someone is experiencing a trauma response, especially a child, it is more important to help them manage their stress than to try and explain why it is happening. “So really knowing about and utilizing tools and strategies and information to help them balance their nervous system again, and boost their resilience.”
To learn more, check out the resources below:
So the topic of fire, wildfire is is has a lot of potential to activate our nervous system to again create that overwhelming, out of control feeling that we might have and the reason for that is because of the magnitude and the impact that it can have on our lives and thats a lot for us to hold, a lot for us to sit with. It really, if you think about it, it really affects our basic survival needs. It can threaten our physical safety, having shelter. Whether our house is safe or not, emotional safety can be threatened because we might experience loss or you know grieving the loss of someone or again in material belongings and then of course we might not have clean air to breathe.
Megan Kay:This is the Living with Fire Podcast brought to you by the University of Nevada, Reno extension. Hi there. Welcome to the Living with Fire Podcast. I'm your host. Megan Kay, Outreach Coordinator for the Living with Fire Program. So this year on the podcast, we're focusing on stories that deal with impacts of wildfire that we haven't really talked about before and that are more under the surface. This episode is about trauma. So just be aware that we're going to be discussing some stressful events. We're going to focus particularly on understanding how children can experience trauma related to wildfire and other events, and how educators and adults can support children by talking about wildfire in a trauma informed way. What does trauma informed mean? You ask? Well, we're going to learn about trauma, informed communication on this episode from our expert guest, Yasmeen Hossein.
Yasmeen Hossein:My name is Yasmeen Hossein and I currently work at the Oregon Natural Resources education program, or ONREP. That's our acronym, which is part of Oregon State University Extension. My current kind of job role is to design and lead professional development workshops and trainings for preK-12 educators, both formal and non formal in the environmental education field, and pretty much all of my, not all of my, most of my professional and academic background is all in the environmental field. But before I came to ONREP and Oregon State University, I worked for many years in the trauma prevention and recovery field. So that was like a little detour I did from the environmental field.
Megan Kay:So earlier this year, in February, Yasmeen published the trauma informed toolkit, a resource for educators. We'll be talking about the toolkit on this episode, and it's also linked in the show notes below, so I highly recommend downloading it, especially if you work with kids in any way. But I also think it's a really great resource just for the general public to understand trauma. Helping me interview Yasmeen was our manager, Jamie Royce-Gomes.
Jamie Roice-Gomes:Hi, this is Jamie Royce-Gomes, the manager of the Living with Fire Program.
Megan Kay:And we are also joined by Spencer Houston, our Special Projects Manager.
Spencer Houston:Hi, this is Spencer Houston. I'm a Special Projects Manager with the Living with Fire Program, working on building high school science curriculum.
Megan Kay:Real quickly. Let's just hear what Spencer and Jamie had to say after our interview with Yasmeen.
Spencer Houston:So as we at Living with Fire, we're building our own high school science curriculum, we started to connect and get into touch with other groups across the country, also building youth educational materials and programs related to wildfire. And that's where we we came across this group in Oregon that Yasmeen is part of and they just do a really incredible job of taking this very like frankly scary topic and working with students who have had trauma related to wildfire, and taking it from a scary topic to one where we can give and help them provide tools to understand what's happening and to have more agency to be able to that. I think that was my, my favorite part of this episode was when we talked about things like, Hey, these are things that you can do with the children that you you know or work with, or your own children to help them, kind of if something bad does happen and before something even bad happens, so that we're all more strong and resilient and prepared for if and when a wildfire or rather traumatic event happens.
Jamie Roice-Gomes:You know, I so as a side note, my family, I have family that lost their homes during the paradise fire, and I remember during that time, and I remember trying to look for information for just helping kids through the trauma of dealing with wildfire, and I was going to send it to my family and I and it was kind of a hard topic to find. So I'm really excited that this really fills that niche. And I this is an incredible episode, and I'm I'm so excited that we did it.
Yasmeen Hossein:When I started in my current position, I was working with educators and just kind of tuning in and asking them, what do they need? What kind of support do they need to you know, work with kids, and again, we're all about environmental education, but what kept coming up is they really wanted some tools on trauma. And so that's where I started weaving it in to the workshops I was designing and leading. And I realized really quickly that one workshop is just not enough time for such a huge, deep, complex topic. So I kept wanting to have some kind of written document, like a resource document that I could give them before the workshop, or that they could come back to after a workshop, and I couldn't find one that encompassed everything I wanted them to have at their fingertips. And so at some point, I was like, Well, I guess I just got to write it myself.
Megan Kay:So my first question before we start talking about the toolkit is I was wondering if you could just give us a definition of what is trauma.
Yasmeen Hossein:Yes. And as you might imagine, that could be a day long workshop, all in into itself. It's just, it's such a big, deep topic, and it's so complex that it's, it's really hard to just, you know, in one sentence, this is what it is, but, and I'm happy to briefly share some understandings about trauma that might be helpful. And then, of course, there's so much more in the toolkit. So this is just a brief overview, and please, you know, kind of continue your learning about what trauma is. That would be my recommendation. So I have found there is no like global, accepted definition of trauma. And I think that is because it is such a unique experience for each individual. You know, there are some common experiences, but it's so highly subjective and individual. So the word itself trauma, it comes from ancient Greek, Greece, Greek. It's an ancient Greek word, and it means wound, and it's not so. For example, trauma having a trauma reaction or trauma response is not the event itself. So I like to kind of liken it to a car accident. The accident is not the wound. That's not the trauma the accident. I mean, the trauma is what happens physically and emotionally to you. What are the wounds that you carry away from that accident? So the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration has a definition that I like the best, if I had to pick one, and so they define it as lasting effects and adverse experience, or experiences or a circumstance has on a person's mental, physical, social, emotional or spiritual well being. So it really has this multifaceted impact on us. And what's really important to note is that trauma comes from an experience that feels life threatening or otherwise completely overwhelming. It just overwhelms all of our senses, and most of all, it gives us a feeling that we have no control, so we have no control over our life, our well being. And that's that feeling that's kind of what can turn into a trauma stress response.
Megan Kay:So what do you think are some key things that everyone should understand about trauma?
Yasmeen Hossein:Yeah, so the first one is, trauma is pervasive. It is everywhere, everywhere we look and it's not often. It's not visible. It's not like a broken arm. It's, you know, these internal wounds that we carry around. And so I really believe, and this is from my personal and professional experience, that every single human on this planet at some point experiences something that feels overwhelming and out of our control, and can lead to that trauma response, and oftentimes we're not even aware of it. We're not aware that this has been imprinted in our nervous system, so it can be conscious or it can be completely unknown to us, and then we just react in certain ways, and we don't know why. And then the second one is that trauma is unique to each individual. I mentioned this before, but everyone experiences events and circumstances differently, and there's such a wide range in how the symptoms show up in somebody's life and how they might impact us. And then the third one and the last one is that these stressful events I was talking about these adverse experiences, they don't always automatically lead to someone having a trauma response. All trauma comes from stress, that's how it starts. But all stress doesn't always lead to a trauma response, and there's a couple of different reasons for that. I call them or well, research, we all, the field, calls them risk and resilience or protective factors, and so some things might be, has the person like, what about the history? Has the person had a similar experience before, or something else, super stressful? What kind of supports are available? Is there access to health care and other services, and then a really big factor in trauma risk is how many healthy, supportive relationships does the person have in their life? Do they have someone they can confide in, they can talk to, who will support them? And then it also depends on underlying factors such as, you know, historical or ancestral trauma, systemic oppression, racism, family culture, cultural beliefs, and just so many more.
Megan Kay:I wanted to take a quick break to talk about the Living with Fire Program. Maybe you found this podcast and you're wondering, what is the Living with Fire Program? Well, we've been around since 1997 we're managed by the University of Nevada Reno extension, and we're really a collaborative effort amongst federal, state and local firefighting agencies as well as resource management agencies to help people adapt, prepare and live more safely with wildfire. So if you haven't already, check out our website, livingwithfire.com where you'll find all of our resources and tools that will help you live more safely with wildfire. Okay, back to the show. So I had some questions about trauma and children specifically relating to wildfire, which is what our program is all about. Could you explain how wildfire can impact children and potentially cause trauma?
Yasmeen Hossein:Yeah, absolutely. And I will also preface that it's not just children, right? I mean, adults, we experience this overwhelming stress response to fire as well. We might, it shows up differently in our lives. But so I just want to get, yeah, just kind of to put it out there that what I'm sharing with you, like is both for children and adults. So the topic of fire, wildfire is, is has a lot of potential to activate our nervous system, to again, create that overwhelming, out of control feeling that we might have. And the reason for that is because of the magnitude and the impact that it can have on our lives. And that's a lot for us to hold, a lot for us to sit with it really, if you think about it, really affects our basic survival needs. You know, it can threaten our physical safety, having shelter, whether our house is safe or not. Emotional safety can be threatened because we might experience loss, or, you know, grieving some the loss of someone, or again, material belongings, and then, of course, we might not have clean air to breathe, access to food and clean water. Nourishment might be interrupted because, you know, the fire pathway might be across a road, and so the road is blocked, and trucks can't get to a grocery store, or we can't get to the grocery store. Of course, health concerns, you know, such as asthma can be exacerbated with smoke heart disease. So even if someone doesn't have that direct experience with wildfire themselves, like so many of us on the west coast have, unfortunately, even the smoke from fires can impact us and and we can, you know, have that like, Oh no, what about my health? I'm breathing this unhealthy air. Like, I'm sure all of you remember the bootleg fire last summer in 2021 the smoke from it blew all the way across the US, and people in New England had smoky skies and were smelling the smoke and had unhealthy air quality. So it it really, it's just so the impacts are so wide reaching, and it impacts all these very basic things we need to survive. And so that is why having that overwhelming, out of control feeling is easily triggered when it comes to wildfire and for kids and again, especially here on the West Coast, they might have already have direct experience with a previous fire, so they have that previous experience of needing to evacuate or just a threat of it. They might have indirect experience with fire, so they might have heard families or family members or friends or other community members having to evacuate or losing their house, news stories, social media, of course, or they might have experienced a similar circumstance to fire. So this is where if someone experienced houselessness or having some kind of illness or physical injury that impacted health or they lost material belongings, maybe because it was stolen, but that's like that similar kind of impact that wildfire might have, and so that could again have overlapping pictures and then trigger that overwhelming stress response, or even just learning about how wildfire can impact us and that it has the potential to threaten our house and our livelihood, that could be really overwhelming and stressful. So students learning about it in school, even if they have no prior experience with it, they could still be experiencing this trauma stress response. I just want to point out that it's always, we always wanted to know, why, like, why are we feeling this way? Why are we so anxious, or, you know, feeling stressed and having these responses? And that can obviously be helpful to know and helpful for the future so we can put certain things into place, so we don't, you know, experience it again. But with kids, especially, it's it's less important why that they're having this reaction or this trauma response, and it's so much more important to have some tools and figure out, how can you help them process this stress and process this heightened emotion that they're feeling so really knowing about and utilizing tools and strategies and information to help them balance their nervous system again and boost their resilience. That's kind of what I would like to encourage everybody to like put your energy behind. Put your focus on.
Megan Kay:I was wondering if you could describe for us how trauma can manifest in children's behaviors, so that adults and caregivers, we can look out for maybe some red flags or signs that children could be in distress.
Yasmeen Hossein:Trauma is such a unique experience, and it can show up in so many different ways that I always I like to do you know, let just give that caveat before I talk about how it might impact children or adults as well, but there are. So there's really no one formula or a list of symptoms that would apply to everyone, every time, in every circumstance. So that's just my caveat. But you know, research over the years, of course, has shown some commonalities of ways that trauma might show up. And so before I go into that, just want to give a quick reminder that these, you know, some experiences could be in combination, or only one and not all the others, or a child might experience a totally new symptom that is not listed here at all. I like to group them into four different categories. So the first one is physical symptoms. How might that show up often? It could be some kind of a pain, whether it's chronic headache or stomach ache or a body pain of any kind, just feeling like the body is physically not doing great is feeling the pain. It's feeling the emotional pain, if that makes sense for students, of course, lots of learning disruptions. For example, there might be some difficulty concentrating memory, memory retention or grasping new information or new concepts that could be really hard and then internally so the in the emotional inner world, students or children might be experiencing more anxiety than usual, social withdrawal, low self esteem or perfectionism or emotional numbness that can happen to depression, increased sadness, fear, persistent worry over safety of self or others. And then, if a child has experienced a fire directly, and you know, their family is is fine, nobody was harmed, and their house is fine, they might also experience what's called survivors guilt, if people they know did lose their house or somebody was physically impacted, so that can lead to feelings of guilt and anger. And then the last category is externally. So as children engage with others in their connections and their relationships, it could show up as increased aggression or tantrums or any kind of disruptive behavior, weak impulse control, irritability, engaging in more reckless behavior than usual. And then, for younger children, behavior regression, so going back to bed, wetting or thumb sucking or clinging to caretakers and not being able to be separated and so on and again, these there's so many more, as I keep saying.
Megan Kay:And I think it probably goes without saying, but maybe we should also mention that it seems like being patient is a key part of this process, because even if you're talking to kids in a trauma informed way. There's probably no road map to getting them to where they need to be, right?
Yasmeen Hossein:That is so true, so true. And also, and this might happen more in a school setting, but simply telling students or asking them to change their behavior like, you know, pay attention, concentrate in this lesson, or or for parents, just saying, stop sucking your thumb, or whatever it might be, simply asking them to change their behavior. That that doesn't work because the trauma response, what it does in our in our brain, the brain science of it, it literally cuts off access to our thinking brain, our rational brain, so everything is happening as an automated response. We're not in control over it. We're not like, Oh, now I will be really angry. And so tuning into that is so important. And again, instead of telling, telling the children what's what they're doing wrong, using some tools and strategies to help them calm down, to help them balance their nervous system. Again, that's that's kind of where the gold nugget is in this work.
Megan Kay:Hi there. Thanks again for listening. We hope that you're enjoying our interview with Yasmeen Hossain from Oregon State University about the trauma informed toolkit that she published earlier this year. Just wanted to let you know that we're going to include the toolkit in the links in the show notes below, so after you listen to the episode, don't forget to go into the show notes, download the toolkit and use it. We hope that it's helpful. Okay, back to the show.
Jamie Roice-Gomes:I was just thinking maybe just we can help, help the children emotionally, so that they're able to better understand things mentally, is that kind of what we're talking about?
Yasmeen Hossein:Yeah, that's, I think that is definitely one of the great steps to do, and not as you know, sometimes I think the misnomer is thinking, Oh, they're just children. They don't need to know all the information or it would scare them too much, or any other reason why we don't feel comfortable sharing information with children like we would with an adult. But children are so intuitive and sensitive. They pick up on things. They know something is wrong, and if we don't share with them, at least, you know, age appropriate information, and loop them in and let them know what's wrong, they might get that feeling of not having control, and then that could lead to retraumatization, or a trauma response, which is what we're trying to avoid. So I think looping kids in and again, doing it in an age appropriate way. But I think you're right, Jamie, that is so important.
Megan Kay:So now I wanted to pivot into some of those tools you had mentioned and learn about some ways that adults and caregivers and educators can support children and talk about wildfire in a trauma informed way.
Yasmeen Hossein:Yes, I'm so glad you asked about that. So there are a couple of strategies that could be applied to talking about wildfire and also keeping in mind these strategies translate so easily to any all kinds of other topics, all kinds of other situations in life. So if you're working with a student or your your children, and you come across any other kind of emotionally difficult topics, feel free to apply these strategies for that as well. All right. So as I already mentioned, I think again, modifying your language and how much detail you give students, I mean children based on their age, but I definitely recommend sharing information with children, even even the very young ones. Again, you might really downscale how much you tell them and the language you use, but definitely share with them what is going on. So before you have this talk, I always recommend to first take care of yourself, put the oxygen mask on yourself, before you help others. And this might look like tuning into your own nervous system, regulating your own nervous system, making sure that youare coming from a place of feeling grounded, you know, feeling balanced, feeling calm. And some things I like to do when I know like, oh, I need to quickly regulate my nervous system and I don't have a lot of time. I like to do jumping jacks. It activates the physical body. I also do some breathing exercises, some deep breathing exercises. And actually would love to share one later with everybody, maybe at the end, so we can all end this podcast with a regulated nervous system.
Megan Kay:I think that's amazing. And yes, I definitely think we should do that.
Yasmeen Hossein:Great. You know, things like walking barefoot in the yard, I like to eat chocolate or ask to have a little pep talk with, well, with one of my friends or my husband, really, anything that feels good to you. So just to make sure, before you have this talk with with the child, that you're feeling grounded and calm, and then help the child do the same. So you might do some things together, you know, maybe you first go for a walk out in the park or in nature. You have some play time. You give a healthy snack. You might do some breathing exercises. If it's appropriate, you might have a little cuddle time. Obviously, probably not in an educational setting, because you don't want to have a potentially stressful conversation if somebody's already feeling a little bit stressed out. And then the next thing after that is, you know, just share information with the kid about the fire situation, you know what's going on, and ask if they have any questions. And if you don't know the answer to some of their questions. I think you can just be honest about it and say, Oh, I don't know. Let's look it up together, or I'll look it up and then I'll, you know, let you know tomorrow what I find out, something like that. And then always emphasize this is one of the cornerstones of trauma informed care, but emphasize a solutions focused approach and a strength based approach. So focus on the solutions and the child's own resilience. For example, you might talk about how previously, how fires were contained. You might talk about all the skills and tools that firefighters have their unique knowledge and how many firefighters are working to contain the fire right now. You can also talk about what is the school or the community or your own family doing in terms of fire safety protocols. You know you have your safety plan, a go bag, a meet up location. That's all like showing the child like, yes, there this is happening, and here's how we're going to keep ourselves safe. Here is all the things we have in in place. And then again, emphasizing that the child themselves has resiliency, because they've overcome situations in the past where they might have been scared or anxious, and so talking about that, like, how did you do that in the past? You know, when you felt X, Y and Z, and then asking, just ask. I'd say, just ask. How are you feeling about this? You know, just invite, create space for the child to share themselves how they're feeling. Not just be talked at, but have it be a real discussion, a real sharing. And then it's so important to acknowledge, validate and normalize any emotions that are shared. I always say emotions are always valid, because it's it's our truth, it's how we're feeling. There is no, this isn't right. This isn't you know, this is wrong, because, no, it's not wrong, it's how I'm feeling. So hopefully that helps everybody feel good about validating emotions always and normalizing it. And so you might say things like, Oh, I also feel scared, or I'm also anxious, or it makes sense that you are feeling again, whatever it might be angry right now, I can understand why you're scared. So things like that can make such a big difference, and then afterwards, or maybe you intersperse this, but giving the child and yourself plenty of opportunities to process what comes up, like process the information from the talk, process the emotions that might have come up. And I recommend there's three main categories of ways you might process the first one, of course, is verbally. And depending on the age of the child, not all children have access to all the language or feel comfortable talking about emotions, you know? And so there are other ways you could do it verbally. You could do that emotional weather report check in, you know, what's your what's your weather report right now? And it might be stormy or the sun is peeking through. So you can use metaphor. But then there's also other things, like. They can do some silent journaling, some writing, and then creative processing, I think, is huge. So drawing, using art, using the body, you can do some dancing around, or, you know, go to the playground, anything like that. That brings the body into it as well. Is really important. Play hide and seek, yeah, and then again, well, I already said it, but art is huge, like visual art, just drawing can be really, really great at processing and these emotions. You know, in an ideal world, when we're experiencing heightened emotions, if we could process it right away, then we don't have the lasting effects of it. It doesn't linger. So in an ideal world, if you have time building in these processing opportunities right after you talked to the child or after you both watched a news story, maybe, or something like that. But even if you don't have time right away, building time in later or later on, the next day or that week, is still going to have a beneficial effect. So don't feel like if you couldn't do it right away, there's no point in doing it anymore.
Megan Kay:Wildfire is stressful and wildfire evacuations are stressful. That's why the Living with Fire Program has created our wildfire evacuation checklist. It's a really simple checklist to help you learn how to pack a go bag and prepare your home and your family, even your pets, for wildfire evacuation. I've included the checklist in the links in the show notes below, so be sure to check that out, and you can also find it at our website at livingwithfire.com, now back to the show. So you mentioned resilience. What is resilience?
Yasmeen Hossein:So trauma resilience is the ability of again, a child or adult applies to both to cope, process and adapt to a traumatic event or circumstance. And the goal of trauma resilience is to help people who are experiencing this heightened stress response or an adverse situation to either stay regulated, stay balanced, or bring their nervous system back into balance in a very short period of time with minimal distress, and having it not really affect day to day living. And so I want to emphasize it's important to know that having that having a trauma response, such as fight, flight, freeze or fawn, that's how we survive. I mean, if we see a bear and we can have the trauma response run, that's fantastic. That might mean we get to live and we're not eaten by the bear. So it's totally normal to experience it when it when it starts impacting our day to day living, and it lasts a very long time, and, yeah, it just impacts our normal life. That's when we might want to look at it further and do some of the processing and trauma informed care and helping our then we know we need to help our nervous system come back into balance, into equilibrium. So trauma resilience specifically informs how long that you're going to experience this stress response, and what areas of your life are affected, and then the level to which your daily functioning is affected. And so for example, for a student's response to a traumatic experience, it might affect school performance for a few days, or it might affect school performance for months or even years, or it might be just school performance, or it might also be their sleep cycle and their relationships with their siblings, or something like that. So as a very general rule of thumb, the faster someone bounces back and resumes daily functioning and engages in healthy coping mechanisms, the higher the person's trauma resilience is. And I also want to point out that resilience, it's not an either or. It's not like either I'm resilient or I'm not. It exists on a spectrum. And again, we all have a certain degree of resilience. It's just, it's our birthright, and so it's, just, how can we move the needle, you know, to the spectrum, to the other side, where we have some more resilience? So I touched on this before briefly, but the risk and protective factors, or resilience factors, that's kind of what trauma resilience hinges on, and even to what degree someone might experience a trauma response or overwhelming stress response. And so earlier, I mentioned some of the risk factors, such as, you know, having underlying, underlying situations, oppression, historical or marginalization, things like that. But now I want to talk about the protective or the resilience factors, so they foster stability and thriving and independence and safety, and then the risk factors is, you know, deteriorates that feeling of security and the ability to thrive and have control over life choices. So some examples of protective factors that I think might this might be easy or not easy, but it's accessible for adults to implement and foster with with children. I nothing. None of this is nothing is easy. I just want to say that that is definitely true. Everything takes work, but one thing is practice coping skills. So even when the child is not stressed out, practice coping skills and and build it into a daily routine. So whether that is having like doing a little bit of art at the end of the day, or having a regular eating schedule, or regular bedtime things like that, routine and coping skills, and then that way or go, you know, run around or scream into a pillow when you feel angry. But that way, when something super stressful happens. They're easier to reach for because we've already practiced it. And then the other thing I already talked about a little bit is practice that strength, strength based mindset and solutions based approach to challenges. So always focus on what's going well. I found in our society, or at least me, if I see that someone's not doing well, I'll come over and say, what's wrong. But when do we ask each other, what's right? What's what's good, what's right? Like we rarely start a conversation with that, but that's how we can start building in and shifting our mindset to that strength based approach, and that's something you can start doing with kids now, just focus on on what they're good at, what are they talented in? What can they do? And then as to the extent possible, having a stable routine, a stable family home environment, can be very important. I know it's not always possible. People are facing all kinds of circumstances, but things that we that you might be able to do is again, having that regular routine. You know, at 7am we eat breakfast. At 10pm we go to bed, whatever that might be, having, maybe family dinners on Sundays, or going on a field trip, going to the park, things like that. But having it be regular and stable is really important, and that counteracts that feeling of not having control, right? So if there's something that children can count on every Sunday, we do this that is in their control, and it gives them that framework and the grounding. Now, one thing I haven't talked about a whole lot yet, is having healthy relationships and social connections, that, again, is kind of one of the keys to trauma resilience. The research has shown that for kids who have even just one healthy, trusting relationship with an adult, it makes a huge, huge difference in how trauma shows up in their life. So that adult could be, you know, it could be a teacher, it could be a neighbor, it could be the librarian, it could be a parent, it could be a family member, grandparent, but having someone who they know sees their strengths, supports them, that they can talk to, they can go and process verbally anyway, if not in many other ways. And so fostering those connections for your child maybe you, and it doesn't even have to only be an adult. All like the wider our social network is, the better, as long as it's healthy trusting relationships. So you might foster more play dates or participate in community events, especially for children, and then for yourself, it's so important right to take care of yourself and so make sure you have those healthy, supportive relationships in your life, whether again, it is family or a partner or friends or a professional. I think, I think it takes, I know it takes courage to break through the stigma of seeking help, seeking help of a mental health professional, but I think it's so incredibly worthy, worth it. It makes such a difference, and I applaud anyone who does it, so don't, don't let that stop you from reaching out. That's what they're there for.
Jamie Roice-Gomes:I really, really like Yasmeen, you bringing up about the the stable home environment, and I'm going to kind of give a little like peek into my life. Life. So I have a precocious five year old at home and and every night at dinner, we ask everybody in the family. We even ask our dog this, what is one struggle and what good thing that happened that day, and it has really opened up our it's deepened our relationships and help us understand how her date went. And then we laugh about, you know, our dog struggle and the good thing, like he went on a walk today, or he was excited because I work from home and I was with him the whole day, or something like that. But I really love everything that you're talking about so, so thank you.
Yasmeen Hossein:Oh, I love that so much, Jamie, and especially that you're including the dog and also your it seems like you're modeling for your five year old that it's okay and normal to not always have a fantastic day. And that is so, so important to normalize having hard days or having things happen that don't feel fantastic or are uncomfortable and that's okay, that's fantastic. I just love that.
Spencer Houston:One question I had in listening to some of the suggestions of activities like parents could do with their their child or or educators could do with children to help them be more resilient was us at Living with Fire and all of us think about wildfire year round, all the time, and have many things that we encourage people to do. If you had thoughts of like, when would it be appropriate to, say, involve your child in kind of defensible space around your house? Whether you're you're raking leaves. Are there ways that you could, you could do that in a way that would or ways you could do that to focus and help build some of this trauma resilience?
Yasmeen Hossein:Yeah, I love that. Spencer. I think involving, involving the kids in that preparation, right in in the plan, the Community Plan, the state plan of keeping home safe, having that defensible space is fantastic. And of course, I think it depends on the age of the children. Like for little ones, you wouldn't want to do that with them every single day. That might get a bit much, but but involve them absolutely. They can be out there picking up some leaves, or even be out there playing in the yard as you're doing it, and then you can talk to them about it. You can say why you're raking leaves. And even that, in and of itself, might be enough older kids, of course, high school age kids, or middle middle school, they might, you might be able to involve them a little bit more even, and ask for their help and let them know that their participation is is valued, that you know their contribution is needed, which that always helps for self esteem and feeling like you're a part of the family, part of the community, And, of course, packing the go bags, I think that all children might want to be involved in, and even though it can be really scary, but really thinking through, what would I want like, what, what can I not live with that? What do I need to pack in my go bag? And that could open up a whole different conversation about material things and the value we assigned to them. And in the end, what do we really need to feel happy and joyful and have what we need? And so again, that we don't have time to get into that, but that could be a whole other talk that we could have.
Megan Kay:Yes, you have definitely given me some inspiration for the future. I'm going to think about that. But yeah, it seems like having kids involved in packing their go bags would add to, you know, give them a sense of security and control in such a stressful situation.
Yasmeen Hossein:Yeah, that's so, so true. I know a friend of mine was saying that she was packing her go bag, and she has, well, middle school and high school aged kids, and she didn't ask them to participate. She just wanted that, you know, the basics, the flashlight and the food and water. But her middle school daughter, aged daughter, saw her doing it and asked her about it, and then all on her own, went upstairs and packed her own go bag, because she wanted that control. She wanted to feel like she's in control of her own well being and safety and if they have to evacuate, she wants to know that she packed what she needed.
Megan Kay:And this has been such a great conversation. But before we wrap up, I just wanted to ask in addition to the toolkit, if there are any other resources that you would like to recommend to adults and educators who are interested in supporting children and talking about things in a trauma informed way.
Yasmeen Hossein:Oh, there's so many, and so many good ones. I feel like there's even now there's resources. Popping up left and right, and the toolkit does have a resource page with links and recommendations. And so I would kind of direct you there again. But I know there are children's books for all ages now that kind of go over what fire is, and somebody surviving, you know, the threat of fire, and so that could be a really important way to a tool to use to talk to kids about fire. There's so many excellent websites and resources online and and for educators who are interested, the toolkit, because it's so word heavy and and long, I am offering a complimentary workshop to go along with it, and I'll offer it probably twice a year, every single year, and the workshop is the application piece. So we could do some role playing. We can do, you know, discussion, talk through practice, some of the tools and strategies. So that's kind of the hands on piece, and for I'm sure, other organizations are offering those kinds of hands on practice sessions as well. I think that could be really useful too.
Megan Kay:Thank you again to Yasmeen for coming on the podcast to talk about the trauma informed toolkit. We are so grateful for the discussion, and we hope that everyone listening goes to the show notes, clicks the link and downloads the toolkit and uses it. Now, we'd like to share with you a little bonus content earlier on the podcast, Yasmeen mentioned a simple breathing exercise that she likes to do and that anyone can do that will help regulate your nervous system if you're experiencing stress, we recorded that, and we're going to play it for you now. We hope you enjoy it. We hope it helps, and thank you for listening.
Yasmeen Hossein:Okay, so I just want to talk very briefly about breathing and breath and why I mentioned it a lot like, oh, take a deep breath. Why that is useful in times of high stress, but also in building our resilience. And there's so many different breathing techniques, but I'll share a very simple one with you today that you could do in the car or walking to work or doing dishes, whatever that might be. So deep breathing, what it does for our nervous system is it really helps balance it and kind of manipulating our breath consciously, because we're breathing all the time, right? And we're stressed too while we're breathing so so simply breathing, our autonomic response of breathing, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about consciously breathing and really mindfully breathing, and that can really impact our body stress response. So when we inhale naturally, it stimulates our sympathetic nervous system, and that is our nervous system that helps us act in times of stress. So that's what activates the fight, flight, freeze or fawn mode. So that's our survival response. And then when we exhale, we activate and stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, which controls rest, digest, restore and brings us back into that regulated state. So in an ideal world, if we're breathing consciously and our inhale and exhale is equally as long, we would remain in that balanced state forever. But what happens when we get stressed is oftentimes we shorten our breath, you know, we breathe shallow, and then that's when things get wonky. And so if it's available to us, and if we, you know, have control over our breath in that moment, what we can do is to consciously make our exhale longer than our inhale, so that we're overstimulating our parasympathetic nervous system and telling our sympathetic nervous system pipe down. We don't. We don't need you to be super active right now. Yeah, and so, so I would like to invite you to join me. We'll in just doing a couple of rounds of a breath where you make your exhale longer than your inhale. And I can count for us. If anyone would like to join me for this, I will count for the inhale to three and then exhale to five. And I just want to invite you to adjust and modify these counts and the breath to suit whatever your needs are today, make it work for you so you could you might want to inhale to the count of two and exhale to the count of four, or again, anything that works for you. This is meant for you to feel good and not to feel stressed out by this. Or like, oh. I can't hold my breath anymore. Okay? Everybody ready? So I invite you to get into a comfortable position. If you can uncross your legs and arms, that's always a good practice, just so that the breath and the energy can flow through you. And I will count to three. So I invite everybody to take a deep inhalation. One two three and exhalation. One two three four five and one more time inhale, One two three and exhale. One two three four five and last time, and I won't say anything this time, you do it in your own time. Excellent. And whenever you would like, I invite you to continue doing this breath or use it whenever you need it in times of stress, but also practice it when you're not stressed, so that it just becomes like second nature to you, a tool that you reach for when you need it.
Megan Kay:Thank you for listening to the Living with Fire Podcast. You can find more stories and resources about wildfire at our website, livingwithfire.com the Living with Fire Program is funded by the Bureau of Land Management, the Nevada Division of Forestry and the US Forest Service, and were managed by the University of Nevada, Reno extension, an equal opportunity institution.
