EP 037 Kate Brassington: The Trauma Journey, Psychological Safety and Brave Spaces

BIO

Kate is a Coaching Psychologist, Trauma-Informed specialist, and British Psychological Society Graduate Member (GMBPsS). She actively destigmatises real mental health, and brings practical wisdom from the field of trauma to life. She helps leaders and managers faced with delivering sustained high-performance under pressure to achieve goals – but not “at all costs”. 

Unlike many coaches, Kate has learnt to work WITH trauma, because she knows whether acknowledged or not, it is present all around us. Trauma isn’t only what most people think it is (the event, that happens to us), but is instead a reaction (what happens inside of us). This is why two people can be in the same event, one gets traumatised, the other bounces back.

This gives space not only for the Big traumas that people experience in events, but the background chronic traumas such as racism, sexism, bullying, that happen all  around us… and indeed mini exposures that add up over time such as those experienced by First Responders – these together add up to chronic trauma.

Kate began working life as a British Army Logistics officer, her first command age 21 was of 50 people. She has since worked in public and commercial sectors, and as an Expert Witness on Employability after injury. Her own trauma occurred giving birth to her first child and sparked a career change into positive psychology and traumatology that she will never regret. She runs her private practice from Luxembourg, working with 1:1 clients worldwide.

You can continue the conversation with Kate on LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/kate-brassington and read more about her work (and listen to her podcast Moving Beyond Trauma) on her website: https://katebrassington.com/

Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Transcript

Yoyo: 0:15

hi, this is Yolanda. Welcome. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. Ifpo is the International Foundation for Protection Officers. And I just want to say thank you from all of us to all of you who are listening. We are dedicated to providing at ifpo Meaningful Education and certification for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference to our members' mental health and wellbeing. And what's more important today is that we actually really do have somebody who's very special, who is a coach. And we're gonna be talking about lots of very exciting subjects, including burnout, purpose matters, coaching, psychology, and trauma. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. Kate

Kate: 1:02

Brasington. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm delighted to be here and I really looking forward to this conversation'cause it's just all on my like, favorite topic.

Yoyo: 1:15

And I have to say hashtag purpose matters is my love language. I think purpose is a great place to start. It's the place where I think you fall into two camps if you have purpose. You are in one camp, and if you don't, you're in another camp. And the journeys can be very different, can't they?

Kate: 1:36

Yes, absolutely, why I. Talk about purpose first is because it's so important to understand why. I'm a coach, I'm a trauma-informed coach. I'm a coaching psychologist. But what really is interesting is that I help people ease suffering and get the fun back. And that is why, that's like my massive why. And if I'm ever doing anything that doesn't fit with that little blueprint, then I know I'm not doing my thing. And when I'm coaching people, we're always, you start with and you come back to and you end with this golden thread that runs through the whole thing, which is why.

Yoyo: 2:17

So you also didn't add that you're a podcaster as well, fellow podcaster

Kate: 2:21

com that's a real funny one because you see, I host a podcast, but you do all your own tech. I have a person who does my tech. But yes, my podcast is moving Beyond trauma. I launched in March this year, and I've just had the most amazing time. Exploring with a ton of different people what trauma is and what it's not, what the misconceptions are, how people get into a kind of muddle with it. People from the lady who did dentistry on one of my children who was a really trauma informed approach to not causing trauma in the first place. Who, my osteopath, who's talking about embodiment and trauma recovery and how people present, even if you didn't know or acknowledge that there was trauma present, it's flipping well there in your body somewhere right through to L G B T activists, just, I've just got this incredible network. And I can't, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna show like roll call everybody right through to Paula Reed, who's a polar explorer adventure psychologist. Like talking, this is, to me, what really matters is that we're all moving beyond it in some way or another. At an individual level. You're gonna move beyond whatever shit's happened to you in your life, but also as a collective level. We need to move on as society, as groups, as collectives, and stop treating it like it's a thing that's wrong with some people and actually understand what it really is and how it forms. It's the fabric of what we do and it informs how we can make life better for so many more people.

Yoyo: 3:50

At Ifpo, we've created a separate project group called Security Minds Matter. In fact, we've won an award for this project, and it's our outreach program to raise awareness for the mental health wellbeing of our security community. And as, we discussed in the pre chatt, there's a huge amount of thirst because of the origins. Of where our community, our security community colleagues come from. Origins can be military based, they can be police based, and each of those journeys can bring with them a different level of trauma. But before we go into that, I'd love to ask you really why, as a society, we seem to have a stigma around trauma. Why, it's more comfortable for us to know it's there, but not see it, like how children needed to be in the eighties, seen and not heard. What, why is it because years ago there was an incapacity to understand it? Is it because people were scared of it? Is it because bad things happened or is it just a cop out?

Kate: 4:55

It's gonna be frank. You are like me. You ask multiple questions, So I'm gonna just, which I love.'cause you've given me a really cool playground there. So if I understand you correctly, you're a kind of like, why is trauma icky? Yeah. Yeah. Why is everyone so weird about it in the first place? Yeah. Okay. It's one of my in fact, I've done a podcast on it. This is funny. You keep saying, I lose points every time I say, oh, I've done a podcast episode on that. But I have so the icky thing about trauma there's two big things. One is that in the main, it's perpetrated on us by other humans. There's actually, proportionally very little of a traumatic events are, like earthquakes or natural disasters or something like that. So it makes it pretty icky because as soon as you start talking about trauma and victims and survivors, which again is a whole nother world of language, then what we are immediately blinding to and immediately not mentioning is perpetrators. Now, that's not to say that everyone who inflicts trauma, if you wanna call it that, or causes a traumatic event has done it on purpose. And I think that there's that's to my mind, the joy of trauma informing is that we would all become a bit more savvy about what might be traumatizing to other people and how we could with pretty much very little effort, make things better. So there's that side of it. Then that speaks really to like the kind of modern western. I'm in Europe, you're uk I have a lot of clients in the states as well. So speaking very much to that kind of environment that we're in, it's like you, you hear a lot about victims and survivors. You we're really not comfortable about the fact that amongst us, therefore are folk causing some of this damage. So that's one which we can come back to. To answer your question more broadly at the meta like'cause, and this is a proper conversation amongst geeks as well. So humans evolve. We're going back to the evolution of the brain here and to the neuroscience of what, how did the brain evolve? And there's a common misconception because of how the way modern science has looked at it that the brain evolved. The body evolved to serve the brain. That's what you might think, whereas in fact it's the other way round. When we, if you go back through evolution and you look at how did you know, we, came out of the mud and became, stopped being fish and became humans and all of that stuff. And the brain that we've still got the sort of basic survival brain, which is the lizard brain. And this is becoming a lot more common. Like people will, oh yeah, that was my lizard brain or my monkey brain. Like people will know this. But that's the part that's designed around survival. So it doesn't care what anybody thinks of any of you. That's, there's no, that's not a social engagement part. The social engagement part for the brain is like the most modern, it's the most recent. And in between those two, what, so what we got was the lizard or survival brain. Then we got the, like what you would call and I, these are for people who go into real neuroscience. This is, I'm sweeping generalizations, but to have something to grasp and to take with you from this like a control room. Control center. Yeah. Yeah. The control center. It, yeah. I think of it, and this is my ex-military stuff. It's like the, it is like an ops room. Because in there are the maps, there are the how to guides, there are the protocols, there are the instructions, there are the connections, there's communication equipment. There's if I need to do anything in my life, I stand in. The cognitive center will have everything that I need. And if I meet a new situation, my cognitive center will immediately go to the map cupboard and download files of have I been here before? Have I done this? Or overlays or instructions or so that's a real cool place. It's crap at forecasting new situations, planning forward. It's, and that's not what it's designed for. It's a learning center. And a lot of what trauma and is so fascinating to me is'cause it connects so strongly with memory. How we lay down memory and that connects with how we learn and that all, it doesn't all happen in that cognitive center because a lot of it happens in the survival brain that's your reaction. It happens without you thinking, because from the time it takes to go a message or a situation or scenario to feed'cause it all goes first to the survival brain. Because if you need to get out of a building that's falling down, you don't want to be thinking about it. You ought be moving. And so what people are familiar with is this hijack, this cognitive hijack where you will go into reaction, fight, flight, freeze, you go into survival mode. And that's, it's so it's still built in. And this is where we'll talk some more, but like when we're talking about trauma, this is the machinery that we have. This is the operating system. This is the software that we've all got, we're born with, and this is the human as we currently are in evolution. This is what all we've got. We don't have a different program or a different operating system that gets downloaded in a new situation. But to close off this little bit, the third part of the brain is this bit behind our lovely human for it. And that's the social engagement. We moved out of the sort of stop being fish and became crawling land animals. And then we became learners and eventually we began to live in groups. This is talking, one sentence of all human evolution thing. And when we lived in groups at that point, it began to be important to know how the group is feeling. What is the dynamics of the group to operate as a group? So to have shared understanding, for example, of danger, shared understanding of we're hunting for elk today. This is what we, everyone needs to be able to say the key words and look for the same things, and to be able to organize and to do activities together, activ and to share. So living in a group which became effective for survival, more effective than a person living on their own and raising our young. And then as we the bodies also were developing. So our babies are, people talk about the fourth trimester, like our babies are born with such a big. Skull and head that they're still actually not, they're not really ready to be born. They're born three months early actually. So our babies aren't fit to survive. So we need a very interesting grouping and the brain evolved to serve the body and the brain. This part of the brain now keeps patting my, keep patting my forehead when I talk about it.'cause it lives in there. And that's where also trauma is icky because we don't like it if there's an illness or a sickness or a problem in the group. And we're highly attuned to noticing when something is in little inverted commas is wrong or different. Yeah. We're great at patterns and at what is healthy and safe and that's all coded in. That's conforming. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so when someone's ill in the broader sense when someone is standing out as a problem, and this is speaking in the terminology of the, evolution of the brain rather than what I feel that it's not my language how I describe trauma, but we all are automatically coding that in and responding to it, going, oh, what's up there? Even on a sub particularly on a subconscious level, it's not even gone to conscious level. You are already thinking, sending messages to the thinking brain, to the control center going, something's off here. Keep working out. What is it? What is it? What is it? And so that is a big, to my understanding, that is a big part of why. Trauma gets so stigmatized because the, we don't like it as a herd, as a survival group that there might be something wrong with anybody. Now I

Yoyo: 13:01

wanna add,'cause as I was listening to you then I'm thinking, okay, let's go back to that herd. Let's go back to the tribe, the hunter gatherers, the berry eaters and the meat hunters. if you've got something wrong with somebody in your herd, that is potentially risky as well. It's a threat. Yeah. So I can see where origins of displacement can

Kate: 13:22

come from. Yeah. And I love the way you phrased that threat, the whole survival the organism that is our human body. And mind and brain is designed around safety or threat. We are in a totally binary operating system. It's either safe or it's a threat. We learn to expand and we, and there's a lot of the sort of modern wellbeing practices expand us, to try and create a gray area where you, but really what we're doing is expanding the safety zone there and minimizing the threat zone. It's binary.

Yoyo: 13:57

Let's look at the generations then. I think you and I we're both Gen X I'm proud. There is an element of keep calm and carry on, isn't there? Certainly within our generation, you see these memes on social media where I. You've got a younger generation taking the Mickey Allergenic going thanks a lot for giving us this. And we're the ones saying hang on a minute. We used to go out all day, be home. By the time the streetlights went on, no one knew what we were doing, where we were going, what mischief we were getting up to, we were told not to get in strangers cars because they weren't intending to show us kittens and puppies. we're a generation that's been quite hardworking. I think we're very loyal to employers. There's lots of general stereotypes, but there is this kind of keep calm, carry on, and I'm wondering if it's gonna be a lot easier for incoming generations to talk about trauma and emotional impact and stress and anxiety and all of those things that can impact our behaviors and how we feel that are much harder, certainly for baby boomer generation and certainly for Gen X. Are you noticing a difference in how generationally we're responding to managing personal trauma?

Kate: 15:10

Yes, I do see a difference. And it's interesting because in my kind of coaching caseload, if you like, so the over a thousand hours of coaching I've worked with people from between the age of eight to 89. And so yes, I can again, scrolling through memory banks for data here. Yes, there is a, there can be a difference. So the freedoms that those the generations as you're talking to The freedoms that they have to voice what's going on and to express themselves. It still falls into patterning that is more ancient than that. Really? Yeah. So it's I, or preferred style, if you like it, or of coping is either to hold it in. Or to, this is again, very broad brush, but this is like modern attachment theory. Really interesting around this. It's is your style to you're in a difficult situation. Do you avoid dealing with the emotion and go away and make a plan and sort it out? You shut your door, you spend time alone and you sort it out yourself. Now that would be what you were, perhaps that might describe a lot of what you were describing there about the sort of your genics or the baby boomers that we're told. This isn't a time when what your personal problems of what's going on are going to be helped by talking about them. What we need to do is everybody deal with it themselves. We've got the, we've got the sort of, the way the world wars have, like the generational trauma the way the coping strategies Just made it a sort of a, in the west, I would think, to just be clear about that in the west. That there's this like unwritten agreement that this is how we deal with problems. This not talk about it now that's in the modern terminology of attachment theory. That's your avoidant attachment style. And why we go to attachment theories'cause it connects so much with developmental. How does the brain develop in a child is again, because of how we, a lot of these conversations about evolution, isn't it? Yeah. But yet we have to be raised by a tribe. And the tribe has an impact on the way that our brain forms together, the way the neurons that wire together fire together. And that's a very common, and that's not just in the west, but these attachment styles are observable across all humans worldwide. And the other nobody is completely one or completely the other, but the other type of attachment style is, in the modern terminology is called coercive, which is a real horrible word as you often get with this kind of stuff. But what, so if I can just allow the sort of space for that to, what it means is where I need you or other, I need another person to behave in a certain way so that I can deal with my emotion. So the first one, I'm dealing with it by myself. I shut the door, sort my own thoughts out, make a plan. It goes to logic. The coercive style is I need you to behave in a I Don't leave me. I need you with me. I need you to be, I'm going, listen to me cry, listen to me laugh, listen to me, whatever my big emotion is, because I can't deal with it on my own. And I need you to be. So it's a clingier one, and the, that kind of attachment style used to be called anxious, which is basically the person who, so the relationship, the person, usually we go and the patterns fit. So the avoidant person thinks I need to go and think about this now. So they withdraw and the anxious or coercive person goes after them going, don't leave me. I'm always being left. I need you with me. And becomes more and more anxious and becomes more and more in pursuit.

Yoyo: 18:50

So you've helped me to align this with something else. During Covid, with hindsight, we can look back and we now know that everybody fell into two groups. There were the natural introverts who really rather loved the fact that they had to they, that they could stop making lies about why they didn't wanna go out to a party that night. Why, why they could very comfortably stay home and be completely content with that acceptance almost of internal processing as introverts have. And then you've got the extroverts who I've learned really need social validation. And I always referred to Sam Smith as being the one example because he was doing what you were doing. He was screaming out, I need to be seen. I need to be heard. I need people to see me. I need to be validated. And I get it. And it's not a, it's not to talk disparagingly about both, but I wonder if it's as simple as that. If you are more extroverted people, All those more inclined to extroverted behaviors are going to fall into the coercive element of attachment. And whether you are introverted individuals will fall more into an avoidance. And that the go, I'll be honest. It's me. I, if I have a problem, I stay home. I stay home. I loved Covid enabled me to think creatively, do things behind the scene, get busy in a way. I really wanted to, I was more than happy not having to go to parties, not having to go to events, not having to travel to London. I was more than happy slobbing around in my shorts and vests and looking like a bill Hickey. There are other types of bill hickeys but I just love the whole relaxation that came and the acceptance of me just being able to be me. And then when I have an issue, I definitely internally process it. I internally process it quite a lot sometimes, and I. And I'm just wondering because it's so easy for me to see that pattern there. I'm wondering if you've identified if we can even predict that we're likely to be dealing with a particular trauma a certain way based on our inhibitions or our extroversion.

Kate: 20:57

So this is, it's super nuanced. I'm gonna say it depends, which is an annoying answer. But I, let me explain. Even though we have very, it's like super sim, these amazing researchers have basically digested so much information and to make it that I can talk about avoidant and coercive. There's one word for two different thing. Okay. It like, clearly every human is not so flipping binary. Is that And in fact, yeah. The third style is called balanced. And that's really where you're looking at a balance of both. So when am I able in a healthy, balanced self-regulated, calm and connected way to ask for what I need from other people? And when am I able to withdraw and deal with my my shit myself? So that I forgot to check if I'm allowed to swear a little bit

Yoyo: 21:44

on your, oh, listen. B C rules. It's no

Kate: 21:45

no F bomb. Oh, okay. B, B, C. Right okay. Check. That's good to check. Just in case you're like wincing every time I say no. Not at all. It's funny. Yeah, so the. This sort of dream, if you like, the, like optimal is to be the self-regulated person. What, what's annoying why I say it is annoying is because we would tend to have different attachment styles depending on the situations that we're in. That, that doesn't speak to well, and that's what's also annoying. And why as a psychologist I find even the descriptions of introversion and extroversion are limited because it's too simplified. We're introverted in some situations and we're extroverted in some, and the descriptions that I like is do I regulate so the introvert can reg will regulate themself and the extrovert. Will regulate through other people. Yeah. So there is, I definitely, and I, you've actually given me a little oh, I must go and read more. I'm now also curious to read a little bit more about that. It's I'll tell you

Yoyo: 22:47

why. I'll tell you why. Because in introversion and extroversion, just look at Myers Briggs as an example. You'll see the balance of scale and do your own. My Briggs, I do mine every year at least, and if I have a new job, I always do at the beginning and then six months in, and I see whether my behaviors are changing. And I can definitely say that I've come from an extroverted lifestyle, but I've become very introverted. But I'm what you call a balanced one. I can pick out the tool set to go into environments and survive and use those tools really well. But ultimately, I withdraw and I become recharged with quiet space rather than with people. So I get what you're saying as well around, that there's a balanced approach as well. I think this is a phenomenal subject. It, I wonder if it goes any way to looking at preemptive behaviors.

Kate: 23:34

That's something that I'm, that's an area of research I'm really interested in. Let me just, I'm just gonna, you have to come back afterwards. Yeah. Loop back a little bit to that. So when so the whole Myers-Briggs and the whole psych testing thing is has its roots in Freud and young, so it's very young in recent in terms of psychology, which is in itself a very young field. And right back when those concepts were first being ex like, delved into and expanded upon young never intended that it would be a typing for life. And in fact, his whole thing, which you can see in the Myers-Briggs, the way that they they're like a little slider goes along your scale is because. We change through our lifetime. Yes. And whatever we predominantly were at this towards the start of our lifetime, we're more likely to go the other direction for, yeah. For the other end. So it's I love that you described doing the testing so often because it's really I think it's really agile and flexible way to interpret those kind of results. I get quite I coach people one-to-one, so I tend not to use psych testing other than helping people work through their strengths. Because people it's a, it's, they're great in a group environment because you can really give people a shared language to talk with one another about, but when you're, when I'm working with one individual I don't need a shared language. I need, I just need their language. They're gonna tell me. So yeah, but you maybe

Yoyo: 25:03

as managers, when we look at how managers are now being encouraged to think and manage empathic empathetically, compassionate management, perhaps the whole trick to being a compassionate manager is to learn what the languages of the people that you are managing in the same way that you have to find the pathway to communicate with your I don't wanna call them patients, your clients the most. Maybe that's the trick, but I haven't had that come along. I've had the, to be a compassionate manager, you've gotta listen, you've gotta try and understand and not enforce your values on somebody else, but understand what theirs are. But maybe understanding their main language, their main is key. Everybody that you are working with. Maybe that's how some people are able to intuitively just get on really well with people very easily because they do it intuitively and naturally and it's not a learned skill that they have.

Kate: 25:54

Yeah. And I think it's this, and it's a learnable skill and that we are all learning, like we are learning machines. And that it's attachment style, even by its nature or by introversion, extroversion, by their nature are learn like we're, they're, they develop in reaction to the environment that we find ourselves in. And so I think there's when this is when you're arriving into work or there's this particular requirement of a team or managing people or any Yeah, like this whole, like how can we help people be in their management roles? I think it's yes, this power of being self-aware inside yourself. Which can take quite a lot of work, depending whatever shit's happened to, yourself. But also then this shared language, this, and so that's where group coaching, and one of my buddies is like she won't coach one-to-one at all. She says, I only entertain the idea if the whole team's being coached. Oh, why do you think that is? Yeah. Yes. Because she says so when you're working with a team and a team behavior, then you're looking at systemic behavior and sys like of the system and the, how the system behaves, how it thinks, how it interacts within itself and how solutions therefore can only come from the system. Because I work trauma informed and I argued, it was a quite a feisty conversation because I said, ah, but when psychological safety's not there for a wide number of reasons, then you could, that systemic stuff's only gonna go so far. And what I provide by working one, and I stick with working one-to-one is. I've got that ultra safe space for that person to look at their own machinery, their own reactions, their own internal, like how they're responding, and give them that safe space to learn and understand themselves and to be that compassionate person with themselves before they're then trying to be that way with other people. And I'm and it's the ripple effects massive. The person who's able to work through some of their stuff. And again, I don't do therapy, but what I do is therapeutic. I am making that space where someone is able to really move forward with the stuff that's happened to them. But I'm not asking them to ignore those things that are, I'm not saying, oh no, that can't be talked about here. So yeah, I think it's and I think these things are lovely tools for managers. Although I'm so I don't use them one-to-one coaching, but I absolutely think that in the team environment, anybody who's reading Dan Pink or Myers-Briggs stuff or really anything, you're just going to educate yourself and a bit more about how humans may or may not work. And then you can try it on with your people. If you enjoy if someone who enjoys that kind of curiosity and love of learning, then it's gonna be really great for them.

Yoyo: 28:42

But if there isn't a psychological contract, somebody could view those very suspiciously and look for them as tools to unveil something about them that they're not prepared to share is something I've learned from personal experience. Psychological safety is a really important place to start here, I think, because the minute that goes, it then leads to. Other areas within an organization. Let's talk about the common workplace and the break of a psychological contract. Let's talk about what that is to people who might not have be so familiar with that term. And then let's talk about the chain reaction that happens because that leads to the distrust. Then that leads to feeling isolated. That leads to feeling, bullied potentially, or feeling bullied or feeling that you have no place a loss of self-esteem. The loss of psychological safety can literally be the root cause of a lot of problems, especially if we are looking at workplace trauma, workplace bullying burnout, all those sorts of things that can generally make an employee feel really bad. Let's start off at the beginning.

Kate: 29:47

Okay. I'm gonna, I'm gonna invite an even more beginning,

Yoyo: 29:51

go on there. Even before

Kate: 29:52

psychological safety, I like so the page before, because I in my world of coaching and I've done a like a master's degree in the stuff I, this is my absolute playground. And I think there is a wide range of BSS talked about safety, we do not understand. It is not well understood. We say first create a safe place, and then basically what they mean by that is, and there'll be a dick, which is good, it's good advice. It stands up, but it's not really understanding what is the, what is safety to a human. And so for that, I've gone to and trained really in depth on polyvagal theory. So the vagus nerve is the massive nerve that goes from that primal brain stem that we talked about earlier. And it runs down through the body. It's got super tons of little branches, the big and little branches that come off. And that's why it's called Poly and vagal is because it's the vagus nerve. And it goes up through your neck. I think that's where the whole biggest thing happens. But it goes down through your heart, lungs, digestive systems, stomach, gut, all of the like body cleaning, body protection areas, all in that soft center. And then it branches down our legs. And at the top is, it's like high, super, super fast broadband. So it's, or in neurological speak, it's highly myelinated. So it's really, the good stuff is at the top and messages passed really fast. But as it goes down body and this is us also, again, evolution, again, us being upright organisms, but we, what we evolved from, were actually horizontal organisms. So we're, we are we've got a vertical body, but it's actually start out that way. So as we go down to what our modern day legs the vagus nerve is way less myelinated. It's more like a kind of dar track. So you go from super fast broadband down to the dart track of passing messages, and this is reflected in how we interpret safety or danger. And the reason why the vertical body, it becomes your understanding, your your polyvagal ladder, which as an exercise I take a lot of people through, is to really get to know themself better. So at the top, you're calm, connected, you're in balance, you're a little bit able to be avoidant, you're a little bit able to be coercive. You're like able to dance with life and with the people around you. And that's your calm, connected, meditative bliss, you, your everything is going really great in that part of the polyvagal system. As we move down which also it reflects also into the torso as well. This is what was people really well know as fight and flight and that lives here and it's where we seek safety via action, which is, nevermind all the other, and there's loads of long words that go with all this, but the bit to remember your like, Listeners, people listening to this, if you are seeking safety via action of some kind, then you are in reaction and that's part of your, it's coming from the polyvagal system. And the fight reaction is not well understood. So you've got the ladder. So if you imagine you've got an axis running, vertical from top to bottom. But we've also got a horizontal access, so this is where we are saying, If I start with fight response, most people are like, oh, I'm, oh no, I'm not angry. I go, yeah, but are you ever frustrated or annoyed or just a bit prickled by something?

Yoyo: 33:25

I like that word prickled. I think I go, I felt prickled yesterday.

Kate: 33:28

so actually what we get is not a full blown naught to 90, but various stages in between. And so in the technical terminology, this is going from glimmers. So if you've got a glimmer of a fight response or a full blown fight response, have you got the glimmer? So flight is another really interesting one to work with because that's where you bang the phone down and walk out of the room. So your avoidant person is not like there you can see, and again, we're weaving together a ton of different theories here. But look, there's your avoidant, I need to deal with this on my own. I do not need you further. No more in this conversation. Bang the phone. Talk to the hand. Yeah. Talk to the hand. You, the silence departure, physical, moving away, or also just silence. you're trying to talk about something with your partner and they are just not answering. You're trying to raise an issue with your boss. You're trying to ra deal with someone at work. And they are, they've actually somehow gone in their head. They've, they're, they've, they're in flight somehow is safety via action. It's safer for them not to respond right now. Some often I find that clients people do tend to know themselves really well and will say, hang on a minute. I'm still thinking about that. Let me get back to you. So that's a real nice way of someone managing their response. It could be, you don't need to know. It may or may not be flight. They're just, they're able to talk about it, but it's in the moment of reaction. But as you go down, and again, this is the whole ladder thing, like down towards the legs, down towards the slower, darker gloomier, sadder part of the nervous system. This is where we get freeze and freeze. And people will also talk about fa as well, which is like an appeasing. But it's more like when you're going from glimmers to full blown, you so freeze response in, in its full blown is when you're like in the jaws of the crocodile or you. You couldn't fight back if you wanted to. Survivor stories. Describe how it's almost an outer body experience. You hear this also in survivors of rape. Talk about this same kind of thing. That and thank goodness the world has moved on, so much from but it used to be that why didn't you fight back? Correct.

Yoyo: 35:42

Yes. And that, yeah. Why

Kate: 35:44

didn't you scream? Yeah. Yeah. Why didn't you scream, why didn't you fight back? Yeah. What was, so this kind of, anyway, don't I wanna get distracted into that. But it's to really understand this, the polyvagal system is so fundamental, this reaction, this safety or danger right? Has this extreme ability to completely take us out of the game to have to send us to an outer body experience. And the purpose of that is to help us survive. Extreme fear and extreme pain. And it also is pain of death as well. Like it helps us deal with pain of death. There's this purpose. But in our modern day stress world, you're not often in the jaws of the crocodile, but the body and mind don't know that you are in the grip of a relentless shift system of extra hours of not being understood by a boss, of not getting on well with people at home of your children, having dramas of your elderly parents of all. You can name any number of stresses as far as our, this is where the whole evolution thing, we haven't caught up yet. What the modern world of what we're living in is we are running ancient software and this ancient software just goes, oh my God, this is, so you're either gonna seek safety via action, fight and flight, or you're gonna seek safety via disconnection. And it's this disconnection where we get done doom scrolling alcohol or any other kind of substance, which is helping you get away. Numb. Numb. And so a safety vibe, disconnection, numbing withdrawal. But it's often, whereas a flight response would tend to feel active. And this is often a nuance I tease out with my clients again,'cause I'm not a therapist, so I'm not needing to diagnose this, there's no diagnostic coming from me, but I'm helping the client understand themselves better. It's so when you're checking out on your phone, how easy is it for you to come back? How long does it take before you feel regulated again?'cause the whole point of it is to be able to then move back up the polyvagal ladder to become calm and connected again rather than get stuck. I

Yoyo: 37:56

should imagine as people are listening to this, just like me, they're thinking about their own perspective and the people they've seen. You have this wonderful way of speaking and taking people on a journey with you. And I think that's part of Thence around what you do. And I think you're worth your waiting goal, to be honest with you. Oh, thank you. I, and I think what you're talking about is enabling people to have a greater sense of self-awareness about. Knowing, for example, whether they are an internal processor, an external processor, knowing where environments we charge them the easiest, knowing how they respond when threats happen and harms happen and knowing as well those coping mechanisms. So if somebody like, and we all know people who go to the bottle too quickly and that bottle of wine's gone. Let's face it, COVID taught us all a few bad lessons around, I'll just pour a little bit of wine while I'm cooking. And then you sit down and have a glass with your meal and it's so good. And then before you know it, you've seen the empty bottle. And I re and I know I'm not alone in, in realizing that, but I also realized there's a lot of covid that I don't really remember for that reason. And I don't really I didn't really enjoy waking up at half past seven on the sofa, falling asleep, watching something. And so now I barely drink at all. I barely drink at all. Because I've learned that my coping mechanism isn't going to wine, and I didn't feel that the need to go to wine and I was rather nice, five o'clock cooking some dinner, have a tip of wine. And I think it was a journey a lot of us went on to. But I genuinely don't enjoy alcohol now so much. I've told a lot of friends this, I went to Wimbledon recently. We had some pims we were in court number one all day. And I just don't remember very much of it. And then I thought, yeah, I wasn't like really drunk. I wasn't like leery or anything like that. I really am quite well behaved. But the point was, what's the point in spending the money to have the ticket and to go and have such an amazing experience if you don't remember very much of it. And so I've seen alcohol, like not really very useful at the moment. I'd rather remember the experiences I have rather than not. And I can see why alcohol is used as a numbing effect. It's difficult when you know somebody as well who maybe is still in that pathway is still high functioning at work, not having any issues, but you know that wine is there every night and you it's difficult to even approach the subject. In fact. How do you, when you know somebody is close enough to you for you to acknowledge it close enough to you, for you to be able to affect some positive influence? How do you bring up the subject of Look? I think, you are masking something that's wrong. What's going on? It's difficult, isn't it really? Oh,

Kate: 40:44

yes it is. Because our system is protective, so we are naturally protective of ourself and we're protective of our coping. So the coping strategy is protect in itself, protecting something, and then someone asks you about your coping strategy. So what is at risk here is that the coping strategy might get taken away because it's not such a good idea. And of course, we've got other parts of us now that we are not one, we're not mono mind. I do a lot of internal family systems theory, which is the idea that we do not have one mind. We've got multiple different parts of us who will speak up at any different different scenarios. And we've got that play different roles in our head. The voices is in our head. So which I can talk more about, for sure. People find it very interesting and very relatable, and children find it super. They're like, oh yeah. A part of me was angry with you, mommy, rather than I am angry with you. This is like ability to realize that I'm not just one thought at any one time. But raising, so when I'm talking with someone, and of course I have a great, much greater permission with my clients than perhaps someone who I'm hanging out with in my life. So it is a very sensitive thing. Yeah, absolutely. To ask. And often getting permission to ask the question is in itself an art which is your, to your mental health first aid training there, that mental health first aid approach, which is that you're to use old fashioned first aid terminology. Your casualties is the person in front of you. You're f you are in a first responder role to someone, so you are going to make some initial assessments of safety and danger yourself. And but of course how that actually shows up in a mental health first aid conversation is different to if you came across somebody lying at the side of the road. But you are looking for your permission. Can I. I noticed this. Can I ask, there's lots of ways softly, gently but straight, like straight, straight up, straightforward, don't, not not coding it in some way. You don't look so happy today. Shall, shall I ask you about that? You, this third time you're hungover this week? Yeah. That is, is it just parties going on or are you finding yourself, yeah. And then freedom and normalizing and yeah, like again, not being a dick about it, not being right about it. There's lots of great, interpersonal skills that come into this here. As to really the sort of deeper machinery behind habits and coping. Yeah, I'm very respectful. I. Of that someone has developed a coping strategy for a dang good reason as far as their nervous system is concerned. And that when I'm working with that person, I am first of all talking not to the kind of deeper hurt, but to the protector, to the protecting behavior that they're doing. So what will happen if you didn't drink? What happens if when you do drink, what happens if you don't? What role is it playing? What job is it doing? How important, so we're gauging how important this is for them. What what role it's playing or the smoking or, we are zoning in on substances, but are, there's, the doom scrolling. The doom Scrolling is a big one. Whether it's heavy sleeping over exercising, particularly in my military fit ties to over exercise is a type of as type of self-harm, same as any other type of self-harm. But of course it gets you get a green light if you just, oh, I overtrained this week. You're like, oh, all good for you, yeah. Whereas as I, yeah, I hammered the drink this week. It's actually depending certainly at this stage when I was in the Army, if you hammered the drink this week, you also got a good for you. That's speaking to my age. So yeah, I just, so yeah, I think the when we are looking at ourselves through the lens of the polyvagal theory, we are really understanding what is the coping strategy? What are we trying to protect ourselves from? Because what you are realizing with compassion, and this is where the connection with compassion really comes in, is that your help, your, that person is trying to self-regulate. Polyvagal theory for some of your listeners. So I'm, I do talk about this some more and I unpack it a lot more slowly with clients as well. I don't expect people to become an expert on polyvagal theory, but I, it's really enlightening. It's your operating system and you don't download a different one. You, you are gonna use those things in all situations in your life. So what you were saying was in the common workplace, what, how do we go from psychological safety to psychological contracting to broken so the breach of contract and to distrust. Yeah. And it's then when I put that with the polyvagal theory, you're really beginning to understand where. Where we're in the calm and connected and safe zone, and you and I are communicating clearly and easily. We understand each other work is happening. Like it's very easy to communicate like that and psychological safety understands that's what we're aiming for. But it also understands that I could be in reaction of some kind. Having a stress reaction because they all happen in react. So in response to another thing, like we're none of us in a vacuum, so you're in a stress situation. You're being, and I use that word stress, like pressure is put onto you at work in whatever way, let's say. So we're in the workplace, you've got people around you, some are in fight, some are in flight, some are in freeze, and all of them are trying to regulate. They're looking for something to come back to, something to self-regulate with, something to ground themselves on, to move forward from. And and psychological safety. If this, if a nervous system in a, so in other words, in a person, if a person is not feeling safe, Then a whole pile of interventions are a waste of time because they're basically to that earlier. It, like what we talked about with the tri the three, three levels of the brain, the triune brain. You basically got an amygdala shutdown. You've got someone who's then operating on survival and they're not bringing in the logical cognitive thinking human brain. So a lot of psych safety stuff is around, is creating this safe space, which again, as I say, no one really knows what safe is. Like we and that safe is maybe not such a great word. And I often have conversations with my clients about that. Are we really talking about a brave space? Is it brave? Are you able to explore here? How where's the boundary? What can we talk about? What can't we talk about? And so in your workplace situation, I can imagine that's a much smaller space than what I would get when I'm working one-to-one with a client. And that's why I advocate for my work being one-to-one, because it needs to be a lot bigger. Space for someone to be able to go into the, and it is always a scary place in our mind because the, it's the mind designed that way. There's a scary place, even though, and I'm not a therapist, so I don't go unpicking that scary place, but we both know it's there. And in the coaching conversation we're looking at where does the behavior show up, unhelpfully, where is it not, where is it stopping you getting to what you need? Where is it obstructing your pathway and helping someone? So I use often the analogy of the bus, which is like all those, all the things, all the different parts of you. The funny part of you, the brainy, the hard worker, the fast runner, the, the organized mama, the whatever. These different parts of us all exist in our head and they're all in the bus. Every now and again, one jumps in the front seat to drive and what the whole function of self-awareness is. Hang on a minute, do I want that part of me to drive or is it actually me? And then you can go cool existential of and who is me and where, so we can, that's a financial, that's awesome. But the trauma part or traumatized or injured or hurting, like moving away from the actual word trauma. But just like these injured and hurting and frightened parts of us are usually very young from a stage in our life when you're little, everything is big. So they're in the bus too. And that's, to me, the joy of moving beyond trauma is that it's coming with us. Wow,

Yoyo: 48:49

that's phenomenal. Because I think I say to people, imagine you're walking down the street and you're holding a handful of balloons, red balloons, and they've all got helium in them, but are they on top of you? Or are they behind you because of the wind direction or are they ahead of you and the balloons symbolize issues you need to deal with, problems. And it's nice. It's one of those nice self-awareness tricks that you can ask yourself. Okay, where are my balloons right now? And what you've just done is taken that to Defcon four level by imagine, by, by using the bus analogy.'cause now you're thinking, okay which part of me is

Kate: 49:28

driving the bus today and it's so cool. Exactly. And we will change in an instant. And this is the whole thing about, yes, we find a language in a shared understanding for all these things, which Uber simplifies everything. But we've gotta really understand that in our actual day-to-day life, you've got different parts of you leaping into the driving seat at, mult at a nanosecond in reaction to something happening to us. Yeah. We are generally much more fluid than that.

Yoyo: 49:54

And even a fight at the steering wheel, I can imagine, because you've got one saying, no, I wanna, no, nope. This is not gonna happen. And it's down to will, isn't it? And it's down to what your purpose is and where you need to be and what direction you're going in, and knowing that as well. Yeah. Look, let's go further down the line. Now we've got a situation, an imaginary situation where a lot of people I know we all know somebody maybe who's struggling with trauma, but for those who are observing and bystanders, there does seem to be a bit of a frustration, doesn't there? And I wondered if we can talk about this, a frustration around, look why aren't they over it yet? Why are they holding onto it so much? Why has it become such a big deal? Why can't they just park it and move on? Like I would, there's a huge frustration with bystanders, friends, loved ones, colleagues and bosses, you name it, of just wishing someone would just move on with the way they're dealing with trauma. And so what can we say to that conversation really? Because yes, we should always be patient. Yes, we should understand that there's a journey and everyone's journey is gonna be different. Everyone's journey is gonna have different hurdles and different boundaries, but it's about tolerance. And it's going back to that whole conversation we had in the beginning where thought every, everybody is really accepting. It's still stigmatized. And so is the perception of how fast someone is moving on in their trauma journey.

Kate: 51:20

It's the analogy, which I'm pretty sure will be familiar to your science because of how you're talking. I'm guessing this is quite familiar, but like it's When you break your leg, it's very visible, it's very easy, relatable. And so nobody is going, God, are you not back in the gym yet? And even a year later when you're like, oh no, I still can't do whatever it is oh, I broke my leg last year. And it's been quite a journey to get, get over it. Then this whole, you should go in the gym mate thing. It stops mental injury is, I think still something that we are really learning more and more about. There is an a bit of an assumption that I'm just picking my words carefully. There's an assumption I come across a lot, which is as if You're gonna get better, so have some time'cause you're gonna get better and then you'll come back to how you were before. And I dispute that and a lot of what I do with my people, particularly who've had severe trauma exposure, multiple repeated trauma exposure, chronic trauma, my first responders, my military folk, or major events or incidents or battlefield or some, car crash, some big so you're the sort of bigger scaled or more of a capital T kind of thing. There's those echoes of it are always going to be with you in some way or another. And that's not to diminish hope. It's a really careful thing when I talk about someone. One is to normalize that it will likely stay with you in some shape or form. And the hope is, The message and understanding that as you become more familiar, more skilled at managing, that you will be able to move on, move beyond, move forward. So it hope is a really active when you, when the nerdy psychology thing like it, it comes with action. Hope is not it's not an emotion that or a thought that arrives out of the blue. It comes from doing something. And if that's get up and make your bed and have a shower and you know that you are doing something, you will begin to foster hope. So there's wishing someone would move on is probably more. It's a triggering of some trauma in us. Or it's a triggering, and again, triggering is an interesting word, you're causing a reaction in me somehow. You going on and on for another week and then another thing. And then you're saying, I'm still not buying and you're sharing with me your experience. If I'm beginning to feel like, ah, still we're still talking about this, if I'm start, then something inside of me is not okay with that conversation, I could be come back to attachment style like we're talking about earlier. So am I expecting you to just have dealt with it yourself and to come back to me when it's all done nice and clean and tidy? Am I am I trying to do that? So I'm avoidant so I'm, I can feel your big emotion coming towards me and I can't deal with it. So I'm gonna withdraw. And why that shows up is frustration and trying to shut the person down, or is it a sort of mixture of the two, like that coercive behavior of saying you really asking me for help? You've got big emotion, it's coming, you're bringing it to me for help. And I need you to behave in a different way. I'm going straight. No, I need you to be X, y, and Z about this. Either way we're our reactions, and this is the whole thing about that I talk so much about is stop thinking that this is a thought through planned strategy. These are reactions, they're happening way in the body and in the brainstorm and through the polyvagal nerve long before you ever got to actual thought about it. So if we're frus, if we're feeling frustrated, I would always be, and again, it's the mental health first aider thing. I'm very compassionate to the person who's feeling their frustration, who's feeling weary. Maybe it's just really hard for them, this is difficult. It's tough to support someone through a mental injury and recovery is long term. And this is the difference where we, the mental health care state, the kind of analogy is that we are. We're first responders, but I actually find that there's not enough in that analogy because your first responder, you're, you are there on the scene and then the professionals arrive and they come and take the person away, and then they get back loaded through the hospital system. And so suddenly you are the first responders not having to first responder anymore. Whereas what happens when that, when person, when you are living in the house or you're in a workmate with this person, you're flipping in first, responding every day. And there isn't this sense of you've, they've been, been going to take care of by somebody else and come back when they're all fixed. So it's tiring. It's very hard. I

Yoyo: 56:14

think also, it doesn't matter how good you are as a first line manager in mental health awareness or whether you have a mental health first aid qualification, if your employer isn't gonna support the whole overall agenda, you are also fighting a losing battle along with the very one person you're trying to support in the workplace. And I think businesses and certainly HR definitely need to be more proactive and more, I want to say the word activated. Everybody can sit back and lean on boundaries and rules and regulations, but there needs to be an activation buzzer. For HR and businesses now that says, okay, we need to now manage the situation because I've been in situations whereas the line manager, I'm the only one managing the situation and I'm not getting a great deal of support from my employer. And and again, it's one of those employers that, talks a good talk but isn't really doing the good walk. And so you then look at whether that's aligning with your values and think, is this a place I need to be? And crikey, shit, the bed, what if it was me that was falling to pieces? Am I gonna have the right support from my employer if I'm the only one that's got the actual mental wellness lenses on here? So it has felt a bit like that from time to time. But I also am aware of situations, certainly within my security community where one person has gone to another person and said, mate, you've got P T S D and this guy's gone. I think you're right. He's then gone and got some support and help. And it's just about, isn't it, doing your bit to recognize when someone else's struggles become all of a sudden very clear to one person, but it can be a minefield of swimming in the mud for others. And I always say to people, once you swam in the quicksand for a bit, swimming in the water becomes easy. But everybody's journey is different, isn't it? Yeah. How would you wrap up what we've been talking about with a very nice, rounded sort of summary, really?

Kate: 58:11

I would,

Yoyo: 58:13

putting a podcaster

Kate: 58:14

on the spot here. I know. Put the podcaster on the spot. Oh my God. The social support element, I think what you're describing there is a huge. Aspect of resilience. So when we're talking in psychology terms and nerding about psychology, then resilience gets capital R and social support gets two capital. Sss'cause it's a thing. Yeah, it's a pleasurable thing. And it's one of these in like invisible, not invisible components of resilience, of bouncing back, of recovery, of moving beyond. It's the post-traumatic growth lies in the area as well. Like how you are gonna actually the leg will mend stronger and so can the mind and the person. And the key role there is that of expert companion. So there's a person, and in your story mythology, the person, the guide the Yoda, the Dumbledore, the high, who whichever stories you love the best. There's always someone who comes as an expert companion who is able to walk alongside. So it's not done too. And I think often what happens in our, if I say our community,'cause I'm ex-military, there's often this respect of authority and so the doctor hasn't signed you off, so therefore you're not sick. Rather than what is, I think happily now a change in the wind, like you described, where in fact you get a mate coming alongside you who says, have you thought about this? This is what helped me. Or some other kind of companionship. But they're in some way an expert in what you are going through, and they're able to just, it's walking alongside. They're not telling you, they're not diagnosing, they're part of your support. As you get the safe space to look inwards, to take that time and to consider this whole steps of self-advocacy, which is what is it I'm feeling right now? What is it that I need? Who do I need to tell and when am I gonna do that? Those four steps are really, to me, very fascinating areas, moving from self-awareness through to action. And that's a lot of what I, that for me as the coach, I, that's, I would think that like the jam in my sandwich, if you like. That's where I really become alive because I'm, I am that expert companion, the person is the expert in their life experience, but I'm that non-judgmental companion that is gonna help them. Explore inside and then do those step self steps of self-advocacy. So I get

Yoyo: 1:00:47

asked a lot, can I recommend somebody for somebody in usually around career coaching and things like that. And it's interesting because as a professional I can identify with those individuals who probably would say, oh, you know what? I just don't wanna ring someone cold off the book because I don't know whether we're gonna be a good fit or anything like that. And this is kind of hesitancy. It's the same when you need to go and book a physiotherapist. Do you go cold and or do you go through a referral? And I think what you've done today is given a wonderful opportunity for those who are listening to think, okay, this is literally what it's like. It's like having a conversation. It's having consensual conversation to explore your journey. And I think you've made it very easy for people to identify. With you and the reason and the purpose, you are there. I would say we'll provide all of your details on LinkedIn, how to reach you, your website, and any useful social hashtags as well, so we can loop all those in together. And I just wanna say thank you so very much Kate Brasington for sharing your wonderful insights on the origins of trauma with the security circle.

Kate: 1:01:52

Thank you for having me. It's been wonderful. Thank you.