Learn Law For All

Lawyers' Invisible Burden Understanding and Managing Secondary Trauma

• Launi Sheldon and Guests

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Explore the hidden toll of empathy with Dr. Kolette Butler as she tackles the profound effects of vicarious trauma on legal professionals, with host Launi Sheldon. Witness first-hand the conversation that sheds light on how the distressing experiences of others can imprint on us, leaving behind nightmares, flashbacks, and an invasive sense of dread. Delve into the duality of our empathetic nature – our greatest asset and potential risk factor – and learn why a dedicated self-care routine isn't just beneficial, it's critical for survival in our field.

Prepare to be moved as we traverse the challenging landscape of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and their lasting impact. With Dr. Butler's expert guidance, the discussion opens up to the increased likelihood of addiction and suicide attempts linked to higher ACE scores, yet reveals the silver lining of resilience and recovery. As our episode comes to a close, we arm you with the knowledge to identify signs of vicarious trauma and equip you with strategies, resources, and a CLE course designed to fortify your mental well-being against the rigors of the legal profession.

You can contact Kolette Butler at:
https://verdanthope.com/

You can contact Launi Sheldon at:
Launi@LearnLawForAll.com

Speaker 1:

Hi, I'm Lonnie with LearnLaw4ALL, and today we are here with Dr Colette Butler. So today we're going to be talking about vicarious trauma, which we just did a CLE on. A little bit about Colette is she has her doctorate in psychology and she also is a jurist doctor, which I think is great. She has completed training on trauma treatment, emdria. She's a trained EMDR therapist. She's completed emotionally focused couples therapy externship and she has additional training, several years of experience of DBT therapy. She works with the court. She's appointed regularly. She has expertise in forensic psychology, which is great, which is why we love her on these shows.

Speaker 1:

But thank you for being here. I'm excited to have you here. Thanks, lonnie. And now as again, our notice to everyone is that we are not here to give legal advice. Or you do not become a patient or we don't have an attorney-client relationship. We're both only licensed in Arizona, and so this is for entertainment purposes only. It's not meant to give specific advice to you. So, colette, thank you for being here. I've got my handy dandy questions for you. So first tell us what is vicarious trauma?

Speaker 2:

So vicarious trauma is when a person starts to develop their own trauma symptoms from exposure to the traumatic experiences of people that they associate with a lot. So attorneys are in that camp often.

Speaker 1:

And so what symptoms might they show?

Speaker 2:

So a way that you can think about it is, if you're looking at the DSM-5 criteria for PTSD all of the criteria sections B through F you could look at that and see okay, do I have any of those? So some examples of those are having nightmares, having flashbacks, having the way that you see yourself or other people or the world changes, developing a generally negative view of the world or yourself, excessive amounts of guilt, right feeling like things are your fault, that client XYZ because of me, those types of thinking, having physiological symptoms, an exaggerated startle response, hypervigilance, always on edge, can't kind of settle down. So those are some of the things that could happen.

Speaker 1:

You know it's interesting that you said the hypervigilance part, because we often do have domestic violence victims who are hypervigilant when it comes to, I guess, trying to protect their kids from their ex right, and we're like you know, I mean, when I prep people, that's one of the things we discussed. Look, we get that. It's not your fault that you have this, but it's still something we got to work on right and so well. So is there anything people can do to not, I mean, I guess, other than being super cold hearted, is there anything people can do to not become traumatized vicariously?

Speaker 2:

Well, I think okay. So there may be some good news around this that in general people tend to be resilient. So I'm not aware of research specific to the ideology of vicarious trauma per se, but we know that if we had 10 people exposed to the same traumatic event, only three are going to develop PTSD. So in general, you may be more resilient than you think and there are some things to kind of watch out for and some things that you could do. But to not be impacted at all by the suffering of someone sitting across from you, I, first of all, I don't think I would encourage it. Second of all, I think that that that could be problematic, right for a person.

Speaker 1:

So I mean, do empaths have a bigger issue with that? I'm super empathetical, like if I watch. I can't even watch things on TV Like those funny videos where people crash and stuff. I literally feel it in every cell of my body when somebody gets hurt. So I know I need to stay away from as much drama and trauma as I can. So do empaths typically have a bigger issue with that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, for sure, and in fact there's kind of some funny research out there. People who score higher on empathy scales will inadvertently pick up accents of people, which can be hugely embarrassing. Right, they go into a restaurant and they start like mimicking the accent of the server and it's like you know.

Speaker 1:

So I do that with TV. I do that with TV and Steve laughs at me. Anytime somebody with an accent or something comes in and says something funny, for some odd reason, I feel like I have to do that also and it might just come out. It's just one of those things that it happens.

Speaker 2:

That's interesting that you said that I mean, if an empathic person is even picking up the accent of someone, it's very likely that they're also picking up that person's emotions, right? I've seen people high on the empathy scale If somebody near them tears up and I look over like their eyes are welling, right, and it's just like-.

Speaker 1:

I did that. I did that on the bench when I was doing, when I was a judge pro tem, and I really had to stop my. I knew I could never, ever, ever be a judge, because if somebody was crying on there my eyes would well up and it was everything I could do to make myself stop.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you're not doing it on purpose. It's like it's an autonomic response, almost. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Right, and I'm already such a cry baby, like I cry for everything. So that wasn't. That wasn't that easy.

Speaker 2:

If you know your high in empathy, you are going to want to do a lot of self care to kind of insulate from that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's a great point. So if you're exposed, what do you do? Is self care one of the things that you do?

Speaker 2:

Yes, and you know, self care gets kind of overused, in my opinion right, and a lot of people will conflate self care with self indulgence, which is not at all self care.

Speaker 1:

I just jumped on my water, sorry, sorry.

Speaker 2:

Self indulgence. I like that, yeah. But you know, self care doesn't mean sitting down with a pint of Ben and Jerry's Netflix binging. It means moving outdoors, right, taking in a sunrise, walking mindfully, turning off your phone for 15 minutes, you know, whatever it is, being mindful of how you breathe, noticing when someone is sitting across from you and they're holding their breath, or whatever, just making sure that you're not, that you are that self care right, really like tuning in to like how can I settle my body down? How can I settle my own emotions down, even when I'm sitting across from someone in suffer?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, and like baths, right, baths are good, good smells. I think we had talked about, I think you had said, you know, have plants around you, kind of to try and get through some of that.

Speaker 2:

There's some great research on plants. You don't even have to have a real plant. A fake plant or even a picture of trees can increase your psychological wellbeing. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, it's pretty remarkable.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, my brains are so cool. Okay, we also talked about ACEs during our CLE. Can you kind of explain what that is?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So ACEs stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences and essentially there was a massive weight loss study that was conducted in California some years ago, and when I say massive, it was about 18,000 participants, which is huge for a study. And in the course of their work with 18,000 middle class San Diego residents, they kind of happened upon this list of 10 things that if those 10 things were present during your childhood, those 10 adverse experiences, then your risk for significant health complications, complications including cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular distress, heart attacks, obesity all of those factors increased a lot if you had a lot of these adverse childhood experiences. And then they also correlated to addiction, substance use, suicidality, and so a lot of attorneys have a significant number of ACEs and that makes them more susceptible to have some activation of their sympathetic nervous system or some trauma responses.

Speaker 1:

So I wanna read through those real quick because I think, look, as a divorce attorney, no matter what our clients whose kids are going through this are gonna have one of them, right, yep, right. So did a parent or other adult in the household often swear at you and salt you, put you down, humiliate you, act in such a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt? So that's any child abuse, right? I mean, that would be that. Did a parent or adult in the household often push or grab or slap or throw something at you ever hit you? I guess I'm not. I guess one is.

Speaker 2:

One is more emotional or psychological abuse. Right, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1:

Now, inya and I talked about this. So one's divorce, one's a substance abuse, one's a parent or a person in jail, one's mental health issues, depression, or and one was, was there fighting among the parents, I think right, and then not having enough food to eat or not having clean clothes, or someone was too inebriated to take care of you, basically. So, and I know that you and I are gonna do another, we're gonna do a family law one on this right. Look, if you've got someone where a kid who witnessed domestic violence is this does this have to be an often thing? Cause it says did a parent or other adult in the house, what is that? One Did your mother or father often, often push. So if it was just a one or two off kind of act, does that mean that they that doesn't, they don't press one for that or they don't check off that one?

Speaker 2:

Well, I can't. Are you looking at number seven there? I am looking at number seven. It says what is your mother? I think it also talks about like. Did it occur for like several moments? You know so, even if it was a one off, was there a time when mom and dad were fighting for several minutes?

Speaker 1:

Okay, so long period of time where it's kind of sinking in.

Speaker 2:

Sure, or where they were threatened, you know, with a gun or a knife. And I was talking to a person who specialized in well, she actually conducted courses for the perpetrators of domestic violence, and one of the perpetrators said you know, I don't even have to hit my spouse, I've never laid a hand on her. All I have to do is just show her my fist right, and so a kid is gonna pick up on that right, right, right, pick up on that right. All dad has to do is, you know, just make the fist and make the face and it's like very clear, you know. So I think, if you're going through the aces and you're trying to make a determination, you know, you know what was happening inside of you when mom and dad were doing whatever.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and then I know we've also talked about how not you and I, but in general we, the we and the family law group of people talk about how dangerous and how detrimental high conflict is on kids and how that can hurt them. Is there anything that's high conflict that's in this, you know? Would you go? Oh, if there's high conflict, maybe there's A, b, c or D, or one, two, three or four.

Speaker 2:

Oh, in terms of the aces, like what might be present by virtue of the fact that it's high conflict.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because I know high conflict is one of those things that's also supposed to cause people to have, you know, a stronger likelihood of cancer, kind of all the same things as this right Because of the emotions that they get sort of shoved into it. So I wonder if that's just a big set. You already have the divorce and so I wonder if there's the, if it's almost like the high conflicts, almost like domestic violence.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a. I think that's a super interesting question, lonnie, because we do have a lot of research about kids who go through a high conflict divorce. And they have, you know, they develop mental illness at a higher rate, they develop acting out behaviors at a higher rate sexual promiscuity, substance use, suicidality, and you know, technically on the aces list they're really going through just the separation or divorce factor, just one of them. But yeah, I don't know. But that is an interesting question because those kids are certainly developing those same symptoms.

Speaker 1:

It's almost like we need to add something to this at some point. You know the high conflict Was mom and dad's divorce, high conflict.

Speaker 2:

You got three for that, yeah.

Speaker 1:

I think so. I think so because I think you know it's gotta be almost close to the feeling unsafe. Was there one? Oh, that's not your special, I'll see. I mean, I think when it says, did a parent or other adult in the household often push, grab, slap or throw something at you? I almost wonder if that's more of like a feeling of unsafeness.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think one of them does speak to safety. It might be nine like the clothing, or eight like did you not have clean clothes or you otherwise felt like you were unsafe or uncared for encounter.

Speaker 1:

I thought there was, but I wasn't finding it. But yeah, but yeah. So you know, it's interesting. I think that we have that other thing that's kind of an outlier that almost should be added to that, but that is the ACEs. And now if you have ACEs, you are, I think you said, more likely to have a substance abuse problem, or if you're high in ACEs, what is high in ACEs?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so kind of the significant cutoff point that they find. Where it is statistically significant is when you have four or more. So if somebody has zero ACEs and I have met one person- who has zero? Really yeah.

Speaker 1:

If you have zero Wait, does that person seem very well rounded? Yeah, oh, I'm jealous.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but for example, a person who has four ACEs and I have this data somewhere but if they have four or more ACEs, relative to somebody who has zero or one ACE, they're something like 18% more likely to be addicted and 16% more likely to have attempted suicide and some different things like that. So somebody who has four or more ACEs it's basically one in five of people who have four or more ACEs are addicted or have attempted suicide or are taking antidepressants for depression, different things like that. It hovers right around 20% of the people with four or more ACEs who are addicted and things like that.

Speaker 1:

And so if they have five or six or seven, I broke exponentially.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if it's exponential, but it definitely. The risk then is much higher as you get higher.

Speaker 1:

All right. Well, thank you, klett, for bringing us all down. No, yeah, you're welcome any time.

Speaker 2:

I mean the good news is that there are things that you can do to take care of yourself, because there is a lot of trauma in family law and in law in general, and you can do things to take care of yourself. You can do things that help your client even kind of regulate and cope with their own distress and we went into that in depth in the CLE and you can even kind of retrain your body and brain to work with some of those traumatic memories and experiences. You're not beholden to a life of profound distress. Like you and I talked, we both scored high-ish on the ACEs and I've never been addicted. You've never been addicted. I've never attempted suicide, things like that. So it's not a sentence.

Speaker 1:

I never have either. Just for the record, I just need to throw that out there, sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it isn't like you are destined to go down this path, but it certainly can help us be more empathic. It can help us be more compassionate to ourselves and to other people, just kind of be aware of those things that are out there All right, and so Collette and I did do a Continuing Legal Education on Vicarious Trauma.

Speaker 1:

So that is available on LearnLawForAllcom and Collette's contact information will be attached or listed on the description of this podcast and she will also have her information Plus some great handouts, by the way. Thank you for those that are available on the CLE. I think those are going to be really helpful to people. So thank you very much. Thank you, bye, bye.