Towards Eden, an Enneagram Podcast
The Enneagram is an amazing tool to help us have way better relationships - and grow emotionally + spiritually.
On this podcast you'll hear stories of people using the Enneagram personality tool
to understand themselves and the people in their worlds.
& I (Elyse) will teach you how to use the Enneagram system so that you feel empowered to use this tool in your own life.
Let's get curious about each others' stories and grow together 🌿
Towards Eden, an Enneagram Podcast
#20 - Compassionate, Trauma-Informed Care with Bailey Regier, RN, CNE
In this episode, Bailey Regier guides us into exploring how trauma-informed care is changing the game in nursing and healthcare. We talk about why compassion, self-care, and understanding trauma are so important for healthcare professionals—and all of us.
⚡ HIGHLIGHTS FROM THIS EPISODE ⚡
- Bailey’s journey in nursing and education
- Bailey's road to identifying as an Enneagram 8
- Why compassion among healthcare providers matters so much
- Tips on handling stress and staying emotionally regulated
- Why trauma-informed care is essential in healthcare today
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For resource recommendations, click here.
The Road Back to You by Ian Cron- start here to find your type
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elyse@towardsedenenneagram.com
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This guide is a great quick-reference to help you remember the types.
Good morning from January of 2025. This is actually my first week back working on the podcast in over a month. All of the episodes for the past five weeks I made and scheduled before I took a big ol' break for Christmas and it was wonderful. I'm really glad I structured my December that way. It was important for me this year to sync up with my husband with his time off of work, and we were very social and very active in December and also had some glorious lazy days, and now we are slowly but surely easing back into a normal schedule. Today's episode I recorded in November.
Speaker 1:My guest is my sister-in-law, bailey Regeer. Bailey is a professor of nursing at Valparaiso University. She recently finished a trauma-informed care certification program that she took through the psych department at VU, and this trauma-informed care is something that she right away began to apply to her job as a nurse and also as a professor. This interview was so interesting to me, especially to go behind the curtain a bit of what it's like to job as a nurse and also as a professor. This interview was so interesting to me, especially to go behind the curtain a bit of what it's like to work as a medical provider. So here it is my interview with my sister-in-law, bailey Regeer. Bailey Regeer, welcome to the podcast. Hi, happy to be here. Bailey is very cool and she has done a lot of very cool things in life, and I am going to let her introduce herself and tell us a little bit about what she does in life, who she is, what you think is important for people to know about you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm Bailey Rear. I'm the oldest of the Rear kids, so I'm the firstborn. That's Brooke Braden. Elise married Braden. I always think it's when your brother falls in love and someone loves your brother. I'm always like whoa, that's crazy, because it's your brother. No, it's cool and it's fun to add more siblings to our family, but I'm a. My background is in nursing. I'm a clinical assistant professor of nursing at a local university. My background within nursing is emergency nursing, so I was an emergency department nurse for about five years. Starting in 2018 is when I graduated from Purdue Northwest University in this area and interesting and fascinating to see health care in different parts of the country was in vastly different parts of the country. While I did that, I finished up my master's because I love school, and now my master's was nursing education, and so now I'm teaching.
Speaker 1:And since you love school, can you tell us anything else about what you're doing now?
Speaker 2:Yes, I'm also a PhD student with the University of Northern Colorado, where I'm also studying nursing education. So I see nursing education as the like, upstream solution to a lot of issues that we're seeing in nursing whether it's incivility, burnout, patient safety errors. I see nursing as a or I see education as a kind of source of all those things. So go back to the source to fix the things.
Speaker 1:That is really cool. What I always see in you from hearing you talk about your job is you're so passionate about Like quality and excellence, but also like compassion in your job and also teaching people. Like you're really passionate about teaching and educating, and even it's not just in the classroom but it's like in your family.
Speaker 2:you're always trying to teach your siblings something new or help, just like help people be better yeah, no, I really like that, um, like growth that comes from learning, but I like really just enjoy the learning process itself. Um, what's interesting with nursing and like compassion is I would say I've had to grow in the compassion but when the connection was made for me that compassion does increase quality of care, like we know that when people start yelling in a patient's room like whether it's a physician yelling at someone who made a mistake, we know that patient outcomes go down. So the chance of that patient experiencing complication or whatever we're doing not being successful goes down because of the disrespect and the lack of kindness. So we see kindness as a professional competency and compassion as a professional competency.
Speaker 1:And are you saying that compassion it's not just from the provider to the patient, but it also would be like to the provider, to another provider in the room.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say, like the environment in general, if it's in civil, if there's disrespect, then mistakes are going to go up and I'm going to hide those mistakes because I'm scared of the environment that's around me.
Speaker 2:And if I'm hiding my mistakes then the root cause of those mistakes, maybe it's totally my fault, but probably there's a lot of factors that's leading into that mistake anyways. But if I'm hiding it, those factors, what nurses need to do, and you're punished for that, that's a sign to get off that unit. Because if I'm punished for my first mistake and of course you need, we call it like remediation, Like if I've made a mistake, I should be educated on that, on what led to the mistake and hopefully find ways to mitigate that mistake later. But if I'm like, if there's punitive actions or I feel put down or I feel shame for that mistake, then you know that's happened to other people and you know that they're going to be hiding those mistakes and so the mistakes are probably a lot more frequent than you think and the root causes are not found. So you're not on a safe unit and you're not on a unit that's going to grow and get better.
Speaker 1:So leave Interesting, yeah. How much freedom do you feel like people have, especially your students who are new to the fields? How much freedom do they have to make that choice to leave a unit or change?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it definitely depends. I would say with nursing there's so many job opportunities that there's a high, high, high level of freedom. You do need to be careful because it costs a unit like $50,000 to train a new grad nurse. So it's a huge wear and tear on that unit. So I would say like you've got to protect you first and make that decision for you first. But if it's truly an issue, then there's a lot of motivation for the manager and the supervisor to fix those problems. Because if they find out new grads are leaving because of X, Y, Z, like there's a charge nurse that's rude or the night's weekend vibe is is not cool for new grads, Then they're highly motivated to change those things because it's really expensive to lose you and keep training new people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say a high amount of freedom. I would say right now in health care the power is in nurses and we learned that during the pandemic.
Speaker 1:OK, so let's talk a little bit about the Enneagram. Yeah, I remember when I first started being around your family, which is when I was dating Brayden, I could tell that you guys had discussed the Enneagram. You kind of knew your types, you kind of knew. You kind of maybe had all read the road back to you and things like that. But when do you remember like first being exposed to the Enneagram? What was that like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't remember who exposed me to it. I want to say it was me and Brooke together, or somebody exposed Brooke and then Brooke told me I can't remember exactly who it was but I remember I was in college and I love all like personality tests, like of all shapes and sizes, so that was really fun to find a new one. And I remember being in college and we were in a study room and I was making all my friends take the Enneagram test because I was like this is so fun, let's find out, you know.
Speaker 2:And then I was secretly guessing what everybody else was, which which I know is not supposed to do, but I was doing it and we like could not figure out how to spell it. To try to find the test, just use a speaker and let's just say Enneagram. But so, yeah, I want to say it was probably like 2017, 2018. And I read the road, or I listened to the road back to you. Um, I one of those years during christmas break, okay, yeah, um didn't get into like listening to podcasts about it, probably until like just recently when you've kind of been doing things with it yeah, okay, so tell me about um finding your type.
Speaker 1:How long did it take to land on a type? Did you go from type to type? What was that like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like my typing journey is very it's like a spiral and not like a negative spiral. But I believe in the complexities of humans and anytime we label someone, we're missing nuances on them. Label someone, we're missing nuances on them. So, um, at least like that's why nursing is such a uh, and medicine and psychology is a super gray field, because you add anything to another person, it kind of like changes them, changes the flavor of them a little bit, um. So when I first read the enneagram I very quickly identified with the one. Um, I definitely value self-growth, I value having a mission, improvements. That's the big part that I probably connected with. The one.
Speaker 2:I never felt, though that inner critic I would say like abnormally, you know, like I think everybody has a little voice like that's either motivating you to be better or like that like self-doubt voice. That kind of comes when we're trying to grow and be better. But I'm not really like a detail oriented person and if there's little things that are imperfect, I'm totally okay with that. I feel very much more of like a let's get the big picture, hey, and if the details are messed up, let's just move on. Like I'll just say, even with as I teach at the university where I teach it, I'll be lecturing and I can see typos on my slide and I'm like I don't. I just personally do not care enough about those things to take my energy and go back and do and take care of them. You know whether that's right or wrong. I I know a lot of professors that will spend hours and hours and hours and hours on their, on their slides. So, yeah, I would say like I don't completely, um, don't identify with the one anymore. But, um, we went, you did a um teaching on the Enneagram at your church here in La Porte and when you were describing the eight, me and my mom, I was saying right after my mom and me and my mom looked at each other and she said how could we have thought you were anything else?
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness. And there was just like it felt like like a sigh of relief when you were describing the eight, because I thought this is me, this is who I am. I've really identified with like the protecting part of the eight. I remember being really little, you know, I don't know what age, maybe elementary school and I could walk into a room and I could pick out the most vulnerable person and you know, I could feel in my gut that person I'm going to protect, even if it was someone like that, maybe like the group didn't like, or something I just never, ever wanted anyone to feel ganged up on. Or if I can very quickly see someone's insecurities and the areas they feel vulnerable in, I'm going to protect those, even if they themselves are exposing those things. Let me protect them in those vulnerabilities. Like I remember having professors where I quickly realized they're not confident in this content that they're talking about, that they're talking about.
Speaker 1:So I'm not gonna ask any questions to make them feel, um, like insecure in that knowledge of um, or that insecure in their weaknesses, kind of thing this is something where when we talk about um, levels of growth or like levels of health is another way to say it with enneagram types, with anything, of course, enneagram types are neutral and we can use it for good or we can use it for bad. And when we look at Enneagram type eight, they do have a focus of attention. It's what you're describing. Where they can, they can identify where is the weakness in a room and where is the strength. They can identify where is the power in the room, who's the strength. They can identify where is the power in the room, who's got the power, maybe who's got the control, and they can use that to their advantage.
Speaker 1:Every person doesn't have that discernment or that ability to see that. This is like a gift of the eight and what you're is a really like healthy use of that. Where you want to, you want to protect people when you see their weaknesses. There's this flip side where, when eights are unhealthy, they, instead of protecting they, might be able to identify weaknesses in people that maybe they consider enemies and then attack them. So this is where we can see attack them. So this is where we can see um, eights getting bad reputations is because eights will identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses and then attack them or use them for personal gain in ways that are not, um, helpful or uplifting, and so I think it's really cool how you're talking about using it to using it in a way that is positively impacting the people around you, and I want to ask you about what it's like, on this topic, being the oldest of nine siblings. So you have eight younger siblings and I just wonder, like, how that has formed this protector type in you this protector type in you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say, like almost every other thought, especially when I lived at home, every other thought was like a safety, let me protect, kind of thought. Sometimes it's probably unhealthy because it leads to a lot of anxiety that a thing that's not going to happen. But I would say like where I kind of moved away from the one was the morality part of the one, because with my siblings and my family I would do absolutely anything to keep them safe and it didn't matter what they do. It doesn't matter if war, if they're in the right or if I'm in the right in my actions. I'm going to do absolutely whatever I can to keep them safe, to protect them.
Speaker 1:So being being protect, protecting and being protective becomes a higher value to you than being morally good, right, you're saying?
Speaker 2:Yeah, then yeah. To me it doesn't matter what is right in that moment, because what matters to me is that they're safe and the morality of it, or the discussion of what is right, what is wrong, doesn't matter, just the safety of the people. One thing that was that's hard about the eight and it's so interesting to think about like how we describe and write about the Enneagram will influence how people think about it, and so I feel like the eight is so often like written from the stance of it's very masculine and very male. So like I don't feel like I'm an aggressive person, and that's just from my perspective. I'm sure in certain situations that I come off as aggressive, so I always. That's where I got confused with the eight, because I never felt like I was a challenger. You know, I never felt like, oh, I'm going to create conflict. To create conflict. I don't like conflict. I would call myself even a people pleaser or recovering. People pleaser is what I like to say, but I someone I think it was a podcast, I don't remember who described it, but they use the word intensity with eight rather than aggressive or challenger.
Speaker 2:And so then I was much more able to see myself as an eight, because I do have really, really intense feelings and sometimes I'll do everything I can to avoid the conflict with those intense feelings, those intense feelings. But sometimes it can just be an intensity where I feel so hurt by this little thing and this person that hurt me doesn't get it. But all I know is my feelings are way up here about the thing. And one thing I learned about like that intensity of my feelings and became really helpful as I a lot more healthy as I got older, was, I realized, when I was asked to put those feelings away or like shove those feelings down, it felt like somebody was like nailing me into a cardboard box and I was trapped, like felt completely trapped and alone with those feelings like, like your intense, they were trying to smother your intensity, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's like some of the most like emotionally distressing things for me is when somebody says, put those away. You know it's not right to express so in some cases it's not right to express those right at that moment or to that intensity. But when I'm asked to put those away, when I really want to express that, it just makes it so much more prolonged for me and really like distressing, I would say, just like feel like alone with those really intense feelings.
Speaker 1:Have you learned as an adult any helpful ways that you can process your feelings?
Speaker 2:um, no, that I mean, it's hard. Um, I would say like, emotional regulation is the skill that um adults need to learn and none of us know how to do it. Adam young, on his podcast the places we find ourselves, describes it really well. Um, and I don't know who you got this, but he describes emotional regulation on a scale from zero to 10. And being regulated, being content, being at peace, is four, five, six and we'll become really hot and intense. We're moving towards a 10 and we become really numb and depressed. We're moving towards a one.
Speaker 2:And so emotional regulation it's not about keeping myself at four or five. That's not healthy. If I, if someone cuts me off and it makes me feel really scared, it's normal to move up to a nine. But the big thing is, can I bring myself back to that middle? You know, that's the scale of emotional regulation to bring yourself back.
Speaker 2:And the only way to get better is that and I'm speaking not from like a professional standpoint, but from just what I've learned personally the way to get better at that is you let yourself go, you feel it, and then you, you bring yourself back, you practice, bring yourself back, and that's going to be different for every person. I would say for me, the best way I've learned to deal to a point where I can't be around that person because I'm not good at hiding that I'm X, y, z, upset, mad, what have you, and I don't want to pretend, because I feel like that pretending is lying. So it's so much easier for me to just, I need to be regulated, I need to be able to be at a point where I can articulate my thoughts and feelings but tell the truth, and it doesn't matter if my feelings are really petty about something that maybe appears to be small. I'm upset about something small, but to me it's a really big deal and I'm having a really big reaction.
Speaker 1:So let me communicate that thing to that person yeah, and that's a hard thing for you know, we the people pleasers because it feels like to avoid conflict is is the easy thing, but in the long run so often like avoiding the conflict actually just leads to more conflict and more tension and more hurt in the long run. So I think that's a really, really important skill to have is like learning to appropriately tell the truth in a timely way yeah, instead of just holding on to things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I heard someone say that the best skill they ever learned was to tell the truth and they wish they would have just learned it when they were younger. Just learn to tell the truth, even if it's you feel so petty and dumb for feeling this way. But it's how you feel, you know, and if someone really loves you, they can also feel that that's petty and dumb and they can tell the truth in that. But at least for me, the most important thing is that my feelings feel heard. You know, it's almost like I don't even ever need a behavior change. Sometimes I do if it's something that's really important to me. But what I feel most important is that that person hears my feelings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I relate to that. I relate to that also in terms of, like there's times when, if somebody hurts me, the only thing I want is just for them to take responsibility. If it was a valid thing, like hear what I'm saying, take responsibility, and then it's over, right, and I can like move on, like same, I don't feel like I would need like a huge behavior modification. But, um, this is a whole different topic. But there's this thing called the apology languages, which is kind of where I'm going for that, where it's when we, you know, when we apologize, some people, you know, want response, you to take responsibility. Other people want some sort of retribution made. Other people maybe want like an action to prove that they're sorry. But yeah, if, if you want to hear more about that, just I'm not an expert on it, but you could just Google the apology languages.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So let's switch gears, because you have recently completed a really interesting program about trauma care and I'd love to hear about, first of all, just what was that for? Why did you take that? What was that class about?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a trauma. Informed care certification through Valparaiso University. It was out of their psychology department. I took it because I wanted to. There was no like financial benefit for me. Valpo has a really cool benefit where people that work there you can take classes for free. So you know, it wasn't hurting me in any way and I had heard from former nursing faculty that it was really beneficial. It was five classes, so it wasn't. It wasn't a minor, it wasn't a major. That's why they call it a certificate. So in in that sense, you know it's it's rather small.
Speaker 1:So it was like a five class program.
Speaker 2:Yeah, many, many, many program that I took. I took one class for two years, so yeah, what was the other part of your question?
Speaker 2:OK, yeah, so I think that answers it. You just you took it because you want to be a better provider. Yeah, you wanted to learn. Yeah, yeah, what were some of the topics of those different classes concept, I would say, in mental health, counseling, all those fields? They just came up with a definition in 2014, which I can read it for you if you want, let's do it. So this was a time. Yeah, so this is a definition by you know, and I don't know if people say the whole word or if they say the acronym, but it's the SAMHSA, it's a government department that works with mental health and addiction, those kind of things, but this was in 2014.
Speaker 2:Or set of circumstances that's experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life-threatening, or that has lasting adverse effects on the individual's functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional and spiritual well-being. So, that being like a really, really broad definition, almost anything could be considered traumatic In that class. In that intro class, it was described to me as an event that overwhelms your ability to process it, and so in that definition, there's a lot of flexibility, because when we think of trauma, probably the first thing that comes to mind is like active combat veterans with PTSD. Right, and that is true, but that's a very narrow part of what trauma would be defined, as it can be as small as a fender bender and really what's really crucial is when in your life that traumatic event or events occurred. So if it was more when you were little, especially with a primary caregiver, it would have a much bigger impact than if I'm older and it's a stranger or kind of some random event that occurred. Other classes were kind of related to like the assessment of trauma, how trauma relates to, like sibling relationships, how to deal with grief, um.
Speaker 2:But I would say probably like that um initial class gave the most information about trauma. Um, we talked a lot about um how traumatic events can be very small and acute, um it can be chronic. So it's um something that's happening to you that will not stop going back to kind of like that um standard things that we think about of trauma that are traumatic, and then smaller things. They refer to them as big T trauma events and then little T trauma events, like a little tiny fender bender, but for whatever reason, that event overwhelmed your nervous system and your ability to process or to handle and you felt very helpless in that experience, process or to handle and you felt very helpless in that experience. So it can even be a situation where I perceive that I'm being threatened in this moment and maybe I'm not, but my perception is that there is a serious threat to me or people I love and that alone, and me feeling helpless in that moment, that alone can cause trauma.
Speaker 1:But remind me was this was the program? Was it specifically for medical providers or was it more for anybody in the university?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's specifically designed for, like, mental health counselors. So even me being in nursing there was some things that just didn't apply, but it was geared more towards anybody that's in a caregiving role, so it could be a teacher, it could be a nurse, it could be a physician, but, yeah, definitely geared more towards the mental health professionals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so talk about why, understanding trauma, understanding a holistic view of trauma, why does that matter for a medical provider?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I would say it's really easy to look at a person and their actions and their behaviors and their words and assume that you know why they're acting that way. Saying those things, being who they are being informed on trauma, gives you a really wide lens perspective on someone, because I can look at someone who's struggling with drug addiction and remember that there are events in that person's life that has influenced them towards this decision, these, this series of decisions that has evidently hurt them very badly.
Speaker 1:So you're talking about? I hear you talking about assumptions. I hear you talking about the knowledge about trauma helps us to not make assumptions, and I remember earlier we were talking about how compassion is important in the medical environment, and I guess there's got to be a connection there, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's really easy to assume that when I'm looking at someone, that's and I don't want to give specific examples because I don't want to be disrespectful to those people but if someone is, let's say, struggling with illicit drugs, it's really easy for me to assume that person's bad, that person's dumb, that person has made the decisions that they've made to get to this point and so they deserve the consequences. Okay, so that's like a very linear way of thinking.
Speaker 1:And guys remember, bailey has been an emergency room nurse for years, so she's this is coming from like real world experience of dealing with high risk situations in the ER.
Speaker 2:This is coming from like real world experience of dealing with high risk situations in the ER. Yeah, no, thank you for that. Yeah, it's, especially in the ER there are so many situations that people have done to themselves, so it's really easy to look at that person and say, well, I guess you shouldn't have made that decision. But what trauma informed care does is it gives that provider a like background story on that person so that person didn't start their lives addicted to drugs. If we're moving with that example, there are many, many factors in that person's life that has influenced them into making that decision Some of them traumatic, some of them not traumatic. That decision Some of them traumatic, some of them not traumatic Even the people who we are today, the decisions that we're making today, are heavily influenced by our language, our culture, our families, our background, our race, our sex, all these things.
Speaker 2:So to assume that I understand a person just by looking at them and being with them in a situation I think is incredibly arrogant. But trauma informed care gives me a ton of compassion because when I understand what trauma does to a person's brain and how it pushes them sometimes towards a certain direction, how can I hate that person or judge that person Thinking about them as a small child who was supposed to be protected by a primary caregiver, wasn't, and so now they have this fragmentation, uncertainty in their brain and they are desperately trying to regulate that and bring that connection back. So maybe I use illicit drugs to do that.
Speaker 2:Understanding this kind of anti-assumption. Is this something that is going to, for example, in the ER? Is this something that's going to practically influence things that you're doing, or is it more of a like mindset, more of an outlook change? I think that it's both. It definitely starts as a outlook mindset change, and it is so helpful because it's really easy for me to be an ER nurse and to go from room to room and just be pissed off because all these people are here because of the decisions that they made and they're taking up resources and time. And there are other people that didn't make decisions, you know, maybe they were in a car accident and they didn't choose that.
Speaker 1:And we implicitly make these value judgments.
Speaker 2:Yeah On those people. So I would say, and that makes it easier. Trauma-informed care makes it easier for me to be a nurse, for me to be a person, because again I can take someone's behavior. Somebody hurt me Okay, but there are so many things that are influencing their behavior. It's not necessarily about me. You know they could be. It's not personal. Yeah, no, it's not personal. It you know they could be. Yeah, no, it's not personal. It is a change in like physical practice as well. They at least in the trauma informed care, like ideas.
Speaker 2:There's a certain set of principles that we want to try to build with people, and I think that these can be built into any relationship. But it's creating safety in relationships, both physical and emotional. It's creating trustworthiness and being transparent with people. So in a nursing sense, it would be. I'm not just going to do these things to you, I'm going to let you know. This is why we're doing it, this is what we're going to do. This is the result that we're looking for bringing people into the process and that can be used in any aspect of relationships.
Speaker 2:Right, being transparent with my decisions being transparent, their sexual background, their identity, because that is heavily influencing my behavior and my actions and how I'm seeing the world, how the lens that I use for the world. There's so many different ones. I'm a woman, I grew up in the Midwest. I'm white. I grew up in church. All these lenses I'm using to view the world and, again, if I'm looking at someone and I'm assuming I'm seeing the whole picture if I'm not considering those lenses, I'm missing things yeah, oh, that's great and you're right.
Speaker 1:This is like it's interesting to hear you talk about the specific application for the medical field, even the mental health field. But this is this just helps us be better people and helps us in everyday relationships and family relationships and friendships at work. Okay, these principles you're talking about. Where do these principles come?
Speaker 2:from From the same organization, so the SAMHSA organization from the government. So it's evidence-based. It's been researched as kind of like a top-down initiative for trauma informed care.
Speaker 1:So, as an educator, what are some things that you're taking away from this trauma informed care program that you really think it's important for your students to know and learn?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, specifically for, like my practice as an educator, students nobody can learn if they're dysregulated. So if I'm overly stressed, if my body is in fight or flight, the parts of my brain that I need for higher learning are offline because my body doesn't feel safe. Right, we're not learning anything when we're running from the line. So, in that, my students need to be regulated if they're going to actually learn something, and that's the same thing like in need to be regulated if they're going to actually learn something, and that's the same thing like in interpersonal relationships, like if we're trying to resolve a conflict and we're trying to learn from each other. That's not going to happen if either one of us are dysregulated. Yeah, so it means going away regulating or regulating together. That's fine too, and we can learn once we're regulated or regulating together. That's fine too, and we can learn once we're regulated.
Speaker 2:What I want my students to take away from trauma informed care. I would say, like, once you learn about trauma and what it does to people and what it does to their brains and how they, how it affects their behavior, it's really hard to hate or judge anyone, because I can very easily and Brielle said this that trauma explains behavior. It doesn't justify it. So those people are still accountable for their actions, absolutely. They know that, right, there's a lot of natural consequences to bad behavior, poor behavior. But trauma can really help explain a lot of things, and so it gives me a much larger capacity to offer compassion and empathy to people rather than be hurt by their behavior or judgmental towards their behavior.
Speaker 2:Compassion itself is a muscle and so when we exercise it it gets stronger. It can get worn out too. We call that compassion fatigue. But I think trauma informed care helps strengthen those muscles because, again, it's giving me more tools to understand the complexities of a person, which, compassion fatigue, is a huge issue in nursing. Really easy to to not want to care. There's too much going on. Um, I have my own, yeah, I have my own problems. And then here's this person that did it to themselves. Um, but um, I think that trauma-informed care helps increase that compassion, helps increase that capacity for compassion okay.
Speaker 1:so we're talking about compassion fatigue. I know another thing that you're passionate about when you're teaching is helping your nursing students understand how to take care of themselves. And while you're talking about regulation, a lot also self-care Also, I know you care a lot about. How do we proactively avoid burnout? What are some things that you, some ways that you want to equip your students in order to take care of themselves well and possibly avoid having too much of that compassion fatigue?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think ultimately, self-care comes down to stress management. So stress is a good thing. Stress helps us study, it helps us get out of bad situations. But too much stress for too long turns into chronic stress or even toxic stress leading to trauma, or it leads to burnout, which then I don't have enough stress, so now I can't get out of bed. You know why do I care? I feel numb, I feel bored with my life. Yeah, so there's kind of like that again, that spectrum with stress. So I think that daily self-care is about stress management, or healing from trauma or preventing burnout, is about stress management. There's lots of different techniques you can go for. The most efficient is exercise.
Speaker 2:You cannot expect and I'm speaking to myself, you cannot expect um negative feelings to leave your body without movement it they. It cannot happen. Um, if you think about the evolution of our flight or flight, um, both of those are movement right, so the stress cannot leave my body. That those um hormones that are causing this high heart rate, this high blood pressure, is not caused by a lion. It's caused maybe by somebody said something that hurt my feelings or I feel an unjust situation. Normally I'd be running from the lion. Yeah, that stress can leave my body physically. Yes, now, we don't have that. We have different types of stressors. So that daily movement is what helps move stress from my body.
Speaker 2:I've heard it described as like a stress bucket. So you know, we all have a certain capacity for stress. Some have more, some have less. You know, it doesn't matter, and when we exercise it kind of lets that water out of that bucket a little bit. So it's not even like I need to be a marathon runner or that I need to exercise every day. But I know for me, when my anxiety is getting up, ok, I need to work out. But it's not going to work, it's not going to make me feel better now. It's going to help in the next couple of days, release that water, decrease my stress bucket even as more stress comes in. That's what's been described. It was in this book. Burnout is by Emily Nagowski I want to say her last name is, but really awesome book it's. The book is called Burnout the stress. The secret to completing the stress cycle, I think is what it's called. And they they provide seven evidence based ways to manage stress in your daily life, exercise being the absolute most efficient, and then the other ones you could just sprinkle throughout your day Laughter.
Speaker 2:Connection to other people is really important, especially when you're talking about trauma. Trauma disconnects in a lot of way. It disconnects us physically in our brain. We know that there's less neural connections in a traumat of way. It disconnects us physically in our brain. We know that there's less neural connections in a traumatized brain. We know that there's less social connections in a person that experiences trauma. And so connection is really really good at preventing and helping us heal through traumatic experiences. Breathing, creative expression, emotional expression, and that's all I can think of at the top. I don't know if I got to seven, but that's all I can think of on the top of my head.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great. I, yeah, I love everything you just said. I know our listeners are going to love this because this matters so much. It matters that we recognize our own stress and understand how to manage it, and it's going to be different person to person, so it's so worth it to try a lot of these different strategies and see what works for you, right?
Speaker 1:And in the Enneagram world, we talk about how, in order to be an integrated person, it matters that we engage our bodies, our minds and our hearts. They all matter, and to those of us who are in different centers of intelligences, it can become easier to connect with one or two and forget the third, but it matters that we can engage all three of those, right? So exercise and movement and laughter and breathing are all great ways to engage your body, and that really matters for stress. And we talk a lot in Enneagram conversations about how there are certain types who are more prone to push their emotions down and repress emotion and forget about emotion. But it matters so much and you're hearing here that there is scientific and psychological evidence that it matters to be able to process your emotions and not just put them to the side or push them down or put them somewhere else, but we have to be able to face them and do something with them.
Speaker 1:And I like how you talked about emotional regulation and connection and connection with other people. That's one of the big ways we engage our hearts, is we engage each other's feelings and even our mind. If there's stimulating conversation or if you can regulate by, you know, reading a book for 10 minutes All good tools, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Who is a person in your life who really gives you space and freedom to be yourself without judgment and helps you regulate and all the things? Who do you feel really safe with?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have so many people that make me feel that way. There's so many people in my life that are very highly emotional. I have a high emotional intelligence that understands that my big feelings are not dangerous. I just need to express them. I'm going to talk about my partner, john, though, probably because he provides this safe space that allows me to be big and have these big feelings. But it's not the end of the world and it's not even that he's gonna necessarily try to fix it. I just get to express it, um, and he lets me, and then we move on with our day, kind of thing does that answer the question?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, that matters a lot to have people who you can like be full yourself with. Yeah, okay, so let's wrap it up with this bailey um, the average listener. Some of us Well, I know a lot of people listen to this podcast. Some people are in helping fields, some people are not and I think a lot of the you know, trauma conversation is especially helpful for people in helping professions, but there's a lot of takeaways for all of us all of us. So if you have any final thoughts on how this subject of understanding and compassion and connection can just help all of us in our everyday relationships, yeah, I think, regardless of what kind of profession you're in, you're a person, you love people, you've been loved by people.
Speaker 2:So I think it benefits everyone to just have even a basic understanding of what trauma is, what it can look like and how it affects our behavior, because again it grows that not only compassion for other people, but that self-compassion, and that self-compassion is what we know is the best way to build your overall compassion. So, if I can have micro-compassions with myself, oh man, I reacted really poorly in that situation. Okay, we did, let's give grace, let's dang it. Why did I sleep through my alarm again? No, let's actually be curious. Why did I sleep through my alarm?
Speaker 2:When I can give myself that kind of compassion, then I have so much more capacity for compassion for other people, so much more patience. I have a bigger window for dealing with just people being people. So I think it benefits all of us to educate ourselves on this Dealing with just people being people. So I think it benefits all of us to educate ourselves on this daily stress management, burnout prevention. We, regardless of what field you're in, if if you're not working, it doesn't matter. We are all susceptible to burnout if we are not managing our stress in a daily way, and it doesn't have to be.
Speaker 2:I really don't like the self-care that we see on the Internet, where it involves money it always involves money and like this big whole long thing where I have to set up a bowl of bath with, you know, six different candles and I don't want to do that. Literally the little daily things that people tell us to do, the experts tell us to do work, that people tell us to do that experts tell us to do work and we have to do them and you have to do it in a small, consistent way and that's when it works. In the book Burnout they use the analogy of a garden. You are never you'll have big days where you tend your garden, but most of the time it's little, tiny acts that cause the plants to flourish. If you think about your mental health as a garden, it's little, tiny, consistent, daily acts. It's not these big, long retreats, it's not these expensive things, maybe it's not even reading a book. It's little, tiny, daily, consistent acts that work for you in filling up that capacity.
Speaker 1:And what I'm hearing you say a lot is start small. Yeah, start with something that's going to be small enough to be sustainable. Yeah, because a lot of times, especially as women, we try to set big goals and have these big new routines and then it's hard to stick with them.
Speaker 1:Kendra Adachi, she's the lazy genius. She said that she always loved yoga and she valued yoga and she knew it was good for her. But she would try to do, you know, the 25 minute yoga routine every day and she could just never stick with it. And then she she uses the phrase embarrassingly small. She says I made my goal so embarrassingly small that I could not fail at it. I said I'm going to do one downward dog a day, Mm, hmm, and that's it.
Speaker 1:And then she did one downward dog a day and that's it. And then she did one downward dog a day and then eventually she stayed consistent with that and she could build on that to make something bigger. But that's been helpful for me. Like, just pick something small and if I can't do a 30 minute workout, I could go on a five minute walk and I'm still going to feel better than if I hadn't had any movement at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely yeah, consistency over intensity, always, always, always.
Speaker 1:So for our listeners who are like I'm geeking out. I love this topic. I want to learn more, Do you?
Speaker 2:have any recommendations of some next step resources that people could go to? Yeah, I would definitely read the book. It's called Burnout, and then there's a subtitle Unlocking the Stress Cycle. I believe that's the subtitle. And then there's a really awesome book called what Happened to you by Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey. That is, I think, the most accessible and appropriate book about trauma. So they just explain it in a really simple way that I think all of us can understand, regardless of your background. You don't have to have a background in mental health to really understand that book, I think, is probably the key resource if you want to understand more about trauma.
Speaker 1:Informed care, awesome. Anything else that you want people to know about the Enneagram 8s.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say especially Well, I would just like when you're thinking about any number, there's going to be so many factors that affect your number. It's OK if you don't perfectly fit into a box. If that number is serving you and helping you understand yourself and your person, it's okay if you don't hit every characteristic that's described in it. Like I said, I feel like the eight is mostly described in like a masculine way, and so you know I didn't even want to identify with that because I want to feel feminine. Leave room for the nuances right, it's not about boxes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're complex and you're allowed to be complex, and the Enneagram is a tool to help you in your relationships and understanding yourself and in growing in compassion. So it doesn't have to fit every little thing.
Speaker 1:I love it. I feel like we could. You know there's probably eight different things that you said that I could go on another hour episode about, right, like we could go so many different directions. So I just really love talking to you. I appreciate how deep you think. Thanks, it's really a pleasure to talk to somebody on this show who thinks really deeply and has convictions and has done research. But at the same time, I know that you are a person who is open-minded and flexible and wants to keep learning and wants to keep challenging what you know. So we just really appreciate having you here. Yeah, it was fun. Thanks for your time. Yeah, thank you.