In this episode of "Partnered with a Survivor," David and Ruth dive into the huge topic of professionals and their emotional safety and trauma as it intersects with working domestic abuse and child maltreatment. As professionals we all bring experiences and bias into our work, and some of those include our experiences of abuse and violence. Addressing the benefits, challenges and nuances that brings to our work is part of doing the work and increases safety and retention of workers. How does trauma and the judgements we make or the protective patterns of behaviors we adopt impact us in our daily work? Challenges for engagement, documentation, retention and the health and well being of workers are addressed from this lens of what we bring with our own experiences into our professional lives. How trauma needs to be addressed to create sustainability and safety for workers and better outcomes for victims and survivors. Ruth speaks about trauma overlaying on to our experiences both professionally and personally and that part of creating a safe and comfortable professional disclosure is creating a culture which keeps perpetrators and their choices in our view as the cause of that trauma. David & Ruth discuss how important it is to create organizational and system cultures that give permission for professionals to explore those experiences and their effects on their practice without judgement and with the acknowledgment that not all trauma impacts us negatively but can help us bring a sense of empathy and create a safe space for those who we work with. The book Trauma Stewardship by Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky is highlighted as a resource both for individuals, professionals and systems.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
In this episode of "Partnered with a Survivor," David and Ruth dive into the huge topic of professionals and their emotional safety and trauma as it intersects with working domestic abuse and child maltreatment. As professionals we all bring experiences and bias into our work, and some of those include our experiences of abuse and violence. Addressing the benefits, challenges and nuances that brings to our work is part of doing the work and increases safety and retention of workers. How does trauma and the judgements we make or the protective patterns of behaviors we adopt impact us in our daily work? Challenges for engagement, documentation, retention and the health and well being of workers are addressed from this lens of what we bring with our own experiences into our professional lives. How trauma needs to be addressed to create sustainability and safety for workers and better outcomes for victims and survivors. Ruth speaks about trauma overlaying on to our experiences both professionally and personally and that part of creating a safe and comfortable professional disclosure is creating a culture which keeps perpetrators and their choices in our view as the cause of that trauma. David & Ruth discuss how important it is to create organizational and system cultures that give permission for professionals to explore those experiences and their effects on their practice without judgement and with the acknowledgment that not all trauma impacts us negatively but can help us bring a sense of empathy and create a safe space for those who we work with. The book Trauma Stewardship by Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky is highlighted as a resource both for individuals, professionals and systems.
Now available! Mapping the Perpetrator’s Pattern: A Practitioner’s Tool for Improving Assessment, Intervention, and Outcomes The web-based Perpetrator Pattern Mapping Tool is a virtual practice tool for improving assessment, intervention, and outcomes through a perpetrator pattern-based approach. The tool allows practitioners to apply the Model’s critical concepts and principles to their current case load in real
Check out David Mandel's new book "Stop Blaming Mothers and Ignoring Fathers: How to transform the way we keep children safe from domestic violence."
Speaker 1: [00:00:00] All right, we're back [00:00:01][0.5]
Speaker 2: [00:00:02] we're back again for episode five, which is amazing. We're going to have to [00:00:06][4.1]
Speaker 1: [00:00:06] keep track as we go [00:00:06][0.8]
Speaker 2: [00:00:07] along. This is partnered with Survivor, and I'm David Mandel, executive director of the Safe and Together Institute. [00:00:13][5.9]
Speaker 1: [00:00:13] And I'm Ruth Stern's mentor and I'm the communications and learning manager. [00:00:17][3.9]
Speaker 2: [00:00:18] And these are our conversations recorded. And for those of are joining us in this, this process, we we were having lots of conversations. We're married and we work together and we're having lots of discussions around domestic abuse and gender and the ideas behind it and personal experiences we both had and. And Ruth came up with the idea that we should sit down and talk about it. So we get together on the couch, which is what we're doing now and with a cup of coffee and a dog and [00:00:50][32.1]
Speaker 1: [00:00:51] I have tea. [00:00:51][0.4]
Speaker 2: [00:00:52] Yes, your tea [00:00:53][0.6]
Speaker 1: [00:00:53] weight, just by the way. No milk or sugar in my tea. That's right. Just straight. Earl Gray. [00:00:59][6.2]
Speaker 2: [00:01:00] Yes. Yes. And that was for [00:01:02][2.0]
Speaker 1: [00:01:02] people in the UK, by the way, Austria or Australia. [00:01:04][2.1]
Speaker 2: [00:01:05] You know, and we we discuss different topics, whatever is kind of we wait for whatever kind of percolates top for us in a given week. And and the last couple of days we've been walking the dog and talking about worker safety and and worker trauma and and how that connects up with lots of things, including practice and and retention of workers and but also [00:01:33][27.8]
Speaker 1: [00:01:33] the ecosystem of of systems itself. You know, it's it's funny. I went, I really do want to acknowledge that there's so many different fields that we touch upon in our work and probably many different people who are listening to this podcast, whether they be professionals or they just are concerned about the issue because they're a survivor and they want to advocate for other people or for themselves in the system. And it's it's it's super hard to to know that our systems are broken and that people are being harmed by them and be an active worker in the system and really trying to to bring about safety and nurturance for kids and for victims and and change in family ecology. So first of all, I really want to acknowledge that that it can you can start to feel a little beat up on like, Oh, everybody in Child Protective Services is horrible. Well, no, that's not true. There's so many good people who are out there working to try to change that. But systems are an eco system. They are a reflection of, you know, the experiences, the traumas, the beliefs that we hold as human beings. And there really is no way to separate that out from the reality of how we how we work. [00:03:00][87.4]
Speaker 2: [00:03:02] I think, you know, you know where we'll get to directly to the topic around trauma and safety. But you're making me think about how hard I've worked over the years that when I've done case consultations or worked with professionals or trained on different topics that I try to help people understand that gaps in their practice or gaps in their awareness are usually the product, especially in this area of product of a system that doesn't treat, doesn't sorry, doesn't teach them, train them and support them in the direction of this kind of domestic violence informed and good practice. And so I ask people to, as you listen to this podcast, even to think about who as my teachers, whether in formal training or in, you know, supervisory or field instructors or whatever, you kind of however you learn to do whatever you do in the area of domestic violence. What could it be, you know, women sector work or even tells you to work or homelessness work or housing work rather than sex or domestic violence that you really ask yourself who of the people who taught you taught you to reflect or ask you to reflect on personal experiences that you had helped you process traumas you had in the workplace? And how they did that, how they taught you to to think about experiences that you had, maybe as a child or growing up or in relationship that may be impacting upon your ability to to think about the work and what's what you're seeing here from the families. And to me, it's always been important to really help people. So this is normal. We actually come in with us, all of us, and it's oftentimes our fields or our professional language or our professional atmosphere that somehow teaches us, Oh, that that stuff doesn't matter. You need, you need to keep that separate. And we, you know. [00:04:59][117.2]
Speaker 1: [00:04:59] Connector, it's it's I don't know that I told you the story, but I met with a friend the other day who shall remain anonymous, but who works in Family Court, right? And this is, you know, this is a big area that needs to be to needs a lot of work. And we all know this, right? We know that the challenge that Family Court presents to survivors and victims. And she's a woman and she's a survivor and she's very clear that is as much as she's in the system. And she has all these experiences that brought her into the system as a lawyer then chose to became a family court lawyer. And it was that direct experience actually of surviving abuse that has given her the grit and the commitment to get in there and roll up our sleeves and really try to make a difference. And you know, so so here is this this intrepid survivor, [00:05:59][60.1]
Speaker 2: [00:06:00] you know, fighter fighter, right? [00:06:02][1.5]
Speaker 1: [00:06:02] Activist, right? But nobody knows it, right? Nobody knows it because all she's really doing is doing a job and doing her job well. And and even that, in a sense, like, I want to take that from the the survivor standpoint. And I want to say that's an act of amazing resistance, right to just we talked about acts of resistance to two abusers by, you know, by victims and survivors, right? And if if you have never read about those, there's some great research about that that you can read about what are those acts of resistance. But in that moment when I was having that conversation, it really solidified to me. This is an act of resistance to the systems that then retraumatize us, right? And I just wanted to give her a big old hug. [00:06:49][46.8]
Speaker 2: [00:06:50] It is, and I we're trying to Ruth and I are trying to carve out on this podcast a more, more permissioned support and more acknowledgment that there are professionals in the field of domestic abuse and child welfare and substance abuse that that we're all coming in with a set of personal experiences. And that's OK. That's OK. And it's it's in a lot of places. We go that there's an unspoken taboo in many ways to to disclose because you'll be afraid to be seen as unprofessional and that you'll be afraid internally that you won't be able to do the work. And I learned that that within so child welfare and I'm always saying this about how much I I respect and am amazed by child protection workers, child welfare workers all over the world because they're going in to do work that our communities, our our society has asked them to do. Be the last line of safety and protection for kids, against parents and against the betrayal of love. Really, it's really it's sort of it's a thankless job and they do it in places that are dangerous and difficult in circumstances are dangerous and difficult. And so I, I I have been a advocate, a proponent, a cheerleader for for those people in those jobs for years. And they because they often get no thanks or little things and often are told, well, you should taking the kid sooner or or why do you let it take the kids at all? And and and you know, so I'm a big proponent of but I also very where I learned pretty quickly working inside the system, side by side, by those, by those professionals that there was there was often a they talking about a thin blue line, you know, sort of the law enforcement. There's often a sense of that that you had to have the grit to do the job. And there was often this fear that if I talked about places, I was scared or talked about places that I didn't know if I could do the job or uncertainties or doubts that you might be labeled by others as well. Maybe this job isn't for you. And sometimes that was said out loud and sometimes that was just lived experience inside people. And so I think this topic is really sensitive for lots of people from lots of different directions, because if we're really going to talk about worker safety and worker trauma, we have to really say it's OK to do that. And it seems so obvious. Yeah, but we need to look at our culture of our systems and say, Yeah, am I in an environment where I feel safe to talk about our relationship I was abused in or the bravery of this young man who I worked with, who's going on his first home visit with a man who was identified as a perpetrator. And he said My dad was violent. To me, this wasn't a private supervision conversation with me. And he said, I'm worried I'm going to go over the table with this guy or freeze up. Mm hmm. And that was such an appropriate use. So supervision and appropriate sharing, right? And I could give him guidance around. Right? [00:10:03][192.9]
Speaker 1: [00:10:03] Well, well, because because that fear which is legitimately based in trauma is what is going to stop him from engaging the perpetrator and doing his job and then it will cascade from there. So just to really hook it back up to say, Well, how does this impact workers in a very concrete way, which then impacts victims and impacts the outcomes? And that is is that a really common bit of trauma is freezing up? Mm-Hmm. Non-engagement and non-engagement. And so, you know, if if we have supervisors out there who are working with workers and they're trained in the safe and together model and they feel very frustrated at a worker who seems to be reticent to engage a perpetrator, then the next question becomes, What is it that I need to help you with, right? Because this is where the the society at large is discomfort with disclosure, right at believing domestic abuse and abuse are relationship issues, catching it as private relationship. [00:11:10][66.6]
Speaker 2: [00:11:11] And she's doing air quotes of him doing air quotes. You can't see the aircraft in the podcast air quotes around the word relationship. [00:11:16][5.2]
Speaker 1: [00:11:17] Yes, I see it as relationship issues in a private matter. Has what has kept it underground, right? And social workers and workers in the field do a wonderful job in educating people? Well, you know, a lot of them do in educating people and saying abuse is not a relationship issue. They give people permission to disclose. But but then we take that in the professional setting and we squelch that. And then we become very frustrated not understanding why our workers are not engaged in ways that we want them to be. And we never stop to say, Wow, that person may have something that's a small bit of traumatic experience that may be causing them fear and causing them to freeze or to run in the opposite direction and not be able to engage the issue. And and really, the human experience of of helping people through trauma is just the first thing to do is to name it, [00:12:15][57.9]
Speaker 2: [00:12:16] you know, and I, you know, you and I were talking the other day and I was thinking about this, about where I developed my attitude towards an openness to share and talk and the importance of that in terms of of of connecting the personal experiences up of the professional experiences. And I think it started for me when I first really got connected to this issue of male violence against women. And I really I I took it in a very personal way as what does it mean to me as a man? And what is it? How do I live in the world and how do I interact with women? And what's my responsibility for other men's behaviors in terms of sexual harassment or sexual assault? When really the first doorway in was really a learning that women I was close to were afraid of being sexually assaulted and navigate their lives? You know, with that fear in mind where they're going to go and when and timing. And I, for some reason, I really can't explain it to this day. I didn't otherwise it. I didn't say, Oh, is that men, those other guys? Somehow, I really took it into a personal realm and, [00:13:26][70.3]
Speaker 1: [00:13:26] well, other rising it is. This is a way to defend yourself against the reality it is. [00:13:31][4.4]
Speaker 2: [00:13:31] And I can't tell you why I did it, [00:13:32][1.4]
Speaker 1: [00:13:33] because you're not a violent man in [00:13:34][1.8]
Speaker 2: [00:13:35] this area, but I think but. But I think that exactly could have allowed me to do that. I could have said, Oh, those are bad men, right? And somehow I took it in as as being a question for me about who I was and a man as a man, and then as I went through my professional training around counseling and psychology. You know, much later I sought out a program, a program I was involved with for a long time that really put you as a person into the therapy in a sense as being that the professional that you could only go as far with your clients in some ways as you had gotten yourself in your own work. So there was a really big emphasis on [00:14:16][40.9]
Speaker 1: [00:14:17] doing your [00:14:17][0.2]
Speaker 2: [00:14:17] own work, doing your own work. And so I bring all that into this discussion and that ability to or understanding to be a good professional and to me, to be to me, I think a person that I want to be a sort of you want to keep working on those connections and looking at them and trying to understand them. And you're the instrument in some sense. And if you don't have the ability is, is that rose? [00:14:44][27.2]
Speaker 1: [00:14:45] I person, I kind of drag along all the tools that I've used behind me, right? Can you hear them when I walk? Yeah. [00:14:50][5.3]
Speaker 2: [00:14:52] And there's a lot of them and there are, but they're but they're but they're beautiful. A lot of them I get to laugh about, Oh, they do, but they're. Really there, you know? [00:15:00][8.1]
Speaker 1: [00:15:01] No, it's it is, it is, I think it is, it is that commitment to doing one's own self work and and going through the stuff I was about to curse again. I have a potty mouth, but I resisted. But going through the stuff and really shifting through it to see what it is that's there and how it's impacting, you know, my ability to be empathetic, my ability to navigate in the world and then creating strategies based off of that right to be able to to engage the world in the way that I believe is responsible and good and feels right to me as well. And and in a professional situation, you know what? What does that mean, you know, and it's going to mean different things in different places in a professional setting. We tend to approach trauma as if it is a deficit in people and it can be it can be a deficit. [00:16:03][62.0]
Speaker 2: [00:16:03] Don't mean to minimize it, [00:16:05][1.1]
Speaker 1: [00:16:05] not to minimize it. But the reality is, is that it can have a lot of varied effects that we never, ever talk about. Some of them being very positive, right? OK, then that's not a guarantee. It's not a guarantee because I dislike when people say to people who have had trauma in their lives, well, it made you a better person. Well, come on, that's not actually real. We all know that we all work with people who have had trauma and are really horrible people. It's made you more empathetic. Know it may be actually has not. It's not a guarantee that that does that. But the reality is is that your trauma really can inform you in a way that is deeply internal and personal and allow you to connect with other people in partner with them in a way. And one of the things that I can really see is that as a challenge to the new course that we're bringing out, partnered with survivors, partnering with survivors, partnered with survivors, the podcast that it it can be a challenge to our people for them to really connect without a partner if they can't connect with the trauma inside themselves and give themselves permission to really say that it's OK that this be a part of their their whole incomplete person, which is also the professional worker who is sitting in front of that other human being and trying to help them. And you know, I have the great liberty because there is no judgment by my boss who's, you know, sitting right there. That's right. No judgment about the about the trauma and the experiences that I've had that I get to give wide permission to people to disclose in a safe and comfortable way. But but them knowing that I can, I can sit in that space, not be traumatized by traumatized by their disclosures. It would take a whole heck of a lot and also not judge. [00:18:09][124.6]
Speaker 2: [00:18:11] Well, I think that I'm sitting here thinking about you and and and how one of the things I admire about you is your ability to see your own experiences around abuse, see your your own path through them. You know, the different ways you handle, the choices you made, the ways you you amazingly survive things and work to get yourself to college and and different things and that. But you don't look just through that lens and judge other people about their choices or paths or where they are. You have this wonderful, generous ability to see other people appreciate where they are and what they've faced, and the choices and how their lives may look different. Or because I think sometimes people who have, you know, we have all these words, I wonder, you know, have recovered or survived or thrived or, you know, these wonderful words. There's this weird angle sometimes where people can say and in wanting other people to be successful, too. Yeah, they can end up expressing unintended judgment. Right? You know, I did it. So why can't you? Why don't you? And you don't do that, and I really appreciate that. And I think one of the ways this shows up in the work is that I think people who are survivors of abuse, whether childhood abuse or adult and have worked hard to get out of really difficult circumstances, can I think with the most generous understanding that they want the other person to be just as safe to be just as successful, come across as judgmental and sort of ignore the differences and ignore the. The lack of resources, the lack of supports or just anything. But you don't seem to fall into that trap. [00:20:04][113.5]
Speaker 1: [00:20:05] I realized really when I was pretty young, I grew up, you know, with 55 other people, 35 other children and and we had this. We have this time periods in the in the cold, in the commune, where the beginning part was incredibly violent for a while. You know, with pregnant women being kicked down stairs and pictures being taken of. Women having to hold knives to their babies throats. I mean, this is true. This is true. Violence. Yeah. Terror, terror, terror. Daily terror. Right? And then, you know, a little cycle of of of calm. Right. And there were children that were being born and raised in those periods and then another cycle of complete and total terror. Right. And so having lived through those cycles and observed them, I really had to have hold empathy for all of the kids that grew up with me in the community. And I had to realize that that they all had different experiences. But some of them were similar to mine, but they were not the same. They're not the same, right? And it didn't impact them in the same way that it impacted me. And it was it was through really feeling connected to those 35 other children in ways that I've had to struggle with as well because I want to save them all. You know, I've wanted to save them all. But feeling connected to them gave me this sense of, OK, well, will this this person has experienced this, but they experienced it in a different way. Right? And this is the effect of it. And this person experienced this and you know, and some people went to jail and some people became abusers and some people became drug addicts and some people went off and got married and had happy families. And it was really a lesson to me in the sort of, I'm going to say, distal effects, because that's my job where my training comes from disaffected, [00:22:03][118.4]
Speaker 2: [00:22:04] great work just off [00:22:05][0.8]
Speaker 1: [00:22:05] of of abuse. So yes, that bootstrap mentality of I did it this way, why can't you and the world rests on all of my experience, right? Is not something that I can I can hook up with because my experience and my framework of the world was very communal, right? [00:22:25][20.1]
Speaker 2: [00:22:26] I think that, you know, to to tie this back to day to day practice and unpacking this, you know, you're you're at least I'm hearing whether you identify this, there's an openness and a curiosity that somehow you brought with you or you had other people's experiences. And I think part of when when I think about about one of the most important traits we can bring into our work and this is about our work with peers or our supervisory work or work with families is is this openness and curiosity? I think I think the curiosity to me is, is that it is biggest one of the bigger traits I want to cultivate in myself and encourage other people to think about because I oversaw a group of domestic violence consultants here in the U.S. for a number of years and trained them to work inside child protection systems. And and I would do regular weekly bi weekly monthly supervision with them, and they'd bring difficult cases to me. But they're difficult cases where often I'm working with this supervisor or worker and I'm struggling in my work, coaching them and working with them. Yeah. And I remember working through a very complex scenario with them and playing in a role playing their role. And there was a there was an example of a consultant working with the supervisor on this case and being frustrated and feeling like those who was being very reactive and was moving towards the removal of a kid. That really perception of myself was didn't need to happen, and we role play this out at different points of view and I won't go into the details. But at the end of it, it came out that this same supervisor had actually been working with the same family and a child had died. Mm hmm. And what was fascinating and powerful in the room was that all the judgment that had been there toward that supervisor and her decision-making evaporated and shifted into compassion. Once that piece of information, which wasn't openly available at the beginning, came out and became available. And and to me, it's it's watching those moments where I see that that that if we're not curious about that missing piece of information right about a person or and this is true for clients, particularly survivors and, you know, even perpetrators. And I can talk about that as well, but about our colleagues and our peers and really understanding where they're coming from. I think we're we're much more in danger of doing harm to one another and not talk about physical harm at this point, but emotional harm. [00:24:56][150.4]
Speaker 1: [00:24:57] And that doesn't mean. That doesn't mean having compassion for it does not actually mean being OK with it. It doesn't mean engaging in it, you know, and and that's true because I'm saying that from the survivor standpoint, that's right. I can have compassion and I had deep compassion for for the for the people who have been abusive to me in my life because I I know the content of their own trauma or I was told the content of their own trauma. That doesn't mean that I need to be OK with it. No, and that doesn't mean that I need to engage myself. [00:25:30][33.2]
Speaker 2: [00:25:31] No. And I think you're really that's that's the kind of finish that story, I think, because I think it is important to say that I see that curiosity and gaining that insight as critical to actually doing a stronger, more effective intervention or engagement with that person doesn't mean that their decision to remove a child, which which could be premature or not necessary because they're filtering the case through their lens of their trauma, their fear. That doesn't mean that my consultant or that person backs off of act gives them more capacity to engage and intervene. And I think that's I think we need to see the connection. And this is when you and I talk about worker sense of efficacy and retention of workers and the connection to unpacking trauma histories for the workers or worker safety fears, which are very legitimate in most cases that if we if we don't see the connection between addressing worker safety, worker trauma and greater efficacy, if we don't see the connection between that and greater retention, right? If we don't see the connection that a greater worker health, physical and emotional well-being, then we're missing one of the key points of this, which is these things are connected. They're not disconnected. [00:26:47][76.6]
Speaker 1: [00:26:48] Well, safety and nurturance has to extend to two people who are working within the industry. That's right. That's right. And you know, that's not just a measure of the basis of like physical safety, right? You know, there has to be this sense of the understanding of of how the work trauma because there's a couple of different boxes, because there's work trauma, there's the trauma that's acquired in the process of working in this field, working in domestic violence, working in child protection, working in the the fields, which sort of touch upon those things. And then there's the trauma that one brings right into their work, from their outside relationships and lives and families. And those are all very, very real. And you know, I loved I loved interviewing our champion for North America, Jennifer Sosnik, and and did a beautiful write up with her about, you know, how safe and together was deeply personal and then also deeply professional and how that informed her sense of empathy and her ability to do her work. And in a really positive way. And and that was such a powerful piece for me. You know, to grab and to push out for everybody to see because that's real. That holistic realization that the personal is part of our work and our work is personal. [00:28:19][90.8]
Speaker 2: [00:28:20] Right? I, the domestic violence consultants, when they were co-located inside child welfare, they would tell me all the time they would get disclosures in the bathroom, of course, and mostly women workers and with with other women. And they would get disclosures in the bathrooms that sometimes were about the worker's personal experience, what they were going through, what they had gone through or family or loved ones. And and. And I also remember doing training for corrections officers around doing work with perpetrators, offenders. And, you know, I get disclosures again from women, usually at the end of the session. And really, no one was saying, you know, you're talking about my best friend from college who was murdered by her boyfriend. You know, that's right. And and they were told to come to this training and they were told to come. And that's I think one things we need to recognize that people get into jobs and professions, whether they're like attorneys, for instance, or you know that they have a broader lens or they're looking at a whole range of kinds of practicing law. And then they move start gravitating towards family law and or child protection law and but don't realize that it includes domestic abuse and all of a sudden they're coming up against rubbing against personal experiences. And, you know, and so I think she was kind of taken aback. And here she is. She supposed to be learning professionally information to use in her job, but she's filtering all of it through and is being re brought back to or kind of confronted with a very important, tragic. Lost that she faced because of her friend and where does she go? You know, I mean, she talked to me for five minutes afterwards, but how does that get supported in the workplace? [00:30:07][107.1]
Speaker 1: [00:30:08] So I think I think that when and I'm going to use a word that I that I I don't really like and I'm going to explain actually what I mean by OK. His see the look on his face because he knows where I'm going. So, you know, just it. Like, I don't like trauma, trauma bonding, because because it hides a lot of realities. There is the word trauma bias, and that also hides a lot of realities. Yeah, because it's very negatively faced. It is. It is a term that can be used as a judgment, particularly towards professionals, right, who've disclosed right that you can't do your job because you have this race right? But the reality of it, as we've been stating, is that there's a there's a variety of outcomes and experiences that come from bringing your own self to your work and whatever conclusions you may have drawn about abuse, about relationships, about how to treat children, about gender roles, all of those, all of those we bring to our work, we we bring our our spiritual and religious training to our work. We bring we bring our family. We bring. [00:31:23][75.7]
Speaker 2: [00:31:24] So you know, those things, [00:31:25][1.4]
Speaker 1: [00:31:26] all of these things come to our work and and and really, there's the personal peace of saying, Well, what is it that I'm bringing to my work? And how am I overlaying my experience on other people, right? And in the places where we become the most uncomfortable are the places where those with those persons experience back up against our own experience and the judgments that we have made. So having been raised in a cult right, a very religious cult, I will start to feel my own trauma, start to come up when I interface with another human being who is super religious, who uses a lot of the same terminology as my family and who is a survivor victim, but who's struggling to see it because they believe it's part of their religious framework of the world, right? That's where my trauma get destroyed and I can make some judgments and become pretty flinty and hard and try to force or coerce that person. I'm going to call it coercive love or want to be loved [00:32:28][62.5]
Speaker 2: [00:32:29] where you want to [00:32:30][0.7]
Speaker 1: [00:32:30] be love, you want to sell them, you want to make them see, so you're going to doggone it, you're going to hit them over the head that you're going to tell them their experience and you're going to tell them who they are and you're going to make judgments on them. And basically, you're going to engage in a lot of the same behaviors that perpetrators engage in to get them to be safe. And so, you know, I kind of wanted to talk about that whole little cycle because it is a real thing, right? And I would say that the places where we feel the most uncomfortable, where we feel our anger really spark up, you know, just sort of rise up like lightning in a bottle or we feel our trauma sort of just poke its head out in really honest, expected ways. These are the places where we need to stop and we need to reflect, right? [00:33:15][45.6]
Speaker 2: [00:33:16] There's so much going through my head right now. And you know, one is just, you come up with these wonderful phrases. You know, the other one was like coercing safety or yes, yes, you know, and so I think saved. Yeah. And I want to do a shout out to a colleague of mine who I haven't talked to in a few years. But Laura der Lipski, that's really her name, and she's the author of a book called Trauma Stewardship, and I would encourage you to buy it. I would encourage you to look it up online. And then, you know, if you'd just type in trauma stewardship to a search engine, her website will come up and her book will come up and and that in terms of this and in terms of this work, that she is really, I think, one of those pioneers of the voice of compassion to us around what she calls trauma, exposure, reaction. And I love it because you were talking about the judgments in the language and problems. And I hear a lot of times people talk about these term secondary trauma or vicarious trauma or burnout. I mean, there's this this this is just this cottage industry of creating terms. And and Laura's contribution is trauma exposure reaction and the reason why she says it that way and and why I like it is it's it's it's meant to remove a lot of the bias, right? It just says that that working with families that experience violence and abuse. And she includes other kinds of trauma like like from climate change. I mean, she really goes that brought her thinking is really. Really wide is is is that that work changes us? Yes. And you were kind of alluding to that earlier when talking about your experience growing up, you know, in the commune is is if you just start with the the very natural language that of course, these experiences change us. Right. And some of those changes we feel are can be positive and some of them are negative. Or at least they're painful. And and some of it is the resilience and the resistance and the skills we learn. And and and she she comes to that conversation with such a spaciousness, right? And I brought her to speak with organizations and watch people respond to that. And given the book to people, in fact, people who work for me and said, We give you a computer, you must, you know, we give you other tools. Here's a book to to give you permission to talk about your, your trauma and how you're managing it and and the stories we would hear. You know, one one man who said that he started feeling toxic going home to his family and didn't know how to talk about his work life. And another one who told the story about their their daughter who who said, Mom, you're crazy. You don't let me go to sleep overs. You don't let me do this. You don't believe that because the mother had worked inside child welfare and had seen all these things that happened to kids on sleepovers or Sunday school. And so her move to protection was, you can't do those things. Yeah. And her kids perspective as mom, you're crazy, right? And it just we want Ruth and I part of what we want with a podcast in general. But for sure, this episode is to create permission to kind of do a little bit of permission [00:36:35][198.4]
Speaker 1: [00:36:35] and comfortable disclosure. That's right. And and and and really systems beginning to have a policy right of a safe and comfortable disclosure for their workers in order to help them not just navigate the the trauma of the work, but also as a stopgap to understand where that trauma may be impacting the work. You know, we have such worker turnover in the United States. I don't know what the averages are in other countries, but we we only have social workers last in the field for about eight months. [00:37:14][38.5]
Speaker 2: [00:37:14] Yeah, 18 to two months. Two years, I think. Yeah. [00:37:17][2.8]
Speaker 1: [00:37:18] And so that presents a lot of funding challenges. If we were to just really break it down into concrete terms to the cost of society, that that trauma from abuse is having, you know that that's a lot of funding challenges for four agencies. That means they have to on board and they can really train a huge investment which takes funds away from their bottom line of actually helping people. And so coming up with concrete strategies within systems, within agencies for people to have a safe, a safe right and comfortable disclosure, right, which then follow steps to allow them and assist them to ascertain how to manage that trauma. How is that trauma impacting them in their internal stances, in their judgments towards the people that they're working with without any particular combativeness? This is just a very, you know, clean exercise and thought, you know, it doesn't need to be judgment. It doesn't need to be a review mark. Or it is simply how is our trauma impacting us in our work? [00:38:25][66.8]
Speaker 2: [00:38:25] And we've we've started carving out more and more space. You know, one of the one of the original impetus is for the entire model, you know, in the creation of model and its perpetrator pattern based focus in referring to the statement, the other model is, you know, which was conversations with child welfare worker statutory child welfare workers about domestic violence cases and asking them questions and and and realizing that they weren't being taught and trained. So again, having a systems you that it wasn't the failure of this individual worker was is really the expectations of the system and the training from the system about what's important and what's not, and that people weren't being told to focus on patterns of behavior. And one of the ways I tried to introduce the importance of that was not only to sort of be able to tell the story of the harm to the kids and the impact on family functioning. But was how could you assess your own safety as a worker who was in the community going into the home? Right? You know who didn't have the luxury of a court building with with safety of maybe law enforcement or other people there on site, but we're really going out [00:39:32][66.6]
Speaker 1: [00:39:33] into the middle of [00:39:33][0.7]
Speaker 2: [00:39:33] nowhere, into middle of nowhere, literally sometimes or. But but to ask some basic questions is this person have a pattern of family violence only or a wider pattern of violence against other people? Or is it coercive control toward, you know, and how have they responded to intervenors, law enforcement, other people in the past? Really basic questions, and they weren't being guided by their supervisor managers to ask or identify the. Factors and into me from the beginning of this, this work, which goes back over 20 years now for me. You know, it was that was about taking care of those people, Typekit a professional [00:40:10][37.0]
Speaker 1: [00:40:11] that's fairly basic, [00:40:12][0.6]
Speaker 2: [00:40:12] actually, you know, and I think it's it's a it's it's we're trying to really bring that forward even more now in our work. To say more pointedly, here is for supervisors. Here's worker safety questions. I'm, you know, I'm sitting here with our worker safety card and you know, and you know, going back to the the point that you were asking one of the five questions we asked supervisors to ask is to workers bringing home yourselves so we need to change our policy and practices. Are there any prior experiences you've had that you think are impacting your sense of safety, right for yourself or the family? And we tried to frame it as a broad question about experiences that allows a worker to choose to talk about personal because you have to be careful. Mm-Hmm. As a in a professional setting that you're not reaching too far into people's own own personal business. Right? I believe in that both ethically and legally and practically that privacy. But but you do have the ability to invite disclosures. You have the ability to say in this way. Are there any experiences you want to talk about that you think are impacting, right? [00:41:17][64.3]
Speaker 1: [00:41:17] But creating the space for that is a very important piece. And again, I'm going to go back to the to the the truth commissions, and they're their outcomes with disclosure. And that is is that in a culture that is combative towards survivors or who judges their experiences as being detrimental to them in a personal manner as a personal mark against them that somebody else chose to batter or abuse them, it doesn't make any sense, right? Then that is not a safe and comfortable place to disclose, and nobody will want to do that unless there is an emergency situation where they are trying to ring the bell and warn everybody that there is a big problem and nobody's paying attention, and they will do that because they feel a sense of responsibility. So it's super important for us to create this safe and comfortable culture, [00:42:06][49.3]
Speaker 2: [00:42:07] and this is where I will always talk about things. The work being holographic is the word I used to use all the time, which was be like that with holograms, that the bigger image contains the smaller images in this parallel, you know, parallels and all this similarities our identities all the way through the system and through the image and and and the work here is holographic in the sense of our approach to family members, to survivors and families. We wanted to be strength based. We want to be able to see the use, the word resistance. We wanted to see the the their strengths, their protective capacities. We don't want survivors, excuse me, we don't want survivors to feel that disclosing about the violence is opening themselves up to judgment and attack. [00:42:59][52.3]
Speaker 1: [00:43:00] Well, I think that I think that then [00:43:01][1.1]
Speaker 2: [00:43:02] I think that's really important. [00:43:03][0.9]
Speaker 1: [00:43:03] The place that that allows for that safe space to be created is that we always focus on the fact that somebody else chose to [00:43:11][7.7]
Speaker 2: [00:43:11] do that, chose to do it right and [00:43:12][1.2]
Speaker 1: [00:43:13] somebody else chose to do that harm. And in in doing that, that that gave us the permission for the person who experienced unwittingly without permission. They did not grant that precious premise person permission to harm them, that they have the safe and comfortable place to say This is what happened to me, right? Just with it's clean, it's clear there's somebody else chose to do the harm. [00:43:38][25.2]
Speaker 2: [00:43:39] So creating a culture for professionals to talk about their experiences is connected to the culture we create. We're survivors who our clients can talk about their experience. These cannot be disconnected. I think that's part of the thing that I think we're finding in a good way, which is that the more safe and together is out there making this conscious link between survivor strengths. There need to be to be able to disclose the abuse without a fear of judgment against them for what somebody else did. Like you just said and that particularly in the context of gender, where women are often feeling like as a parent to talk about the abuse that they're experiencing or their partner's behavior is going to be a mark against them as a parent. [00:44:23][44.0]
Speaker 1: [00:44:23] Well, because you know, it's it's not just, you know, we have a whole culture that essentially silences victims on a lot of different levels. It's not just about being a parent. It's that, you know, I fully knew if I disclosed certain things at certain times that I would be, I would be in danger or I would be legally punished for them. I would be threatened. I would be whatever it was, that all. So it's all of the above. You have to say all the above. [00:44:52][28.6]
Speaker 2: [00:44:52] No. And I think we want to create workplaces to tie this back to workplace worker safety. [00:44:56][4.1]
Speaker 1: [00:44:57] We don't want workers to feel threatened as if their job is threatened as if it's a mark against them, right? If they disclose that they've had a personal experience of violence and somebody harmed them. And and in talking about those in creating a space for having that conversation or even in just creating a passive space where it's stated that we acknowledge that all people come to their work with different experiences, we hold empathy for that. And we also want to address the places where that may impact the work adversely because it can it can impact the work positively. [00:45:35][38.0]
Speaker 2: [00:45:36] I think it's I've had, you know, we can create these spaces and I have had these experiences where, you know, I've had people working for me come to me and say, Look, I had a case. You know that where a woman died was murdered by her partner in this case has reminded me of that one, and I can't tell if I'm seeing it accurately. Like, I'm using my experience, which is good to see the level of danger accurately here. Or I'm superimposing my fears, right? [00:46:03][27.0]
Speaker 1: [00:46:03] And that's what we have [00:46:04][0.6]
Speaker 2: [00:46:04] to figure it out for. And that is to me is that was the most mature, responsible kind of way to kind of do it is that we went to an environment where our practitioners, our colleagues are bringing that for themselves and opening up on the table for other perspectives so they can get input and say, No, no, you're actually seeing this accurately. And I see it the same way. So don't be afraid that your prior experience is coloring it, you know, versus, you know, somebody else who doesn't do that or brings their their prior experiences and attitudes and beliefs and experiences undigested. [00:46:39][34.9]
Speaker 1: [00:46:40] And there's another there's the other side of that. And I really want to acknowledge it because it's super important. I know that my experiences in my childhood have made me super sensitive to being able to see where there's abuse, right? And acknowledge it even when it's never being spoken and find a way to sit down with it and allow that person to give them permission to tell me their own story in a safe way. Right? That's the benefit. So I want to make an acknowledgment because we're we're almost about to end. And, you know, being an American who went to Australia, you know, for the first time last year and we're going back in just a couple of weeks, we're going to be in New Zealand and Australia for a couple of weeks doing work. I was so incredibly touched, by the way, that they acknowledge the original owners of the land. There was very touching as an American to watch, and I wish that we did that here. Yeah, me too. Now I know this seems a little disconnected, but it's not. I want to acknowledge that everybody listening to this podcast has their own personal and deeply impactful experiences with violence and abuse, right? And I want to acknowledge that they are valuable and that they are out there working in the world to do good right and they are actively working against sometimes the legacy that somebody selfishly handed them. And they are resilient and they are impactful, right? And they are making a difference in this world, and I really want to acknowledge that, right? So that's my acknowledgment to you. [00:48:22][102.4]
Speaker 2: [00:48:23] I think that's wonderful. And I think it's it's um, I'm I'm in complete agreement with you that I that I think that we have to do better as leaders and systems, as professionals, as fields to give permission support and the tools to create space for four professionals who are living inside their their personal experience of of violence or their professional experiences of violence to get the support and they need to get the help. But to just be able to talk without feeling like that, they're somehow going to be judged. Um, I see this with attorneys that there's so little talk in the in the legal field around how the work affects them. And I guess I'm going to shout out to Laura V. engineer Lipski. And again, I encourage you to go out and and buy trauma stewardship. It's not my book, it's her book and and read it because it really is one of the best teachers in this area. I've had people who read the book and said, Well, I didn't. It's the first time we talked about exposure to trauma. As a professional. I don't feel judged was the feedback from somebody. Somebody else said after there, I heard that after they went to her talk, that they that this was a new work or had been the field a couple of years that she slept through the night for the first time she'd been in the job. I mean, these are the things we don't talk about. A lot of times, you know. The people who go home and drink after work and or they can't talk to their families about what they do because either there's there's barriers on what they can talk about, but they don't know how to give them that information. They don't want it. I think this thing about feeling toxic, you know, it's really stuck to me was that guy who said, I don't I don't know how to talk to my family because I feel toxic because of what I've done. So I'm really with you around sort of giving the tools and and really being compassionate to ourselves as professionals. Yeah. And and we're going to come back to this topic again. I have a feeling worker safety. [00:50:34][131.5]
Speaker 1: [00:50:35] Well, there's a really good feeling clicked off one box, really of the worker safety. So yeah, we were pretty much all about worker trauma in this one. Yeah. [00:50:44][8.8]
Speaker 2: [00:50:44] And I think it's I think this is just such a partner to both of us. I think we're going to we're going to come back to this again. So for the [00:50:50][6.3]
Speaker 1: [00:50:50] my name is Ruth [00:50:51][0.6]
Speaker 2: [00:50:51] and I'm David and [00:50:52][0.8]
Speaker 1: [00:50:52] and I have drama. [00:50:53][0.8]
Speaker 2: [00:50:56] Yeah. And I just [00:50:57][0.8]
Speaker 1: [00:50:57] disclosed, I don't know how many people have [00:50:59][1.8]
Speaker 2: [00:50:59] and I have. I have bias and issues and things that I'm talking about. And but I do think, you know, we can talk more future things about that journey for me as a man around around these issues. Yeah. Safer Together Institute AECOM is the website. You know, find us on Facebook Wryness on Twitter [00:51:17][17.8]
Speaker 1: [00:51:18] and give us feedback. If if you like this podcast, if, if you have suggestions for topics, please let us know. [00:51:24][5.9]
Speaker 2: [00:51:24] Yeah, and we will be back again. This is episode five, which we're talking about worker safety and trauma, and please share this podcast with other people if you like it. We're building up a great listenership and we want to keep getting the word out. Okay, take [00:51:38][13.9]
Speaker 1: [00:51:38] care. Bye bye. [00:51:38][0.0]
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