By Shenandoah Chefalo, Faculty, The Center for Trauma Resilient Communities
[Editor’s note: The following article was originally published in the National Child Support Enforcement Association’s May 2020 issue of the Child Support CommuniQue (CSQ) and is reprinted with permission.]
Panic is a real feeling. Anxiety about the unknown is real. Recognizing our actual feelings is a good first step in understanding if we are in survival mode. This “survival brain” or trauma brain as we often refer to it, is a necessary and lifesaving auto response we have to real life threat. However, it can be sent into over-drive and then become our automatic response instead of our life-saving response.
This “triggering” can have life-altering and sometimes deadly consequences. It’s impossible in a short article to rationally explain all the ways living in survival mode can affect you, but it has a broad range including migraines, rashes, hormonal imbalance, tiredness, digestive problems, tension, trouble focusing, insomnia - to even more severe illness.
I talk often about my survival, and the lifetime I have spent trying to rewire myself from those learned conditions. During this current pandemic, I have had to have some hard and difficult realizations about the work I still have left and convincing myself that I also now know what to do instead. That still doesn’t alleviate some of the triggers Coronavirus is having in my life. For starters, feelings surrounding scarcity and lack are real - and those feelings can be all too familiar.
On March 12, I was triggered just reading about how the stock market was at levels similar to Black Monday in 1987. In short, 1987 was a horrible year for me, lack was everywhere, and frankly I was starving to death (quite literally). It was the year before I was ultimately placed into foster care, and I was absolutely doing everything I could to survive. I had to have a very tough and candid conversation not only with myself, but with my support systems about what I was experiencing. I needed their help.
Asking for help is a first step, but part of what I have been working on with individuals and organizations is having a self-care plan for themselves, their teams, and those that they work with and serve. Not just for daily care – hopefully you know and remember that daily care is doing those things that bring us absolute joy and fill us up – but also addressing those issues within our personal development that can prevent our growth. We often find those things we work on when we look at our trigger care. You know, those things that “push our buttons” or send us into negative swirls. We often blame the button-pushing on how others behave, but in truth, it is often hitting at a piece of our own personal development that we need to work on.
These areas are crucial, but right now, we need a plan for how to care for ourselves in crisis – our crisis care. How will you care for yourself when chaos ensues, the unknown? Some people in trainings don't want to think about it or have a tendency to think they don't have to worry about it. But if nothing else, this virus is proving that chaos can happen when we least expect it, from places we couldn't even imagine, and we need to have a plan.
It is critical when we talk about wanting to implement trauma-informed care within our organization to understand that the work really does start on an individual basis. That we each need to take extraordinary care of ourselves so that we can be overflowing enough to give to our teams. When we are overflowing enough individually, that overflow can pour over to our teams, allowing us to support those teams to be overflowing enough to give to those that we serve.
So, please, please, please, for your own mental and emotional health – how will you care for yourself during this time? Who can help? What do you need? Our goal at the Center for Trauma Resilient Communities is to keep as many adults well-regulated and functioning within their executive functioning brain, because many others in our community are going to need us, and we must care for ourselves before we can properly care for others.
EASY TIPS:
- Appoint someone from your team to lead wellness.
- Ensure every meeting, whether virtual or in person, starts with connection first.
- Especially during tele-meetings make sure collaboration is still happening. Is everyone’s voice being heard?
- Slow Down and Let Go. Everyone is experiencing a new type of normal, and our pace of work needs to make space for our grief. Slow your pace!
- Employees follow leaders. If you want staff to take care of themselves, you need to take care of yourself. If you want those you work with to care for themselves, you need to care for yourself. Monkey See, Monkey Do!!
Learn more about self care and team care during times of isolation by watching my May 21, 2020, webinar recorded by the Michigan Judicial Institute.
