Introduction to Restoring Sanctuary
Part 1
Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes, Executive Director AllCEUs Counselor Continuing Education
Podcast Host: Counselor Toolbox
Based in part onâŚ
Objectives
~ Review types of trauma
~ Define sanctuary
~ Explore where to create sanctuary
~ Identify why sanctuary is important to change
~ Learn about the impact of trauma
Types of Trauma–Individual
~ Physical, emotional or sexual abuse victim or witness (At home, in the community, at schoolâŚ)
~ Neglect
~ Household member with addiction or significant mental illness
~ Gaslighting
~ Accident, illness, medical procedure, birth trauma (Medical trauma)
~ Historical trauma
~ Natural and man made disasters
~ Forced displacement
~ Military or community violence
~ Traumatic grief or separation (death, jail, divorce)
Trauma and the Organization
~ An estimated 70 percent of adults in the United States have experienced a trauma (employees, caregivers, providersâŚ)
~ This means that traumatized individuals who are likely reenacting their own trauma dynamics are the ones running the environments in which people are supposed to recover from trauma.
~ Organizations are living, adaptive systems which are vulnerable to stress, particularly chronic stress.
~ Organizations can be traumatized and the result of traumatic experience can be devastating
Types of Trauma–Organization
~ Physical, emotional or sexual abuse primary or secondary victimization
~ Neglect (Senior management not providing necessary tools, resources, safety)
~ Team members or clients with addiction or significant mental illness
~ Gaslighting
~ Historical trauma
~ Natural and man made disasters
~ Forced displacement (Transfers, program closing, terminations)
~ Community violence (Bad reputation in the community)
~ Traumatic grief or separation (death, jail, divorce)
Impact of Trauma
~ Issues of exposure to trauma and adversity in childhood are central to the development of most mental illness
~ Early attachment determines how people interpret and interact with the world
~ Biological (stress, hypocortisolism, sleep difficulty)
~ Emotional (triggers and regulation, inability to grieve and anticipate the future)
~ Cognitive (attitude, perception, schemas, efficacy (concrete operational and egocentric))
~ Social (empathy, trust, communication, boundaries, difficulty with authority)
Impact of Trauma
~ Behavioral Urges, Knowledge, Emotion, Physiological reactions (UKEP)
~ Are stored and assimilated or accommodated
~ Can be recalled
~ When exposed to highly stressful situations the brain is flooded with neurochemicals that make it difficult to remember and integrate what is going on
~ Poorly integrated UKEP can cause hypervigilance, body memories, flashbacks
Impact of Trauma
~ Failure to integrate experiences leads to
~ Adaptive coping which leads to
~ Habit formation
~ Symptoms/Clinically significant distress
~ Like assembling a piece of furniture and having 6 parts left over.
Symptoms that Cope with Violence
~ Aggression (verbal and physical)
~ Self-injurious behavior (cutting, addictions, eating disorders)
~ High risk behaviors
~ âAntisocialâ behaviors
~ âBorderlineâ behaviors
~ Creating drama and chaos
Why Sanctuary is Important to Change
~ The impact of traumatic experience is so profound because it tends to freeze children in time, trapping them in a seemingly endless feedback loop of destructive repetition that is conveyed from one generation to the next via disruptions in attachment relationships
~ The focus of attention changes from exclusively trying to control the childâs behavior â or misbehavior to the true complexity of the childâs dynamics and injuries
Creating Sanctuary
~ Refers to the shared experience of creating and maintaining safety within any social environment
~ Home
~ School/Work
~ Hospitals/Clinics
~ Doctors Offices
~ Public Buildings
~ Correctional and Court Systems
~ Child Welfare
~ Neighborhoods
Necessary Skills
~ Safety and self care. (You deserve it)
~ Give examples of poor safety skills as a result of trauma exposure
~ Emotion regulation and distress tolerance
~ Cognitive (Attitude, perception/perspective, schema evaluation, self-efficacy, problem solving)
~ How does trauma impact this area?
~ Communication (Mindfulness, assertiveness, boundary setting)
~ Give examples of problems with communication resulting from trauma.
~ Judgement skills (Mindfulness, tuning in, problem solving)
~ In what ways is judgment impaired as a result of trauma?
~ Grieving and envisioning
Summary
~ There are many different types of trauma
~ Organizations, like people can be organized around crisis and create trauma for employees as well as for clients
~ Many presenting symptoms in clients and crisis organized organizations can be traced back to behaviors to protect from trauma
~ Learn why creating sanctuary is so important to change and skills necessary for sanctuary in interpersonal relationships, organizations and communities
~ Next session is a brief introduction to assessment of the organization for trauma-prone characteristics and interventions to address them
Introduction to Restoring Sanctuary
Part 2
Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes, Executive Director AllCEUs Counselor Continuing Education
Podcast Host: Counselor Toolbox
Objectives
~ Learn how to assess the individual and organization for symptoms of trauma
~ Identify the Sanctuary commitments
~ Discover how to use the SELF model for interpreting individual and organizational behavior
Assessing the Organization
~ What evidence do you see of these things in yourself, colleagues, providers as the result of trauma exposure?
~ Biological (stress, hypocortisolism, sleep difficulty)
~ Emotional (triggers and regulation, inability to grieve and anticipate the future)
~ Cognitive (attitude, perception, schemas, efficacy (concrete operational and egocentric))
~ Social (empathy, trust, communication, boundaries, difficulty with authority)
~ In what way do these symptoms compound stress or recreate trauma for people who have been traumatized?
~ In what ways do these things impact the organization?
Organizational Evaluation
~ What evidence do you see of these things in your organization?
~ Loss of basic safety and trust (S)
~ Loss of emotional management (E)
~ Inability to deal with loss (L)
~ Inability to resolve/integrate experiences for a growth opportunity (F)
~ Problems with cognition, perception and problem solving
~ Communication issues
~ Problems with authority
~ Confused sense of justice
Assessing the Organization
~ Crisis-driven organizations
~ Sacrifice communication, feedback loops, participatory decision making and complex problem-solving due to chronic stress
~ Shift to an increasingly hierarchical, top-down control structure that discourages creativity, innovation and risk-taking resulting in an inability to manage complexityâ (Bloom, 2005)
Impact on the Organization
~ Chronic stress ď Chronic crisis ď Lack of safety and basic trust ď Loss of emotional management ď Communication breaks down ď Conflict increases ď Repetition of failed strategies ď Learned helplessness ď Loss of critical thinking ď Silencing of dissent ď Increased authoritarianism ď Unresolved issues and demoralization
~ How do people feel within these environments?
~ In what ways does this parallel prior toxic experiences?
Behavioral Evaluation
~ S=In what ways did the person not feel safe
~ How could he/she be helped to feel safe
~ E=What vulnerabilities, triggers/re-enactment stimuli, or skill deficits led to inability to effectively identify emotions in self and others and effectively regulate personal emotions and behaviors?
~ What needs to happen to scaffold emotional management?
~ L= In what ways did this event represent a loss or a recapitulation of a loss? (Safety, love, power/control)
~ F= What does this person need to be able to restore hope, purpose and empower positive change?
What are the Benefits of Sanctuary
~ Improved communication
~ Improved social skills and relationships
~ Decreased violence
~ Improved judgment and problem solving
~ Fewer symptoms of trauma
~ Improved job/work/school performance
~ Organizational
~ Reduced turnover
~ Improved morale
Sanctuary Perspective
~ What happened to you instead of what is wrong with you.
~ More time focusing on the solution than the problem
SELF
~ The 4 key interactive aspects from bad experiences
~ Safety: Maintaining safety in self, relationships, and environment
~ Self Protection
~ Self Knowledge
~ Self Esteem
~ Self Efficacy
~ Self Discipline
~ Self Control
SELF
~ The 4 key interactive aspects from bad experiences
~ Emotions:
~ Identifying feelings
~ Modulating affect in response to memories, persons, events
~ Trading actions for words
SELF
~ The 4 key interactive aspects from bad experiences
~ Loss: Feeling grief and dealing with personal losses
~ Grieving
~ Saying goodbye/integration
~ Refraining from re-enactment
~ Moving on
~ Feeling grief and dealing with personal losses
~ What losses did the person experience or were triggered as a result of this experience?
SELF
~ The 4 key interactive aspects from bad experiences
~ Future:
~ Trying out new roles, ways of relating and behaving as a âsurvivorâ to ensure personal safety and help others
~ Learn ways of relating and behaving as a âsurvivorâ to ensure personal safety and help others
~ Enhance vision of the future
Sanctuary Commitments
~ NonviolenceâPhysical and Verbal (Trust)
~ Helping to build safety skills and a commitment to higher goals
~ From hostile environments (including microaggressions) to hospitality (physical, social, moral, and psychological safety)
~ Refusal to retaliate with physical or psychological violence
Sanctuary Commitments
~ Emotional Intelligence (Seeing Patterns, affect management)
~ Capability of individuals to
~ Recognize their own emotions and those of others
~ Discern between different feelings and label them(and their causes) appropriately
~ Use emotional information to guide thinking
~ Leaders understand that a key part of their job is to recognize, contain, and manage emotions in their organization
Sanctuary Commitments
~ Social Learning (Constantly learning, problem solving)
~ Learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling healthy interactions
~ From top-down directing to a âliving-learningâ environment
~ Everyone â clients, staff, leaders â is expected to learn and contribute to the learning of others all the time
~ Become aware of, articulate, and unlearn established patterns and routines (What are some toxic routines at your agency? That you have?)
~ Adapts to changing conditions
~ Values everyone in the learning environment
Sanctuary Commitments
~ Open Communication (Maintaining a flow of ideas)
~ Helping to overcoming barriers to healthy communication, reduce acting-out, enhance self-protective and self-correcting skills, teach healthy boundaries
~ Organizational and interpersonal transparency (Know the whys and eliminate ulterior motives)
~ Everyone communicates directly and, as much as possible, using words to convey what they mean
~ Leaders not only practice the ability to handle dissent when it occurs but to actually search for it.
~ How is this done in an organization? In therapy? In parent-child relationships?
~ What are the organizational âundiscussablesâ?
Sanctuary Commitments
~ Social Responsibility (Common goals and focus)
~ Helping to rebuild social connection skills, establish healthy attachment relationships
~ Develop a commitment to balancing individual rights and responsibilities with the rights and responsibilities of the community instead of the âreciprocity ruleâ (react as the other did, and expect the other to do as you did) to
~ Distributive justice (how resources are allocated) â
~ Procedural justice (principles that govern decision making processes, rewards and punishments)
~ Interactional justice (how one person treats another)
~ Shared ethical principles
Sanctuary Commitments
~ Democracy (Importance of each personâs contribution)
~ Helping to create civic skills of self-control, self discipline, and administration of healthy authority
~ Communicating that everyoneâs participation as a personal responsibility
~ Tools needed for democratic participation
~ Expressing oneself
~ Deeply listening to others
~ Conflict management
~ Compromise
~ Self-control, self-discipline, self-respect
~ Respect for others
Sanctuary Commitments
~ Growth and change (Vision to propel innovation)
~ Helping to restore hope, meaning, purpose and empower positive change
Summary
~ Trauma takes many forms and represents a sense of a loss of safety
~ Sanctuary can be created in the home, community and organization
~ Sanctuary helps people become aware of the function of their behaviors and break unhelpful re-enactment cycles
~ Organizations are susceptible to trauma and can retraumatize individuals
~ The SELF model helps people interpreting individual and organizational behavior in terms of its impact on safety, emotional regulation, sense of loss and hope for the future.
Services Provided by the Sanctuary Institute
~ The Implementation of the Sanctuary Model is executed through a combination of trainings and consultations provided by the Sanctuary Institute Faculty members that move organizations through a series of steps to align the practices and attitudes of an organization toward a trauma-informed perspective.
~ Sarah Yanosy, LCSW, Director of the Sanctuary Institute
~ Andrus Childrenâs Center
~ 1156 North Broadway Yonkers, NY 10701
~ Phone: 914â965â3700 x1117
~ Email: syanosy@jdam.org