You Don't Need a PhD to Help: Three Facts Everyone Can Use to Support Trauma Survivors
And they apply to workplaces, too!
Someone reached out recently to ask if there was anything they could do to support their partner, a high functioning individual who comes from a family affected by substance abuse and mental health issues.
Our conversation was a useful reminder of how much power we all have to make the lives of the people around us a little (or a lot!) better. People don’t need a fancy degree (as much as I rate them) or a PubMed subscription to become part of the solution to a complicated problem. Presence, positive intent and small personal actions can go a long way. I certainly have lived off kind words and thoughtful gestures coming from friends, managers and mentors for years.
So, for anyone interested to help a survivor in their personal or professional life: this one’s for you. As for my fellow survivors - let me know what resonates and how you’d like to see the basic science of trauma applied IRL!
1. Safety
If there is one thing you remember about trauma, I hope it’s this:
Trauma = lasting damage to a person’s sense of safety in the world.
Almost everything about how trauma works can be boiled down to the issue of felt safety.
Talking about safety can be misleading. Lots of people think of safety in terms of physical security, while survivors usually mean emotional and relational safeguarding.
Most adult survivors learn to function socially despite a constant effort to assess and re-establish safety in the background. This can show up as anxiety, tension, restlessness, inability to switch off or relax. Lots of survivors are excellent maskers, and therefore invisible to the untrained eye.
Anything you can do to scaffold a sense of safety in survivors helps. With friends and family this may mean:
creating space for the other person’s experience, opinions and choices without a need to assign value or meaning to it (difficult, I know)
being present and reliable, do what you said you’ll do when you said you’ll do it
stating your personal boundaries clearly and inviting the other person to do the same
modelling healthy relationship skills, particularly repair ones e.g. apologising, taking accountability for personal mistakes, asking for feedback.
All these behaviours will serve you well at work too, but in professional circumstances nurturing safety can also mean:
being clear on performance standards, deadlines and team roles
taking seriously instances where people are not comfortable with specific assignments, colleagues or work environments
applying the same rules to everyone
giving people voice and choice as often as possible.
When you notice someone becoming withdrawn, tense or defensive it’s worth pausing to ask yourself, has anything made this person feel unsafe? Is there anything I can do to help restore a sense of safety?
Amy Edmondson has done us all a great favour by putting psychological safety on the radar for organisations everywhere. Just keep in mind that psychological safety often means relational safety, and trauma survivors are particularly sensitive to it.
2. Recovery
When your sense of safety has taken a hit you often end up in a constant state of hypervigilance, scanning your environment for potential threats. This is exhausting. Add a demanding job, sensory overload (constant noise, bright lights, excessive touch etc.) and a lack of personal space or privacy (5 days/week in an open space, anyone?) and what you get is a recipe for burnout.
Everyone needs time to rest and recover, but that is truly critical for trauma survivors. Ironically, survivors tend to be particularly rubbish (excuse my Britishness) at carving that time out for themselves, hence your opportunity to intervene.
In personal relationships this can look like:
taking the lead and booking something you and the survivor will enjoy, e.g. dinner somewhere nice, theatre tickets, a 2-week trip to Costa Rica (okay, fine, that last one is there just in case my husband reads this)
letting the other person enjoy some alone time, no questions or judgement
being okay with the fact that clubbing or being squashed by thousands of sweaty, screaming Taylor Swift fans is not the other person’s definition of fun.
Burnout is a huge risk among survivors. To reduce that risk at work you might consider:
making sure that scheduled breaks are always taken
not springing new projects or overtime requests on people at the last minute or at 4pm on Friday
flexible hours and work from home whenever possible and in alignment with the survivor’s needs; lots of survivors for example struggle with attending therapy that clashes with work hours, a problem that could easily be resolved in partnership with a supportive manager
giving people some space! Not everyone thrives being around other people all the time. I was once part of a management team that always went for lunch together and did not rate my preference for a solitary mid-day break (as a feedback session with HR eventually revealed). Some people just crave some time alone and it has nothing to do with you. Can you facilitate that?
3. Adaptation
Trauma is not an illness, but a normal, instinctive and reversible adaptation to abnormal circumstances.
All mammals are born with trauma response capabilities. When we deal with overwhelming or life-threatening experiences, a set of specific biological and behavioral mechanisms rooted in subcortical components of our nervous system take over.
The only difference between trauma survivors and non traumatised people is the fact that the latter were lucky enough not to find themselves in traumatic circumstances.
Framing trauma correctly matters. If you perceive trauma survivors as fundamentally different, broken or sick, you operate from a “not one of us“ mentality. Othering survivors denies their full humanity, reduces them to stereotypes, and positions them as less worthy of empathy, dignity, or inclusion.
So what could this mean in practice?
Start from your own mindset and beliefs. What is your personal understanding or trauma? What thoughts, memories or mental imagines do words like trauma, survivor or CPTSD evoke in you? Do you have a neutral and compassionate stance on the topic?
Is the person you want to support aware of the fact that they’re using trauma responses that no longer represent the best choice? How can you work together to come up with new responses to present demands?
Were there instances where traumatic adaptations were labelled as overreacting, immaturity, being difficult or plain strange, and the core issue was not addressed? Is there an opportunity to correct perceptions of trauma, and what would be a practical and sympathetic way of achieving this? Is there any action that can be taken today to remedy mistakes made in the past?
If you feel awkward or insufficiently informed when it comes to trauma, don’t beat yourself up - there’s not much around exactly helping you be otherwise. Simply reading this makes you pretty special! And remember, we underestimate too often the impact we can have on other people’s lives, but the truth is we have more power than we think. Do not let yours go to waste.
My Interview Ready: Managing Mindset and Emotions course is now out! Newsletter subscribers can use code SUBSTACK20 for 20% off until 9th of July.
Thanks for tuning in,
Adina
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Dear Adina, what resonated most for me in this is the need to create psychological safety. I'm mainly seeing this through the lens of being a manager and mentor, and I'm aware that many people I work with are most likely dealing with trauma in some form or other
A skill all of us need to develop is to see our environment through others' eyes... Is our conduct trustworthy? Do we actually value our people? Is our word worth what we think it is?
As survivors we tend to be hyper sensitive to BS and deception. And, sadly, most corporate environments have ample supplies
"Lots of survivors are excellent maskers..." Great point, and so true, Adina. Excellent post.