Challenges Dealing with Trauma

  • I am not qualified to talk about their (org) trauma
  • They are not ready to open to talk about their trauma
  • How to talk about risk w/o creating too much fear
  • Hopelessness / apathy of self
  • their trauma affects their ability to change
  • Unable to travel to field office (no resources, too dangerous, no trust, ..)

Suggestions for Dealing with Trauma

   

  • [Session with counselor on the boundaries (of trainer)] to recognize who we are in the process, and what our boundaries are when approached by 'client'. To be able to: 1- acknowledge/recognize the other person's reach-out, 2- be able to articulate the limits/boundaries of our abilities. 
  • To be able to know what we know, and  is irresponsible to pretend to know beyond your actual abilities. It is ok if possible to:
    • provide a space for it to take place, so the person can debrief.
    • be comfortable with NOT providing the solution.
  • Go back to adult learning principles. Adults will learn and capture what is most useful to them at the moment (they won't take in more than they are 'able/willing/ready' to). 
  • Sometimes it is important to take a step back when the organizational level trauma is a clear impediment to any reasonable chance at success.
  • Self-care:
    • food/rest/exercise
    • have the emotional support group as well as the tech-support
  • When there are people who are actively "sabotaging" your work / training (i.e., IT person saying no to everything), make allies out of them from the start. Same with staff who are resistant to change / learning. 
  •  Recognise that sometimes you will need to compromise on the strictness of the security standard in order to convince people about the larger goal. 

How to talk about risk without creating too much fear

  • warn them that now we will demistify and in the process fear will come - get consence - point that ways to mitigate will come after the 'scary' part
  • always have time to provide the mitigation in the same time-space where you 'scare' people
  • there are situation that require clear demostration of extreme risks, eg. in organization situations where the leadership is endagering the constiuents through forcing them into insecure behavior.

Resources related to well-being, stress management

 

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