I'M HERE TO CHANGE THE LANDSCAPE WHEN IT COMES TO WELLBEING FOR PROFESSIONALS WHO EXPERIENCE SECONDARY TRAUMA.
This is for social workers, lawyers, healthcare professionals, HR professionals and any other workers who hear about other people traumatic or difficult experiences on a regular basis.
WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A WORK RELATED MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS
CREATIVE, THERAPEUTICALLY INFORMED SOLUTIONS ARE NEEDEDI provide an evidence based, cutting edge therapeutic tool that can prevent burnout and mitigate the impact of secondary trauma.
The instant impact of this is happier staff, increased productivty and fewer sick days.
As staff continue to use these tools they are happier and more productive. The service they are able to provide to your end user is elevated; they have the emotional capacity to handle challenges with ease.
Providing a preventative, therapeutic tool that specifically addresses secondary trauma gives you an edge over your competitors. You will be leading the charge on tackling one of the leading causes of mental health difficulties in high stress professions.
This approach has the potential to challenge the perspective that burnout is inevitable in high stress professions like social work, law and healthcare.
I’m giving you the opportunity to shift towards a culture of supporting professionals to work in a more sustainable way that doesn’t damage their long term mental health.
My story
I qualified as a social worker in 2012 have over a decade of experience or working in child protection and perinatal mental health settings.
I left social work due to burnout and retrained as an EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) therapist.
EMDR is one of the best treatments for PTSD and I quickly realised it’s a powerful therapeutic tool than can be used to reduce the impact of secondary trauma and prevent burnout in high stress professions.
As well as experiencing burnout I also have a long term mental health condition as well as ADHD. I’ve spent a great deal of time having my own personal therapy and learning tools and skills to take care of my own emotional health.
I speak not only as a professional but as someone who has lived experience and knows how it feels to experience secondary trauma.
My entanglement with secondary trauma began as a newly qualified social worker. I remember wondering, 'why don't social workers receive therapeutic support to help them make sense of the difficult things they are hearing on a daily basis?'
The organisations I work with care about staff wellbeing, are innovative, forward thinking and passionate about diversity and inclusion.
Despite all they do to support staff wellbeing they still struggle with low staff morale, high sickness rates, and staff turnover.
The trap many organisations fall into is seeing staff wellbeing as a box ticking exercise.
Wellbeing apps and employee assistance schemes aren’t enough when you’re dealing with secondary trauma.
The reality is if you don’t address secondary trauma you aren’t going to have a healthy workforce.
Offering a one off workshop isn’t enough – staff need ongoing, therapeutic support to process the difficult things they are experiencing on a daily basis.
What if your staff were able to truly believe you care about them?
Currently, staff don’t feel you have their back; they feel like all you care about is KPI’s not their wellbeing.
If your staff truly believe you care about them as people, not just as workers they are more likely to be invested in contributing to the business in a positive way.
They feel better, are happier and this in turn leads to lower staff turnover and sickness levels and increased quality of work.
If you’re create a wellbeing offer that resonates with employees, you can to breathe a sigh of relief. You know you’ve taken the moral and ethical high ground – you’re doing the right thing for your staff.
Long term you’re able to attract a higher caliber of employee. Your staff stay because they love their workplace and the clients they support get a more efficient, empathetic person centred service.
This isn’t just a ‘nice to have’. This approach will also lead to reduced spend on staff sickness and wellbeing tools that don’t work; providing a quantifiable benefit to your organisation.
WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN?
EDUCATION
Professionals who are impacted by secondary trauma need to be aware of how this manifests itself. What are the signs and symptoms and what can workers do to mitigate against the risks of secondary trauma impacting on them.
They also need tools and techniques take care of their own emotional wellbeing. This can include understand their nervous system and how this interplays with stress and trauma.
THERAPEUTIC SUPPORT
Professionals who experience secondary trauma would also benefit from ongoing therapeutic support to allow them to decompress and release the emotions that build up with this work.
In the same way you would go to the gym to burn off excess calories; people need psychological tools to ‘burn off’ the effects of secondary trauma.
HOW CAN I HELP WITH THIS?
I have a number of ways I can help organisations with this.
– Group workshops where I share tools and techniques that employees can use to mitigate the impact of secondary trauma.
– Group EMDR sessions. This isn’t traditions group therapy (I couldn’t think of anything worse than having group therapy with my colleagues!)
These sessions use a powerful therapeutic tool to allow employees to process the difficult emotions that often come with these types of jobs. It doesn’t involve having to share anything with colleagues which reduces the risk of fear of judgement.
– Virtual reality therapeutic programme – an 8 week programme that uses cutting edge technology and gold standard therapeutics to reduce the impact of secondary trauma and burnout.
– 1-1 EMDR therapy for employees experiencing symptoms of PTSD.