Trauma Stewardship - Navigating Overwhelm and Finding Support | Laura van Dernoot Lipsky of The Trauma Stewardship Institute

I'm just really feeling for people. I mean, I'm really feeling for folks who can't get mental health support. I'm really feeling for folks who have to wait. I think it's even harder when you care about somebody than if you yourself are going through it. But, like, for anybody who's ever had like, a niece, a nephew, a grandchild, a child, like a loved one who's in pain, and all you want is to get them support, and you can't even get on a waitlist, that is a level of suffering that is, like, indescribable. And then for those folks who are doing the work, you know, one of the most painful things I think is when we feel like we're not doing enough and we feel like we should be doing more. The system right now, it's just there's so much pain coursing through it. For me, when I work with our colleagues who do this work, a lot of what I talk about is trying to create some space for grieving and mourning and just really letting your heart break. I mean, and really, as we say in early childhood education, having your big feelings.

Welcome to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. We are here to inspire creative ideas and connections for entrepreneurs and advocates working to address our mental health crisis. As you listen, I hope you will experience new ideas and motivation to innovate in your business, your community, and in your life. Welcome back, everyone, to the Mental Health Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Harrison, and with me today is Laura Vandernut Lipsky. Laura has authored a book called Trauma Stewardship. She has also done a TED talk on the subject and has a podcast called Future Tripping. Welcome, Laura.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Of course. Let's dig right in. How would you define trauma stewardship?

That's a great question. When I think about trauma stewardship, I think about trying to have acceptance to the reality that in life, as many traditions talk about, there are equal measures, things that are stunning and gorgeous and also accept, as Jack Kornfeld talks about, oceans of sorrow. And so with trauma stewardship, we're not trying to resist that. We're not trying to move away from that. We're trying to have some ability to accept that, you know, continue to work for social justice, environmental justice, social change, everything we can do to make sure we're doing all we can to prevent suffering, and then where harm exists and pain exists and suffering exists, that we are able to understand that if we're to tend to that for the long haul, we're going to need to be very mindful and very intentional about how we do that.

Right. So I'm almost hearing like accepting that this is part of life and we need to make space for it.

Yes.

Yeah. Where do you see that becoming the most challenging? I know in your book you talk about a lot of different places where people might have difficulty with this.

Well, it's a great question. I mean, one of the places, you know, I work with all sorts of professions and folks and many different jobs and careers. I think one place that it gets very hard is when you have folks who are incredibly, incredibly, incredibly dedicated. It means so much to them, the work they're doing. To tell those folks to pace themselves, to slow down, to understand, like if they want to be in this for the long haul. This is going to, you know, really take some intentionality to move away from martyrdom, which is set up systemically and structurally. You know, that's a big ask, right? Whether or not somebody has their own trauma history. I think that's a big ask. So that's one thing I would say. The other thing I would say is when I do this work, I never talk about it in terms of self care. And I say that with respect. But for me it is very important that we address the systems and the structures where folks are doing this incredible work. Both the systems and structures that are contributing to harm and then the systems and structures where folks are doing this incredible work, right? And that I think those systems and structures, whether it's the legal field or the medical field, the mental health field, places that are working for ecology, whatever it is, that those systems and structures, I think have a moral mandate and an ethical obligation to create sustainable environments where folks can do these jobs and do this work. So I think that's another place it gets very hard, right? Is the systemic structural piece and not ever taking away folks individual accountability, responsibility. But to me, this just cannot be an individual pursuit of like, okay everyone, let's turn our frowns upside down now, right? Like we really have to look at this structurally and systemically. And then the third thing I would say is the other place that I spent a lot of time working is with folks who are providing care for others. So that could be. Know your brother has come home from serving in the military, right? This could be that your mom is dying of early onset Alzheimer's. This could be that you have a child who is neurodivergent and things are really, really, really hard in middle school, right? This is like all the care providing that happens I imagine folks listen to your podcast from all over, but certainly in the United States, we do a pretty miserable job supporting folks who are providing care. Whether that, again, is for somebody who is ailing or aging or just people who are parents, you know, we don't do a good job there.

Do you think that's largely not making space for suffering, or what are some of the things that you see that could be better?

Well, I think it's a few things. I think part of what's gotten challenging with the conversations around self care is that let's assume, well, that it's. It's not been intentional, but I think inadvertently what has happened then is there's been a big shift on individually, what are you, as an individual gonna do to take care of yourself as opposed to. Hang on a second, like, do you know any public school teacher who is, like, able to actually do their job well, given the resources they have and the time they've been given, with the responsibilities they have, how are you supposed to do that job? Well, long term, part of what's hard is we're not looking at the systems, we're not looking at the structures that are creating so much harm. And then you have these individuals who would think if I was just more efficient, if I was just more devoted, if I just skip my lunch, and also if I never took time to pee during the day, maybe I would be able to do X, Y or Z. So I think that's part of what's gotten very, very hard. And then I think the other thing, as you know, is when folks are overwhelmed with trauma, it's very hard to step back and think, like, okay, hang on a second. My parent might have Alzheimer's for a decade. I'm going to be parenting for a very long time. My child, my sister, who just returned from combat, there's a chance her PTSD is going to go on for a long time. So what do we need to put in place so this is actually sustainable? And instead, I think as humans, we get very used to just you put your head down, you keep your mouth shut, and you just do what needs to be done. But then we know that that causes a lot of harm. And I think we just haven't spent enough time paying attention to what that looks like.

Yeah, I do think that that's true. And I'm wondering, though, how do we make space for that? Like, where do we start with that?

I mean, you know, I don't know your experience with this, but in my experience, I think one of the most Damaging things. When it comes to anything trauma related and anything related to oppression of any kind of Is isolation. Most important things that we need to do is interrupt folks isolation. Part of what I tried to do with the writing I've done on trauma stewardship and then on overwhelm is just help acknowledge for folks. If you are feeling like you can never do enough, if you are feeling exhausted, like, ancestrally exhausted, if you are feeling numb, if you are feeling, you know, negativity bias, if you are feeling cognitive overload, it's not you. I mean, it might be. You might be experiencing that, right? Like, you're in good company. And I have this kind of circle that I show folks that have some of the most common manifestations. Individually, collectively, personally, professionally, what folks experience when they're navigating overwhelm, trauma, really hard things. And I cannot tell you how many people will be like, have you been reading my journal? Are you in my couples counseling session? Do you have a camera in my home? Because we do this thing where we think, like, it. It must just be me. And then we get into guilt, and then we get into shame, and we do this thing of like, if I feel like I can't parent my kid one more day, if I feel like I can't be the therapist I want to be, if I feel like I can't show up and work against species extinction, there's something wrong with me, as opposed to being able to pull back and be like, wait a minute, like, this is completely untenable. So I think that's one thing is interrupting isolation. Because isolation, I think, really, really causes folks to get into a very damaging place. You know what I mean? It's like, one thing. If you show up for a job that's hard, and you're like, okay, this is bananas, but I'm gonna do the best I can. I'm gonna, like, bring my A game. But I'm not internalizing this. Right. That's very different than if you show up, you're trying to do it, and you start internalizing that there's something wrong with you that you can't get what needs to get done done. And also, not just that, but, like, you know, joyfully, in a delighted way. There's so much. Yeah. And then you. And then there's a lot riding on it. And again, that's for somebody who doesn't even have a trauma history. But for folks who are doing work related to trauma or overwhelm and who have their own trauma history, then it's a whole nother layer of this conversation.

Does anyone really not have a trauma history?

Well, I mean, that might be because of the lives that you and I are living in terms of just who we spend time with in the work we. But I think to your point, I think all of your listeners know what trauma mastery is, even if they don't know that term. But one of the things that is so hard about primary trauma, living through a primary trauma, is the out of control nature of it. And so what we see happen for humans forever, what we do is we recreate situations as similar to the traumatic incident as possible because we tell ourselves this time we're going to have a different outcome. We can see that with activities, we can see it with relationships, and we can see it with work and careers. So that's part of what I'm talking about is some people who go into sexual assault work, some people who go into oncology, some people who go into working, you know, against the prison industrial comp. Some of those folks are doing it just they, they stumbled into this work. They don't actually have a life or a history that's connected to that. I would say, as you've probably seen, the majority of folks who do a lot of these jobs come into it knowingly or unknowingly because they're trying to reconcile something from back in the day. So that's part of what I'm talking about in terms of that trauma history too, whether or not trauma mastery is at play and there's nothing bad or good, right or wrong there. But I do spend a lot of time working with folks that if you are doing this work from any place of trauma mastery, it is incredibly important that you know how much you're asking of yourself and that you make sure you've got conditions in place so that you don't get exploited while you're doing this work.

That's a loaded statement. Yeah, I mean, I think in, in my familiarity in the mental health world, everybody comes into it looking for some probably personal answers or like you're saying trauma mastery pieces. And when we know that we can do a lot with that, when we don't know that it can be a lot more complex. So that self awareness piece is really big. But even with the self awareness piece, I think it's interesting that you say that we're asking a lot of ourselves, we're asking ourselves to be placed in a triggering situation and that's our job every day. And we may or may not have the supports in place to manage that. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few things. I think, again, if systems and structures aren't set up to be mindful, intentional, respectful, honoring of this, then you can imagine, again, let's assume, well, that's not intentional, but how exploitive it can get. Because when you have folks doing this work who come from a place of trauma mastery, we are not the best people at pacing ourselves. We are not the best people at knowing when it is time to walk away for an hour, for the day, for the weekend. We are not the best people at like, not getting into a martyring situation. So you really need systems and structures at place who again, not ever taking away our own accountability or responsibility, but take it off of the individual worker. So it's not on the individual worker to figure out, like, am I going to do six more case files or get to my kids lacrosse game? So that's one thing is the systems and structures, if they are not in place, it is very hard for individuals to figure out how to pace themselves when we have a trauma history or when we're from historically oppressed, marginalized or underserved groups. I'd say that's one piece of it. I think the other piece of it, again, you know, I'm not going to comment on any other society but the United States. I don't think anybody looks to us for having a strong suit and grieving and mourning. So I think the other thing that happens is because there's so little support for grief and loss in our society, you know, that if you have a choice between, you know, surviving something traumatic and letting your heart break, letting your mind be blown, grieving, mourning, walking through the fire, or you could dedicate 60, 70, 80 hours to working in that field or a related adjacent field, being jacked up on caffeine, being jacked up on adrenaline, being externally focused, and unfortunately having a lot of people be like, you're so amazing. I don't know how you do that. You just survived this loss and look at you. You started a 10k and now you have, you know, like a foundation and you're like going to grad school for this. Right? And that's not really the messaging we want to give because as you know, you can work a thousand hours a week doing this and that doesn't have anything to do with touching the original harm or trauma. Right. Like, nothing's going to substitute for that. But what can happen is we can just find ourselves working more and more and more and pouring more and more and more of ourselves into it. And we still have, you know, this broken heart over here. We still have this pain that we haven't tended to. And so then you can just find that you're just like, wait a second. I'm like, literally doing everything I can in my job as a police officer, in my job as a guidance counselor, in my job, whatever it might be. And you notice that that's not tending to what originally drove you to do this.

Right?

So then it can get very, very, very convoluted.

Right. And I think about too, the reality of when you're serving a population that is struggling again, like, you're saying all these different possibilities, whether that's a trauma survivor, whether that's first responder, all these different careers, it seems like it's very difficult. If we are not tending to our own selves, then I also wonder how well we are able to help. You have a quote in your book that I think is pretty profound, and you say if you are numb, which is often a trauma response, and numbing out can be just disconnecting from our emotions, right. Or it can be getting engrossed in like, TV or the Internet all the time, right. Or scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, but if you are numb, you will not be able to gauge if you are doing harm. That's pretty profound. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Yes. I want to add to what you said that I think, yes, numb can be for sure a trauma response, as you're saying. I also think numb again in the United States just can be just a response to being like, hyper capitalist society where there is so much harm unfolding. Right. So when I do work with folks now, part of what I try to affirm is like, hey, I imagine pre pandemic, you weren't necessarily thriving. Like, at least nobody I work with, none of the fields I work with are like, oh, my God, we were like, super abundant. And then just the pandemic came and everything, you know, like, people are already having a hard time pre pandemic. Then there's, you know, regardless of where your listeners are at politically, I don't know anybody who's psyched about what's happening with our democracy. Okay? Climate crisis, that's not new. Oppression, also not new. So you've got layer after layer after layer. And that in and of itself, I mean, you. How do you stay open to feeling all of that? And then again, in the United States, our society is all about people numbing out, and it's about people numbing out through consumerism, it's about people numbing out. Through other kinds of capitalism, like it's all about numbing out. So it is very countercultural to actually intentionally every day make a decision that you want to feel. And like you're saying things are so readily available, whether it is doom scrolling, you know, whether it is screen time, whether it is all this stuff. Think about all the stuff that know the jobs that you and I have had and the careers that we've been in, that support, right? Just somebody who brings in like 40 donuts to a staff meeting. And again, there's not any shame around that, but it's just understanding that that isn't really doing anybody any favors, particularly if you know about food justice. And again, if you got folks there from historically underserved communities, right? So there's just all these different pieces where you have to make this conscious choice to not numb out. And then I think with what you're talking about, what I was writing about there in terms of the doing no harm, people come to the work that you and I are involved in for so many different reasons. But I know that I'm going to assume that all of us have one of the things we share is an ethic to do no harm. And when I work with people and I talk about that, I think everybody, I can just see their brains immediately shifting because of how devoted they are to thinking about how they're showing up for their job, how they're showing up for others and how they're serving. Obviously I care about that a lot. But the first place that harm's gonna happen is not gonna be there. The first place harm's gonna happen is gonna be in our own health. And I think that is something that historically in our fields we have not done right by right. Like there has not been messaging historically. You know, if you think about Chief Self's web of life or King's single karma of destiny, if you're tending to all these parts of the web out there that are very compromised self societally and in the world, how do you, as Stevie Wonder says, handle your business? How do you handle your business in your immediate part of the web knowing that it is not ethical practice, it's not integrity based practice, it's definitely not sustainable practice if your sole focus is on parts of the web out there without handling your business here. But again, field after field after field has communicated implicitly and explicitly. If you care enough, you're down with your cause enough, you know, and you're dedicated enough, you're Going to put your head down. Like we said, do what needs to be done. So I think that's one thing, is just helping people shift that paradigm of like, hey, everyone, the first place harm happened, it's not going to be you as a counselor. It's not going to be how you show up in your job as a firefighter. That's not where it's happening. The first place harm's going to happen is going to be in your physical health. God forbid. Diagnosis aside, over here, just think about, you used to never get headaches. Now you have headaches. Your back used to never hurt. Now your back hurts. You used to never even know what inflammation was. And now your doctor's like, yo, you're really inflamed. And then there's our own mental health. You know, depression, anxiety, ptsd, panic disorder. Everyone I work with will say, laura, of course I'm depressed. Everybody's depressed. Of course I'm anxious. Do you know anybody who's not anxious? You know, what you said earlier, like, do we know anybody who doesn't have a trauma history? And I love humor, and I love that we're not isolated through these things. But then we have to remind ourselves, like, hey, colleagues, that's not the baseline we're going for, is that we're all depressed and anxious. So that's absolutely the first place we see harm. The second place we see harm is in our personal relationships, if we're able to maintain any personal relationships. Right. So this is where you hear from your roommate, your partner, your best friend, your sibling, something to the effect of, I don't know how they say you're so good at what you do at your job because you suck in our relationship. And then the third place we see harm is in our colleague relationships. Right. So we could be doing incredible work in the community. But many of us as colleagues, we have been a part once or twice of gossiping, trash talking, not assuming well of our colleagues. Kind of clicks, all of that. And then the last place you're going to do harm is actually in your job. So by the time anybody's feeling like they are not pastor, they want to be, they're not the marine biologist, they want to be prosecuting attorney, they want to be. There's usually like a whole, I think about it like a mountaineering accident where there are all these indicators we should have been paying attention to. And if you're numb to what you asked earlier, you can't gauge any of that.

Right, Right. It just happens. And then eventually you're at a crisis point and thinking, how did I get here? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What is your opinion of our mental health system currently and how we're doing? I mean, you've kind of talked about it systemically, how we're doing with all of that, but do you have any thoughts or ideas on what we might be able to do better or what you're seeing?

I mean, the first thing that comes to mind when you ask that is I'm just really feeling for people. I mean, I'm really feeling for folks who can't get mental health support. I'm really feeling for folks who have to wait. I mean, anybody who has ever. I think it's even harder when you care about somebody than if you yourself are going through it. But, like, for anybody who's ever had, like, a niece, a nephew, a grandchild, a child, like a loved one who's in pain, and all you want is to get them support, and you can't even get on a wait list. That is a level of suffering that is, like, indescribable. I really feel for folks who are not able to get the care either because of availability or affordability or any of that. That is brutal. And then for those folks who are doing the work, you know, one of the most painful things, I think for those of us who do the work is when we feel like we're not doing enough and we feel like we should be doing more. So the system right now, it's just there's so much pain coursing through it. So I think that for me, when I work with our colleagues who do this work, a lot of what I talk about is trying to create some space for grieving and mourning and just really letting your heart break. I mean, and really, as we say in early childhood education, having your big feelings and whether you do that in the shower when you're crying, or whether you do that in a boxing ring, or whether you do that training for a triathlon, or whether you do it like raging to a best friend, whatever, but like, having our feelings about how incredibly overwhelming and daunting things are, because, again, I am a total catastrophic thinker. So I completely acknowledge that I'm often not glass half full with things. Maybe things are going to get much better if that would be amazing. As I'm looking at what's unfolding, at least in our society and other societies, I'm not super optimistic that, like, 2024 is going to chill out. And so I think that's. The other piece is like, how hard it is now and then like staring ahead thinking like, oh my God, I mean, like what, like what are we going to do? So I think one of the things is we have to feel deeply and we have to have conditions in place where we can metabolize. How scary it is, how overwhelming it is, how sad it is. And then we go about the business of, you know, we do what we can, however, not at the cost. Like it can't be at the cost of our health, be at the cost of our loved ones. It can't be at the cost of like me being a horrible colleague to people. It can't be at the cost of us becoming like awful practitioners. So I think that's one thing. On the other hand, in terms of Glass Half Full, I am really optimistic about the folks who are doing what they can to bring in alternative and new modalities. You know, whether that is being able to use traditional medicines, obviously in an ethical, integrity based way, or folks are using stuff just working with one's environment, environment. But I do feel like there are some really very hopeful things happening now and also on the horizon of how we are doing what we're doing. So that feels very, very hopeful to me. And I think the other thing I would say is, you know, I've got kids who are young adults and you know, you have those moments in life where you kind of can't believe it's all happened in your life. I mean, I'm 54 and I cannot believe how much has changed with how readily not everybody. And there's understandable headwinds for many folks, but how readily so many folks in so many communities now are willing to talk about mental health. And just watching the friends of my kids, for example, how willing they are to talk about their own depression or a friend's anxiety, that also feels very, very hopeful to me that we've got some folks who the stigma is really. I don't want to over generalize, but there is a disintegrating in many places of that stigma, stigma. And so there are fewer headwinds in terms of just being able to get help. And that I think is huge.

Yeah, I agree with that. So I am curious, what were some of the experiences for you that led you to writing and speaking on this topic of trauma stewardship?

Yeah, well, that's a long story. More than we could get into, maybe broad highlights. Yeah, I mean, I think the short end of it was I started doing trauma work formally when I was 18 and I came in with a lot of Love and devotion and dedication and politics and all of that. And I had no idea I was doing it from a place of trauma mastery. And while I had a lot of devotion and dedication and, you know, fire in my belly, I had zero, zero understanding of trauma, vicarious trauma, what one has to do to sustain, nor did anybody around me. So it didn't take long before I really started losing my own mind. And it was because I had what I describe as a near psychotic break some years into my career that that's when I just kind of accidentally started talking. I mean, I just started talking about, like, losing my mind. And because of that, then I came to understand what vicarious trauma was. And then I just was, like, readily talking about it, like, wow, I'm, like, really tripping. And then I think I was just fortunate that more and more people were like, hey, I'm tripping, too. I'm tripping too. This is hard. This is hard, this is hard. So that's how I kind of, in addition to doing primary trauma work, which I still do, then I started doing vicarious trauma work was from a very personal place of knowing what it's like to kind of get to your brink of like, oh, wow, I can get to a point I can't come back from. I'm not a writer. So the way the books came about is people asked me to write and very persistently asked me to write, and I finally decided to do that. But that happened not because I was a writer. That happened because I was hoping to be able to offer what folks were asking for.

No, I like that. Yeah. And then you have your podcast, too, which you're using that word, tripping, and it's making me think of your podcast, which is future tripping. And my understanding helped me fill in the gaps here, is that it's a lot about trying to give some practical ways that people can do this. Staying present, connecting with their bodies, kind of having a space for feelings, that kind of thing.

Beautifully said. It's really all about overwhelm. And it is trying to offer folks. We pitch a very wide tent, and it is trying to offer folks concrete strategies for how do you navigate overwhelm. It's a combination of folks who come and talk about very specific things. You know, we have a whole episode on narcissism, for example, and then folks in certain fields who come in and talk about their field. Ed Yong, who won the Pulitzer Prize, talked about what it's like to be a journalist and the vicarious trauma. There's. It's Very important to me that all of my work, to the best of my ability, is also relevant for adolescents as well as young adults. And so we also have adolescents and young adults come in and talk about their experience of, you know, what it's like to navigate, like, the hellacious experience of being in high school and figuring out what after high school. Right. So it's for adults as well as adolescents. And we pitch a very wide tent and you can kind of scroll through and find the episode that you want on perfectionism or, you know, hear a story about somebody who survived the fires in Maui. And every single episode, we really try to offer very, very concrete strategies of how to navigate overwhelm.

I love that. I really do. That's amazing. What is one thing that you really want people to know from all of this topic, from your work, from anywhere? What is. If we boiled it down, what would

be the one thing revisiting this point of just no matter how overwhelmed you are, no matter how at a loss you are, no matter how despairing you are, understanding that you are in very, very good company and you are absolutely not alone. And I know it can feel lonely and life can feel very isolating, and you can really believe that you're alone and doing anything that we can to remember we're not alone. And while sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to ask for help in any way, whether that is from a teacher or a neighbor or a friend or a colleague, even if you don't have to know what the help looks like, but just being able to say, hey, I don't actually think I'm doing okay, honestly. And just to kind of reach for that help and remembering that you are in good company and there are so many options now in terms of what that help looks like. And it doesn't have to be sitting on a therapist's couch, though, that can be amazing. It could be studying martial arts. It can be going to an acupuncturist, it can be joining a hiking. I mean, there's a lot of options. We are not isolated.

I love that. Well, Laura, thank you for being here today. And all of your connection information will be in the show notes for anyone that's interested. And I just really appreciate you talking to us.

Thank you so much for having me. It's really a treat to get to have this conversation with you. And if we at my institute could be of any support to your listeners, we avail ourselves.

Awesome.