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Julie Edwards: you are more than welcome. 2, and we will get started here in a bit. Hello, California! Coming in first, hey? And in the opposite coast. Hi, Connecticut, hey, Kim?
Julie Edwards: You know they look.
Julie Edwards: Oh, man, I'm so happy to see you South Florida.
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Julie Edwards: hey? California? I wa. Why, everybody's coming in now, hey? There's our Canadian friends. New Hampshire.
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Julie Edwards: close to Tampa Bay.
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Julie Edwards: So I
Julie Edwards: I'm normally in Montana. I think many of you know that. But I'm down in Southern California this week, and I did, in fact, those of you done a webinar with me before. No, I say this before we start. I did do the license plate game. I
Julie Edwards: I have 42 of the 50 license plates. I need somebody from Hawaii to be driving around me in the next few days if you could manage that.
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Beatriz De La Espriella: Alright. So we are just at the top of the hour, and I am going to go ahead and get us started. We want to stay on time. Use our time well, today.
Julie Edwards: Thank you for joining us. I am Julie Edwards. I am a librarian and instructional designer with niche Academy. And we are here today in this webinar on transforming libraries through trauma, informed services. I am so happy to have you all with us today. Let me start by quickly introducing Niche Academy. We're an easy to use all in one learning platform to help libraries create and deliver effective training and
measure learner success.
Julie Edwards: Our platform is the perfect tool for libraries. If you're looking to increase your E resource usage, move your programming, including your story times online and deliver and track training for staff development. So if you're interested in learning more about what we do, chatting with a member of our team, or hearing what your colleagues and other libraries have to say, I will drop a link in the chat to our website so you can learn more about how we can work together with you.
Julie Edwards: So I am recording this webinar. I will make the recording, the slides and the chat transcripts available on our blog. In a couple of days. Usually that happens. I wanna make a quick statement about this that we I don't normally do. But because of the sensitive nature of today's topic, and the fact that we do publish the Chat Transcript, because so much great information gets passed back and forth in the chat. Please just be sensitive to anything that
Julie Edwards: you place in the chat. If you don't want something out there, maybe
Julie Edwards: maybe change your name, or think about not posting, or or whatever. Just be be aware that the chat is
Julie Edwards: mit Ctl. And published after on the blog, so that all the good information that you all pass back and forth during this hour you can have access to. Afterwards
Julie Edwards: you can turn on closed captioning at the bottom of your zoom screen. If you like to use that, you're certainly welcome to. There are many people registered for today's webinar and I expect the chat to be really active. So if you have questions for the presenter, please go ahead and use the question and answer box in zoom. I will go ahead and moderate those to the best of my ability and our time together. At the end of the webinar.
Julie Edwards: This Webinar series is part of our commitment to solving bigger problems together, providing continuing education in the library space. I am really genuinely happy to have all of you here today in case you can't tell
Julie Edwards: little side note, this is my one hundredth webinar with niche Academy. I've moderated a hundred of these organized and moderated them. And I that is only because you all keep showing up week after week, many of you every week. And so thank you all for just being such a great community to work with. It's really II really love interacting with all of you
Julie Edwards: and bringing such great content to you and hearing the great content you bring back to us in the chat.
Julie Edwards: So if you're interested in seeing our 100 and first webinar and many more, after that, I'll drop the link to that in the chat as well. So without further ado, our presenter today is Beatrice de la Espreya.
Julie Edwards: Beatrice is a bilingual, licensed, clinical social worker, a certified trauma informed care professional and a mental health educator. She is the founder of Be mindful coaching where she provides mental health and trauma-informed training specifically to libraries. She's presented and facilitated professional development, training to educators, mental health school staff and library staff in the areas of child abuse, suicide, crisis, response, toxic stress, self-care mindfulness.
Julie Edwards: trauma informed services and mental health awareness. I am so happy to have her with us today, and with that I will turn the presentation over to her.
Thank you. Thank you so much. All my! I cannot believe I get the honor to be your one hundredth webinar. So that makes me super excited. I am really really happy to be here with all of you today, and we do have a lot to cover. And but I do wanna remind everybody again. Just make sure. Be mindful some of the things that we're gonna be posting on the chat. This topic can be heavy.
Beatriz De La Espriella: so if it becomes discomforting for you, or if you are interested in sharing some things again, remember, the chat will be published. So let's go ahead and start with
Beatriz De La Espriella: taking a few moments to just be present and to be here in this moment. Right? We want to be able to arrive to this presentation. We want to slow down and take a moment to be here. The topic, as I mentioned, can be overwhelming. Right? So and you can bring out some distress. It can bring out some anxiety. So we're gonna do some deep breathing exercises. If you're able. I would like for you to join me in doing some deep breathing right here right now. So go ahead and take a deep breath in
Beatriz De La Espriella: and out.
Beatriz De La Espriella: One more time. Let's take a deep breath in
Beatriz De La Espriella: and out.
Beatriz De La Espriella: And what we wanna do is we wanna let go of any negative situations and negative comments or things that are present earlier in the day, so that we can be present here right now in this presentation in the chat just again. Just keep an eye on if you're writing any questions, just make sure you put them in the question and answer. Section and I will say that if you need to take time for yourself,
Beatriz De La Espriella: to step away like if some of the topics are getting discomfort for you. You're more than welcome to step away and this will be recorded so you can go ahead and review it a lighter time, but mainly talk to somebody. Right? So if you are feeling uncomfortable about some of the topics, and make sure that you do go and seek support and have someone that you can. Someone trust it right trusted person, individual friend, family member.
or a coworker, someone that you can talk to. All right. Let's go ahead and get started. So what are we going to talk about today?
Beatriz De La Espriella: Trauma? We're gonna talk about what is trauma adverse childhood experiences, the impact, the trauma and adverse childhood experiences have on the individual. We're gonna go into some strategies how to provide trauma informed services. We'll talk a little about it by empathy. And then when a close up with some effective communication strategies and also some self care strategies.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So what is trauma? The definition we're gonna be using for today is based on the substance, abuse and mental health services administration. So we're looking an event series of events or sort of circumstances that can happen to an individual and we're talking about it could be a physical circumstance, or is it could be a physical event. It could be also emotional, or it could be life threatening right. But the key part of this trauma
dramatic event, or what trauma is, is that it has a lasting adverse effect on the individual right that it can impact their mental health, it can impact their physical health, social, emotional, or spiritual. Well being
Beatriz De La Espriella: so, what are some examples of traumatic events in the chat. You're more than welcome to type in a few, but these are the ones that come to mind whenever I think of traumatic events, physical, emotional, or sexual assault, hospitalization depending on the level right that could be definitely a traumatic event, deportation of loved one experiencing poverty, homelessness, and even experiencing a natural disaster.
Beatriz De La Espriella: I'm in Florida, and we've recently had a hurricane, so that in itself, depending on where you were in the hurricane, depending on how it was, for you could be a traumatic event for you.
Beatriz De La Espriella: There's other traumatic events like being involved, you know, in an auto accident, and things like that. So I just wanted you to keep in mind that there could be many things as long as there's again an event, physical or emotionally harmful or life-threatening, and that it has lasting adverse effects on the individual.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Now everyone experiences traumatic events completely different. So we cannot generalize right? Not everyone who lived through a divorce or was part of a divorce experience that as a traumatic event, right? So for the purposes of the presentation today, I wanna make sure we understand that
Beatriz De La Espriella: we're talking about individuals who have experience in traumatic event, who did not overcome right individuals who were not resilient with that traumatic event because they didn't have the right protective factors. So those are the individuals that we're gonna be talking about as we move forward through your presentation.
Beatriz De La Espriella: The next thing I wanna kind of go over is adverse childhood experiences. What are these? So these, again, are potentially traumatic events that take place between the ages of 0 to 17 years old, and we're talking about experiencing violence or abuse, or neglect.
Beatriz De La Espriella: right like growing up in a very violent home, witnessing violence in the home or in the community that could definitely be an adverse childhood experience having a member of your family commit or attempt to to commit suicide.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So these are experiences that are very traumatic but potentially traumatic, but also undermine the safety, stability and bonding of the individual. It's like we're looking at. The child's environment is the child environment, impacting them and therefore causing them to experience the traumatic event. Even living with somebody with a substance use or mental health problem can be an adverse childhood experience.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Now, these examples that I showed in here are just not all meant to be all a complete list of advertising experiences. But it's just to get you started in thinking, what is that? You know? What does that look like?
Beatriz De La Espriella: And why am I even bringing this up right? Well. There was a study that found a study back in 2,018 that was looking at the relationship between these traumatic experiences. Right? A a child who's experienced exposure to physical violence, sexual violence, household dysfunction. Right? So a child who experienced that
Beatriz De La Espriella: dysfunctional in the in the household right, living with someone with mental health issues and the relationship between that and chronic health problems, mental illness and substance use. And what it found was is that the higher amount of childhood, childhood, adverse experiences, the higher the amount for chronic health problems.
Beatriz De La Espriella: How impactful is that the higher amount of individuals or children who've experienced
Beatriz De La Espriella: domestic violence or not domestic violence, but have islands in the home right? Experiencing that physical and and and maybe sometimes sexual abuse, the higher the chance for chronic health problems, mental illness, substance, abuse. And there was another study that found that can also have a negative impact on relationships. Individuals may not be able to even build or have secure relationships because of those experiences.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Right? So these experiences can lead to so much. And there's also been studies that show that whenever a child has had these experiences they can also have a change in their brain structure. They can change their brain development. And that's something we're gonna be talking about later on.
Beatriz De La Espriella: I will say, and I do encourage everyone to take the Asis questionnaire as a quiz. So I'm going to make sure that that quiz is available link to that quiz is available with the slides in the recording, so that you take a moment for yourself and sit down and just ask those. There's only 10 questions, and to see what your score is with regards to those adverse childhood experiences and how much it can definitely impact in the later years.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Alright.
Beatriz De La Espriella: now, we talked about impact of, you know, trauma in the brain, the individual. But now we're gonna go a little bit further as to what it looks on that brain development and how it changes. But before we do that, I need to show you, I need to talk to you about the normal function of the brain, right?
Beatriz De La Espriella: So we're going to look at a normal function of the brain. And then we're going to look and see how trauma can impact the individual. So we are going to go into some biology here. So please bear with me and just hang on tight with me.
Alright. There's 2 parts of the brain that I want you to keep in mind of. One of them is the limbic system right? And this part of the brain is in charge of that emotional response. Right? There's only one part of the limbic system I want you to keep in mind on, remember, and that's the amygdala.
Beatriz De La Espriella: The limbic system is involved in that behavior. The emotional response is that fight flight of freeze response. Some of you have heard it. Distress response system. Right? There's no critical thinking here. It's all reactionary. It's just like, get to meet that. I need to respond right away. That's what the limbic system does. It is scans for real or perceived threat.
Beatriz De La Espriella: and then it moves through the limbic system to help us respond very quickly again, there's no time for logical thinking here.
Beatriz De La Espriella: The other part of the brain that I want you to keep in mind on is the frontal lobe. So it's this part here of the brain, and this part is in charge of the voluntary actions we're talking about reasoning, thinking, decision, making logic right? That part right here is what's in charge of. There's no automatic emotional response. That's the limbic system. Does
Beatriz De La Espriella: the frontal lobe focuses on evaluating our emotions. listening to our experiences and then making a judgment so that we can make a decision.
Beatriz De La Espriella: The frontal lobe can override the limbic system and it can slow it down and say, it's okay. Limbic system. I got this. I'm gonna use logic and reasoning to respond to a situation. I don't know if some of you have any teenagers or no, any teenagers, but a lot of the times, the frontal lobe, part of the brain. It's really not developed because they don't use logic or
Beatriz De La Espriella: critical thinking to make decisions, a lot of the times when they're younger. Right? That's what the law, the front low part of the brain does, uses logic and critical thinking.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So now let's want to use an example to see how all of this comes into play, how it it works together.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Let's go ahead and get the example of encountering a bear in the woods. Right? So this information, which is a threat right, goes through the brain in milliseconds. Super quick and limbic system is gonna help us make a decision. It's gonna help us say, Alright, am I fighting the bear? Am I running away from this bear, or am I saying frozen like I, what am I gonna do? There's no frontal low part of the brain in that situation. The brain is not gonna go. It's like, Hmm.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Let's use logic here and try to figure things out. Oh, no limbic system is there to support you to? It's your body's automatic and primitive response. Let's go ahead and do this quick. If not, we're dead right? We need to figure something out. This is what Keith man relied on to survive
Beatriz De La Espriella: right now. Of course we we're not encountering theirs all the time. Right? So let's use another example like
Beatriz De La Espriella: you're crossing the street. There's a bus that's coming through limbic system, scans, realizes, sees that there's something that is in danger. You're you're facing a threat. It quickly sickness your body to react by jumping away from the vehicle or the bus in order to survive again, that kind of quick response is what the limbic system is in charge of
Beatriz De La Espriella: through our day we are faced through different levels of stress. Some perceived threats or even harm. So our limbic system helps us respond to those situations. Right? So let's go ahead and take a look at
Beatriz De La Espriella: what happens in the body whenever we're faced with that like, what's what's really going on in the body.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So the first thing that happens there's a queue that comes in. It could be a sound, could be a smell, could be an image, and this situation could be again that bus that's coming in, or an individual a person that's approaching you. That reminds you of something threatening. Right? So that is what that queue comes in.
and then the body gives you this stress hormones that come in. So we got some adrenaline. We got some portal. So, and all of these stress responses cause the body to do a few things.
so the blood let blood vessels can definitely help us. The in the skin they construct right. So they hold tight, so that if we do decide to fight, we try to like not lose as much blood as possible. So that's the body trying to protect just from that
Beatriz De La Espriella: the shutting down of a digestive system because it wants to conserve energy. That is another way of saying, Hey, I know you're ready run. I know you're ready to fight. So I'm gonna shut down your digestive system and let's go ahead and get this going. So that's what the the brain is sending those signals through the body
Beatriz De La Espriella: increase heart rate. Right? It's just definitely we wanna push that blood flow to get you ready to go and run, and then your next shoulders and back muscles constrict. I don't know if you notice, but already you get kind of stressful situation. Your neck starts to tighten your shoulders. Certain tighten. Well, that's that's what's happening. The brain is signaling. There's a threat. Something's happening. You gotta protect yourself. Body is going into reaction.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Now, all of this is normal, right? But the issue lies on that stress response system being constantly activated. We're talking about constantly activated by traumatic events, so that constants abuse, that we talked about earlier neglect, repeated physical violence, or that verbal abuse. This means that our limbic system is always on.
Beatriz De La Espriella: It's always responding to a threat, right? It's always responding to that abuse is always responding to that physical violence that even when the threat it's not real, the person still perceives it as a threat, and they're still reacting in that way. We're gonna talk a little bit about that. But the biggest thing I want to do. I don't know if you remember that amygdala part of the limbic system when the body starts to realize like oh, perceiving a threat perceiving a threat, but it's not real.
Beatriz De La Espriella: What we call this de Amygdala hijacked
Beatriz De La Espriella: is that part of the limbic system that has hijacked the brain, and it's constantly responding to everything as a potential threat, whether the threat is real or not. But that's what the brain has done. It has map created some pathways, right, and then it has forced the person and forces the person to react to situations as if they were the original traumatic event.
Beatriz De La Espriella: And unfortunately, a lot of the times. These individuals who have experienced traumatic events don't have the right coping skills to deal with the right way of responding.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So what they have. Instead, it's reactionary coping skills that chronic activation of our stress response system. Remember that part of the limbic system that we talked about means that the reactionary coping skills kick in
Beatriz De La Espriella: the brain has now mapped these skills as critical for survival. Some of the skills that we're looking at are yelling, crying physically or verbally lashing out. This is what individuals know, and this is what they believe to be the right thing for them to be protecting themselves.
Beatriz De La Espriella: even when the individual's not under threat. He or she may still perceive that situation as threatening. Right. So then they go to yelling. They go to crying. The brain has not been hijacked by the amygdala. So the frontal lobe, the frontal part of the brain doesn't get to do with Spart doesn't get to do this. Job doesn't get to help us react to reason.
Beatriz De La Espriella: I can bet that some of you have seen some patrons behave
Beatriz De La Espriella: with some reactionary coping skills.
Beatriz De La Espriella: You probably were talking to them about something basic. As I'm sorry you can't have a seat at the stable. You can move to this one, and their response is to go ahead and automatically yell or respond verbally abusive to you. Right? And at times we just kinda think, like, Okay, what is wrong with that? Right now, I'm not saying that everyone
Beatriz De La Espriella: that it's react in this way has had a traumatic experience. But traumatic experiences are so prevalent. They are so
Beatriz De La Espriella: big. They're they're almost everywhere that there is a chance that that individual
has now has experience with a Mac event and their brain. It's perceiving that conversation right? And it's I. We all know it's not as a threat. It's just the conversation, but they perceive it as a threat. So therefore they're gonna use the only skills that they know the reactionary skills. Those are the skills that they knew from when they were younger. They're gonna use them again, cause they don't have the right cooking skills
Beatriz De La Espriella: to slow down that limbic system part of the brain, and then use logic to be able to respond
Beatriz De La Espriella: alright. So that was a little bit too much for biology, but I promise that's as much as biology. That I have for today for you. So if you do have questions. Please please put them in the Q&A section, because I do want to make sure that we get to them.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Alright. So you might be wondering. All right. This is great information, right? We talked about the brain. I know how the brain works. Now, you know, trauma can definitely impact the individual. you know, adverse childhood experiences can lead to chronic health problems. Hold. My.
Beatriz De La Espriella: but how do I know if the person I am providing services to at the library isn't just a jerk right like that's one of the things like, or did they actually experience a traumatic event? And the sure answer to that is, you won't know until they tell you.
Beatriz De La Espriella: And to be honest, trauma informed services is not about knowing whether the individual has had a traumatic experience. Right? It's about, not even if they hadn't experienced a traumatic experience at all.
Beatriz De La Espriella: But trauma informed services, looks at understanding how much of an impact, how great of an impact trauma can have on the individual.
Beatriz De La Espriella: And the way that we interact with them based on this knowledge can make a difference, right? It can make a difference in how we connect with others, it can make a difference, and how we connect with our community. It can make a difference on even on ourselves right, and how we manage those conversations so that we don't create a graded effect on the individual, or it affects us. Right? So let's go ahead and jump in into trauma. Informed services.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So what is trauma? Informed services or trauma informed care? Again, we're gonna be using the model of trauma, informed. Care from Samsha, which is a substance, abuse, mental health services, administration and trauma. Informed services, incorporates knowledge about trauma into services that create safe spaces and trust through respect and collaboration.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So any agency that wants to provide trauma informed services needs to understand these 4 h of these 4 parts of trauma informed services realize how widespread the impact of trauma is. So that's one aspect of it. Recognize the signs and citizens. Symptoms of trauma in our clients, our patrons right? Our families, that staff individuals that come in, and any anyone else that we've come in contact with.
Beatriz De La Espriella: some of the signs that we're talking about. We're looking at someone who's easily startled, right? Someone who's always on guard, or someone who may have some self-destructive behaviors. So maybe drinking too much, or someone who has trouble, sleeping trouble concentrating someone who's irritable, right? Who has angry outburst or some level of aggressive behavior, right? Or maybe some overwhelming guilt or shame. So those are some of the signs that we can look into.
Beatriz De La Espriella: But the key. It's responding by integrating this knowledge that we just talked about into policies into procedures and into practices right which, by doing that, we're actively seeking to resist, re-traumatizing the individual, not just the patron, but again avoiding re-traumatization of also staff members, staff and patrons equally.
Beatriz De La Espriella: and that leads me into our 6 strategies for our 6 key principles for trauma informed services.
Beatriz De La Espriella: I will say that any agency that wants to have trauma informed services whether it's a library or not wants to be able to follow. They wanna be able to follow these specific principles. I do wanna highlight that this is not a checklist. Right? It's not a single one time. All. Let's go ahead and take a look and we're done. We're trauma informed. No, it takes constant attention.
Beatriz De La Espriella: It takes awareness, ongoing assessment communicating with staff. Are we doing the right thing, bringing in the collaboration from the community and other stakeholders. So with the Qc. The 6, let's just go ahead and go through them really quickly. Safety, trustworthiness and transparency peer support, collaboration and mutuality, empowerment, voice and choice, that one
Beatriz De La Espriella: cultural, historical and gender relevant, but that one empowerment, voice and choice is one of the most important ones for me. There's 2 of them, safety and empowerment
Beatriz De La Espriella: with an individual who has experienced a traumatic event. Their voice, their choice, has taken away from them. They no longer feel empowered. So in order for us to provide trauma informed services, we want to be able to allow them to have a voice. We want to be able to allow them to have a choice, to build on their strength, and to be able to collaborate with them and say, Hey, are we doing the right thing? Here are, what can we change? What can we do differently?
Beatriz De La Espriella: And the other one I do wanna highlight. It's safety. It's not just about the physical safety of the patrons, or just the psychological safety of the patrons, but also the staff.
Beatriz De La Espriella: That's very important, because if the staff safety is not in play. We're not going to be able to provide the services that we want to provide. Right
Beatriz De La Espriella: trauma informed services, shifts this idea or focus from what is wrong with you to what happened to you. And if you remember earlier, we were talking about this coping, those reactionary, hoping skills, sometimes leaving you like. What is wrong with you like? Why would you be yelling at me like that? What
Beatriz De La Espriella: versus asking, what happened to you?
Beatriz De La Espriella: What
Beatriz De La Espriella: happened? What what could have happened for to you, for you to behave this way, for you to act this way. When we do this, we allow the individual to become a person first. Right? We treat them with curiosity, we treat them with dignity and empathy, and that's what trauma informed services is about to be able to allow them to become a person first, right? So that we perceive that anger, or the belligerence, or
Beatriz De La Espriella: the obscene language that they have in any other type of behavior as most likely due to poor coping skills and brain chemistry instead of them individually, you know, going at you or taking it for us to take it. Personal right.
having a knowledge of how trauma affects the brain, can give us another layer of understanding our patrons when we are providing those services.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So I do. Wanna go into empathy. A little bit, because I believe that empathy is one of the most important ways for us to avoid retramatization. And I think Brene Brown, who is a license. She's a social worker scholar. She does an excellent job at explaining what empathy is. So we're gonna watch a short video. I will say this.
The volume we tested a little bit earlier and the volume was kind of low. So please, it does have some captions in there. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop share and then go back to that. But keep in mind that the volume is kinda low, and we are including this video in the slides later. So let's just go ahead and do this really quick.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So
Beatriz De La Espriella: so I do apologize for.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Yeah.
And
so what is empathy? And why is it very different than sympathy. empathy. fuels, connection, sympathy drives disconnection empathy. It's very interesting. Teresa Wiseman is a nursing scholar
who studied professions very diverse professions where empathy is relevant and came up with 4 qualities of empathy perspective. Taking
Beatriz De La Espriella: the ability to take the perspective of another person, or or recognize their perspective as their truth, staying out of judgment. Not easy when you enjoy it as much as most of us do.
recognizing emotion in other people and then communicating that empathy is feeling with people. And to me I always think of empathy as this kind of sacred space
when someone's kind of in a deep hole, and they shout out from the bottom, and they say I'm stuck. It's dark. I'm overwhelmed, and then we look and we say, Hey, you climb down.
I know what it's like down here. and you're not alone. Sympathy is it's bad. No, you want a sandwich.
Empathy is a choice, and it's a vulnerable choice, because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling rarely, if ever, does an empathic response begin with, at least
I had a yeah. and we do it all the time, because you know what. Someone just shared something with us that's incredibly painful. and we're trying to silver lining it. I don't think that's a verb.
but I'm using it as one. We're trying to put the silver lining around it. So I had a miscarriage. At least, you know you can get pregnant. I think my marriage is falling apart. At least you have a marriage.
John's getting kicked out of school. At least. Sarah is an a student, but one of the things we do sometimes in the face of very difficult conversations.
is we try to make things better if I share something with you. That's very difficult. I'd rather you say. I don't even know what to say right now. I'm just so glad you told me.
because the truth is, rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Alright. So let me stop here for a second
Beatriz De La Espriella: and go back to my slide
Beatriz De La Espriella: alright.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So, having empathy and working from oh, sorry working for my trauma, informed approach with the patrons, could definitely help us act less on that personal biases or any personal messes that we may have, and it can help us see that their behavior is not personal. That is not something that they're doing to us intentionally. But the biggest thing in even earlier in the video, it talked about
Beatriz De La Espriella: taking the perspective as they're taking their view as their own as of their own truth. And I think that is the biggest part when it comes to us using empathy, and the libraries like that is their truth. I am not changing them, which
Beatriz De La Espriella: leads us to our next topic. And what we're gonna talk about, I understand, like trying to communicate, communicate with someone who has had a traumatic event or just someone who's irrational, right, who who doesn't have that logic
Beatriz De La Espriella: part of the brain. You know the frontal lobe activated and just uses motion to kind of respond and communicate with you can be difficult, right? So I completely understand. But before we jump into those effective strategies and to how to communicate with them, let's talk a little bit about what are some of the barriers that we need to be in mind of before we jump into that.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So one of them is the lack of emotional regulation. You know, people with emotional regulation problems often cannot take someone else's perspective. You know, when they're at anxious or overwhelmed, they shift that discomfort, and they go ahead and bring it back to the other person. Right? And is that part of the limbic system? There's no rational thinking they're like, well, it's I'm very uncomfortable. Just go ahead and push that into the other individual by showing them my reaction
coping skills. And I'm gonna yell, and I'm gonna be little. And I'm gonna treat you bad, right? So
Beatriz De La Espriella: they're unable to control that part of the brain. They are unable to tell the amygdala. Excuse me, mind your business. I need to go ahead and take care of the situation with logic because they don't have that right. They have emotional regulation problems. Another barrier to communication is their internal, our own internal beliefs right? Our own negative biases, our own distortions, our own belief systems, right can definitely have a huge impact. And how we communicate with others.
Beatriz De La Espriella: And the last barrier to communication that I wanna highlight is our desire to change others per se perceptions. Right? And this is where the biggest conflict happens right? Instead of being open to their truth, we wanna change it so that it matches ours. Okay? So now let's look at some effective communication strategies. When it comes to communicating with individuals. Right? We all have fears right. But
Beatriz De La Espriella: individuals who have that irrational thinking, or they just unable to use the the logic part of the brain to communicate with us. They perceive everyday event as a real threat or as a crisis, right? So getting them to see things like we do with logic can be very difficult and sometimes even impossible, depending on how far they've gone. So instead, we wanna look internally.
Beatriz De La Espriella: we want to take a look at okay, if I can have them. Look at things in a logic go away. What can I do? Instead, I need to make a change. I need to make a shift.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So what we want to do is wanna unhook on. Emotionally, we are not going to take what they're saying to us. Personally, we want to increase our self awareness. We want to look at any patterns, learn about ourselves. What's your communication style? Are you someone who is passive, aggressive? Can you instead change that communication style to be able to communicate with individuals in a different way. And then also what is in our control.
Beatriz De La Espriella: we can change what happened to them.
Beatriz De La Espriella: We can't control that. They perceive us as a threat. But what we can control is how our perception of their behavior right? We can't change. It's like, Okay, well, they're acting in a way that is very irrational. So instead of me being at their level of trying to change them the way that they're thinking, I'm going to be open and try to be as understanding as much as I can.
I will say this
Beatriz De La Espriella: safety is the number one priority. None of these strategies matter. If safety is an issue.
Beatriz De La Espriella: We talked about one of the strategies of the key principles of trauma. Informed services is safety. So if your safety, if you're in danger
Beatriz De La Espriella: and and safety is of concern. You need to follow your libraries, procedures, and policies to make sure that you your safety remains as a number one priority, because again, none of this matters. If your safety if if you're at home. Okay, another strategy I do. Wanna highlight didn't include in here. But I think it's very important to touch, to share
Beatriz De La Espriella: listening right? We want to do some active listening. We want to listen to, to understand, not listening to respond. Now, these are not necessarily de-escalation techniques or anything like that, but they can be used. But it's more about looking at us internally right. And I understand that it's easier said than done. You know I completely get it. I am aware I acknowledge that it's it's easier for me to sit here and tell you all these things right. But it can happen right? And it could definitely make a difference. And it takes time right?
So let's go ahead and go into one last strategy that I want to share with all of you. For effective communication.
Beatriz De La Espriella: And this one is, I don't know if many of you have heard of this strategy, but it's called ear. So it stands for empathy, attention and respect, and I wanna use it as an example of maybe an interaction you'll have with a patron. So bear with me a little bit. And I love that. You guys are poison. Those questions in the QA. So I'm excited to get to those. So it all starts with empathy. Right? So we can say something like I could see you're frustrated.
Beatriz De La Espriella: But most likely the patron will stop you and say something like frustrated. I am annoyed. I am mad. So you're trying to use this example that I'm giving you. But it's it's okay. You can try to still show them that empathy. And just say, II could see what you're you're that you are upset like. Let's go ahead and talk about it. Right? So then that's the attention piece. Let's talk about it so that I can understand.
Tell me more. I want to hear where you're saying, and then they're gonna probably respond with, you don't understand. I have gone everywhere. That library told me that they had it, and they didn't. And all this chaos, and it was checked out, and all that stuff. I've been running around everywhere.
Beatriz De La Espriella: right? But you're still giving them that attention, and then we're going to wrap it up with the last one, which is respect, and you can let them know it's like, look, I respect everything you've gone through I completely understand. But here's the thing. I wasn't there to what happened. So why don't you tell me about it
Beatriz De La Espriella: again? You bring in that back attention. You're showing them that everything is like II cannot 100 relate to you, so tell me about it. Tell me what's going on. I am here now to help you, so go ahead and tell me, what do you need right now? Never agree with a person, or make a statement that you are not in agreement with.
Beatriz De La Espriella: as I'm most of the times that will believe that you're lying to them. So just wanna make sure that just try to be as calm as possible. Whenever again we wanna use empathy attention, give them the attention and the need. And last thing will be that respect, aspect, and again, in any dangerous situation, please could use caution right, and seek safety first, safety definitely. Come first. None of this matters. If your safety is compromised. Right? So make sure you follow the protocols
for safety that your library has provided
alright. So I don't know about all of you. But we talked a lot about trauma, the brain empathy, you know, those strategies for communication.
Beatriz De La Espriella: And oh, boy. I'm feeling a little bit drained. I don't know about any of you right? Which I think it's very important that we now talk about self-care.
Beatriz De La Espriella: because none of the things that I presented to you today, none of them matter if you're not feeling up to the challenge right? If you're not ready to tackle every day with your foot forward and walk into that library, saying, I'm ready to be here to make a change in myself. Others, whatever might be.
Beatriz De La Espriella: None of it matters if you're not taking care of yourself now, self care is a buzz word, right? It's one of those words that everybody talks about. It's like, Well, I'm gonna go pamper myself. I'm gonna go get my nails done. I'm going to on a vacation. And yes, all of that's wonderful. But self care doesn't mean
Beatriz De La Espriella: spending money. Self care doesn't. Necessarily. Yes, it's really good, and I encourage everybody to go on a vacation. Don't get me wrong, but if that's not what all self care is about right. Self care is about realizing when you're overwhelmed.
Beatriz De La Espriella: realizing when you need help listening to your body, listening to your mind and say something's happening, and I'm not comfortable with this. So go ahead and do something to listen to your body and take a pause right, and speak up and talk about the things that you want to to be able to share with others and say, Hey, I am comfortable. I'm overwhelmed
Beatriz De La Espriella: right now. A simple Google search defines self scare as the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one's own health.
Beatriz De La Espriella: And the one part that I want you to highlight from this is taking action right being purposeful about it. So I'm gonna go over a few strategies in a little bit. For self care, calming strategies and things like that. But the one challenge I have for you. It's for you to make sure that you do something and take a step in focusing on yourself. I will say that if you do struggle with starting
or even keeping some self care strategies because that does happen. I am gonna share my email at the end. And you are more than welcome to email me, and I can share some tips that I have to get just to get started with self care right definitely. If you're having some trouble with self care.
Beatriz De La Espriella: I will be more than glad to share some tips with you. All right, let's go ahead and get started with some of the calming strategies that I want to share with you today.
These are actually strategies that I talk with my clients, and we actually do them in sessions together. I teach them how to do them right, and these are my most favorite ones. So breathing, grounding, or breathe grounding, and using your 5 senses.
Beatriz De La Espriella: We started the presentation breathing right? Because I believe 100%, that breathing is super important. And it's more of a purple school breathing right to sit down just 5 deep breaths, that's all it takes. And that's all you need just 5 deep breaths to be able to get to regulate your stress response system and then help the brain use that logical part and to be able to react to situations. Right groundings bring attention to the present moment what's happening around you, and then see, touch, smell.
Beatriz De La Espriella: and taste as your 5 senses. I do recommend using one sentence at a time.
Beatriz De La Espriella: If you're going in a walk. Try to notice the sun hitting your skin, or just listening to the trees, the leaves wrestling, and things like that. So you definitely want to practice using your senses as a way to remain calm and as a calming strategy.
Beatriz De La Espriella: The last self group strategy that I want to share with you today, and these again are my favorite ones. One of them is setting boundaries, your own boundaries. We're not talking about what we want other people to stop doing, or other people to not do right. We want to look into what are some of the things that I need to do to set that boundary to not cross that line
also another self care. Strategy is saying no, and understanding that no is a complete sentence. Right? You do not need to add an explanation to that sentence. You do not need to say anything further when you say I don't want to join you at the event. Right? That is also a selfish strategy.
Beatriz De La Espriella: And these list of activities you enjoy these. Actually, my favorite one's a walking, reading, painting, drawn and journaling. These are ones that I talk to my client, my clients in therapy that we work with together on. If they don't know what to do. Journaling, we will work on it together great again, just doing activities since you enjoy.
Beatriz De La Espriella: If you are struggling again to do something or to get started with selfish strategies, you're more than welcome to email me and let me know. But I want to close up with one challenge for you one last time. And it's just to think about doing something different and challenge yourself. Leave work on time today.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Go on that walk that you've been wanting to go on right today is the time to do something different. Whatever you've been doing, it's not working. So let's go ahead and do something different. If you're noticing that you're feeling a little burnout, or just a little bit of stress or something's going on. Go ahead and do something differently today.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Alright. So here's my contact information. You are more than welcome to email me. I do wanted to highlight. I also have for those libraries that want to provide trauma informed services, and they don't know if they're ready, I do have a checklist that I can share with all of you. So if any of you are ready or want to provide trauma informed services. You're more than welcome to send me an email and I can share that checklist with you as well. So
Beatriz De La Espriella: other than that, Julie, I am ready for the next any questions that anybody may have.
Julie Edwards: Beatrice. Thank you so much. This was absolutely fantastic. There have been a lot of questions that have come in, and we will try to get as many as possible in here in the time we have together. Many, many people were asking if you would mind touching more on people pleasing as a fight or flight response. That was a new concept to a lot of people that they would like to hear more about.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Well, a lot of it when it comes to people pleasing and when they would they talking about fight and flight? Response? I think I know exactly which which slide as a coping reactionary skill. It's because they want to protect themselves. So that's kind of what that looks for. So if their reactionary skills is like yes, saying yes to everything that is at coping a reactionary coping skill that they have done so when they were younger I would use as an example. So when they were younger, and a traumatic event happened to them, and all they wanted to do was to please
Beatriz De La Espriella: the adult or the parent that that was doing to something to them so that it wouldn't happen again. Then they're using that one more time as a reactionary coping skills when they're older.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So that behavior of now I'm saying yes to everything here as an older person, it's probably attached to this similar behavior that happened when they were younger. Does that make sense? Is that a good? I want to make sure?
Julie Edwards: I think it makes sense. If anybody has any follow-up questions feel free to to drop them in the question and answer box.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Yep.
Julie Edwards: let's see. So someone is asking, how can we use these strategies when a patron who is reacting from trauma is causing us to react from our own place of trauma.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So the biggest thing is
Beatriz De La Espriella: when we use. So that's with the common strategies that I talk about. So the first thing is self awareness. So if you yourself aware that this there's something that's triggering you, and you start to listen to your body.
Beatriz De La Espriella: If you notice, your heart rate's going up, or you're starting to feel kind of warm over here, and you're noticing that things are triggering you. The words that they're saying, the best thing I would say in that situation is to remove yourself for you in order for you to take care of yourself. Right? So you can then say I'm sorry I'm gonna have to step away for a minute and then seek help from another. Probably a staff or another individual that can go
ahead and bring in and support you. In that situation. I think one of the biggest thing is, and this is what I teach or I talk to with my clients.
Beatriz De La Espriella: We need to learn to find the right coping skills for us when we get triggered in a situation. So what do you use what has worked for you in the past? To calm down, to say, remain to stay focused. What has worked for you and be able to bring that up in that situation.
Julie Edwards: Thank you so much. Super, helpful
Julie Edwards: lot of people are asking about whether any of this changes when you're interacting with children who show signs of trauma. Is there anything specifically that
Julie Edwards: we should think about?
Beatriz De La Espriella: No, I think it. Also, it's just there's a few things that I wanna keep in mind. So again, I wanna highlight empathy as listening to what the the child is doing or
Beatriz De La Espriella: observing the behavior. If the child opens up, you know I don't know how much you. So again, your supervisors will require you to do any reporting, because that's again in my, in my situation, in my job I would have to report it, especially if it's a child. But if you start noticing those behaviors, we also wanna be careful that
Beatriz De La Espriella: it could be normal, just childhood, like child development. And that's where it everything. It's kinda hard to determine. Is this just the child development? Or is this the child who is has had a traumatic event? But when we come from empathy on both sides. We can still connect with the individual, even if it's just like normal childhood development. And we can also connect with the individual if it's also a traumatic event, so I would say.
Beatriz De La Espriella: doesn't necessarily change definitely an empathy aspect of that but just be mindful that not every behavior, especially with children is because of dramatic event. It could be just normal childhood. Just developmental behaviors.
Julie Edwards: Thank you. Several people have asked sort of a
Julie Edwards: couple of questions coming in that I'll combine here. So someone wants to know.
Julie Edwards: I would love information about how to evaluate if our typical policies and procedures are trauma informed. And then the flip side of that question is, what do you do when someone is
Julie Edwards: complaining about? a policy that you you can't do anything about.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Okay. So the first part is so that whoever wrote that question or anybody you can, you're more than welcome to email me, because that is a completely separate topic for us to discuss. I do have a checklist.
Beatriz De La Espriella: that can help you get started. So it's not an end. All be all I don't know how much, Julie. You want me to go in this, but that's that's my training. So like that's what I do. I actually come in into the library and be able to
Beatriz De La Espriella: go with you through everything that you have in your library to evaluate and just see what's going on, if it's from inform or not. Train your staff. So that's a completely separate ball game, which I'm not going to go into it. But I do have a checklist that we can go. You can have just to kind of get you started. And then again, you're more than welcome to email me with regards to the other thing.
Beatriz De La Espriella: you have to be mindful. So that's a very deep question, because you you can please everybody.
Beatriz De La Espriella: and that's a tough one, but we want to be able to try as much as we can to not re-traumatize. That is the goal of the trauma informed services. So if your policy at the end end of it is we are avoiding ret traumatization. That's where we want to stick with. That's where we want to stay. So I'll be more than happy to look at it. If you guys are more than welcome to again, just email me. And then we could talk more.
Julie Edwards: Thank you.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Someone's asking if you could put up the 6 principles again. They just wanted to. Yeah, look at that. Yeah, of course. Let me go back to that. Probably gonna take me a little bit because I don't know how to jump other than going backwards this way.
Beatriz De La Espriella: There it is. Yeah. And these can be accessed directly through Samsha, the substance abuse mental health administration that they can definitely have these
Julie Edwards: great and this is probably a good time to remind everybody that I'm going to send out all of this information in just a few days, so keep an eye on that as well. And there's
Julie Edwards: Beatrice has included her list of references here which link out to other fantastic services.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Yeah, at the end of the slides. You get the slides, for sure. So, Umhm.
Julie Edwards: great. So someone's asking, How do we have a conversation with coworkers about trauma you've experienced in the workplace? I had an incident where a patron threatened to shoot me, and a co-worker was present, and my director's response felt underwhelming to the extent of victim blaming. How do I express this without breaking down?
Beatriz De La Espriella: Oh, that's a tough one. Here's my! My biggest thing is.
Beatriz De La Espriella: you want to be. Have a good support system and the
Beatriz De La Espriella: not everybody. Is trauma informed right? Not everybody. It's gonna be open, not everybody's gonna have that. So you may still have them not respond the right way. But I think the most empowering thing. It's for you to take that. It's not about what they, how they respond, but for you to feel empowered, to make that change, to say something and to say this mattered to me enough that I'm going to say something, regardless of the outcome.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So, being able to feel ready and strong. And if you're not ready.
Beatriz De La Espriella: then talk to someone that can help you get there to that situation to get you into that moment, but I think it's all about you empowering yourself and saying I'm going to speak up, no matter the outcome, because it bothered me, and if it bothered me it probably bother other people, too. But I'm doing it for myself. So that's how I would approach it.
Julie Edwards: Thank you. And now. Somebody's asking if we can go. If you could go ahead and put your contact slide back up so you will all get these in a few days, I promise.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Yeah, we could definitely definitely do that. So and if there was, yep, no, there it is. And then there's the resources you guys are gonna have towards the end for links for for different of these things. But yeah, any other questions.
Julie Edwards: Yeah, there are so many other questions. We definitely are are not gonna get to all of them. But several questions have come in about, what's that line? And maybe this goes back to self care. What's that line when you open the door to empathy? But then, like you can't shut it right. So, like the patron really wants to keep talking. They they seek you out now. It's it's not bad. It's just really overwhelming.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Yeah. No, I completely so
Beatriz De La Espriella: fatigue fatigue. Oh, goodness! There is a
Beatriz De La Espriella: yeah. It happens a lot in social work, services, mental health services. You open the door and then they come in and they want to see you all the time, and you're being really nice to them, and sometimes you have work to do right, and then you're just can't get away from them. There's a few things that I would say. Be honest with them.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Very honest and clear, and say, I really like our conversations, but II have to get back to work to be able to end the conversation. So I do want to. And this question actually came up in another training. So it was the same and
Beatriz De La Espriella: There I ended up writing an article about it, because, having ending those difficult conversations with the patrons can be hard, but I think if you approach it from an honesty standpoint, it's more important than anything to say. Hey, I like our conversations, but unfortunately
Beatriz De La Espriella: I have to get back to work. There's this is something I need to do. My boss is on me. I really need to get to it. There was another at the other presentation, the person was saying, oh, sometimes I have my staff. Call me and say, Hey, we need you so you can kinda get off from the conversation. That's never gonna go away. So just I think the best thing is just coming from a very honest standpoint, and just saying to the individual. I need to step away. I can't have this conversation today, maybe another day.
Julie Edwards: Fantastic. Thank you so much.
Julie Edwards: Someone is asking, How do we avoid retraumatization of for youth of color in the library, especially when library staff can be seen as authority figures.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So
Beatriz De La Espriella: that's a yeah. That's a very good one that it's probably gonna take me a little bit to respond. the problem with authority figure. I think a lot of it is just connecting with them, and in a way that it's there. But it's possible.
Beatriz De La Espriella: So I understand that they're an authority right? But coming to them and not being here, but just at their level as much as possible, understanding that there is an experience that they had, that you haven't. So you're coming in with curiosity.
Beatriz De La Espriella: Right? You're coming in with just a simple Hey, how is your day today? And I know this sounds like very simple that I'm telling you this right now. But the more you bring yourself from being here to every time that they that child comes in into the library, you see them eye to eye
Beatriz De La Espriella: back them in the same way that you want to be respected. I think it shows a lot. So again, bringing yourself down to their level, and you show them the respect that you want from them as well. So I think that would be very important, especially when you have different there's still different cultures. So, coming from that aspect of curiosity
Julie Edwards: that's fantastic. Thank you. You're getting a lot of thank yous in the chat. And I also want to remind those of you who are subscribers to Niche Academy, because I've seen stuff come up about self care and passion, fatigue and burnout. We do have tutorials on those topics. You can look for those in the marketplace to share with your staff. You can also share this webinar and the slides. All this information will
Julie Edwards: will be out there for you in a couple of days. Let's see. Gosh! There are so so many good questions.
Julie Edwards: maybe so. A couple a couple of questions have come in, and this revisits a little bit what you said, and this this maybe can can sort of wrap everything up here. But
Julie Edwards: several people are asking like, How do you know the do? Should we always assume someone is
Julie Edwards: experience trauma experiencing trauma? Is it okay to take this approach like we don't know what's going on with them. W. What if they're on a substance or something else is going on? Does it matter if we know that or not.
Beatriz De La Espriella: I think
Beatriz De La Espriella: it doesn't matter whether we know if they have had a traumatic event or not. If they've experienced it, I think coming again. It's just this idea of traumatic events are so big, and it's such a thing that happens that we don't even know how much is happening. But it happens a lot. It happens a lot. And then a lot of children have experiencing traumatic events. So coming from that aspect of it, with the substance. Use? It's hard to know right which one or the other, but if you think about it.
Beatriz De La Espriella: if there is a traumatic event, there is a higher chance for that substance use. So they're kind of connected. So your response to the individual, your connection with that individual, it's automatically gonna go into that traumatic event, just thinking. Oh, they have experienced a traumatic event. Therefore I'm going to talk to them as if they had. So that is the act of whether it was whether they are the substances or not. Just having that. But I do want to say this. None of that matters. If safety is an issue.
Beatriz De La Espriella: That is the biggest thing I want to make sure that everybody understands. Yes, we want to be. We want to show empathy. Yes, we want to be there for for them, and connect with them, and and to sympathize, not sympathize, but empathy, be providing empathy to them right. But if your safety is an issue. None of that matters. Okay. So just want to make sure that we get that.
Julie Edwards: Thank you so much, Beatrice. We really appreciate your time and expertise. You're getting so many compliments in the chat. Thank you. Awesome, awesome. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much.
Julie Edwards: and thank you all for attending today. It's so great to see so many of you here. I'm so glad a lot of you seem to have gotten so much out of this presentation. Please join us for our next webinar next week, and I hope to see you as we continue doing another 100 webinars together. Thank you. All have a great afternoon. Bye, everybody.