The Edge of Compassion, with Françoise Mathieu

Season 1, Episode 8

[Intro music]

[Intro]

[00:09] Teresa Huizar:
You are listening to One in Ten from National Children’s Alliance. I’m Teresa Huizar, your host. Join us as we engage in one-on-one conversations with the brightest minds in science, medicine, faith, communications, and the law. We’ll discuss the path forward to solve the greatest challenge one in 10 of our children face: child abuse.

Today’s focus is the edge of compassion. We know that compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and burnout can take a heavy toll on people in the field of child protection. Children’s Advocacy Center staff, law enforcement, prosecutors, medical providers, caseworkers, and others deal with this every single day.

How do we stay hopeful and resilient in the face of such suffering? I invited Françoise Mathieu, co-executive director of Tend Academy, and a highly sought-after speaker on the subject of high stress workplaces to discuss how child advocacy professionals can protect ourselves and our colleagues as we deal with cases of horrific child abuse.

How can we cope with the stress while remaining effective and compassionate for the children and families we work so hard to help?

[Intro music begins to fade out]

[01:37] Teresa Huizar:
You’ve had this 20-year history working—more than that, perhaps—working in the field of mental health. How did you wind up coming to these issues of workplace health and addressing secondary traumatic stress and vicarious trauma and those kinds of things? I think it’s an interesting place of practice, but not necessarily one that has very many people in this space.

Françoise Mathieu:
No, you’re absolutely right. And certainly when I received my education—I have a master’s in counseling psychology—in the late nineties, I had not been exposed to these concepts at all in the course of my education. We, you know, probably talked about self-care a little bit. But certainly the terms “compassion fatigue,” “secondary trauma,” none of those terms had really been created or had, you know, just really been very recently kind of created in the field.

So I wasn’t aware of them. But what happened is when I started my work—I was a crisis counselor, and I worked for about seven years in that capacity in a variety of places. And I started noticing that a lot of my colleagues were—sometimes I really noticed an erosion of their empathy with patients and clients.

And I started seeing that, you know, I had to take a patient to an emergency ward. You know, some of the nurses and physicians were wonderful and some of them were not. And the same with law enforcement. And I’m the kind of person who’s always questioned everything, and I started wanting to make sure—well, first of all, I wanted to make sure that I did not lose my ability to have empathy for the people I serve.

I’m a huge advocate of, you know, clients and patients and folks we serve. And I also started wondering, you know, how can we stay well in a field that’s so challenging and have so many limited resources? And I started digging around looking for strategies not only for me to stay well but to support my colleagues so that we could all continue doing a really good job.

So that’s how it started. In about 2001, I read a couple of resources and, then with a friend, we decided to put together a small workshop just in our community. And it just kind of took off from there.

[03:41] Teresa Huizar:
So one of the things that I wonder about, you know, in the sort of mind of the public, there are all kinds of terms that get tossed around: compassion fatigue, burnout, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma.

How do you think about the differences among these? And what’s important for us to know about the differences among the terms?

Françoise Mathieu:
So it’s a great question, and I am really grateful to the Secondary Traumatic Stress Consortium, which is a group that I’ve been a member of since 2015. We basically created a think tank of people in the field to try and bring some clarity to not just terminology but resources and strategies. Because it was pretty confusing. And I think—as you say—it still is a bit of a messy, you know, terminological topic out there.

And so what we’ve established, as a think tank, we kind of came up to a consensus agreement in 2015. But although those terms are complimentary, they’re not—and they’re probably overlapping as effects—they’re not one and the same. And the reason to me it matters to be able to clarify what’s happening for ourselves, let’s say as a service provider, because the strategies and solutions are going to be very different.

If what you’re experiencing is a lot of indirect or secondary trauma effects, that’s actually really different than if you’re working in a place where you have tremendous amount of moral distress because of, you know, ethical dilemmas or rules, regulations, or procedures you disagree with. Or if you work in a place where you’re experiencing a lot of compassion fatigue because of similarity of cases or the same folks you serve over and over again. Or burnout, which is related really to your working conditions, your hours, your pay, your rewards, your recognitions.

And, of course, many of us can have all of these factors, and I really like to think of them as a Venn diagram with all these overlapping circles. But the more we understand what’s actually the main contributing factor to our erosion, the more we can address that one. And so for me, clarity in the difference in terminology has made a really big difference also for me to be able to decide, well, what needs attention, you know?

I have a currently, actually, my sister’s visiting, and she has a very spirited two year old who’s at my house. [Laughter]

And I could tell you that my sister right now, her personal stressors are probably higher than her work stressors, if you know what I mean.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
Right? She’s sleep deprived.

Teresa Huizar:
Sure.

Françoise Mathieu:
She’s caregiving this amazing, phenomenal little kid. And so at her stage of life, she might say, “My contributing factors to the stressors are largely personal.” Whereas at another stage of our lives we might say, “Well, it’s actually the nature of the work or the people I work with,” and so on and so forth. So I think clarity is important also in order to do good quality research.

If we don’t all agree on the terms, how on can we collect data? So we’re really advocating for clarity between terminology, and certainly at the consortium we’ve come to an agreement of what those terms mean.

[00:06:41] Teresa Huizar:
One of the things that I’m wondering about, because I’m thinking about during a time period in which I was ending my stint as the executive director of the first center that I headed. I have to tell you, I did not think that I had burnout, compassion fatigue, any of these things.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
If you had asked me, I would’ve said, I’m so—you know, I loved every minute I worked there, I was sorry when I needed to move to another state and make a job change. All of those things. I have to tell you, about six months after having had a complete, you know, change, not working in the field of child abuse during that brief period of time at all, I really began to realize that I had been carrying around a lot of stress that I didn’t—I had not recognized. But I didn’t know that until sometime later.

You know, I wasn’t scanning around Walmart to see what children were being abused. [Laughter] You know, I wasn’t, you know, hypervigilant walking down the street. You know, all of those things. And I’m just wondering, how does a person know that they’re being by impacted by these things in the moment? Not six months later, not after they’ve had a job change, but what should they be looking for in themselves to know whether they’re being impacted right now?

Françoise Mathieu:
I really love that question because I think, as you say, so many of us, we just go, go, go, and then either we get sick or all of a sudden something feels like it’s “out of nowhere.” But as you say, we’ve probably carried it and accumulated it over time, and at some point it catches us unaware.

And I really like to advocate for, first of all, establishing real clarity about your own warning signs. And I like to break them down into physical, emotional, and behavioral warning signs. And those are things that we can monitor on a daily, weekly, regular basis.

I tend to like to think of Sunday. I don’t work on Sundays; I’m very lucky that way. But Sunday’s kind of my check-in day, you know what I mean?

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm. Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
So it’s a day where I’m going to take stock. And it might not be for hours. I have a busy life, like many people, but I might take half an hour to kind of take stock of where everything’s at. You know, how am I feeling physically? How’s my sleep? What kind of media have I been consuming in the evenings? Let’s say I do a high trauma job. Have I also then been watching, you know, Forensic Files—

[Laughter]

Françoise Mathieu:
—on wine, so to say.

[Cross-talk]

Françoise Mathieu:
As a lot of people do.

Teresa Huizar:
And some Law and Order to back that up too, right? Yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
And a little CSI thrown in for good measure.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
So I tend to like to do, you know, sort of that weekly check-in. Not just the New Year’s resolution thing. But I also think that we’re noticing and we’re recognizing more and more the regular moment by moment self-awareness is what makes the biggest difference.

It was kind of funny because a couple of days ago, I had family coming to visit. And I watched myself. I even had my own voice, you know, Laura Van Lipsky has a great sentence. She always says, you know: “Check me out. Check me out. Over-functioning.” And I literally, on Monday, cleaned my house in a way that was absolutely unnecessary.

Teresa Huizar:
[Laughter] Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
I was having all these thoughts about: My father was coming, and I wanted him to think my house was—you know, it was just ridiculous. And I was like, it was super-hot outside, and I’m, like, scrubbing every inch of my house in a ridiculous kind of way.

But as I was doing it, I was also observing myself. And I was like, “Huh. Check me out. What’s going on today? Why am I spending four hours scrubbing this floor? What is that really about?” And I’m really honest about this because I think that self-awareness is not just waiting till your Friday yoga, you know, session or whatever you do. It really is a moment-by-moment process of being aware. What’s my appetite like today? How have I slept? What are my thought patterns?

And I feel that the more we develop self-awareness skills, they’re not just before and after work. You can literally be sitting in court, if that’s what you do, and pay attention to how your body is feeling or what your thoughts are while you’re also doing your job.

And that’s what we recommend. So be aware of your, we call them the three big warning signs. That’s your number one physical, emotional, behavioral warning signs. But also day to day: What’s going on? How am I feeling? Am I drinking too much coffee? Am I, you know, somehow going through a day without even, you know, feeling myself?

So those are the things I practice, and I find them to be very effective. And they also prevent a slide into a place where, as you say, it’s been months, you know, without me checking in. I check in all the time.

[11:03] Teresa Huizar:
One of the things that I’m thinking about is, when I, you know, talk to colleagues and—who work in this field, and especially when I think back to the work that I did directly with teams—you know, many times, the warning signs or the flags, I don’t—I’m not sure they actually came from the person themselves. Or, if I’m talking about me. from myself, my self-awareness. But I do think that if I look back, that there were people who were being impacted by it. Right? And if I had been paying more attention to that, there were red flags there. You know, am I so exhausted that I’m impatient in my interactions with other people? And I think that that happens at home and not just in workspace, right? The family winds up impacted by our work. Not just, you know, the person who’s actually doing the work.

You know, what are your thoughts about how people can pay attention or should be paying attention to those dynamics, too. Where it’s not only, you know, “How am I feeling in terms of my sleep?” and those things, but looking at those sort of relationship-functioning impacts that I think are very much a part of what happens in this work if we’re not careful.

Françoise Mathieu:
I often say, you know, if you want to know what your warning signs are, ask your loved ones. They will be delighted to tell you.

[Laughter]

Teresa Huizar:
That’s good advice.

Françoise Mathieu:
And I also think, you know, what I’ve observed over the years of doing this is that it looks often like, like this. I think that the first place where the erosion shows is, as you say, is at home or with our significant others or friends. And then I tend to see an erosion with our colleagues. Often we still do a really, really good job with the people we serve, but everything else around—

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm. Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
You know, I remember at some point I would stop going to the lunch, you know, whatever. We’d have like lunch at work. And I started skipping the lunchtime because I was probably working too hard and I wanted to finish some files. Or maybe my colleagues were irritating me because they were talking about maybe non-trauma related topics and I just—

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
—wanted to talk about about trauma. Or I know that I was really fortunate that I recently did a session with a DA’s office in the States. And they invited their families to come to the session. And it was so powerful for the family members to hear: What is it like for both sides?

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm. Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
What is it like to come home to you? And what is it like for us to have you come home? And I certainly—I actually just had a great conversation with my partner last week. He, we’ve been together for a million years, and I had just had a high trauma week, which is unusual for me now because I don’t do as much direct patient or client service.

And I said to him, “What was it like?” We were on a drive, you know—

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm. Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
—one of those great parts where you’re on a long drive and you can talk. And I said, “What was it like when I did crisis work all the time?” And he said, “It was hard.”

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
You know, he said, “It was hard because you would come home, and you were either irritable or withdrawn. Or you needed this big bubble around you. Or I’d watch the news on, and you didn’t want the news on because you had just lived the news.”

And so I really, I encourage people in this field to have a really loving and open conversation with their loved ones about also what you need. So if you work in this field, maybe you need to come home and change clothes or have a shower. Or you need 10 minutes to yourself. Or you know, that it can be an open dialogue because this is a job that impacts everyone in our support system. It’s not just about us. And they also deserve our time and attention.

And that’s the second piece that I certainly worked on very hard, is to be present. Even when maybe at home, I’m not going to lie, there were times where the crises in my family really paled in comparison to what I had just seen—

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
—at work. And I really reminded myself, you know, my, I have a son who’s now 19 but when he was a teenager, he would come home from school, and I would always put my phone down and close my laptop and just look at him and listen. Maybe for seven minutes. He probably didn’t want to hang out with me any longer than that. But you know—

[Laughter]

Teresa Huizar:
Right. Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
He had other things to do.

Teresa Huizar:
Typical teenager.

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah, exactly, right? But you know, probably eating a giant snack and going somewhere else.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
But it was just reminding myself of being present.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
But the other piece that, again, I have millions of examples because I obviously live this life. This is actively happening. Right. My son said to me recently, you know, some of my anxieties about highway safety driving or whatever’s going on, he said, “You know, this can’t turn into a thing for you and I.”

And I said, “What do you mean?”

And he said, “I understand you’re worried about it because you used to work in the ER and you know too much.” He goes, “But this cannot turn into a thing where I can’t also live my life.”

And I thought that was a really great dialogue for us to have.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Françoise Mathieu:
And to be able to have a conversation about: These are rational fears. These are actually fears that are caused by your work. And how do we find a balance?

And I really think open dialogue and communication with your loved ones is crucial if we’re going to, you know, be able to do this job in the long haul and stay connected to them.

[00:16:16] Teresa Huizar:
Well, and there are two things about that that I want to follow up on. Because I think there, that’s critical. You know, when I’ve been doing public speaking, if I raise any issues like this, one of the things that you know, I’ll often say, and it always gets a laugh, but I have to tell you it’s a little bit in the wrong sort of way, is, you know, whether you know the folks in the room, you know, “How many of you let your kids go on sleepovers? How many of them are, you know, able to go to summer camp?” and those kinds of things. People laugh with this knowing laugh because their kids are not having the same experiences as other kids because they’re so impacted by this work.

You know, you do see the—and you are exposed to cases that involve these things every single day. And so I think there’s this balancing act you’re trying to do between not being overprotective of your kids but also at the same time not ignoring real threats that exist. So, you know, not wanting to overly shape someone’s childhood with these fears. But also really having seen the evil in the world on a daily basis.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
Which I think takes its own toll, honestly. And I think that juggling act is something our multidisciplinary teams deal with and our CAC staff every single solitary day.

Françoise Mathieu:
I agree. And I think that, so, you know, if we’re going to talk about strategies, how do we address that?

The reality is we see and we hear very, very difficult things that many civilians in the world have never, ever seen. Hopefully. Or certainly not in the volume and quantity that we have. How do we deal with that? And one of the pieces I think that we need to be aware of is staying connected to the rest of the world.

I have a brother who works in the entertainment industry, and I find it sometimes very refreshing to talk to him because his work is completely different from mine, right?

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
He deals with lights and sounds and, you know, what have you. And I find it sometimes really restorative for me to also acknowledge and—. I have a friend who works in a garden center. It’s wonderful to share what she does.

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
I think that there are times where we start spending only time with people who do our work because they get it. We don’t have to explain anything, but that can also become imbalance.

Now, I also agree with you that we know a lot and we probably all have friends or loved ones who are not in this field and are actually, quite frankly, very naive.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
And there are certain times where I either say something or sometimes I bite my tongue.

[Laughter]

It depends on the risk level.

Teresa Huizar:
Right, right. Yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
Because I also think that there are times where we do know things, and I think that we also sometimes have a duty, not only the desire to, but we also have a duty and a responsibility to let people know, “No, I have complaints about this.” Or, “Do you think that’s right?”

And in a way that’s no different from someone who’s a special ed teacher who notices that maybe a child has exceptionalities, that haven’t been, you know, scanned for, haven’t been assessed. It’s an occupational transformation. And everyone that you could talk to who is a professional of any trade could probably tell you that they have that. You know, I have a friend who’s a carpenter, and he could probably walk in a room and say, you know, “This isn’t,” you know, “structurally safe” or whatever. So it’s one piece of the work that we do. It’s a gift, but it’s also sometimes can be, it’s really isolating, you know, that we know a lot.

[19:30] Teresa Huizar:
I think that that’s true. And I also think because the nature of what we are dealing with in these cases is really in many ways, existential. You know, you are holding somebody’s safety in your hands often. And that comes with it this weight of responsibility. And it’s almost like I was thinking back to times when I—I was never a forensic interviewer myself, but in the first CAC I led, I watched hundreds of forensic interviews. Which, you know, not to say anyone should ever do that. I’ve learned better since.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mmm.

Teresa Huizar:
But I did do that. And I remember feeling when I would emerge from that like I was surfacing from underwater. You know, this sense of having been submerged in all of this dreadful information.

And you know, I mean, I do certainly believe that we can listen to it if kids can say it. You know, I think that we have to honor that we’re asking people to do hard things and that means doing hard things ourself. But at the same time, one of the effects I think that happened for me personally with the sense of daily being submerged in all of this and then surfacing is, often when you surface, it makes other things you’re doing seem overly frivolous. You know what I mean?

Françoise Mathieu:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
Like how can you be nagging at me that the, I don’t know, the garbage disposal hasn’t been fixed—

Françoise Mathieu:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
—and you’ve been saying something for the third time when I’m dealing with child abuse, for God’s sake?

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Teresa Huizar:
You know, it’s like that’s the part that I think gets really tricky in terms of the way this impacts friends, family, people you love is around this sense that you are doing something that is so impactful—and I don’t mean that in a prideful way—

Françoise Mathieu:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
—but something that does have this impact. And yet there are these calls for your normal life.

[Laughter]

Teresa Huizar:
You know, all the important routines and balancing that I think can be really challenging.

Françoise Mathieu:
I so agree with you. And in fact, you know, the parallel that I often use. So I was really fortunate. I worked for the military as a civilian for 10 years. And I was working as a member assistance program. So basically doing their member assistance program for soldiers and their families.

Teresa Huizar:
Hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
And we, of course, talked a lot about reentry, right, after a tour of duty. And they were coming back from combat situations. And you know, I had lots of very, very intense, obviously, conversations with soldiers who talked about—and I think we can all imagine, if we haven’t experienced it what it must be like to come back from a war zone, you know, after six, eight, nine months, however long, however long. And they talk about reentry being very difficult at times.

Right? I remember one soldier telling me that he saw people drinking, you know, just like tap water. And he couldn’t believe that that was something you could do—

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
—because where he was, there was no such thing, or it was contaminated.

The thing about the jobs that we do is, unlike humanitarian workers or military who go away for large, you know, tours of duty, we go home every day. And so our transition and our reentry is daily. And I really believe in the importance of transition rituals, ways to resurface, as you say. Ways to kind of reenter. Almost like, you know, I talk a lot of, when I do a lot of workshops, people talk to me about, you know, leaving their briefcase in one part of their house.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
Not letting it sort of seep into other parts of our house.

Having—I certainly know that, one of my rituals, if you will, is when I go home from a difficult day, which is, you know, stuff you’re referring to, I will immediately go change all my clothes, wash my hands, do the dishes. I’m not doing it because I need to do chores. I am landing.

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
And it’s a way to compartmentalize and leave things behind.

However, there are times that that doesn’t work as well. And I certainly know a few weeks ago some of the stuff I heard really hitched a ride me with me. And as you know, I’m sure you’ve had that some stories hitch a ride with us—

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
—more than others for a whole host of reasons. Personal vulnerability or whatever. I mean, we could go on and on and talk about why do some stories, you know, affect us more than others.

And I know that those times when those stories hitch a ride with me. I don’t know how, you know, your folks on the podcast, how they deal with it. But I personally get more quiet and I get more introverted. I need almost the space because there’s part of me that’s kind of maybe grieving or—

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
—I’m really affected by it. And yet I kind of want people to know without me retraumatizing or sliming them. I kind of need people to know that I’m feeling low or I’m feeling affected. And so I know that in my relationships, I found some ways to do that without sharing the detail. You know, that I, because I’ve been in a very long relationship with my partner, I might go home and say, “Today was hard.” And he knows what that means, right? Because I’ve told him in the past, right?

Teresa Huizar:
Sure.

Françoise Mathieu:
A hard day means X, Y, and Z. But not just, “Today was hard.” “Today was hard, and I need (such and such.)”

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
I need a hug. I need half an hour of quiet. I need to shut up, right?

[Laughter]

Teresa Huizar:
Whatever. Yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
Whatever. But the thing that I find is that I think a lot of us, you know, the other piece that’s important to remember, of course, is that many people in our field, they don’t live in a family or a household with a relationship to someone else. I have a lot of friends who live on their own. And so when they go home, there isn’t a forced transition. There aren’t people clamoring for your time. And knocking off can be hard. Because how do you shift?

And I have a friend who openly—she’s very comfortable with me sharing this—but she’s a parole officer. And you know, she openly acknowledged that until we spoke about it, she would go home and eat six donuts and watch CSI all night.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm, mmm, mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
And she realized that in a way her nervous system was so hyped up and she just couldn’t bring herself back down. And then she actually adopted two rescue dogs who are very needy. [Laughter]

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah, yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
And she said it was the most wonderful thing.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
Because these two dogs, she would go home, and they needed her.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
And they needed care. And so she’d go home and change and take them for a walk. And she said, you know, that was actually so helpful and healthy for her to have a way to be called into another place.

We also talk a lot about, you know, our nervous system. And I think there’s more and more information about that, which I think is wonderful. And certainly, you know, my team, we talk a lot about preparing ourselves before exposure, managing exposure as it’s happening. So let’s say, as you say, you’re doing a forensic interview or something else. But also, what are your strategies to reset once you’ve done that?

You know, do you go exercise? Do you run up a flight of stairs? How do we flush it out of our nervous system? And there are lots of strategies to do that, but I think we need to be, I think this should be part of the crucial training as people start working for CACs, for example, you know, resetting.

[26:35] Teresa Huizar:
Yeah. I think one of the important things you’re pointing out is the intentionality of it.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
Whether it’s in terms of saying what you need or having a sort of positive ritual to help you reset.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
And what I think sometimes happens is only about half of that. In other words, someone says, “My day was really hard,” but it’s not paired with, “—and this is what I need.” And so what happens is maybe there’s a recognition that it’s a hard day, or maybe there’s not. But at any rate, what you’re actually needing may not be what the person is actually proffering either, you know?

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
And so I think if you can verbalize that and say, “—and I need 10 minutes by myself,” or “I need to take a walk around the block,” or “I need your attention,” or whatever it is, at least there’s a better alignment with what you’ve, what you are actually needing and what you’re likely to get, too. Which I think can be really validating.

Françoise Mathieu:
Well, you know, if you don’t mind, I would like to add an example. I have a team of folks who do admin and, you know, all sorts of support for my company. But they’re not in a trauma-exposed field at all. Right. So they could be working other places. They do the office stuff. And I actually invited them to come to the Huntsville conference symposium last March. And they had never been exposed to our field. And I said to them, just, “I want you to be prepared.” You know, “I want you to see what we do, but I also want you to be ready. Because this is going to be a shock. You’re not in this field.”

You know, one of them is an event planner. That’s what she used to do. And, I’m not going to lie, they were pretty shaken. Not in a bad way. They didn’t go to sessions, but they were, you know, at a booth, and they saw displays. You know what I’m talking about, right?

Teresa Huizar:
Right, absolutely.

Françoise Mathieu:
Everyone on this podcast surely knows.

And they were pretty shaken by it. And I said, “I wanted you to get a feel for when—the folks that we serve, the people we work with, this is the work they do.” And I think it was really important for them to get a—it was a real shift in their understanding of what this is about. Because I think that without retraumatizing—and that was not my intent—retraumatizing or sliming people in our world who are not in this field, I also think it’s important for them to have a bit of a sense of what we do.

My mom actually read my book. This is super cute. My mom read my book, which is a very sweet thing for someone who’s not in this field to do. And she said, “I now understand better why you never return my calls and why you only want to email and text.”

Teresa Huizar:
Ahh.

Françoise Mathieu:
And I was like, yeah, because who wants to be on phone call—even with someone you love—

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah, yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
—at the end of my day when I’ve been doing crisis work all day. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. And I found it really helpful for her to understand. It doesn’t mean it’s necessarily super cool. Everyone, if you have a mother, call your mom. I think it’s always nice.

[Laughter]

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
But it was really important for me to be able to say, “I am spent. I’m spent. And texting and email works for me because it’s on my terms, and I know you don’t love that, but it’s also a way for me to take care of myself.” And just basically, generally being able to have that open dialogue with people who love you.

[00:29:35] Teresa Huizar:
I think one of the things that we’ve been talking about has been this element of self-care. And in the best possible sense of that, you know, not in the sense of, you know, “Here’s your gift certificate for a pedicure,” or whatever.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
But in the sense of how you actually pay attention to your needs and go about trying to create some healthy space between, you know, your work life and your home life.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
But one of the other things that I think about is, that’s, you know, that’s half of it.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
And then the other half is having an organizational culture within CACs, police departments, prosecutor’s offices, CPS, wherever you are, that really recognizes that they also have responsibility to you and your health.

And so I’m wondering, do you feel like you’ve seen some shift? Because I think, you know, not that many years ago, when you talked about these things, especially outside CACs, you know, to the multidisciplinary team partners—not so much to the line level people who were coping with it, but at other levels—I’m not sure there was—

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—a lot of recognition and support for addressing these things. But it feels to me, and I just want to check and see what your experience has been, then maybe there’s been some movement on that.

Françoise Mathieu:
Yes, I completely agree with you. I’m really fortunate because I’ve been, you know, doing things related to secondary trauma and compassion fatigue since 2001, 2002. And the first decade was, I’m not going to lie, it was really a tough sell. There were some groups that were early adopters and were, you know, really open to it. And I also agree with you that some of the folks that were open to it, you know, that the earliest adopters were definitely folks working in the field. For example, you know, social work, child exploitation, you know, people related to child welfare. They were some of the first, the earliest adopters. And some other groups in the multidisciplinary teams were definitely a lot tougher to convince early on.

And then we saw, almost overnight, you know, tipping points. It was so interesting. We saw a huge shift in the last—I kind of want to say five, seven years. Definitely the last five years. We have seen a huge shift of a growing openness to these concepts by leadership, by organizations. I have a few theories about why that’s happened. I’m really encouraged by it, though. And we’re not encountering the same roadblocks as we used to, where sometimes we’d have, we’d be invited more by the grassroots kind of folks, you know?

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
And now we’re having senior leadership contact us and say, “We recognize we need support, we need help. And what can we do within, obviously, the limitations of our mandated budget?” Because full reality and politics and all of that. But we’re seeing a really exciting shift and a growing openness to this.

[00:32:22] Teresa Huizar:
Well, you know, I wonder if some of this isn’t driven also by economics. I mean, when I think about our field, we had two things that really pushed us at National Children’s Alliance to add in our Standards of Accreditation a piece around this, at the organizational level. One is that we really did, we could see the toll that this work was taking on people. And we felt that there was, you know, we’d see it on our listserv all, you know, people would constantly write for strategies to address it, but it was always at this sort of individual level, you know?

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
I, for my staff, I helped them with whatever it was. But it didn’t seem to reach back to organizational policy and structures of jobs and those kinds of things. Because it—we were—I mean, we were at the infancy. This was very nascent. And so that was one element.

But the other thing is, just the level of churn in these positions, you know?

Françoise Mathieu:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
Asking about, you know, why is it that some of these front lines positions turned over, over and over and over and over and over and over and over, and what can we do to address that issue? And it’s not just pay. And it’s not just benefits.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mmm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
It’s also feeling like you can come home as a whole person at the end of the day.

Françoise Mathieu:
Right. Feeling valued, feeling—even stimulated. Feeling recognized. You know, having—and you know, it’s so true, what you’re saying is so true. And some of the research has demonstrated, of course, nobody’s going to turn their nose down at more money. But actually that pay was not one of the main features that influenced people’s desires to stay in a certain employment.

I mean, obviously there’s some jobs that we have entry level positions and people move on. But what we started seeing are people having, wanting rewards and recognitions of other kinds. Having flexibility, you know, having a certain amount of control over, within reason, obviously, caseloads or schedule, having a boss you trust, having someone who’s responsive to your learning needs.

We know that when we hire someone, it takes a minimum of two years for them to be reasonably confident in their job. Do they have access to good quality training? Do they have access to timely debriefing and supervision? Do they work with other supportive colleagues? All of those elements started coming out as much, far greater, far more important actually than self-care, although I’m a huge believer in it. People’s working conditions had a much bigger impact on their well-being than if they all went for a 40-minute run after work.

And we started in a way with leadership, making a business case because, as you say, we started seeing very high rates of attrition in certain fields in particular where people weren’t staying.

And the new generation, you know, millennials are not the same generation in terms of priorities or—you know, they’re not staying in a certain job necessarily for 15 to 20 years if it doesn’t fulfill them. And so that started happening, too, with senior leadership calling and saying, “Our turnover. How do we attract and keep people and then keep them well?”

So it’s been fascinating for me to see that level of openness. And I have to tell you that most senior leaders I work with are incredibly open to implementing changes. I’ve had wonderful interactions with people at every level of leadership.

[00:35:31] Teresa Huizar:
I think that’s really true. And in our field, what I see is more an issue of trying to figure out what should be done as opposed to any resistance at all to the idea of taking whatever actions are within their power to take.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
I’m wondering whether, you know, when you think about building a healthy workplace culture, especially within the Children’s Advocacy setting but even beyond that, with the multidisciplinary team partners that we work with, what do you think are those top line things where you say: You know, these are absolute core ingredients that. without them, you know, you just cannot be healthy yourself personally, no matter how resilient you are, if you’re doing these sort of jobs where you have this secondary traumatic stress exposure?

Françoise Mathieu:
So my colleague, Dr. Fisher, actually developed a really wonderful organizational health model that looked at this very thing. And what she identified as the three essential pillars from which other things flow out are leadership, and I’ll go back to that in a minute, succession planning, which refers to attracting good people, having good mentors, you know, keeping good people, getting them trained, you know, the whole process of creating a culture that’s healthy and supportive. And the third one was actually employee health and wellness.

And I think that the leadership one is often overlooked. You know, as Pat Fisher always says, you now, “Leaders are people too.” And I think that sometimes we overlook the fact that they may have, certainly from the field themselves, they may have their own levels of trauma exposure. They may actually be new on the job. They may need, you know, support and training to become good leaders. You know, there’s a whole piece there.

And I also think that sometimes leaders forget that their staff are watching them and that you are powerful role models. And so it’s not just doing, you know, “Do as I say, but don’t do as I do.” And a lot of staff will say to me, “You know, my boss is great. And he tells me, or she tells me to go home at five, but I get emails from them at three o’clock in the morning.”

[Laughter]

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

So, you know—

[Cross-talk]

Françoise Mathieu:
What are we, what are we modeling?

Teresa Huizar:
What are we modeling? Yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
Exactly. And the other piece is also that, often when there are a lot of cutbacks, one of the first places where we cut back is actually education, training, and backfill to cover for people to go out and develop confidence and competence.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
And I think that confidence and competence comes from many places. One of them comes from years on the job. I’m sure you and I, we’ve been in the field for a long time. There’s certain cases that would not elicit a high level of stress because—not that they’re not disturbing, but we know what to do. And if you know what to do, you’re not having the same stress reaction. You are confident: “I have the training.” You are competent: “I know what needs to be done.” You know what the resources are out there, formally or informally.

And I feel that, first of all, when people retire or they leave, we lose all that institutional knowledge and memory but we also lose their mentorship skills.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
And when someone’s onboarding, we need to be patient and give them time because there’s no way that—you know, I just met, actually, it was really interesting. I met someone as a brand new forensic interviewer, and of course that’s incredibly stressful. And she needs a lot of support in mentorship because there’s so much at stake, as you know.

So the third pillar of health and wellness is also all the things we talked about in the first part of our discussion. You know, are you, well? Are you sleep deprived? You wouldn’t believe the number sessions I do, whereby two o’clock in the afternoon people are flat-out exhausted and then I take a survey and no one in the room has had more than six hours of sleep the night before.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm. Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
Not one person.

And so I think that all of those pieces come fit together. But then in addition to that, ideally, right, blue sky, people need to work in an environment where they trust their immediate supervisor, where there’s actually a trusting relationship. And, you know, it’s been said that what matters the most is who you immediately report to as opposed to where you work.

So if there’s perceptions of fairness. If you feel that, you know, there’s open communication and there aren’t these factions that, of course, unfortunately develop in many workplaces where people, you know, gossip or they turn on each other. I mean, these are all, to me, key elements. And what you’ll notice is, what I haven’t mentioned yet, are things that we don’t always have over our control, which are, you know, more money, more funding, more referral resources.

Even without those things, which are wonderful, I still think that we can make a lot of changes to have a much healthier workplace for ourselves, the people we work with, and the people who come to us for help.

[40:13] Teresa Huizar:
You know, I think that’s so true, and I think that when, you know, in addition, or maybe as parts of those pillars, I think there’s also things about, you know, when you drill down to people’s individual job level?

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
What are we asking them to do and at what volume? You know, if you think about trauma exposure, kind of like a viral load, right? You know?

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
There becomes some point that’s a tipping point—in the course of a day, even. And so, you know, this question comes across our listserv all the time: You know, how many forensic interviews should someone do in a day? Or how many counseling sessions should somebody do in a day? Or how many, you know, victim advocacy, non-offending parent intakes should somebody be expected to do in a day?

I think it’s not really the number they’re looking for. In many cases, what they’re trying to figure out is, you know, am I fairly distributing work in a way in which we’re reaching as many kids as we can, but without killing our staff, essentially?

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah. And I think that, you know, there are two pieces to that. One of them is sheer wear and tear.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
And you know, certainly, when I worked with the military, when we looked at what we call operational stress injury, which is of course PTSD plus, you know, moral injury from having to do things that we were morally objected to and so on and so forth. But the other element was actually wear and tear. So just sheer fatigue of, you know, just the volume. But I was recently in a hospital emergency ward with my daughter—who is fine, but I talked about this at the conference [2019 NCA Leadership Conference], she had appendicitis and so on. And the hospital, the ER, was very, very busy that day. And the nurse said to me, this stayed with me. She said, “We’re having a high volume slash low acuity day.”

And I thought that was really interesting because a high volume, low acuity day meant that there were a lot of people in that ER that basically had stubbed toes or—

Teresa Huizar:
Right, right.

Françoise Mathieu:
—or, you know, it really wasn’t. And the nurse was not actually fatigued. Because she was just going to work through the cases as they came.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
There was no one who was at the—and I don’t think that she would go home that night and say, “That was a really difficult day.” She was just like, “I have a lot of people to see. You’re going to have a long wait time and everyone is safe and I’ll take care of your stubbed toe,” or whatever. I’m minimizing, but you know what I mean. And so I really was thinking about that. A high volume, low acuity day can have its own challenges.

But I think that, as you say, there are times where, and that’s why we do triage in a hospital. You know, there are times where one case might actually completely drain you, you know, and other times, four cases might not. And it really depends on the severity, the complexity of it. And that is such an intangible. Although I do believe that very good supervisors who have a lot of experience can actually do a good triage because we have a lot of expertise.

But I think we need to be careful about how we allocate cases.

And the other thing I see a lot are the people who are really, really good at the really, really hard cases, get more and more of the really, really hard cases, right?

Teresa Huizar:
Right. Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
Because they’re like, “Give those to Linda, she’s amazing at X, Y, and Z type of thing.” But the problem is that she might be great at them, but we are now exposing her over and over and over again to the toughest cases, and that’s probably not ideal in the long run.

[00:43:29] Teresa Huizar:
Well, and we’re also not giving whoever her counterpart is an opportunity to exercise any resiliency muscles or learn more either. I mean, I think it has this other effect where, you know, Linda becomes the really super star—

Françoise Mathieu:
That’s right.

Teresa Huizar:
—and the other person, you know, maybe never gets to exercise their real potential in dealing with these cases either.

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
So I think, I think you’re raising a really good point about this issue of overuse. You know, it’s—there’s so many sort of health analogies, you know, you could make from that. You know, the sort of injuries that you get that are just from overuse of a muscle or those kinds of things.

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
It’s the same sort of thing that we can see in people.

And I just, I think that there are strategies that sometimes people don’t even know that they can ask for or apply. I was thinking about a circumstance that happened in the second CAC that I headed. And in that one, you know, we had someone who, she wound up being ultimately—even though we did rotate staff—being very triggered for a period of time about some things.

And I remember we had, we were lucky enough to have three people in the role that she held. And we really talked about, you know, what can we do about this?

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
Because we could see that she needed some space, honestly.

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
Some space not to be doing forensic interviews. And so we agreed that for a month we would rotate her off of that entirely, and she would do something else. And I have to say, her colleagues were really wonderful. Because their view was, you know—and they were very experienced so they could do this. They were like, “You know what? It’s not the end of the world for us. And we’d want the same thing if you saw the same signs in us.” And what was really interesting is she did, she wound up staying employed for a period, for actually several years beyond that. And I’m not sure she would’ve otherwise.

Françoise Mathieu:
Right.

Teresa Huizar:
But I don’t know that people think they can ask for it. And I don’t know that people think that they can give that sort of thing to where you can just say, “You know what? Somebody has hit their limit. Let’s see if a short sabbatical, essentially, from that particular work assignment is going to make any difference or not.” While they do other things to work on, you know, whatever issues that they’re dealing with.

Françoise Mathieu:
Well, I agree with you, and I think that that, you know, really suggests a very supportive team and a lot of trust. And that’s wonderful. And I think that if that can happen, it’s fantastic. I think unfortunately, a lot of places—I see two things happen. I see people who are, you know, in what has been called a zealot phase where they are, they’re taking it all on, you know, “I’ll just do this one. I’ll take one more.” You know, kind of we’re over functioning.

Teresa Huizar:
Right. Yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
We’re really close to actually burning out, but we don’t even realize it.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
And so in a way, it’s also we’re in a state of kind of hyperarousal and we’re just like, “I don’t even need sleep.” You know, “Just give me 50 cases.” Like I’ve seen that a lot.

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
I have a lot of separate thoughts about what might be going on there, you know, for folks who are really just keeping themselves busy with all of that. Or they’ll say, “You don’t understand. You know, if I don’t do this, you know, people that—like people’s lives are at stake.” And I’m not minimizing that, but there will always be more people who need us than we can do.

Teresa Huizar:
Yes.

Françoise Mathieu:
So in a way is that good practice, you know, in the long term.

But the other thing that I started seeing in some workplaces that where maybe there wasn’t the same climate of trust, for a variety of reasons, is that people did not want to acknowledge or tell anyone that they weren’t doing well. Because there’s still a tremendous amount of stigma around this issue.

You know, I think that—and I think I’ve worked with enough CACs, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for MDTs—but I have definitely seen, you know, quite a macho mentality sometimes among MDTs and CACs.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
And I don’t just mean law enforcement.

Teresa Huizar:
No, I know.

Françoise Mathieu:
I mean, everybody.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
Where there could be this thing, it’s like, “You know, I can take it.”

And is that really what we want? That everyone’s kind of, you know, bracing themselves, or you know, and in a way, do I really want to be—I always used to joke. I had a colleague who is the therapist who, in my opinion, saw too many patients in a day. That’s my personal opinion. And I always used to think, “Do I really want to be the ninth person she sees today?”

Teresa Huizar:
Oh, that’s a good point.

Françoise Mathieu:
Right? Like, is that actually ethical? Like, in a sense, like, is that OK? And then actually someone told me that, that patient told me she’s, the therapist is falling asleep in a session. I was like, here we go. This is not OK. Like, you’re doing no good to anyone, and you’re obviously completely maxed out.

So I think it requires a lot of support among a team and trust to be able to say, you know, “I need a break.” And if you have a really supportive team, it’s fantastic to be able to do that. And as you say, take a little bit of a breather. Because the other element is, maybe we have stuff going on in our personal lives that makes certain cases more difficult.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm. Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
You know, we have a child of our own that’s a certain age. Or maybe we have our own lived experience. And it’s possible that there’s certain cases that are just more difficult for us. And being able to, I mean, in a way that’s what reflective supervision—some fields still did it. That’s what it was about, right? Being able to ponder and reflect on: Why did this case get to me more than, you know, other cases? And being able to have a little bit of time to do that type of reflection.

[48:32] Teresa Huizar:
Well, and I think one of the things that you mentioned, which you know, now that I’m thinking about, it’s so interesting this sort of, and I have seen this too, this sort of craving of more exposure. Right? You know, I wonder if that is not coming so much from a place of machismo—although in some cases I think that can be the case—

Françoise Mathieu:
Hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—but I wonder if it’s almost like, you know, sometimes when you see kids who have been abused, they’ll re-expose themselves to certain elements of that because they’re trying to work it out in their head. They’re trying to make some sense of it.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mmm.

Teresa Huizar:
And so they’ll just expose themselves, expose themselves, expose themselves, trying to figure out: Why is this happening to me?

And I almost wonder if there’s something sort of obsessive about that. And not diagnosably obsessive, I don’t mean it that way. But when you see someone struggling with that, where they’re exposing themselves unnecessarily to things that they don’t need to—

Françoise Mathieu:
Yes.

Teresa Huizar:
—and they know about trauma exposure and the impacts of it, it just makes you want to kind of dig a little deeper to ask that question about:

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
What is that about?

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
You know, why would you feel that compulsive desire for that?

Françoise Mathieu:
Well, you know, it’s a little bit like, you know, when we talk about the window of tolerance framework and look at hyperarousal and hypoarousal. And you know, some of us, well, we do the opposite. We shut down, right? So I have lots of friends who confess to me that they might go home and watch six hours of Netflix. Like completely check out. Like they are done after this type of work.

But what I saw, certainly with my soldiers, and I’ve seen the parallel, you know, with these folks. Is my, you know, my soldiers would come back from combat, and they would engage in high risk behavior. Not because they were trying to self-harm. They were trying to get a rush.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm. Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
They were already in a state of hypervigilant hyperarousal. They’re already living on adrenaline. And it was almost like there were two options. You know, drink themselves into oblivion, kind of numb out, you know, with whatever your drug of choice is.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm. Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
Or they would, you know, go speed racing. They’d like race down the freeway. They would get into bar fights.

Like we, I met at some point a chaplain—he was a padre for the Marines and in one of your military bases in the States. And he said, “We have so many bar fights when people come back from Iraq.”

Teresa Huizar:
Ah.

Françoise Mathieu:
And he goes, “It’s a way, it’s like they’re all hyped up.”

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
And in a way, when we’re already hyped up, it’s like we kind of try and get, you know, neurologically it kind of makes sense. We’re trying to get more stimulation.

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm-mm.

Françoise Mathieu:
Because it’s almost like we think that that’s what’s going to work. But also it’s very difficult to come down from that.

You know, I work a lot on being really calm or being grounded.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
But if I’ve had, you know, no sleep and five cups of coffee and two soda pops, like I’m not [laughter]—

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
—able to do that. It can feel actually really uncomfortable in the moment.

[51:16] Teresa Huizar:
You know, it’s so interesting that you say that and the analogy that you’re making because I can definitely see that after big cases, especially.

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
You know, ones that have been large multi-victim cases. I’m thinking back to some that we were involved in, or ones in which there was some element about the abuse that even for a very experienced team—

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
—was very shocking or surprising.

Françoise Mathieu:
Mm-hmm.

Teresa Huizar:
Or caused … more distress in some way. And I think it’s interesting that you’re saying that because it was definitely an amped up feeling.

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah. Yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
And my colleague Diana talks about, you know, she, she talks a lot about the window of tolerance and she calls it “flipping our lid.”

It’s like, we are—we’re no longer, you know, in our executive functioning, we’re not necessarily calm, we’re not problem solving. We kind of go to other parts of our brain where we’re, yeah, we’re amped up. And in a way, for some people, some things are going to work. You know, like the basic self-care stuff—going for a run and so on.

But there are certain cases where even that doesn’t seem like it’s enough. And you know, that’s why certain modalities like EMDR—

Teresa Huizar:
Mmm. Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
—or emotional freedom techniques or neurofeedback, sometimes they’ve been found to be really helpful. Because while we’re experiencing a trauma, we’re traumatized, and our whole limbic system is reacting to that. And so, you know, the basic stuff is great. But there are times where we need more. And we also sometimes need to share.

And that’s why, I was recently somewhere in a state where there was a very, very big court case that just finished that day. It was a very tragic, terrible story. And everyone is wired and they want to talk to each other. Well, that’s also huge, right? Social support, being able to go and have a debrief—with consent obviously—and being able to share with someone else who was there. That’s a big process too, of kind of verbalizing it. And I think that we’re often so pressed for time, and we have such a high volume of cases and busy lives that I don’t know how much of that is being done.

It’s being done informally, you know for sure, by the water cooler, in the car driving back from whatever. But how much time have we got to actually sit down and say, “This was big. And this hitched a ride with me?” And being able to process that terrible image or story that you heard.

[53:32] Teresa Huizar:
I picked up one of your cards that had the low impact debriefing on it. I thought to myself, “Boy, when I was a CAC director, I wish I had had this.” Because, you know, there was a lot of informal debriefing and even some formal. I’m not sure how helpful it was because I look back at that and I’m not sure that we included all the elements. So for those who haven’t seen the card, can you just briefly walk someone through low impact debriefing? Because I think it’s a critical part of the work.

Françoise Mathieu:
I completely agree with you. So we became aware of this kind of notion, from Lorianne Pearlman years ago. In one of her books, she talked about limited disclosure. And we kind of riffed on that and we started thinking about: What does that really mean?

And we started developing this concept of low impact debriefing. Some of my colleagues like to call it low impact processing. And the idea is basically, first of all, I think we, when I refer to sliming, I think everyone knows what that means. I think we’ve all had moments where we were recipients of a colleague’s graphic story that we’ve never asked for. We hadn’t even been, you know, given—we hadn’t even given permission. I know there’s a lot of that, that happens informally too.

And so low impact debriefing, the four steps are basically, the first one is actually self-awareness, right? Check in with yourself. What do you need? Do you actually need to share with someone?

Number two, fair warning. Do they actually know, or do they think you’re about to talk about your weekend or the ball game? And I think that happens a lot at work, right? We’re like, “Have you got a minute?” And then we just blind people.

And the third step is actually consent, which ironically I don’t think we do very often with each other. So I come to you and I say, “Have you got a minute?” And then we don’t say, “I need to share this really graphic story. Is it OK?”

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
Because it might be that, you know, today I, maybe I’m in the red zone and I’m maxed out. Or maybe it’s a story that I don’t want to hear about that. And maybe we could have permission to say, “Give me the Cliff Notes.” Like I don’t necessarily need the forensic details.

Teresa Huizar:
Mm-hmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
Do you need to share the forensic piece? You know, and I think that just that process of slowing this down doesn’t mean we don’t share. But I actually believe I’ve demonstrated that even in this interview where I referred to stories without telling you the stories. And you’ve actually done the same. Right. I don’t think anyone needs us to pull out the crime scene photos—

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
—to understand what we’re referring to.

Teresa Huizar:
Right. Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
And so in a way, we’re demonstrating low impact debriefing by not sharing extraneous information when it’s not needed.

And also when, let’s say my colleague has agreed to listen to me. I’ve asked her permission. She’s given me permission. Just start with the outer circle of the story. We don’t necessarily need to share everything. And if we do share everything, let that be a process that’s gradual. Start with the bigger outer circle of the story and then I’ll say, “You know, can I tell you a bit more?” And of course, at some point they might be like, “It’s fine, go for it.” But they’ve also had a chance to prepare—

Teresa Huizar:
Hmm. Mmm.

Françoise Mathieu:
—in a very quick way. That’s really different than sharing a sandwich and having a competition about who heard the most horrible—

Teresa Huizar:
Right.

Françoise Mathieu:
—terrible story today.

Right. So it’s a stance. It’s a shift. And it can be very quick. It doesn’t need to take time. It does take practice, though. I find that sometimes my, when we share this concept, some people will say, “Well, what if I’m not the problem? Like, what if I’m constantly being slimed by others?”

Teresa Huizar:
Ah.

Françoise Mathieu:
And I say, “Well, the point is not to shame your colleagues. Like, this is not a finger-wagging, you know, ‘Shame on you. You shouldn’t do this.’” It’s more an education process just like we’ve all learned to be trauma-sensitive and trauma-informed. Right? We’ve all learned to be inclusive in our language. But we can also learn to not extraneously share graphic traumatic stories when we don’t need to. So it just kind of becomes a muscle memory that I’m very careful now, and I just try not to share extraneous details unless I have to. And then, when I do, I have a little bit of a care and consideration about how it’s done.

[57:24] Teresa Huizar:
Well, it’s a gift. It’s a gift to the other person—

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
—if you think about it that way. That you, you know that you are, yes, getting your need to debrief— and theirs as well—addressed. But what you’re gifting them is their mental health back, essentially.

Françoise Mathieu:
Yeah.

Teresa Huizar:
Because you’re not leaving them with a bunch of unresolved feelings that they then need to go debrief with someone else.

Françoise Mathieu:
Yes. Exactly.

Teresa Huizar:
Or slime someone else to try to cope with. So, you know—

Françoise Mathieu:
Well, and there’s a contagion effect to that, actually.

Teresa Huizar:
Yeah, yeah.

Françoise Mathieu:
And that’s what’s such a good point you’re making. There’s such a contagion effect to that piece where we all go around telling our terrible war story to one another in no shape or fashion, you know?

[58:01] Teresa Huizar:
Right. You know, I could talk about these things with you all night.

[Laughter]

And I know we’re out of time, which I hate. But if there were one thing that you said, “OK, if the listener takes away one thing from this conversation, I would want it to be—.” Fill in the blank.

Françoise Mathieu:
I—oooh—it sucks that you’re putting me—oh, that’s so tough.

[Laughter]

OK, so here’s the thing. I love trauma work. It has been—I love this work. I have never wanted to leave the field. And my number one, what has motivated me to stay engaged is, I’m so—I still believe in the rights of the children or the folks we work with, that they deserve the best possible, most compassionate, present service provider.

And there’s so many different things that we can do to ensure that. Regardless of where we work. That yes, there’s certain workplaces that are tricky. And sometimes we also have choices to actually remove ourselves and go work somewhere else. But what keeps me motivated are the rewards of the work. And that there’s so many things that we can individually, as professionals and individuals, do to stay well.

And the strategies are there. They’re available, but that we also need social support. And we can’t do this without each other.

[Outro music begins]

[59:17] Teresa Huizar:
Françoise, it has been a wonderful conversation and so helpful to our listeners. Thank you so much.

Françoise Mathieu:
Thank you, and thank you for the work that you do.

[Outro]

[59:31] Teresa Huizar:
Thank you for listening to One in Ten. We hope you’ll tune in for the next episode where we’ll talk with Maya Brennan of the Urban Institute on “Housing Opportunity and Kids: Connecting the Dots.” For more information about National Children’s Alliance and the work of Children’s Advocacy Centers, visit our website at www.nationalchildrensalliance.org.

[Outro music fades to silence]