These were the amazing graduate students that I got to work with from Mahidol University in Thailand.
In my last post I talked about doing some ACT exercises with the Thai staff at rural orphanage in Kanchanaburi. In this post I want to talk about buffers to trauma and how absolutely amazing the Thai people are.
Usually when I am providing training on how to work with clients/students who have been through trauma, my first and most important recommendation is to regulate yourself. If you are dysregulated when a child is having a “stress response” or a “trauma response” then you are going to make the situation worse. This is because, when a child is having a “stress response” or a “trauma response”, they are not misbehaving (this term indicates that they are choosing to behave in specific way), their body and their nervous system is responding to a perceived threat. When we, as staff and teachers, are also dysregulated we are sending off signals of threat; this means that we are not helping the child to calm down we are telling their body to continue to react to the threat (us).
This ability to model regulation so that another person can start to regulate themselves is called “co-regulation”. There is also of documentation and research to show how effective this process is when working with… well, anyone who has a dysregulated nervous system, but especially for someone who has been through trauma. The Thai people are already doing this and did not need tons of instruction in this area. This was so beautiful to see!
I met with Camille Kolu (an amazing expert in the field of trauma) before I went to Thailand. We talked about what the most important topics of conversation/training would be for staff in Thailand. Camille brought up that there is research that shows there are six buffers to trauma. This means that are six things that can serve as a buffer and build resiliency in someone who has been through trauma. These buffers can increase someone’s ability to go through trauma without drowning in the trauma. These six barriers are:
- Nurturing Relationships in your life
- Exercise
- Stress Relief
- Mental Health
- Sleep
- Nutrition
The picture above shows the six barriers in Thai.
During the staff training, we introduced these six barriers and asked each staff member the following questions:
- What buffer are you already getting a lot of?
- What buffer do you need more of?
- What can you actively start doing to get more of that buffer in your life?
- Think of a child in your care and answer the same questions.
It was especially pertinent to have the staff do this exercise for themselves. Working with individuals who have been through trauma can be so difficult and can cause vicarious trauma and burnout. I felt that it was especially important to address this and provide validation for the staff who are already doing a very hard work. Additionally, when the staff are taking care of themselves, they will be better able to take care of the children in the orphanage.
We got an incredible reception from this exercise. The staff said that they felt “heard” and “seen”. They also felt like they had a renewed energy and commitment to working with the children.
What I learned from this experience is that there are a lot of cultures that are already working well with people who have been through trauma. And America can and should learn a lot from those cultures.