Trauma-Informed Leadership during Turbulent Times

This week, we are going to take a break from our series on psychological safety to talk about how to be a trauma-informed leader during tumultuous times. For many of us, the results of last week’s presidential election were devastating and we are experiencing sadness, anger, grief, and a sense of moral distress. How do we move forward? If we value the importance of being trauma-informed, how do we make sense of our nation electing an individual for President who has vocally expressed opinions contrary to our core beliefs? For many, the results of this election not only reflect a profound disconnect with our personal values, but they trigger our own fears with threats to personal and psychological safety. How do we move forward amidst these uncertain and turbulent times that can be profoundly stressful? How do we manage our own emotional responses? How do we manage the emotional responses of our team members?

Personally, when I learned the results, I experienced my own trauma response in my body. I was completely dysregulated – racing thoughts, temperature quickly moving from too hot to too cold, heart rate increasing, shortness of breath, difficulty concentrating, you name it. I know I’m not the only one who experienced these reactions to the news – I have heard from many of you that you have experienced similar feelings. Our team members are not faring any better. They are experiencing their own trauma responses that are impacting on their ability to engage in their work. In times like these, it’s more important than ever to integrate a trauma-informed approach into our leadership style. To be a trauma-informed leader during turbulent times, we need to do two things. First, we need to take care of ourselves. Second, we need to create a culture in which we support our team members.

The first thing that we need to do is to acknowledge what we have experienced and how it is impacting us. A couple of weeks ago, I introduced the Pause-Reset-Nourish (PRN) model (you can access that article here), and it’s worth repeating here as a way of acknowledging and accepting our emotional responses. As leaders, we may feel pulled to respond to everyone else’s needs, but it’s okay to acknowledge that we are human and we may need to pause, reset, and nourish ourselves before doing anything for anyone else. For me, that was essential. I withdrew from the world and social media and did a lot of things to be kind to myself – ate nourishing food, slept when I needed to, and processed my feelings as they arose. While it can be tempting to ignore our responses and focus on showing up for others in times of crises, they will inevitably come up again when we least expect it! Once we can regulate our own emotions, we can support our staff. I’d recommend sharing the Pause-Reset-Nourish model with your teams, validating their experiences and providing them with tools to process through their own emotional responses. Normalize that this is a difficult time and that we are experiencing it together. Model the importance of self-care before we do anything else. Create spaces for our team members to provide each other with support and to process any emotions they are experiencing in a safe environment.

The next thing we can do as leaders is to prepare ourselves and our staff for what this means going forward. When something bad or scary happens out in the world, it activates our own grief and loss responses. Last week, I realized that I was going through my own stages of grief. For those who aren’t familiar with the work of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and the Five Stages of Grief? here’s a brief overview:

? Denial: Denial is the first of the five stages of grief??. It helps us to survive the loss. In this stage, the world becomes meaningless and overwhelming. Life makes no sense. We go numb. We wonder how we can go on, if we can go on, why we should go on. We try to find a way to simply get through each day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible. Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. I know when I first heard the election results, I kept imagining that they couldn’t be true, that there was a “mistake” and that things would turn out differently. Sometimes, we run the risk of being stuck in the denial phase, pretending that things will stay the same as they were. When we are stuck in denial, our body can lock up and keep us in a frozen state, unable to move forward through the process. While there’s grace in the initial denial because it helps us only let in as much as we can handle, eventually we need to step into the reality. This is where the next step, anger, comes in.

? Anger: Anger is a necessary stage of the healing process. Anger stores up in our bodies and can often turn outward towards others through various emotions – ranging from irritability to full-blown aggression. In the aftermath of the election, I have seen people generally more irritable with each other – ranging from anger regarding lines at the grocery store to full-blown fights in the parking lot over a space. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger, and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing. The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, your family, your co-workers, strangers on the street, but also to God/the Universe, or however you make meaning of the world. Underneath anger is pain, your pain.

? Bargaining: Before a loss, it seems like we will do anything to prevent it from happening. After the loss, or in the case of the election, before the final results were tallied, many of us were bargaining with our higher power, “If my candidate wins, I will be a better person.” After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce. “What if I devote the rest of my life to helping others.” Then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?” We become lost in a maze of “If only…” or “What if…” statements. We want life returned to what it was; we want life as we knew it (or hoped it could be) restored. We want to go back in time to a place where the bad thing didn’t happen. Guilt is often bargaining’s companion. The “if onlys” cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we “think” we could have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain. We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt.

? Depression: After bargaining, our attention moves squarely into the present. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever. It’s important to understand that this depression is not a sign of mental illness. It is the appropriate response to a great loss. We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness. Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of. In truth, Depression is often just a phase in the process that can go on for weeks, months, or even years. The more we try to “avoid” our depression or any of our sad feelings, the more likely they will anchor inside of us, impacting all our interactions with the world. Many of us are currently in the depression phase, unsure of what to do next, feeling sadness at the outcome.

? Acceptance: Acceptance is the final stage of the process. It often confused with the notion of being “all right” or “OK” with what has happened. This is not the case. This stage is about accepting the reality of the situation and our loss and recognizing that this new reality is permanent. We will never like this reality or make it OK, but eventually we accept it. We learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live. It is during this phase that we start plotting a path forward. If we think about the results of the election, acceptance can look like deciding how to advocate in the future. What do I believe in? What do I stand for? What am I willing to fight for? Some of you might be able to double down on being strong leaders for your team members, others might want to show up at various protests, while others will actively fight legislation. It is at this point that we have renewed energy for the future. Yes, the loss was real, but we are at the point of determining our path forward.

People often think of the stages as lasting weeks or months. They forget that the stages are responses to feelings that can last for minutes or hours as we flip in and out of one and then another. We do not enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may feel one, then another and back again to the first one.

I have found that when I’ve experienced a loss, reviewing the five stages of grief?? can powerfully validate my own sense of helplessness so I don’t feel as isolated. Many of us are sharing this grief together. However, grief passes. No, things will not be the same as they were before, and action is more important than ever. But if we allow ourselves to grieve, it’s amazing how it moves through us. The more we defend against grief or deny it, the stronger the hold it takes on us. Like many things, when we decide to own our grief, it stops owning us.

As we move forward in the next days, weeks, months, and ultimately years following this election, we will likely experience several moments of stress that trigger our trauma responses. As leaders, when these moments arise, it’s helpful to take them one at a time. Process through and reset your emotions as much as you can, then take the next step forward, whatever that might be for you. We have no way of knowing ultimately what will happen and what changes will occur around the bend. However, we do have control over the present moment, how we respond, and how we support our teams.

What are some other ways you have worked with your team to navigate turbulent times? Comment below.