Monique Blom
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Welcome to this presentation on Managing Triggers.
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I am Monique Blom, the Senior Director of Communication and Engagement at the Board of Inquiry,
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The Board of Inquiry into historical child sexual abuse in Beaumaris Primary School and certain other government schools proudly acknowledges Aboriginal people as the First Peoples and traditional owners and custodians of the lands, seas and waters of Australia.
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We pay our respect to Elders, past and present.
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We acknowledge the profound history of healing approaches within Aboriginal communities that seek to address the impacts of trauma by embracing social, emotional, physical, cultural and spiritual dimensions of health and wellbeing.
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We recognise the remarkable strength, resilience and courage of all victim-survivors, secondary victims and communities affected by historical child sexual abuse.
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We extend our gratitude to everyone who has shared their personal experiences and stories with us. I would like to introduce you to your hosts, Victoria and Amanda.
Victoria and Amanda
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Welcome to today's presentation on managing triggers, which is presented on behalf of the Board of Inquiry.
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In this presentation we want to try and be as inclusive as we possibly can be. However, for the purposes of this presentation, we will be using the term victim-survivors.
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But we do acknowledge the importance of language and understand that some people may identify simply as survivors, and we invite everyone to please replace the language that we use with the term that you must identify yourselves with.
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So today's presentation is intended to be educational,
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but it's not to replace therapy.
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We hope to provide you with simple information so that you can better understand about the impact of childhood sexual assault and manage your triggers at home. We also hope that this might be helpful to family members, community, and support people and others in your life who might be impacted and who might want to learn more in order to be able to help you.
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So what is trauma? Trauma impacts people in lots of different ways, and the next slides are going to provide some common reactions. This might be feelings, thoughts and bodily reactions for people who've experienced trauma.
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Everyone experiences trauma differently and there is no right or wrong way to feel. And maybe you'll identify with some of these examples.
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A trauma is an experience outside of our expectations.
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Trauma could be a one-off incident, can be ongoing
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and interpersonal. It can affect many areas of your life, your relationship, your social, family connection.
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Abuse that occurs within institutional settings can raise unique difficulties for survivors of that abuse, such as managing feelings of guilt, shame, and isolation. It's a shock to our system on many levels. Some people may experience effects immediately, and others may experience effects a long time after the event.
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For victim-survivors, it's frequently an assault or abuse that's caused by someone who's trusted or familiar and who should have been safe. And there can be profound impact on victim-survivors, sense of safety when abuse happens in a context where that person should rightfully have felt safe. And it's important to acknowledge the large degree of power and authority held by abusers in institutions.
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Childhood trauma does not go away as an adult, but we can learn to manage the impacts in a healthier way.
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Trauma can impact the mind and the body and therefore strategies and techniques are about how to think and how you can release the trauma that you hold in your body and these can be really helpful. Trauma can also impact family members in the community. This is known as secondary trauma, which is the impact of seeing and hearing a loved one in distress.
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So now we're going to talk about some common reactions and responses that people can have to traumatic events.
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Try not to judge where you're at and recognise that your feelings and reactions aren't often a normal response to an abnormal event.
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It's common for both victim-survivors and their families to identify with some of these typical reactions, and everyone's reactions are different and there is no prescribed way for someone to respond.
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You may experience feelings of powerlessness and a loss of control.
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Some of the examples may include feeling helpless
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and out of control and preoccupied with thoughts about how to stop this from happening. Again,
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you may experience emotional numbness. This lack of feeling can lead to victim-survivors to question whether they've been impacted by the trauma at all. But we know that emotional numbing is often the brain’s adaptive way of protecting and surviving the terrible impacts of the trauma.
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Denial is also a normal reaction as your brain tries to make sense of the trauma, leading some people to question did this happen?
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Disturbed sleep is another common symptom which can sometimes persist for years.
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Sleep is also an important opportunity to process experiences and memories
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that sometimes for some people, the memories that we process whether in sleep or during other times, may feel as if we have been transported back to when the incident actually happened. And this phenomenon is known as flashbacks.
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And when we think about these memories, it often leads us to feel guilty and potentially blaming ourselves or questioning ourselves. But while we haven't told someone and dwelling on fears, we could have prevented it happening to someone else. For family members, they may wish that they could have done something differently to support the victim-survivor, but for victim-survivors it might be difficult for them to talk about their experience because they may feel embarrassed and shamed because of the abuse.
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This can be easily reinforced when the abuser has threatened the victim-survivor into silence, which is a common form of grooming used by perpetrators of abuse.
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It's important to remember victim-survivors have often been abused as children or by adults with greater power, and options
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to seek help do not seem available to the victim-survivor.
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Loss of confidence can also be another common experience for victim-survivors of trauma such as childhood sexual abuse,
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and this can be made worse by experiences of powerlessness at the time of the abuse. Often when children experience abuse during school years, it impacts their emotional development, their confidence and of course severely interrupts a child's capacity to learn. All of these factors can impact confidence and self-esteem. For example, mood changes such as feeling crazy or feeling a loss of control.
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And the impact of self-esteem can last for years after the abuse. For some, it can even impact their adult years. They might wonder why they are not achieving in comparison with their peers, and it's common for people who've experienced abuse. As a child,
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depression is not uncommon and victim-survivors might feel guilty about the duration of and the impact of depression on themselves, but also on their loved ones.
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Fear could be triggered whenever a memory of the abuse is activated. This can be as simple as a word, a sound, or smell that triggers the memory or even a place, a context that stimulates the memory to recall the traumatic events, such as having to attend school, concert for a grandchild if the abuse occurred in this setting.
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Anxiety alongside depression is a very common reaction for victim-survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
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These feelings are triggered due to the high sensitivity of the central nervous system with the victim-survivor and is working all the time to scan for possible dangerous situations in its attempt to keep you safe from further trauma. Anger is a normal and functional emotion which can motivate us to take action, such as seeking support or to report to police for example. It's important to understand these powerful emotions and normal responses to an abnormal event.
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Loss of sexual confidence is another effect which can feel difficult to talk about or even admit to, but nevertheless it is a common effect of childhood trauma. Some victim-survivors report wanting to stay away from relationships and opportunities for intimacy due to it feeling so overwhelming. Others described wanting to make themselves so small as to disappear from sight. These effects can be understood as a means of surviving the abuse and staying safe and future.
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Often trauma responses can change the way we think, feel, act and behave towards ourselves and towards others in the world. It is not uncommon for people to identify having experienced all of the four responses, states Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. During flashbacks of trauma,
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there can be more than one response to trauma, or individuals can also move between states as well during an experience or a recollection of that trauma.
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Characteristics of the fight or flight response include panic and rumination. Perfectionism might develop over time for those whose default response tends to be the flight response specifically, for example, as it might be a means of trying to gain control. Flight is one of the other available responses to mobilise the body to fight the threat. If the brain assesses that this is possible, the survival characteristics that can develop from this include angry or aggressive outbursts, feelings of rage which serve to protect the individual
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and fend off danger. These can often wreak havoc in family relationships and are sometimes a factor in individuals actually seeking help from a specialist trauma service.
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Some individuals experience a freeze response to danger posed. This can result in mentally moving outside of your body to avoid the feelings associated with the abuse. Some described drifting away during abuse and imagining themselves somewhere else. This response has enabled the victim-survivors to survive and endure their experiences. This can become a way of responding to all forms of threat. For some people this can continue for years after the assault.
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Fawning. Fawning is a trauma response where a person behaves in a people pleasing way to avoid conflict and establish a sense of safety. When faced with trauma, fawning serves as a coping mechanism. By developing a fawn trauma response, trauma survivors attempt to avoid conflict by pleasing their abuser. This again can lead to internalised shame for victim-survivors who do not readily understand the role of the nervous system in keeping the individual alive by using these mechanisms
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and responses to survive their abuse.
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Here are some examples of common reactions, and one example is intrusive symptoms. And these include flashbacks, nightmares and feelings that the traumatic event is being re-experienced in the present.
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Often these are triggered by parts of the traumatic memories coming to the surface.
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Intrusive symptoms can include visual images, sounds, smells, tastes and physical sensations that may have been involved in the traumatic incident or incidents.
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Severe reoccurring anxiety reactions spark panic,
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feeling paralysed with fear or wanting to run away.
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For many victim-survivors, the world can become very routine and they can experience their world as shrinking. They might feel cut off from their emotions and have difficulty in experiencing joy in everyday activities, whether they participate in them or not, and the effects of avoidance can be terribly debilitating and isolating.
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Hyperarousal is another common reaction in response,
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and some of the signs of hyper-arousal include jumpiness, being easily startled, hypersensitivity to what is going on around you, difficulty falling asleep or frequently waking once you are asleep, concentration, and attachment problems.
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It can be really helpful to understand your favoured coping styles and it can be helpful to develop insight into how you manage your triggers and understand better what is helping you and what is creating further problems in your life.
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Using the list on the next screen, think and take note of your own coping styles.
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Here are a few examples of how the brain can adapt to help us survive our experiences and go on with normal life. Some of these strategies are helpful in the short term but can become unhelpful if overused in the long term. For example gambling, workaholism, staying in control, which can sometimes in some cases escalate to using control over your family or workplace. And some may use alcohol and drug use to numb feelings and to escape painful memories.
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For some, these coping strategies may trigger a sense of shame, blame and guilt, which then can continue to shrink their world.
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What do you need to help you feel grounded and connected safely to yourself, and in the present moment?
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Remembering this looks different for everyone.
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The following slides are designed to provide you with some examples of coping strategies that you might want to consider.
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Mindfulness is one of the strategies to increase tolerance. This is the ability to be fully present, aware of where you are and what you're doing, and not being overly reactive or overwhelmed.
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Mindfulness is something that takes practise, may feel awkward at first, but the key is to continue practising. It may increase your ability to cope with difficult emotions, improve your ability to be focused and aware of the present moment while accepting the difficult emotions that sometimes also come up.
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The key with mindfulness is practise, practise, practise, and if one strategy doesn't work, that's something else. There are a number of ways to increase mindfulness. These can include breathing exercises, spirituality, yoga, physical exercise.
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All of these activities are effective because they enable us to remain present and connected with ourselves, our body, and in the present and connected with our surroundings.
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Really simple grounding exercises can include going for a walk to notice what is around you, what you can see, what you can hear.
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There are some other quick grounding exercises using the senses, and we're going to highlight a few for you just now.
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If you have a pet, spend some time with them. Notice what is special and different about them. If you wake up in the night, remind yourself who and where you are, what year it is, what age you are. Look for familiar objects around the room.
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Hold a mug with a warm drink in it. Feel the warmth and inhale its scent. Sip slowly and take your time tasting each mouthful. If you have a garden with some plants, tend to them. Plants and soil can be excellent grounders.
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People also often use art as a way to cope and regulate. And art can be an excellent strategy because it uses all of our different senses. It's a really useful way to express and explore your experiences through art. Could be in the form of drawings, music or in another form of art.
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Another good coping strategy is the use of grounding rocks.
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So as a child you may have had a pet rock. This is a really similar concept but the focus is on paying attention and holding on to the rock to ground yourself. The act of holding the rock may help to calm yourself and to be more present. So firstly find a rock or stone about the size of your palm. Find something that immediately attracts you, feels good in your hand. Pick a colour or colours that resonate with you, that you enjoy. Colour your rock.
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Choose a positive word that you find calming and write that word on the stone with a black marker.
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Carry the stone with you. Hold, play with it
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to help ground you. Get used to the feeling of the stone in your palm
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and let it calm you as you start to feel anxiety or you start to feel ungrounded.
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For some people, grouding or mindfulness strategies are not enough, and there becomes a point in a time where a victim-survivor may want to access trauma recovery or what we call therapy counselling.
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We understand that there may be family and friends who have joined this presentation to discover ways to be helpful to someone that they care about.
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So following on are going to be some examples of some ways to be helpful
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for many families and friends. The initial question they ask is what do I say?
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And they have self doubt about saying the wrong thing or upsetting their family member. Know
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the three key things to remember when you're responding to a victim-survivor
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of a childhood trauma.
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Firstly Listen: without interruption or judgement, and show empathy.
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Believe: and validate the person's experience
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And Provide.
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Know that as a family and friend you can provide emotional support
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and encourage sourcing external support if it is warranted.
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Here are some other examples of how to simply respond.
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It can be as simple as thanking them for sharing their experience and having the strength and the courage to share,
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Using empathic responses and acknowledging what might be a terrible experience that they have shared, validating their experience and the fact that no one should ever go through abuse or trauma like this.
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For many family and friends, the initial question we ask is what do I say?
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How do I make sure the timing is right? How do I make sure that I don't upset the family member more
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so? First and foremost, it's about establishing: Is there immediate risk to the safety of the person disclosing or anyone else?
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It's also one of the things that you can do is remember that you're not trained,
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but there are trained people out there who can help people who've had experiences similar to your loved one and it's about you together, source and contact information and finding a relevant support service for yourself and your loved one.
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Here are some other examples of maybe things that you might want to avoid. And it's important to enable the victim-survivor to share detail at their own pace and their own speed and not to have it feel like an interrogation. It can be really anxiety provoking and triggering to retell a story, but also acknowledging it's triggering often for family members to hear the story. So if in doubt, provide reassurance and a space for them to share and avoid
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asking too many questions.
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So it's really important that we remember listening is more important than talking.
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Avoid implying that your loved one or the person that you're supporting could have protected themselves or questioned why they've not shared this experience before.
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This can lead to increasing victim-survivors’ already heightened feelings of self-blame and shame.
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Finally, we all have the capacity to grow and to change. Whilst the brain can be severely impacted by trauma, the brain also has the incredible capacity to change and so the symptoms can be reduced.
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We hope that this presentation has been helpful for you and if any of the content has been triggering or if you want to source further support, please refer to the Contact and Support page on the Board of Inquiry website for details of where you can access the support.
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