By Vickie Choitz, Director – Federal, State, and Local Systems Change, Corporation for a Skilled Workforce
Before reading: I invite you to take a few deep breaths to take a mini break from your day and calm your nervous system before reading this blog. Go ahead, no one’s watching, and you deserve it.
I’m tired. I’m sick and tired. I’m jumpy and can’t sleep. I’m numb and only want to sleep. I’m angry. I want to cry. I want to scream. I want to punch someone. I want to hurt myself.
These are some of the common and, believe it or not, normal reactions to all the stress and trauma most of us have experienced in the last year. The multiple simultaneous pandemics have been a bear. The COVID-19 illnesses and deaths. The shutdowns, unemployment, and financial distress. All disproportionately affecting low-income and people of color. All layered onto long-simmering toxic stressors and trauma from systemic racism and racial injustice, persistent gender inequality at work and in the home, four decades of growing economic inequality, and the polarization of our communities. (Take another deep breath or two here.) Not to mention more personal and familial sources of trauma that many of us have experienced such as adverse childhood experiences like neglect and abuse, military PTSD, sexual violence, environmental catastrophes and injustice, other traumas, and the later retriggering that often happens.
Describing something as a bear is a metaphor for a very difficult challenge in which we’ve had to fight hard to survive. The brain, however, despite it being the center of our intelligence, cannot distinguish between something feeling like a physical threat and a real bear chasing us in the woods. We now know through the study of brain science that any danger registered by our brain—be it real physical danger, the memory of that danger, or the perception of physical danger—triggers the exact same parts of and processes in our brains. You meeting a bear in the woods and someone struggling with unemployment, home schooling, and ill family members both likely trigger our “run like hell” response, “fight like hell” response, or a freezing of our ability to think and act. These are normal responses to events and situations we sense are dangerous or harmful to us.
As an employer or workforce development professional, you may have seen some of these symptoms in your employees, your clients, your colleagues, even yourself. You may be noticing more anger or less engagement and motivation. You may be seeing more withdrawal and avoidance, less productivity, more “brain fog” and confusion among workers and colleagues. This is the brain on toxic stress and trauma.
But all is not lost. The brain is malleable, and there are many practices and tools we all can adopt to sort of overwrite the brain’s natural reactions when they are not the healthiest responses to situations. The National Fund for Workforce Solutions has published a guide, co-authored by Stacey Wagner and me, for employers and workforce development professionals to understand more about toxic stress and trauma, the effects on the brain, how employers and workforce development professionals can help to address and manage toxic stress and trauma, and examples from a variety of forward-thinking companies and organizations. Here is the guide: A Trauma-Informed Approach to Workforce: An Introductory Guide for Employers and Workforce Development Organizations. Understanding toxic stress and trauma is new to employers and the workforce development field, so we also note what additional resources, tools, and support would be helpful to deepen our understanding and improve practices, policies, and organizational cultures.
Understanding and managing toxic stress and trauma is no different than understanding and managing diet, exercise, and other aspects of our health. In fact, there is tremendous intersectionality between our physical and mental health about which we have a lot more to learn. Importantly, understanding and managing toxic stress and trauma is not a substitute for mitigating them in the first place—through more equitable social and economic policies, better quality jobs with family-supporting wages, stronger supports for children and families, etc. Both are important: resilient minds and bodies strengthen the fight for better policies, companies, organizations, and communities. If we can bear it, we can repair it.
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