Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Lisa Ferentz. Humor, Faith & Self-Compassion In The Time of COVID: from the archives
Transcript
- 0:00Or today we even another episode from the archives with one of my incredible guests,
- 0:05enjoy or welcome back to the Traumaverst Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
- 0:20My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to be
- 0:24human, to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer
- 0:28in who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires
- 0:32cultivating authenticity, genuineness and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
- 0:38about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist Project dot com.
- 0:43That's the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started. Are you ready
- 0:49to do it? I'm ready, all right, all right, here we
- 0:51go. So five four, three, two and one, our folks,
- 0:57welcome back to the Trauma the Everst Podcast. I am thrilled to have back
- 1:02Lisa France on the podcast. Lisa, welcome again. Thank you, Gret.
- 1:06I always love being with you. Awesome. So, as you probably
- 1:11know or should know, Lisa is a recognized expert in the strengths based the
- 1:15deep pathologized treatment of trauma. It's been in private practice for thirty four years.
- 1:21She presents workshops and keynote addresses nationally and internationally, and as a clinical
- 1:26consultant to practitioners and mental health agencies in the United States, Canada, in
- 1:30the UK and Ireland. Lisa's been an adjunct faculty member at University of Maryland
- 1:34School of Social Work, University of Baltimore, Maryland, University of Maryland Department
- 1:38of Family Medicine, and as a founder of the Friends Institute formerly known as
- 1:44the Institute for Advanced Psychotherapy Training and Education, now in its twelfth year.
- 1:49In two thousand nine, Lesa was voted Social Work over the Year by the
- 1:52Maryland Society for Clinical Social Work. She's an author of Treating Self Destructive Behaviors
- 1:57and Trauma Survivors Inititions Guide, now in its second edition, also Letting Go
- 2:04of Self Destructive Behavior as a workbook of hope and healing, and also Finding
- 2:08Your Ruby Slippers Transformative Life Lessons from the Therapist count so awesome. All right,
- 2:15So before we dive in here, remind our listeners and myself where are
- 2:21you currently right now? I think I'm in Baltimore, Maryland. Okay,
- 2:24I mean, but I'm also in limbo like everybody else in the world.
- 2:28Right So, I'm in Baltimore and I'm in limbo just like you. Yeah,
- 2:32yeah, how are you doing? Just oh, thank you for asking,
- 2:38I would say, mostly really well, And I think I'm doing everything
- 2:42in my power to lead with gratitude. You know, I have to tell
- 2:46you, as a clinician, I did not lose a day of practice and
- 2:50I'm extraordinarily grateful for that. And you may or may not know, but
- 2:54I like to I actually call myself Wilma Flintstone in that I was of the
- 3:00absolute adamant belief that therapy could only happen face to face. I would never
- 3:05ever do anything online. And my institute, all of our trainings in Baltimore
- 3:08have always been live as well, and I have to say that it's been
- 3:14although there's been a learning curve, it's it's actually been gratifying to discover that
- 3:19there are ways to transfer this work. And again, I just am holding
- 3:23with a lot of gratitude that I was able to continue to do the therapy
- 3:27with my clients and continue to offer our trainings in an online format. So
- 3:31you know, that's that's gone a long long way towards um allowing me to
- 3:36navigate what for most of us has been very challenging and difficult. Yeah,
- 3:42was, um, is there are there two sides to that? You said
- 3:46you didn't miss a beaten for in terms of seeing clients. Was obviously that's
- 3:52good, but it seems like it might be challenging. It's like you're trying
- 3:55to get deal with the present situation too. You're you're right, and I've
- 4:01actually it's interesting. One of the talks that I've been asked to do in
- 4:04many different iterations now online is exactly that, you know, helping mental health
- 4:11providers to be able to hold their own you know, reactions and emotions about
- 4:16all of this and still be arbiters of hope for our clients. And you
- 4:20know, sometimes it's really really challenging, and we have to learn how to
- 4:26kind of contain and compartmentalize and continue to have that balance so that we're making
- 4:30sure that we're taking care of ourselves and processing, you know, with whomever
- 4:35we feel safe, processing with the impact that all of this is having on
- 4:39us, so that we really can stay fully grounded and present for our clients.
- 4:44Well, let's let's dive a little bit into that. I mean,
- 4:47what has it been like for you to to do this? Yeah, again,
- 4:53initially I was very reticent. I you know, I, as you
- 4:56know, I work with profoundly traumatized folks, and for me, energetically being
- 5:01in the same room with somebody, you know, is three quarters of the
- 5:05work as far as I'm concerned, UM, Being able to see their whole
- 5:10body, being able to you know, read all of those nonverbal cues such
- 5:13an essential part of the work that most of us who are trauma informed,
- 5:16you know, include in the paradigms that we use, and so you know,
- 5:21to get a profile of somebody and to feel, you know, that
- 5:25there's some degree of distance because there's glass between us. UM. In the
- 5:30beginning, it was it was challenging. It was challenging in the therapy when
- 5:33there's a big sheet of glass standing up there as well as your masks and
- 5:36so forth or whatever. Yeah, well no, so I I immediately I
- 5:41see, I would not do therapy wearing masks. So I stopped in person
- 5:46therapy a year ago. Now, you know, I felt that it would
- 5:49be so triggering for a trauma survivor to attempt to feel comfortable, comfortable and
- 5:55safe with me if they can't see this much of my face, you know,
- 5:59UM, and it would make it really difficult for me to fully appreciate
- 6:01and understand what was happening for them if I can't see their whole face,
- 6:05and so I immediately you know, transferred into the online format, so you
- 6:11know, I see the whole face. And there are definitely tons who are
- 6:14working with the body. I'll invite the client to lower their screen so I
- 6:16can really see their breathing and have a clearer sense of you know, what's
- 6:20happening for them. But it's challenging they have they get interrupted. So many
- 6:27folks have young children who are either doing one hundred percent virtual learning or hybrid
- 6:32learning right and so you know, I do therapy sessions and I've learned to
- 6:38ask, you know, do you have privacy? Are you alone in the
- 6:41room? Is there the likelihood that will be interrupted? What do you have
- 6:45to do as soon as you click end meeting with me? Because you know,
- 6:47many many folks have stayed very committed to doing therapy, but they click
- 6:53end meeting and five seconds later they're back on zoom doing a business meeting.
- 6:57So you know that context is important that for therapists to take into consideration because
- 7:02it's going to dictate how deeply we go, how emotional. You know,
- 7:06the client is going to get in that session, and how much time I'm
- 7:10going to leave at the end of the session to do containment and regrounding,
- 7:14really making sure they're fully back in their prefrontal cortex, you know, if
- 7:17they have to leave with me and then you know, sound intelligent in a
- 7:23business meeting. So what's the part of the loss? And you know,
- 7:26I've always said so much of COVID is about loss. You know, so
- 7:30many different kinds of losses. But one of the losses that for clients and
- 7:33therapists alike, is that transitional space where a client, you know, could
- 7:40end a session and then maybe even sit in their car for a couple of
- 7:43the drive home, have a drive home, you know, have that space
- 7:47so that they can decompress, so that they so that they can do a
- 7:50little bit of containment, so that they can allow some of what came up
- 7:54to kind of resettle. And that's not happening, you know, or very
- 8:00committed clients who want to still do the weekly work, but the context is
- 8:03completely different. You know, they do the work and then they have to
- 8:07help their kids with algebra. So you know, that's that's been challenging.
- 8:13That's interesting. I've heard a lot of people talk about, you know,
- 8:16the challenges of doing things online with Zoom for example, but not so much
- 8:22about the context Like you're saying, well, what are you doing exactly afterwards?
- 8:28You know, is there going to be that space? Can you take
- 8:31the space which also impacts what you're going to be doing or able to do
- 8:33in session as well too. Yeah, that's right, that's right. And
- 8:37so I think it's requiring both the therapist and the client a tremendous amount of
- 8:43fluidity and flexibility and spontaneity. And you know, we can be working on
- 8:48something for two three weeks. You know, that's very deep and rich.
- 8:52But in the fourth visit, if the client says to me, listen,
- 8:56my kids in the next room, you know, we shift gears. And
- 9:01I think you have to allow for that kind of flexibility given that larger you
- 9:05know, contextual reality. Right now, what are you seeing, Lisa in
- 9:11terms of how your clients are just dealing with all this? And I realized
- 9:18everyone has their own story, but in general, are people coming to you
- 9:24just even more burden? I mean, to me, just let me just
- 9:28say this. When then all this stuff hit for me, I was nuts.
- 9:33I mean, I was so anxious, right, I was someone who
- 9:39and still am, I love to keep abreast of the news, and I've
- 9:43just found myself, you know, the kids were home suddenly, my wife
- 9:48fortunately was able to work, and then now I've got two kids and all
- 9:52this crazy news. I was going nuts. I was like, if I
- 9:54want to keep it together, I've got to stop and stop, you know,
- 10:00create some boundaries for myself, which fortunately I did, but it's it's
- 10:03still very, very challenging. Yeah, yeah, you're hitting on something.
- 10:09I'm so glad you brought it up, because with any other intervention that we're
- 10:13doing as clinicians right now, I still think one of the most powerful and
- 10:16necessary interventions is really being directive with our clients about saying, stop watching the
- 10:24news. Stop and so you know, stop going down the rabbit hole of
- 10:28social media. Certainly, do not watch the news before you go to bed.
- 10:33This has become something I'm reminding my clients about pretty much every session,
- 10:37because whether it's COVID, or it's politics, or it's civil unrest or you
- 10:43know, unfortunately, we've had a confluence of a lot of really frightening and
- 10:46anxiety producing things in our world. In the last year and so you know,
- 10:52what clients eventually do figure out is that when they make this this conscious
- 10:58effort to not go down that rabbit hole, so to speak, they are
- 11:03less anxious. They do feel common. And by the way, watching the
- 11:05news all day long doesn't help you in any way, right because so much
- 11:11of what's happening is not in our control, and all it's going to do
- 11:15is activate your sympathetic system. It's going to put you in either fight flight
- 11:18or freeze reaction. And so the control you have is about creating those boundaries
- 11:24and limiting how your exposure because I think there's a lot of vicarious traumatization literally
- 11:31just around watching the news or the divisiveness that keeps showing up in social media
- 11:35right now. So I think that that's critically important. I think there is
- 11:41a bit of a universality, although you're absolutely right to suggest that people react
- 11:46differently, and I think the more you come at this with a trauma history,
- 11:48the more you're going to be triggered, and the more impactful that triggering
- 11:52is going to be. But I think there's a kind of universality to a
- 11:56lot of the key issues that COVID and other issues that have happened in the
- 12:01world have kind of raised and exacerbated for us as human beings. So that's
- 12:05you know, we touched on losses. So there's the loss of freedom and
- 12:09the loss of finances, and the and the loss of employment for a lot
- 12:11of people, and the loss of life, you know, and the fear
- 12:16of getting sick, the loss of freedom. I'm working with so many clients
- 12:20now, guy, who have experienced to death and they couldn't have a funeral,
- 12:26you know, for Jewish clients, they couldn't sit shiva, which is
- 12:28a seven day process which is essential, you know, to help us to
- 12:31begin to navigate our grief and our suffering. So many younger people who couldn't
- 12:37go to a graduation, you know, young couples who couldn't get married in
- 12:41the way they wanted to get married. So a lot of loss around activities
- 12:46and social engagements and connection. And that's been huge. And if you're a
- 12:50trauma survivor, you've already endured tremendous loss in your life, you know,
- 12:54loss of safety and privacy and boundaries and protections. So the whole concept of
- 12:58loss, I think can be very, very triggering. And then there's this
- 13:01huge dynamic of uncertainty, and all of us as human beings are impacted by
- 13:07uncertainty. We don't like to not know what's going on, you know,
- 13:11and if there's a blank, we're going to fill it in. We're going
- 13:13to make stuff up if we have to, because that feels less anxiety producing
- 13:18than limbo and not knowing. And now the uncertainty has shifted to including things
- 13:24like when am I going to get vaccinated? And how do I even go
- 13:28about getting vaccinated. That's something that my clients have been in the last three
- 13:31or four weeks. They're constantly wanting to process in a therapy session, and
- 13:37just of course the relentlessness of everything that's happening. I think one of the
- 13:39biggest triggers though, is the need to do physical distancing. And I like
- 13:46to use the term physical distancing as opposed to social distancing, because we can't
- 13:50afford to do social distancing. We have to keep finding ways to connect.
- 13:54One of the interesting things to notice or to know is that when we're threatened,
- 14:00when we're stressed, when we're overwhelmed or frightened, it is literally in
- 14:03our DNA and in our biology to reach out and do social engagement, and
- 14:09so think about that. We're wired to want to do social connection in response
- 14:16to anxiety, fear, or overwhelmed. And yet what we've been forced to
- 14:20do for almost for a year now is social disconnection. Right to maintain that
- 14:26six feet, to wear that mask, to not go to all the places
- 14:28that you normally go to, you know, that give you comfort, that
- 14:31help you to feel, that give you a sense of identity or a sense
- 14:35of belonging, you know, the communal gatherings that we all need in our
- 14:39lives and in order to feel connected. So, although it's absolutely necessary,
- 14:43and I do want to emphasize this, I'm not in any way saying don't
- 14:46do physical distancing. It's obviously necessary for our physical and medical safety, but
- 14:54it's really not good for our emotional and psychological well being. And a lot
- 14:58of people are experiencing PTSD around that degree of isolation and feeling that degree of
- 15:07disconnection in general. Guide there's going to be a ton of PTSD fallout from
- 15:13all of this, the mental health aspect of everything that we've had to go
- 15:18through and endure, you know, in an attempt to stay safe. And
- 15:22so you know, I tell my colleagues like get ready, because we're going
- 15:26to We already are seeing dramatics increase in substance use and relapsing, dramatic dramatic
- 15:33increase in domestic violence, in child abuse and sexual abuse, in depression and
- 15:37anxiety, and that's real, right, right, We're going to have to
- 15:43deal with that as mental health providers and people navigate. And it just feels
- 15:48like there's this constant backdrop to all of our all of ourselves and all of
- 15:54our lives, of all these things that you talked about, and it's it's
- 16:00um yeah. I mean for someone like myself who tends to you know,
- 16:06the needle tends to go toward more towards anxiety. It's it's a day to
- 16:08day recentering and recalibrating, you know, to keep it together, right,
- 16:15You're right. What I say to my clients is if you get too focused
- 16:18on what you cannot control in all of this, your anxiety is going to
- 16:22dramatically escalate. I think the challenge and the opportunity and you know, you
- 16:27know, I take a very strength spaced approach to everything, so I try
- 16:32to frame it as an opportunity. I think the opportunity right now is to
- 16:36really get clearer about what is in our control and to make sure that we
- 16:42are fully and proactively using our agency around the things that are in our control,
- 16:49for example, For example, so practicing simple little strategies that help to
- 16:56navigate and reduce anxiety too, with a lot of intentionality, whether you want
- 17:00to bring on board mindfulness or meditation, becoming more aware of doing guided imagery
- 17:07or breathwork, downloading free apps onto your phone you know that walk you through
- 17:11very simple guided imagery and meditation for anxiety management. I think that's huge if
- 17:18you can't go to the gym, and a lot of us can't because it
- 17:22does it just doesn't feel safe to do that. I've discovered all these fabulous
- 17:26new exercise, free exercise videos on YouTube, so I become the queen of
- 17:32finding new exercise videos. That's so funny because I have to right yeah,
- 17:37so, and then I passed them onto my clients. I like, you
- 17:38know, I just did this fabulous ten thousand step walking thing. You know
- 17:44that that like really worked up a sweat and I needed this much space in
- 17:48my living room, you know, or or you know again, meditation,
- 17:52yoga. I've a lot of clients who discovered yoga for the first time,
- 17:55you know, doing it online, we can make We have control about our
- 17:59nutrition and you know, what we choose to eat and what we're not eating.
- 18:02We have control about our sleep and are we getting enough sleep? You
- 18:06know, we have control about making those social connections in safe ways. You
- 18:11know, I am doing more cocktail zoom hours with friends, you know,
- 18:18than I've ever done. So it's really just kind of taking that half a
- 18:22step back and focusing on what is in your control and then really you know,
- 18:29making it an intention to engage in that, you know, reading things
- 18:32that are fun. I'll tell you something else that I have become addicted to,
- 18:36and that's jigsaw puzzles, a thousand piece jigsaw puzzles. Now, when
- 18:38I first started doing it, it was kind of a way just to fill
- 18:41up some of my free time because I had you know, I wasn't traveling,
- 18:45I wasn't giving trainings on the road. I had a lot of this.
- 18:47Suddenly I wasn't in airports anymore, so I had a lot of downtime.
- 18:51And then I did a little bit of research and I was delighted to
- 18:53discover that doing things like jigsaw puzzles, Sudoku, crossword puzzles. This has
- 19:00an actual impact on our brain and our brain chemistry. You're activating the left
- 19:04and right hemisphere. Jigsaw puzzles and these other activities are meditative, so again,
- 19:11they calm down anxiety. They're distracting in a good way, so that
- 19:14if you're the type of person who's been perseverating about COVID, you know,
- 19:18focusing on to doku or crossword puzzle or jigsaw puzzle just gives your mind another
- 19:23place to go. Actually releases in dopamine, which makes us, gives us
- 19:29pleasure and makes us feel good and positive. If you're if you're isolating with
- 19:33someone else and you work on a jigsaw puzzle together, you know, that's
- 19:37something that feels connecting and collaborative. I have clients who are doing jigsaw puzzles,
- 19:45the same jigsaw puzzle at the same time with somebody on zoom, So
- 19:48even though they're not in the same space, you know they're they're kind of
- 19:51working on it together, and they're you know, they're lowering their screen to
- 19:55show the other person you know, where they're at and what they've done,
- 19:57you know. So that's all the stuff that actually is still in our control,
- 20:03and that's what we've got to grab onto and take advantage of. Right
- 20:06now, I can see where that might even feel more elusive, because there's
- 20:11so much seemingly out of our control, so easy to get overwhelmed with that
- 20:18that almost like you know, thinking about and collecting, gathering what we can
- 20:25take hold of almost might seem elusive, but so so crucial. Um,
- 20:32let's you know, you mentioned a fallout and one of the things that I
- 20:37mean, it's been been but a lot of people have been talking about,
- 20:41although I don't think it's been talked a lot about in in uh generally speaking,
- 20:47is how all of this is, you know, falling out down on
- 20:52the mental health clinicians and how they're going to deal with it, the fallout
- 20:55with them? Yeah, what are you experiencing and we're seeing Yeah, I
- 21:00mean there's a lot of fall out, I will tell you, you know.
- 21:02In addition to doing you know, therapy hours, I also provide consultation
- 21:06to clinicians, whether they're beginner clinicians or very season clinicians. In the last
- 21:11four or five months, I have been and I'm I'm always so thrilled to
- 21:15do it, but I'm noticing this dramatic increase in the number of colleagues who
- 21:21are wanting to do consultation because they just need a safe place to process their
- 21:26own anxiety, you know, just to deal with the frustration if they're feeling
- 21:30about having to continue to do online therapy as opposed to face to face therapy,
- 21:36a safe place just to process their their own fear and uncertainty about COVID
- 21:41and and you know, other things that are happening in the world. And
- 21:45so I do think if you are a clinician, the two things to get
- 21:48really focused on is give yourself the gift of consultation supervision right now, because
- 21:53you deserve it, it will benefit you. It is a safe place where
- 21:57you can unload and process your own fears because obviously we can't unload them in
- 22:03a therapy session with a client. We need a safe place to be able
- 22:07to do that, and we need a safe place just to be able to
- 22:10process the anxiety that our clients are bringing to these online sessions, you know.
- 22:15So consultation and supervision, I think now more than ever, is a
- 22:18real gift. And I also think we have to stay mindful of our own
- 22:22acts of self care and self compassion. So no matter what modality you use,
- 22:27and I use many many as a clinician, I become more and more
- 22:32convinced that what makes everything work is when you bring self compassion to it.
- 22:37And the irony guy is that clinicians are often not that great. They're extraordinarily
- 22:44compassionate towards other people, right, I mean, that's why they're in the
- 22:47field that they're in. But they're not always great with self compassion and they're
- 22:52not always great with self care. And so you know, again really bringing
- 22:56that into your conscious awareness to just put your hand on your heart and say,
- 23:00you know what, it's really hard right now. It's hard to be
- 23:04a mental health provider. It's hard to be a medical provider. It's hard
- 23:08to be a teacher. It's hard to be a parent with three young children
- 23:12who are trying to learn at home. So just bringing a little bit of
- 23:18compassion to that reality, as simplistic as that seems, again, the anxiety
- 23:23comes down. Just as you said that, I could feel it, seriously,
- 23:29Yeah, I could feel that. Yeah. So the self talk is
- 23:33hugely important. You know, if we're shaming ourselves about the fact that we're
- 23:37struggling, we're going to feel worse. If we can hold compassion and kindness
- 23:42and concern and care for the fact that this has been one hell of a
- 23:48year and it's hard and we're doing the best that we can. And if
- 23:52we can be kind to ourselves about that reality again, our bodies soften,
- 23:57our physiology comes down, and we create this space to begin to think about
- 24:03acts of self care. So once I can acknowledge it's hard to be a
- 24:08mental health provider right now, the next question that it evokes is, so
- 24:14what do I need? What do I need to do for me so that
- 24:18I can navigate this? And what I've discovered is not to schedule clients back
- 24:23to back in online therapy, because because I'm immobile, I'm staring at my
- 24:30camera. You know, I've got blue light coming at me. I can't
- 24:33do that for six hours in a row, you know. In my office.
- 24:37Yes, I'm good at seeing you know, four or five clients or
- 24:41not that I'm necessarily advocating that, but after thirty seven years, it comes
- 24:45easily to me. But this doing this, you know, four or five
- 24:48hours in a row. Enough. My body doesn't want me to do that.
- 24:52So once I realized that, I gave myself permission to completely change the
- 24:57way I schedule on therapy sessions. It's very different than what I do in
- 25:03my office. I'm making sure in between every session, I'm standing up and
- 25:06moving. I have that jigsaw puzzle going at all times. You know,
- 25:10I'm in my thirty Seriously, my husband I and he's a physician, and
- 25:14he's just distressed as I am. And we're working on our thirty fifth puzzle
- 25:18and it's been a godsend. You know. He comes home at the end
- 25:22of the day, you know, after doing you know, twenty he does
- 25:26twenty five tell telehealth sessions in a row, you know, and then he
- 25:29sits down with that puzzle and it's like everything sort of dissolves, you know,
- 25:33and again we can be in a different part of our brain, making
- 25:37sure that I'm eating properly, you know, in little small ways throughout the
- 25:41day. Again, different from the way that I would work in my office,
- 25:44you know, when I'm kind of in one place all day. Walking
- 25:48my dog in between sessions has been another godsend. And if you don't have
- 25:52an animal, a pat just walk, you know, just walk around your
- 25:56house, walk outside, walk up and down the steps, let your body
- 26:00move, because there is this I think this greater degree of being sedentary and
- 26:04being more immobilized because we are all doing this all day. We're staring at
- 26:10our screens, you know, and that immobility is not good for our bodies.
- 26:15Is this situation of COVID Is it making it more challenging for clinicians therapists
- 26:26to wonder about to what degree they should disclose their own feelings of anxiousness,
- 26:33right because it's something uniquely that we're all experiencing. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
- 26:40I think you still have I think there's a way to do it.
- 26:41Guy. I think that, yes, we want to normalize the humanity of
- 26:45this and that we are all in this together. And when a client says,
- 26:49you know, I feel scared or I feel anxious, or I feel
- 26:53exhausted, you know, certainly saying I get it, I totally get it.
- 26:59With out going into any detail about what that means, you know,
- 27:03I think that that's a really appropriate way to do a little bit of self
- 27:07disclosure, you know, in the name of joining and speaking to the universality
- 27:11of it all. But I'm still going to tell you that the clinicians job
- 27:15is to be the arbiter of hope and optimism and you know, my fundamental
- 27:22rule about therapy in general is somebody has to be grounded and present at all
- 27:26times, and it better be the therapist because it's often not the client.
- 27:32And so when my client, you know, I'm thinking about I did a
- 27:34couple of sessions yet last night, and I had, in both cases clients
- 27:38who are very disregulated. One was crying, one was really anxious and angry,
- 27:45and I had to stay really calm and really present so that their mirror
- 27:51neurons could bounce off of that and they could begin to calm down and get
- 27:56some relief if I met them, you know, so they're up here.
- 27:59If if you meet the client where they are, then who's doing the great
- 28:03you know, when we're the stabilizing factor, you know. So yes,
- 28:08we definitely can normalize for our clients that we're frustrated, we're anxious, we're
- 28:15angry, we're bored. We haven't we haven't mentioned that emotion, but I
- 28:18think that's a really big emotion that people are grappling with their bored The microcosm
- 28:22of their world has dramatically decreased. You know, Um, we're doing much
- 28:29less than we normally do, and so there's boredom around that and just to
- 28:34normalize. Yeah, there are times you're going to feel really really bored and
- 28:38anxious and angry. And I get it. We're all in the same boat,
- 28:45I think, you know, saying things like that is valuable because I'm
- 28:48not any different from my clients. The extent to which I'm going to share
- 28:52why I'm anxious. I'm not going to go there, you know, because,
- 28:56first of all, to their session. It's their time, and again
- 29:00I want them to really trust that they can rely on me. And actually
- 29:06I find it quite gratifying when a client says, I feel so good when
- 29:11I interact with you because I feel calmer or I feel more optimistic. You
- 29:17know. I try to bring humor into the sessions, you know, even
- 29:22when it's difficult. I was working with a woman yesterday who's still grieving the
- 29:26death of her husband, and believe it or not, I would say four
- 29:29different times we were both laughing in the session, and she thanked me for
- 29:33that. She said, you know, I've been so consumed with grief and
- 29:37sadness, it actually feels good to laugh. And then she was cused.
- 29:41She goes, is it okay that I'm laughing? You know, so just
- 29:45giving that permission, you know, Yes, that's as healing as crying,
- 29:48you know. So I think we do have to find ways to take care
- 29:52of ourselves when we're not in session with our clients so that we really can
- 29:56be hopeful and optimistic and fully present when we're with them. Clients need that
- 30:03more than ever. So the institute, now, are you folks offering courses
- 30:11online or workshops? Yeah? So everything is online and you know, I'm
- 30:17I didn't think it was possible, and it is, and I'm delighted that
- 30:19it is. And so I still have a fabulous faculty. I do a
- 30:23lot of teaching. My faculty does teaching. I'm still able to do my
- 30:26certificate program and trauma treatment online. So just going to the Farrens Institute,
- 30:32you know, we'll give you the whole, the whole calendar, Okay,
- 30:34and consultation also, yes, So if you go to the Farrens Institute,
- 30:41it's the easiest way to email me, and I'm more than happy to provide
- 30:45that. I really feel like that's something that I can provide. You know,
- 30:49I've disclosed this before. I'm not a trauma survivor, so I tend
- 30:53to be by nature a very optimistic, positive, hopeful person, and so
- 31:00I can I like being able to provide that hope and that optimism. Not
- 31:04that I'm a Pollyanna about anything, and not that we ever minimize or downplay
- 31:10suffering, you know, but I think that we can juxtapose suffering with hope
- 31:14and certainly suffering with compassion. And so I'm more than happy to, you
- 31:18know, to be able to provide that to clinicians who feel stressed and overwhelmed,
- 31:23and frankly just want a little bit of extra guidance about doing this work
- 31:27online because it is different, you know, doing trauma work in particular online.
- 31:33It's not the same thing as doing it face to face. Lisa,
- 31:37what is it about you? Do you think that enables you or allows you
- 31:44to maintain this hopefulness, the you know, the positivity. And I'm not
- 31:49saying you are Pollyanna, But what is what is it about you? What
- 31:53do you think? It's a great question. Actually, what immediately comes to
- 31:57my mind is that I was blessed with extraordinary parents. I lucked out.
- 32:02I just was blessed with extraordinary, loving, kind parents who made me feel
- 32:09special, you know, not in a narcissistic way, but just made me
- 32:14feel worthy and valuable and precious every day, and and and they were optimistic,
- 32:22positive people. Despite the fact that both my parents came from their own
- 32:28they found they were remarkably optimistic human beings and thank God brought that into their
- 32:34parenting. The other thing I'll tell you, and this is not to proselytize,
- 32:37but you know, I'm an Orthodox Jew, I'm a person of faith,
- 32:40and when stuff like this happens, I just turn it over. I
- 32:45just turn it over. I'm so convinced that there is a force at play
- 32:49that has so much more power than I do, and I just turn it
- 32:52over, you know. And that helps me to not have to carry the
- 32:58heaviness and weight of worry. And I think that if you don't, if
- 33:02you if you go through life and you're not perpetually worried and you do believe
- 33:07I believe in the goodness of humanity. I believe in the goodness of a
- 33:12higher power of God. You know, if you hold that idea um and
- 33:16you just you trust that that ultimately things are actually going to be okay,
- 33:22awesome. Well, Lisa, like I said, I love having you on
- 33:25here. Man. Anytime you want to come on, send me, send
- 33:30me an email. We'll have everything we talked about today linked up at the
- 33:35h Traumatis podcast dot com the show notes page. And want to want people
- 33:39to reach out to you and your institute UM and allow me please to publicly
- 33:45thank you because you have done extraordinary work. I get emails from people guy
- 33:52like you know from around the world who've listened to your podcasts and have caught
- 33:57the ones that you and I have done. So I just want you to
- 34:00know that you are making a profound difference in the world, and I thank
- 34:05you for your generous thank you. It means a lot. I appreciate you
- 34:08saying that all right, we'll take care, we'll be in touch, all
- 34:13right. Bye bye