John 14:15-21
“Now we are doing Mindfulness Mondays and Fearless Fridays,” Shelly explained. She laughed. “Although Watercolor Wednesdays turned out to be a huge flop.”
“Trauma is something that happens,” Danielle told me, “but it doesn’t define us. The trauma response is innate and biologically protective. It can get out of balance, though.”
Ronda’s words: “When we are frightened, our sense of the world as a safe and orderly place is shattered, and that leads to anxiety and despair.”
“By and large,” Brandon said, “my templates for what to expect may not be accurate in this time. I work really hard to stay curious.”
This week, it was my privilege to talk with four mental health professionals from our congregation about the challenges and opportunities of this COVID-19 crisis. Thank you to Shelly Cichowlas, Danielle Rousseau, Ronda Yeomans, and Brandon Jones. The conversations were fascinating: I had many “ah-hah” moments. The conversations were inspiring; I am in awe of their passion and dedication.
Shelly Cichowlas is Clinical Director of The Old Colony Y Girls Secure Detention Unit in Brockton, where she supervises staff and works with adolescent girls in Department of Youth Services custody.
I asked Shelly how this crisis has impacted her work. She started by talking about the challenge of preparing the girls for what’s happening without frightening them. “We went from no one wearing masks to not cause alarm,” she said, “and now we are all wearing masks.”
She expressed her frustration that girls are sometimes staying longer than they otherwise would. Court cases are delayed and, if the girls have a history of running, they are held as a threat to the community and themselves.
Our conversation turned to the opportunities arising during this time. Because school has moved to a virtual model, there is more time for the clinical staff to offer groups. Instead of a few each week, now they offer two groups and a staff-led program every day.
It has been transformative at many levels. “It really slows the unit down,” Shelly said. The girls have more input, especially about evening programs. Staff feel empowered to take leadership roles planning programs.
With a more relaxed schedule, staff members have begun joining the girls in the groups. One young man opened up about his aunt who had just died from COVID-19. He was able to turn his own experience into a learning opportunity for the girls.
The new schedule has also enabled new creativity. There’s Mindfulness Mondays, Tactile Tuesdays, Thankfulness Thursdays and Fearless Fridays.
As we talked, I began to see a theme emerge. Central to Shelly’s work is the value of creating safe space. Shelly and her colleagues use their insight and creativity to structure groups that enable the girls and the staff to share honestly, claim their leadership gifts, contribute to the wider community, and discover their inner resources.
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Danielle brings a similar focus on safe space to her classroom at Boston University, where she is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice. When her school made a rapid change to virtual learning, Danielle reached out to help on-campus students who were suddenly uprooted. Many had to move cross-country or even to different countries. Some were moving to unsafe situations. She tried to help them find strategies to care for themselves.
I noticed that Danielle used the word “trauma” frequently. From the beginning of her career, she has focused on forensic psychology. In her work with victims of crimes, survivors of sexual abuse, first responders and people who are incarcerated, she has come to see trauma as a key driver of our mental health response. She finds viewing mental health through the lens of trauma to be helpful. So much of mental health, she said, can have a negative lens, with a focus on diagnosing what’s wrong. Shifting the focus to our response to trauma allows for a strength-based approach.
Danielle talked about the human trauma response as innate. Our physical and emotional reactions to danger are good and necessary. When we have experienced trauma, though, we can get stuck in that heightened response and may begin to experience everything as a crisis. Reframing a mental health challenge as a natural response that has gotten out of balance is a more empowering approach. The focus becomes finding strategies to shift the balance.
I asked her about “post-traumatic growth”–an expression that acknowledges the ways our experiences of trauma, which often lead to stress and distress, can also lead to growth. “Yes,” she said, “we have the potential to use our experiences to help ourselves and to be of service to others. But it’s important to recognize that Post-Traumatic Stress and Post Traumatic Growth are not mutually exclusive. You can experience both at the same time.”
We talked about factors that can enable us to grow from our experience of trauma. Danielle identified three: having a sense of personal agency, being able to connect with others, and being of service to our fellow human beings. Her Friday morning Trauma-Informed Gentle Yoga class, which she has been offering virtually through Open Spirit, has been an opportunity to do all three of these: take action, connect, and serve.
Danielle described what is happening now as a “mass trauma,” a trauma that impacts a large group all at the same time. “It is a shared experience,” she said, “but it doesn’t impact everyone the same way.” Systemic injustices mean that our experiences of this shared moment can vary drastically. “It’s the difference,” she said, “between missing comfort food and experiencing food insecurity.”
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Ronda is a clinical psychologist, although she has not practiced professionally for several years. Still, her training shapes her perception of the world. Ronda inspired the Board of Wider Mission to make a special donation to the American Society for the Prevention of Suicide. She is acutely aware of the heightened danger of suicide in these uncertain times. It is even harder than usual for people in distress to find help, especially if they are worried about finances. She sees growing unemployment as a risk factor: “There is the American mythology that if you work hard, you will succeed,” she said. Our identities, she noted, are often caught up in our work.
Ronda also had a word that kept emerging: “anxiety.” She talked about anxiety in the context of the powerlessness that feels pervasive in this time. “The situation is making us feel out of control,” she said. “Very few people are good at that.”
While she is not in a professional role, Ronda does what she can to help. She is claiming her gift of connecting people–helping a teacher, for example, who learned of her student’s family crisis find food for them. “My go-to,” she said, “is to listen to people. So many don’t have someone to do that.”
A book by Buddhist nun Pema Chodron, called When Things Fall Apart, has offered her a helpful perspective. “When we suffer,” she said, “that suffering is the key to bringing us closer to others. If we can tolerate our agony, that teaches us patience and compassion. It unifies us: we find our strength and we grow.”
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Brandon has moved his counseling practice into his bedroom, the quietest room in the house, with his closet door as a backdrop for tele-health appointments. He is embracing the change: “With new clients for sure, I am reminding them that I’m in my own home,” he said. “I have two cats and a daughter. I’m leaning into ‘You’re going to get sounds of who I am.’”
That change in venue has led to a subtle shift in his approach. While he continue to keep the focus on the experiences of his clients, he says, “Now I’m more likely to be honest, especially about what I don’t know. It helps to normalize uncertainty. There is power in mutually embracing uncertainty.” He adds, “I’m also more likely to share the hope I feel.”
Brandon is struck by the depth to which people are struggling. Everything is amplified. “For folks who have issues of safety in their home environment, it is worse,” he said. “For folks socio-economically struggling or folks being asked to work when it is not safe to do so, it is worse.”
He has also noticed that some of the people he expected to have a hard time are doing well. “People are wonderfully complex,” he commented. This time has reminded him that we are so much more than our circumstances. “There are stressors, but people are separate from hardship. People are capable of living well and doing things and connecting with others.” He paused and added a caveat: “That doesn’t excuse our collective responsibility to mitigate hardships and support each other.”
Brandon also had a word that kept emerging in our conversation: curiosity. “I do my best work,” he said, “when I’m able to stay curious.” Curiosity helps him stay grounded and frees him from worrying about what he should say or do next. Curiosity also informs his approach to social justice: if we are curious about our neighbors, we are less likely to stereotype or judge each other.
Brandon sees curiosity as something that can help us as we move forward, through and beyond this crisis. “One reassuring thing,” he said, “is that people in a really tough situation are thinking, ‘how do I still live well, and how do I live well with my neighbor?’ There’s something about that: openness and curiosity in spite of fear.” For Brandon, it points to the power of imagination, the capacity to envision a different kind of future. “If I can picture it, I can take some steps toward it,” he said. “Embracing openness and curiosity while re-imagining a future that works for all of us.”
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See what I mean? Fascinating and inspiring… Next time you see one of these four faithful folks–through Zoom or from six feet away with masks–ask them more about their passion for healing and justice.
In our gospel reading, Jesus promises that God will send us an Advocate, a Spirit of Truth who will abide with us and in us. As I listened to Shelly and Danielle and Ronda and Brandon, I thought about how the Holy Spirit works through them–as they abide with their clients and students and friends, assuring them they are not alone. The Spirit is surely in their deep listening, as they create space to enable others to discover their own inner truth. The witness of their work challenges each of us to listen for the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, within us, as we struggle to survive and thrive, to heal and be healers in this time.
I have found the four themes that emerged from our conversations helpful. I invite you to ask if one–or more–of these themes helps you claim your own wholeness and your capacity to make a difference.
Shelly uses her creativity to shape safe space. What might you do to create safe space in your life or your home–space to acknowledge the range of feeling stirred in this time, space to enable others to share their truth?
Danielle offers her students strategies to help them grow in the face of trauma. What changes for you when you name what we are experiencing as a “mass trauma?” How might that shape your response to your own struggles and the struggles of others?
Ronda lifted up the anxiety stirred by feelings of powerlessness. How do you experience powerlessness in this time? Can you dare to sit with it? How can you use the power you do have in meaningful ways?
Brandon cultivates curiosity. What might change for you if you approach your life and your relationships with curiosity?
God yearns for our wholeness–as individuals, as a society, as a planet. Thanks be to God for people who dedicate their lives to the work of healing. Thanks be to God for the ways they inspire us all to be healers– of ourselves, our community, and our world. Amen.