CLINICAL COMMENT FROM GUEST
EDITOR FRANC HUDSPETH, PHD, LPC, ACS, RPT-S: Vicarious trauma can be treated systemically by “taking care of us.”
So, how do you know if you have taken the trauma home? Here is a short list: • Over-responding: snapping orders, freaking out about messes, using words like “always” and “never,” (i.e., “you always leave your clothes on the floor” and “you never help around here”).
to ignore it because you do not have the bandwidth to deal with it right away. You are too tired to set limits with your kids when you know they need them (the thought that an extra half hour of screen time will not kill them).
• Dreading special playtime with your children: It feels like work. • Not enjoying a small gathering in someone’s home, wondering what might be going on upstairs between children (even when there is a babysitter present).
• Not letting your children go to a bathroom by themselves or spend the night elsewhere without enormous worry; remaining vigilant on play dates.
• Diminishing creativity: Feeling drained, as if you will never have a deep thought or an inspired idea again. Hear the word “never” in there? Both authors have experienced this and feel the need to encourage others.
we must take a hard look at our compassion fatigue. The toxic effects of carrying trauma for too long go by many names: burnout (Freudenberger, 1980; Maslach, 1982; Pines & Aronson, 1988), vicarious traumatization (VT, McCann & Pearlman, 1990; Pearlman & Mac Ian, 1990) and secondary traumatic stress (STS, Baird & Jenkins, 2003; Baird & Kracen, the increased energy expense in working the “second shift,” or tending to housework and childcare after a full-day’s work (Hochschild & Machung, 1989/2012), affects how we show up for our own families.
How We Show Up at Home Most of us have heard how important showing up is. Being aware of how we show up is crucial. Trauma-informed play therapists are well-versed in the window of tolerance and its applications. It is helpful to apply this lens to our own regulation. If we spend as much of the day as possible in our optimal arousal zone, we are likely to bring our best selves to our children and partners. What does that look like?
Several years ago, Paris’s children gave her two nutcrackers. On the left, we see the “cookie mommy” in the pink dress in her optimal arousal zone: warm, nurturing, playful. On the right, the “drill sergeant” is in her
As we take a hard look at what causes our secondary trauma and make self-care shifts organizationally and individually, our creativity returns. It was never gone. It was simply covered up by holding trauma content and the “busyness of business.”
The Busyness of Business There are always ancillary tasks to do, such as writing notes, returning e-mails, dealing with third party payers, cleaning the playroom, etc. The It is like a drone that hovers around us at all times. In fact, going back into clinical session is a relief, because mindfully holding the child, dyad, or family sharpens our focus on the present moment, and allows us to land the drone for a short while. This business busyness creates its own stress that accumulates over time and becomes what we call detail fatigue. Some strategies we have found helpful in managing detail fatigue include: • Chunking time: cordoning off a percentage
of time for
administrative tasks based on the number of clinical or supervision sessions scheduled.
• Jotting notes: trigger recall for note writing later.
• Connecting with community: talking with others about how they manage detail fatigue. The APT Resource Center has dozens of ideas shared by other play therapists (
https://www.a4pt.org/ page/ResourceCenter).
• Scheduling have the most internal resources.
www.a4pt.org | June 2019 | PLAYTHERAPY | 43
perhaps with less nurturing engagement. When the drill sergeant shows up, she must work to get back into her optimal arousal window. A third sloth-like nutcracker would binge Netflix to represent hypoarousal, but fortunately no one makes a nutcracker like that.
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