Trauma-Informed Care in the Workplace with Jennifer Berard

Sep 12 2023 • 23 mins

Melanie Nicholson welcomes Jennifer Berard, a counseling psychologist with nearly 20 years experience in the field of addiction and mental health, to the show to discuss trauma and what trauma-informed care in the workplace looks like. Jennifer has experience working with first responders, paramedics, and other individuals dealing with traumatic environments, and sheds light on what trauma response looks like in everyday life.

Jennifer defines what trauma is and how it manifests in the body, explaining the different ways bodies express trauma and stress responses. Often things that get chalked up to people’s personality quirks can actually be stress responses to trauma, and understanding that reality can assist employers in being more sensitive in how they lead teams. Jennifer and Melanie discuss exactly what trauma-informed care from employers can look like, how to create a consistent and safe environment, and how to avoid moral injury after a reponse. Jennifer’s insight is compassionate, experience-based, and incredibly useful to everyone in fostering the understanding that almost everyone has a trauma history and that we can create safety for each other through recognition of this truth.

“And this is the thing that I would say to employers, too, is that just because we have to be able to have resiliencies to deal with stress and trauma, we cannot, it's not normal to expect people to adjust and manage their stress in environments that are toxic, in environments that are bullying… it is not the employee's responsibility to adhere to and to get safe in unsafe situations. In my opinion, it's the employer's responsibility to have safe places where people can then have the space to figure out whatever it is that they need to do through therapy or through their friends or through their supports or those kinds of things.” - Jennifer Berard

About Jennifer Berard

Jennifer Berard believes that all people have an incredible capacity for change. In her career she’s had the honour to observe individuals, with seemingly insurmountable challenges, create meaningful and lasting change in their lives. Theoretically, she utilizes Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Motivational Interviewing and Solution Focused Therapy to help facilitate change.

At the core, Jennifer’s approach is client centered. She believes that clients are the experts in their lives and aims to help them find their strength, in their own time, at their own pace. Therapy can be an important part of self-care, self-improvement and self-discovery.

Jennifer began her counselling journey in 2003 when she graduated, with distinction, from the University of Lethbridge with a Bachelor of Health Sciences, in Addictions Counselling. In 2010, she completed her Masters of Counselling Psychology through City University of Seattle. She has been a registered psychologist with the College of Alberta Psychologists since March 2015.

Throughout her career she has dedicated herself to helping people trying to cope with addiction and trauma. She has extensive experience and training in the Addiction and Mental Health field, with significant experience in the areas of addictions (residential and outpatient), First Responders, anxiety, depression, trauma, grief, and Forensics/Corrections.

Jennifer is a member in good standing with the College of Alberta Psychologist (4342) and the Psychological Association of Alberta.

Contact Melanie Nicholson | Melanie Lynn Communications Inc.

Contact Jennifer Berard

Transcript

Melanie Nicholson: [00:00:03] Hey, everyone, and welcome to It's a Theory. I'm your host, Melanie Nicholson, and today we're talking about trauma and trauma-informed care at the workplace. How can employers take the science and knowledge we have about trauma and use it to build stronger, more psychologically safe workplaces? Let's find out. Our guest today is Jennifer Berard. Jennifer is a counseling psychologist with close to 20 years experience in the addiction and mental health field. While she works with adults facing a variety of concerns, her primary focus is supporting individuals and first responders as they deal with substance use disorders and PTSD. Jennifer takes a strength-based, client-centred approach to counseling and has dedicated her career to advocating for and providing quality clinical care for those seeking change in their lives. She believes that recovery and healing is a deeply personal process, and the therapeutic relationship should be one that is developed through respect and dignity of the individual. Jennifer primarily utilizes cognitive behavioral therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, also known as EMDR, to support her clients. Jennifer is a registered psychologist with the College of Alberta Psychologists and a member of the Psychologists Association of Alberta. She holds a Bachelor of Health Sciences and Addictions Counseling and a graduate degree in counseling psychology. In 2017, she founded Jennifer Berard and Associates, a private mental health clinic in Calgary, Alberta. Let's chat with Jennifer. Welcome, Jen, to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you here.

Jennifer Berard: [00:01:37] Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's a real pleasure.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:01:40] This is a topic I find just so interesting. I think we're hearing more and more about toxic work environments, moral injury at work, and employers have a responsibility here. And I don't know that many understand the concept of trauma-informed care, why it matters at work, how they can apply it. I'm excited to dive into this today. What I want to start with today is just helping people understand some basics. So what is trauma? Can we start there so people can wrap their heads really around the scope of trauma itself?

Jennifer Berard: [00:02:12] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, trauma, even in and of itself, is a huge topic. And so to be able to kind of narrow it down into the space that you're talking about, I think is so important. And it's actually something that I've become very passionate about over the last few years in my practice as a psychologist and as a mental health professional. But when we think about trauma, and it is one of those words that we kind of talk a lot about now, but when we think about trauma, it can be like a lot of different things and it can show up a lot of different ways for people. So in a nutshell, it can be anything from a single traumatic event that happened sometime in the past. It could be a single traumatic event that happened recently or currently, or it can also be like a long-term chronic pattern of what we would consider exposure to traumatic events. And that can be at any point over someone's lifespan. So throughout their childhood, sometimes into adulthood, if they're in abusive relationships and then also into workplaces. We know and with my experience in working with first responders and public safety personnel, their whole careers are chronic and long-term patterns of exposure to trauma. So in a nutshell, we can be looking at sort of a whole range of what that can look like for people. The other tricky thing about it is that everybody's body responds differently to trauma. And so that's why we might see an event happen where five people experienced and witnessed the same thing and then everybody has a completely different response to it. Some people develop a traumatic stress response, some people have a normal stress response that sort of evens out afterwards, and some people don't have much of a response at all. And how our bodies show up to trauma along with our experiences also kind of is a big, big factor in how and how trauma plays out.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:03:56] So talk more about that. Like how does it show?

Jennifer Berard: [00:03:59] Yeah. So, well, I mean, first let's talk about the things that can influence it, right? So some of the things that can influence it are big things, are childhood experiences, right? So if somebody grows up in a time where their brain is developing and they're developing attachment with safe people or unsafe people, we can see that being something that can both create trauma responses and resiliencies in people. Where our resiliencies are, what we're capable of managing and coping with, our own nervous systems and how they respond to things. Attachment styles are a big one. And again, just kind of like in a nutshell, attachment is primarily sort of like how we learn to bond and how we form bonds with our caregivers when we're younger and how that kind of continues to, can continue to play out in the relationships that we have moving forward. And again, environment, right? So this always kind of, that piece also brings me back to workplace stuff, right? The environment that we're in, in conjunction with all of those things that are happening, can determine how the body responds to trauma. And so how that can look is sort of a couple of different ways. So one of the things that we have is what we sort of in the field of trauma and addiction call a window of tolerance. Right? And so that's all of our ability to be able to tolerate stress or tolerate discomfort without completely and totally dysregulating.

Jennifer Berard: [00:05:22] So it's not comfortable. We all know that stress is not comfortable. Right? And we all know conflict and trauma is not comfortable, but we can be in it and tolerate it. When it feels like we can't tolerate it anymore, our body has some built-in automatic mechanisms to be able to put us into more survival mode. So we have a couple of them. So one is when we're in our window of tolerance and we go into hyperarousal. So that's when our nervous system, our sympathetic system really activates. That's where we would see our fight or flight response. So high anxiety, our heart rate goes up where we're ready to fight or flee, right, essentially. And how we do that. But then also our body has this ability to be able to go into what we call hypo arousal. And so that's when the feelings become so big and so overwhelming and so intolerable that our body, like essentially disconnects us from our self, disconnects us from our emotions, disconnects us from our feelings. So that's where we would see things like we would call it dissociation. It can look like depression and we can see some people-pleasing behaviors showing up in those places as well. So it really depends on a whole lot of factors in how that shows up.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:06:30] And is that when people are, what we often say are, you're scared of confrontation, but it actually could be because of X, Y, Z.

Jennifer Berard: [00:06:40] Yeah. So if we think about, that's a great example, like fear of confrontation, right? I don't think anybody, not many people love confrontation. It's not a very comfortable place to be, right? Conflict is hard. Yeah, but if we can be in conflict and still manage to be able to ask for what we need and set boundaries and do all that kind of stuff, the feeling of it being hard is okay because we're still able to function and do the things that we need to do. That would be an example of being in the window of tolerance. If in conflict, my body tells me that I have to fight and yell and scream and intimidate an aggressor, you know, or like get the heck out of there and run and hide, that would all be examples of more of that hyperarousal response. But then, yeah, in that hypo arousal space, that's where we would see people who maybe get labelled as passive communicators, conflict avoidant, right? Which we would attribute sometimes and well, I say a lot of the time, we would attribute that to like a personality thing, right? It's just part of their personality. They're passive, but actually it might be that their body is so uncomfortable and so intolerable to the stress of conflict that they're actually shutting down from a survival perspective, which is not something that we often talk about when we think about those sort of like more passive forms of communication and conflict.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:07:59] So interesting to hear the personality label because I think back to some of my corporate experience and that was always the case. It was like, well, this person is this and this person is this. There was never any thought given to their story, their experience, their why. And so that's really interesting that people get labelled that way. So as an employer, then, when we're looking at the concept of trauma-informed care, we start with being informed about trauma and understanding. And then when you wrap your head around trauma, then you're coming into your team of employees with the assumption everyone's had trauma. Is that really the best approach for employers, to assume everyone has had some kind of trauma and then navigate their way through that?

Jennifer Berard: [00:08:45] Yeah, I think so. I mean, we think about it in terms of, like trauma-informed care is not asking about trauma. It's not doing trauma treatment. It's about acknowledging the fact that people could have been exposed to trauma.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:08:57] Let's say that again first, though, it is not about asking people if they've had trouble.

Jennifer Berard: [00:09:01] Not about asking people if they've had trauma.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:09:02] Don't ask people.

Jennifer Berard: [00:09:04] No, we do not ask people that unless there's a good reason to do it. And if you're someone, an employer, it's not a good reason to do it. Right? And so those should be those safe places. But when we think about it, like we talk about it a lot too, as almost like a universal precaution approach to trauma. Right? It is the assumption that when I interact with people and I assume that there is a high likelihood or a good likelihood or even a small likelihood that they may have had trauma in their life and their experiences and that might be driving what it is that I'm seeing or what it is that I'm experiencing in terms of the interaction that I'm having with people. It can open up people's minds and perspectives about what might be there, so it can break us out of these like, rigid ideas of going, You're passive, you're assertive, you're, you know, able to do this, you're not able to do that. And it gives us an ability to be able to kind of like come up with ideas about how do we create environments. Because if we think about environments being really important to a body's sense of safety, right, I think it becomes an employer's obligation to be considering culture and environment in terms of trauma-informed care with people.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:10:12] Can you give me an example so people can really wrap their heads around what is a way whether you're an employer or even just dealing with people in the public, how can you take a trauma-informed approach to dealing with people, that you don't know their story, that's universal and safe? It's like creating a psychologically safe environment for people.

Jennifer Berard: [00:10:31] Yeah, well, and you know, one of the, I know it sounds really easy, but a lot of times it's about like asking permission, right? Or asking questions. So if you're going to, if you have to deliver a message to somebody because being an employer is hard, right, you still have a business to run. You still have expectations on performance and you know, those kinds of things. But if you need to have conversations asking people, do you feel more comfortable if the door is open or closed? Right? Do you, what would make you feel more safe? Being consistent and being predictable. If you're one day angry and stomping around and mad and blaming people for things and then the next day asking people to trust you, that environment becomes inconsistent and people will start to respond to an unsafe environment. As well, too, when we think about kind of like physical proximity to things, right? Some people feel very, very comfortable in close proximity to other people and other people do not at all. It's a big trigger for them. Right? So, again, like if there's ever times - and this is really basic stuff - but if there's ever times where we need to touch somebody or we even need to get close to somebody, right, or we need to do those kinds of things, giving them a heads up so that their brain can kind of process what it is that's going on.

Jennifer Berard: [00:11:38] One example that I often talk about, because it makes sense when we think about people who have trauma, is, you know, if we consider like a dental office, for example, right? It's not appropriate for your dentist or your dental hygienist to be asking you if you have a history of trauma that they need to know about. But if we presume that people do have it, you think about being in a dentist, right? Like you're very vulnerable, you have people very close to you, being able to sort of talk people through, either giving them a heads up beforehand, what's going to happen, letting them know before you touch them, letting them know, you know, I'm going to put this vest on you, it's heavy, and so just be prepared for the weight of it, can keep that brain sort of in these sort of more neutral places where it doesn't get, I guess, for lack of a better term, sort of startled or scared or feeling like there's a sense of lack of control.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:12:27] Because as you said before, it is a reaction. There is, the brain is very involved here. This is not a made-up situation. This is a scientifically proven trauma reaction and how people navigate through that.

Jennifer Berard: [00:12:42] And if we can keep environments - to the best of our ability, right, we can't know everybody's stuff and we can't know what everybody's triggers are going to be - but if we can keep our environments to the best of our ability, where people can stay regulated even in conflict or discomfort or that kind of stuff, that's where we can make choice in how we respond to things. Those things I was talking about before, hyper and hypo arousal, those are automatic survival responses. What our body does is it shuts down the things we don't need so we can get through like that next moment, minute, meeting, whatever it is that it might be. So the trauma response is actually a really normal physiological response to something abnormal that has happened to somebody. So whether it's a long history of childhood abuse or witnessing a fatality car accident, those are things that we're not really designed to experience. And so we have really normal stress responses to it. Right? But at the same time, we have to be cognizant. And this is the thing that I would say to employers, too, is that just because we have to be able to have resiliencies to deal with stress and trauma, we cannot, it's not normal to expect people to adjust and manage their stress in environments that are toxic, in environments that are bullying and environments that are, it is not the employee's responsibility to adhere to and to get safe in unsafe situations. In my opinion, it's the employer's responsibility to have safe places where people can then have the space to figure out whatever it is that they need to do through therapy or through their friends or through their supports or those kinds of things.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:14:18] Well, and I think that's important to mention. So we talked about someone could come into, as an employee, having experienced trauma in the past, and then it's navigating that without even maybe knowing it. But there is also trauma that can occur at work and you're still expected to go to work. And I mean, I mentioned off-the-top toxic environments. I mean, I worked somewhere where I mean, every one of us that has left has referenced how toxic it was. And I don't know if any of us realized how toxic it was until we left. And it took months. Every single one of us said months until we felt more like ourselves again and we recentered. And that was fascinating to me because I don't think I realized it in the moment until later. So when you think about that happening at work where you're creating an environment that could feel traumatic or unsafe, what does that look like? I think it's the term moral injury. Is that...?

Jennifer Berard: [00:15:19] Yeah, well, when we look at moral injury, moral injury is one of those things where it's not so much about what happened. It's not even so much about the event that happened. It's all the things that did or did not happen afterwards, right? So how somebody was supported or not supported in an event that happened, if there was blame, if there was toxicity, if there was no accountability. Right? If there was, if someone gets scapegoated every time something bad happens or every time something goes around, those are things that can create this sort of like toxic, really, really unsafe environment. And it can create moral injury where it's not the response that they're having in the moment to the things that are happening, but the sort of disbelief of how they were treated afterwards, or how they weren't supported afterwards. And that's the piece that I think that from an employment perspective is so, so important. I work with a lot of people who are returning back to work off of stress disability. I work with a lot of people who are on psychological injury claims because they do the really hard work of putting themselves in environments that are traumatic, like our paramedics and our police and our, you know, our correctional officers and our first responders and all that kind of stuff.

Jennifer Berard: [00:16:32] One thing I've learned, even anecdotally from everything that everyone has ever had the privilege of sharing with me through the therapy that I do, is that most of the time people know the risk that they're taking. If they're in a job with high risk, they know that. No one goes into these jobs thinking, Well, I hope I'm the paramedic that never sees anything scary, right? They do it out of service. Where the injury comes in and where that sort of moral value place comes in is, I'm doing this, but then when I kind of go back, you skip a debrief, it's on to the next call, it's who is at fault, fill out your paperwork. Right? No time to rest. All of those things can feel injurious and it can feel traumatic. And when we think about connection, it disconnects people and it creates a real sense of like, not trusting your employer. And then there's a cycle, right, of like, how do I go and do the hard work? Because I'm passionate about my community and the things that I'm doing, but then there's nowhere for me to kind of put this stuff. And there's no supports there in place.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:17:33] How do we make this change then? How do we take the concepts and the knowledge and the research and the science around trauma and trauma-informed care and get it into the workplaces? What needs to start to make that happen?

Jennifer Berard: [00:17:47] Well, I think education needs to start. I mean, and you made a good point, Mel, when you were talking about and thank you for sharing that, right, like your own personal experience of that, because I too, I mean, I like to think that I'm somebody that has more than the average person's awareness and knowledge about this kind of stuff. And I, too, have had that experience of staying someplace and not realizing until many years later when I left how sort of insidiously toxic it was. And so I always think to myself if - I mean this sounds, I mean this in a very humble way - but if somebody like me can experience that with the amount of information that I have, then like people are really vulnerable, right? And so I think that a big part of that is about employers making commitments to things like supporting their employees' mental health, right? Whether that's through benefits or time off or, you know, like any of those kinds of things. But I also think we need to be asking people to educate themselves and taking responsibility for the fact that we can't be responsible for every individual person. But if you own a company or if you have a business or you are a boss, you are responsible for the environment. And if you don't understand the science and how this stuff can affect people, I think the onus is on people to bring in consultants, right? And get the information and learn about what it is so that they can do the best that they can in order to support people. And there are some amazing employers that do that. I don't want to make it sound at all like that's the case, but there are some that do not. And I see that sort of time and time again when people are trying to prepare to go back to work after a stress leave, but they're stepping just right back into an environment that hasn't changed, even though they have. And it's, it can be tricky.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:19:26] And employers aren't just responsible for the culture and the environment, but they're also responsible for their personal actions because we lead by example. So if you can lead and demonstrate an ability to have conversations with people in a trauma-respectful way, then the rest of your team will follow suit if they can learn from you. I think that becomes also very telling.

Jennifer Berard: [00:19:49] Yes. And when we think about like stress is not always a bad thing, right? Stress can be motivating. And so if stress is moderate or lower, if it's predictable and it's consistent, if we know it's coming, we can actually use it to motivate ourselves. When it starts to shift into something that's more toxic, it's when it is unpredictable, when it is severe, if it's chronic, if it's one day hot, one day cold. Right? You know, all of those kinds of things, that's what can start to create that sense of lack of safety in these positions. And so I agree with you completely. I think the onus is also on employers being responsible for how they deliver messages, because I get it, when you have to give performance evaluations, when people are struggling, when you have to be in conflict, it is kind of part of managing and leading. Right? But how we do that is absolutely on us. I always think, too, about like, you know, when we look at like little kids, like little toddlers, they're sort of like the living embodiment of like a stress response without sort of that like --

Melanie Nicholson: [00:20:52] On every level--

Jennifer Berard: [00:20:53] -- adult brain power to be able to regulate it. So when they're hungry, you know. Right? When they're tired, you know, and when you set boundaries, they don't like it, right? But we have to be able to learn to sort of co-regulate with people, right? So if we dysregulate with our toddlers, which I'm sure we've all made the mistake of doing a time or two.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:21:13] But to your point, our patience with our kids some days, most days, not every day, but is better because we come with an understanding of they don't know or they haven't learned this yet or this might be confusing to them. So let me explain it in a different way. So our level of just patience is so much higher.

Jennifer Berard: [00:21:35] Totally. And we can't there is a thing that happens where we can co-regulate with people, right? Like if somebody is really stressed, even think about friendships, or any kind of interactions we have. If you have a friend that's stressed and they call you for support, typically that interaction doesn't look like I'm going to get just as stressed as you are, right? Like we can co-regulate each other in that where we go to safe people, where we go to places where we can get predictable responses and we can kind of help balance people out a little bit. But the thing we can't do is that we can't regulate dysregulation if we're dysregulated ourselves. Right? And that's what I would say to employers is that if you are avoiding conflict, if you are passive, if you have your own trauma history, right, that you might want to be paying attention to and making sure that you're taking care of. Because bosses and employers are humans, too, and have a whole life experience that all of those things are actually pretty critical in terms of culture and predictability and safety.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:22:33] 100% And I think I am hopeful to hear more and more employers just taking the time to learn. Because if you don't understand, then you can't take the steps to help your people. And most leaders I know are, who have started teams, it's because they want a team of people and a community and we want to support each other. So thank you so much for this conversation. I think this is so important and I hope other employers have found this important. And thank you for taking the time.

Jennifer Berard: [00:23:05] Oh, it was a pleasure. Anytime. I appreciate it.

Melanie Nicholson: [00:23:12] Assume everyone has a trauma history. Such an important reminder through this conversation. A huge thank you to Jen for sharing her insights with us today. And thank you so much for listening. Please like, subscribe and consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. We'll catch you next time on It's a Theory.

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