There is a game in which you tell people two truths and a lie and folks must guess which one is the lie. Want to play? One: I lived and worked on a seaplane for several months. Two: for a time, I built musical instruments for a living. Three: I helped several women escape domestic violence. To help you figure out which one is the lie, let me tell you a story.
Shortly after graduating from college, I started working as a Personnel Specialist for the Department of the Navy in Washington D.C. I felt I was doing well at my work and volunteered for a number of assignments that others did not want, including working on disciplinary cases. One case involved a clerk who called in sick frequently. Her supervisor had exhausted his options and wanted me to begin disciplinary proceedings.
A clerk in my office asked if I was working on that particular person’s case, and I said yes. She asked me if I knew why she called in sick so often. When I said no, she told me that the women’s boyfriend would beat her up when he got drunk and she called in sick and stayed home until the bruises did not show.
Now at the time, there were big differences between clerks and managers in the federal government. Washington D.C. was and still is, primarily African-American. The clerks tended to be city residents, African-American, women and single mothers. The managers tended to be white, (or in my case Asian) male, and most lived in the suburbs. We only lived a few miles apart, but in terms of life experiences, we were often very different.
The clerks understood the issues single moms faced. They probed to find out each other’s personal stories. In contrast, neither the clerk’s boss nor I had tried to really find out why she was out sick so often. He had asked, and accepted her excuse of various illnesses. It never occurred to either of us that domestic violence was involved. Her boss and I later sat down with the woman, confirmed the story and completely changed our intervention plan.
This story however, does not have a happy ending. Word of my intervention got out and suddenly several other abused women came to me for assistance. My difficulty was that I had no life experiences or training to know how to deal with domestic violence. When after a few days or weeks the women went back to their abusers, it felt like a personal failure. What was I doing wrong?
In retrospect, I should have simply referred them to programs or shelters and left it to the professionals. I made the referrals but felt I needed to do more. After all, they had come to me for help and were so very grateful that someone listened. So I ended up becoming overly emotionally involved in each case.
A few months later, I remember getting up one morning, dressing in a three-piece suit, sitting down to eat breakfast, and suddenly breaking into uncontrollable crying. I could not stand the thought of hearing another sad story and feeling a total failure. Like those women, I called in sick until I felt ready to pretend everything was fine. It was not.
I ended up quitting my job and moving out to California. Among other things, I built stringed musical instruments and lived and worked on a big seaplane. I did any work but human service work.
Eventually, I did realize that it was not my personal fault that they returned to their abusers. There are failures even with the best interventions. I learned to set better boundaries. After a few years, I returned to human services. I have since spent many years resettling refugees from Southeast Asia and Eritrea, planning heath programs for farmworkers and organizing community services for persons with HIV. I find health and human service work very fulfilling. I would like to think I have become more effective at it.
So of those three opening statements, the lie was that I helped those women escape domestic violence. It certainly did not happen while I was working with them. Our current understanding of ACEs suggests that even having someone listen to, and acknowledge, your story can be beneficial. So if you want to be charitable, I might have helped them begin to realize they had options. But if they eventually did leave their abusive boyfriends or husbands or improve their relationships, it was not because of my efforts.
The real point of this story however, is not about the people with ACES, but the people trying to help people with ACEs. Some of them may be folks with an ACE score of zero and no life experiences or training to cope with trauma. Others may have multiple ACEs for whom hearing certain details may trigger old memories and behaviors. How are we helping them deal with trauma?
We spend a lot of time talking about making more people trauma-informed. We need to spend even more time making sure they have the training, skills and support to respond safely and appropriately. I think we often assume that as a human being, people of course know how to deal with human feelings, no matter how complex.
Many of the people we hope to “empower” to be caring and effective trauma-informed advocates may lack the training and experience to critically assess and appropriately respond to trauma. We hear physicians, teachers and others express concern because they are unsure what to do after someone mentions adverse experiences. We need to pay attention to this concern. Addressing trauma is challenging for trained therapists and social workers, and even they make mistakes. Good intentions are no substitute for training and experience.
I can say from experience that very few people can make a decent living building musical instruments and there is not much call for a seaplane handyman. However, we do need more trauma-informed people, and we need to train them properly, support them emotionally and supervise them effectively. We do not need more customers.
Note: Pictured is the seaplane I lived on, a post WWII British Short Solent double decker passenger plane. At the time, it was parked in Richmond, CA and it was filmed as the “China Clipper” for the first “Indiana Jones” movie. It is now owned by the Oakland Aviation Museum. Part Two of this blog, “What Does an ACE Score Really Mean?” is also available on this site.
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