Window of Tolerance

I've been researching something called the Window of Tolerance. There are many images online that try to capture it in different ways. This is one of them.

We do our best work when we are in the Optimal Zone:

But things can happen that lead to hyper-arousal:

When that happens, what can we do to get back to feeling calm again?

Taking Care of My Candle

I was recently working on an assignment from a legislator to map out examples of young people in Ohio who lost their lives to abuse, including specific details on how these losses could have been protected. 

This assignment was an important one.

It also broke my heart:

• I’m a fixer - and I wanted to go back in time and fix each situation. 
• I’m a protector - and I wanted to step in to protect each child. 
• I expected myself to just push through, but there was an ache in my throat, and a feeling of danger in my nervous system that I needed to listen to...

Sometimes I think that those of us who have been at this work for a long time can expect ourselves to be super-human. Which isn’t really fair to ourselves. 

I’m trying to listen to my body this year, and take time to make sure I’m being attentive to my own needs. It’s a growth area. I’m calling it: Taking care of my candle. 

We had a Security Day at my workplace last year, and one of the trainers shared the quote above. He said that we need to normalize compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress as part of our work. He pointed out that it would be inhuman if we were able to witness such painful things and had no emotions about it and didn’t care. 

This is likewise true when it comes to how foster care advocacy work can intersect with both primary trauma and secondary traumatic stress. The next step is figuring out what to do, and how to care for ourselves when this happens. Not IF — but WHEN.