Trauma and post-traumatic stress can manifest in ways that you wouldn’t think to associate with trauma. As leaders, this is a really critical thing to remember when we are hiring for culture fit and evaluating performance. As team members, viewing others through the lens of trauma can help make sense of colleagues’ behavior, energy or disproportionate reactions.
Individual trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.
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Trauma and post-traumatic stress can manifest in ways that you wouldn’t think to associate with trauma. As leaders, this is a really critical thing to remember when we are hiring for culture fit and evaluating performance. As team members, viewing others through the lens of trauma can help make sense of colleagues’ behavior, energy or disproportionate reactions.
Taking care of our people and creating inclusive environments that foster belonging should include addressing trauma, as an estimated 70%-90% of adults in the U.S. have had at least one traumatic event in their lives. As part of a top-down assessment of your organization’s DEI initiatives, it's important to recognize that a significant percentage of spa workers and guests have some form of trauma in their history.
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHS) Administration:
Individual trauma results from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or life threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.
According to trauma expert Dr. Bruce Perry, trauma is “an experience, or pattern of experiences, which impairs the proper functioning of the person’s stress-response system, making it more reactive or sensitive.” So, trauma does not necessarily have to be “big T trauma” (such as abuse, combat or assault) for the event to impair the proper functioning of the stress-response system.
Related: 4 Ways to Create a More Inclusive Spa
Given that a majority of our clientele and team members have likely experienced some form of trauma, it’s imperative we understand it at the very minimum so as to do no harm. In an ideal scenario, both the organization and its team members would be trauma aware or trauma informed. This allows us to transform our practitioners’ care experience from treaters to healers, ensure that those who have survived trauma can access our services, and support our team members’ health and well-being in the ways they need it most.
Bodyworkers and Trauma
Despite the hundreds of luxury spas that are the stuff dreams are made of, the spa industry still suffers from stigmas originating from the sex industry. Even with boundaries in place, some clients still consciously try to cross the line, with overt or subtle sexual advances and impropriety. Being on the receiving end of sexual impropriety has lasting and profound effects for many people. While this may not be traumatic for some, for others it may compound trauma that is already present in them, triggering post-traumatic stress and a cascade of mental, emotional and physical issues.
Juul Bruin, a trauma-informed massage therapist and educator, anecdotally says that massage therapists likely all have trauma. “I'm pretty sure it's 100%. Most massage therapists become therapists because they want to help other people. They've been somewhere, something has happened.”
“There's an archetype out there called the wounded healer. Many of us go to massage school—probably all of us—to heal ourselves, adds Eric Stephenson, chief wellness officer of Elements Massage and owner of iMassage Education and Consulting. "The overwhelming majority of massage students and therapists are being really courageous, brave and vulnerable with their continual healing, so that they can help others heal.”
Massage therapists can be supported in three key ways:
- Through an inclusive, trauma-aware environment that provides assistance at an organizational level
- Trauma-informed education
- Mental health care as part of a benefits package
The Trauma-Sensitive Organization
Trauma-sensitive means that you become aware of the impact of trauma and how you might see behavior a little differently because of that knowledge. Being trauma-sensitive allows you to view people through the lens of “What happened to you?” instead of “What’s wrong with you?”
Related: Practice Inclusivity by Leading with Empathy
Trauma in adults can look like anger issues, constant fear or worry, poor self-esteem, depression and problems with mood, self-destructive behavior, difficulty trusting others, addiction, chronic illnesses and physical health problems, hypervigilance and difficulty in relationships. Essentially, something else is going on, and it may not be as simple as someone being difficult to work or get along with.
When you account for trauma, you can take a different approach to supporting that person who is talented and troubled. Just as you would do with equity, inclusion and belonging work, you’re meeting that person where they are, and supporting them how they need it most. The core principles of a trauma-informed approach to care that are necessary to transform a health care setting are safety, trustworthiness, choice, collaboration, empowerment, peer support, humility and responsiveness.
A trauma-informed organization seeks to:
- Realize the widespread impact of trauma and understand paths for recovery
- Recognize the signs and symptoms of trauma in both clients and team members
- Integrate knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures and practices
- Actively avoid re-traumatization
These values are translated into practice, through the training of practitioners and client-facing staff, the active engagement of team members and clients in the change process, and modifying the physical environment.
Employers might not be able to immediately correct the microaggressions that cause harm, but they can create space for team members to talk about it. “They can give space and empathy and understand that maybe you're going to be withdrawn from work today. By giving that space and letting you be heard, maybe it doesn't settle into your body and become traumatic. By just giving that space, they shift the culture,” says Shenandoah Chefalo, a trauma-informed implementation consultant.
Educational Support
Currently, education for massage therapists around potential traumatizing events is contained in ethics classes, and the conversation is framed around sexual impropriety, rather than trauma.
“Unfortunately, mental health does not play a very big role in our core training as bodyworkers. There is a real need for it, especially when we look at the numbers of women who've already experienced sexual assault. So let's say you've experienced assault previously in your life. Now you're a massage therapist, and then something like sexual impropriety happens. We should be able to process that so that you're not leaving the profession altogether,” says Dr. Tiffany Ryan, MSW, LMT, trauma-informed yoga teacher and cofounder of Yomassage, a luxurious and relaxing experience that makes therapeutic touch more accessible. “We need to think and talk about how we can protect ourselves, how we can have boundaries, and what we need to do to make ourselves feel as safe as possible.”
On a technical level, Stephenson says that educating therapists on mitigating risk also creates better boundaries and safety. “Make sure that you're training people to cut things off before they get to be a problem; train them to notice red flags. There are places where they potentially have some issues, right? Whether that's money or cleanliness or something else, the therapist has to be aware of the places where they could potentially be triggered,” he says.
In his workshops, Stephenson also trains therapists on how to set better boundaries by creating power statements, so that should something occur during a session, the massage therapist can fall back onto those statements. “A power statement says who you are, what you do, what you stand for and what you won't stand for. The therapist might be able to state their boundaries very clearly, but when they're in that fight or flight state, they can lose sense of where they are, what they're supposed to do,” explains Stephenson.
If something happens and the therapist gets triggered during a session, the power statement is an anchor that helps them say, “I’m feeling triggered. What's my power statement so that I can set a really strong, clear boundary that's respectful for me and the client, but makes no bones about where this massage is headed?” Stephenson uses his own as an example: “My name is Eric, and I'm a respected member of the Elements massage team. I ask that you treat me as such, or this session is going to be immediately over.”
Mental Health Benefits
Now more than ever, addressing mental health in the workplace has become a business imperative. Supporting employee mental wellness is beneficial for company culture and for productivity; by some estimates, for every $1 invested in supporting workplace mental health, there is a $4 payback.
It is crucial now to offer mental health benefits. Younger employees have come to expect it, and it is an important retention tool. When talking about mental wellness at work is normalized, and staff have the safety and space to discuss what’s going on with them, they are more likely not only to stay, but to thrive.
When you support your team members with mental health care as part of a benefits package, you support everyone on your team. That is one of the best benefits of doing trauma-informed work—while not everybody may need post-traumatic stress support right now, the structure is there in case they will in the future.
