Helper Sectors: Healthcare Professionals
At Gap Relief, we focus our trauma-informed training and therapeutic services within the career sectors that keep our communities safe, that say yes to hard things, and that intentionally stand in the fire of trauma so that we don't have to. Those are the helpers we want to serve.
In the coming weeks, we want to spend some time highlighting these different sectors and the difficulties they face in serving their local and global communities.
One of these key helper groups is healthcare workers. When we think of this community we consider both mental health and physical health providers, including but not limited to: doctors, nurses, and hospital staff as well as trauma counselors and other mental health workers. Both sets of caregivers are highly trauma-impacted and say "yes" to incredibly hard things so that the rest of us don't have to.
As a natural part of their job, these community servants are intentionally stepping into pain places day-in and day-out. They're signing up to work with hurting people, and their job is to (on purpose) sit in spaces of looking at pain and trying to sort through how to get people to relief. Coming face-to-face with intense suffering day after day shifts and changes the human nervous system as neural pathways become wired differently--beginning to anticipate more and more pain. The mental and physical consequences of this change are detrimental to the very work they do best.
Compassion fatigue is one way to describe the impact of the work, but that term almost feels too simple to describe what these helpers are walking. Not only are they caring ABOUT the health and safety of those they serve, but they are also caring FOR the pain their patients and clients face. They are standing in AND helping to close the gaps, and see and experience the impact of these gaps first-hand. Perhaps one of the most painful experiences for these helpers shows up when the gap they are fighting against simply can’t close. This may look like an irreparable injury, a difficult diagnosis, or the trauma that comes from a loss that can’t be undone. Many of these helpers are protectors at heart–and for them to bear witness to such pain and loss in the midst of their intentional efforts is excruciating.
Our heart for these helpers is to make sure they know that we see and honor their difficult and painful "yes." We want to hand them the resources, care, and connection they need so they are not having to carry it in their nervous systems alone. Research shows that test subjects dealing with stress alone burn up to six times more glucose than subjects working through stress with others. Walking these hard things with someone else enables healthcare workers to stay in the fight, to keep walking their mission and to and literally save lives.
We at Gap Relief are in it with you 💪🏽💙.
