Season 1, Episode 22: Restoration Counseling Founders, Chris and Beth Bruno, and Innovator Tracy Johnson speak with us about mental, spiritual and emotional resources available during the Pandemic

Chris Bruno- Founder and Counselor at Restoration Counseling in Colorado
Beth Bruno - Chief of Strategic initiatives at Restoration Counseling
Tracy Johnson - Spiritual and story work counselor, leads virtual team at Restoration Counseling, she is also the founder of Red Tent Living.

We start with a Together but Separate check in - How is everyone holding up?

Tracy she has grown kids out of the house as well kinds living at home. After almost 30 years plus of avoiding homeschooling, she is homeschooling her youngest and “it’s as bad as I thought it would be.” She is feeling the distance with her grown kids being far away and being without any family near by. Tracy has “all the feelings” including what she is holding for her clients as all.

Maggie can relate to avoiding homeschooling her kids and fo course has found herself in the same place as most people. Her kids say it’s not their favorite to which she whole-heartedly agrees and then acknowledges that she is not a teacher and has not been trained as a teacher so they are all having to make the best of an awkward and difficult situation.

Beth started by reeling from so much loss —  so many cancelled exciting things that were coming up for her. Feeling so sad and disappointed led to anger, fear and anxiety. She describes it as a sense of feeling out of control, of not knowing really what we’re really dealing with. She has begun to limit her news consumption to avoid the panic that begins to rise as she reads too much news and media. They have been very purposeful about getting outside and do something that gives them life everyday.

Chris mentioned they emptied out their garage rafters and found a giant 12’ x 25’ photo backdrop that they then put out along their fence and invited people in their neighborhood to come journal, draw, write things they are grateful for and prayer requests… They provide space for people to express and communicate to each other as a way to do something communal in a time of separation.

Danielle notes how much complexity this time is — its full of grief, having kids home or being alone, working at home, losing a job and not being able to get unemployment… issues with the internet—which is a chief source of connection—because the internet was not made for the whole world to be on at the same time. It’s all overwhelming.

Restoration Counseling is offering virtual help and support, for leaders and pastors and it’s open for all people. Chris says that mental health field has gone online the past few days in light of the decreased access to care. Beyond just one-on-one counseling, which many places are offering (including them), it’s actually the group spaces in the moments of trauma that create an ability to process as a community, and uniquely in this time when our group spaces are so deeply limited. They are offering group spaces to offer communal lament as well as celebration.

They started by asking their teams what they are passionate about, what themes are already coming up in their individual practices and spheres of influence… and then to create a digital space for groups to connect: group for women who’ve experienced trauma, trauma-informed yoga, college freshmen who’ve been displaced, high school seniors who have lost their last year of high school, etc.

Tracy’s group for women who’ve experienced trauma starts this coming week (Thursday April 2nd) and meets for a half an hour. There are still spots available—see link at the bottom—and the goal is to provide space for the women to be able to name what is happening in them right now, what is coming up for them now as opposed to past trauma or story work. How are they noticing what’s happening in the here and now that is hitting places of trauma from the past. It’s to get a sense that we are not alone and don’t have to spiral into hopelessness or depression. The group will meet for the next six weeks to be a safe space for women to connect and be heard and to feel supported. Limit is 8 ladies, can be from any where, 7-8:30pm CST on Thursdays.

Danielle noted that she has been feeling the need to lay down and take naps, and has heard from other friends this same feeling of exhaustion even when it seems like we’re doing far less. Tracy said we’re actually doing more in this move to working from home. Our normal working rhythms have been lost to back-to-back meetings online rather than having time to go get coffee or lunch, or chatting with another co-worker along the way. And we’re all also holding our collective trauma—fear and anxiety, losses, uncertainty. Tracy is hearing it again and again how tired people are, greater levels of exhaustion.

Maggie says the increase in tiredness could also be the result of the blurring of lines between a place of rest and a place of work: Our homes are now our places of work. You can work longer and you’ve lost the time you would normally be able to shut off work mode because we aren’t leaving to go home from work. Maggie seconds Beth’s choice to limit media consumption—your brain tries to process all the information and news and social media, it’a always changing and it’s hard to know what to read and trust. It’s crazy making.

Beth also adds there is the impact of staring at screen all day. She noticed the other day that her husband’s eyes were bright red, bloodshot from 9 hours in front of the computer without a break. We’re working in entirely different ways and we’re in the midst of trauma making us fragile and thin as our window of tolerance is getting smaller. We’re falling apart over things that we wouldn’t normally, and then we think ‘what’s wrong with me’ rather than normalizing it: We should be feeling this way!  We’re in a world-wide pandemic.

Chris acknowledges that people experience things differently—older generations have experienced similar world-wide events, younger people have no frame of reference, less history of global events. How we are engaging is not just based on our gender or previous experience of work-life and home-life but also our experience of history and the age at which we find ourself here in 2020. How we have engaged our previous trauma (or how we have not engaged it) informs how we are sitting with this current trauma. It’s important recognize that there are a lot of different reactions out there and there is space enough acknowledge and name these reactions as valid even if they are different. And to allow that to inform our communal understanding of engaging this. All are different and all are true.

Maggie talks about the importance of coming to this current experience with curiosity—when and where have I experienced trauma? How am I responding now and how is that the same or different than how I have responded in the past? Wondering why I am feeling this way and naming what it is I am feeling. Maggie said she’s been feeling “out of sorts” … That she’s not necessarily afraid of being sick but that she is afraid of other people panicking: deprivation and scarcity. She said she was in her early 20s when 9/11 happened [correction: she was 18 and heading off college] and she reflects on how that collective trauma is different than the current coronavirus collective trauma. She said this feels worse, though she acknowledges that she was not in NYC when 9/11 happened and the trauma felt in Seattle at that time was easy different then what was felt in NYC, because of the global scale of scarcity and deprivation.

Chris says by comparison, they were living in the Middle East when 9/11 happened and it was a very different trauma than the one that people living in the US experienced. In the midst of this current situation, Chris said they have found that they are returning back to the things they found comforting and rest in as they were coping during 9/11, and are choosing to lean in to that and allow it to bring the comfort again. It’s this sense of “where have you been?” and “how have you experienced trauma before” and “how would you like to enter into it now?”

Beth said it was actually surprising to be remembering these old tv shows that they watched after 9/11, bring drawn back to them with nostalgia… And they named that it was brought them comfort then and this caused them to acknowledge that they were in trauma again. That those were the things that helped them walked through that time before and it can be that again now.

Danielle said that her kids don’t have that “other memory” of collective trauma to look back on but instead have been asking to watch older movies (Brave and Signs). They’ve asked her “Well do you think aliens will come now?” They were trying to make sense of why we were isolated. They are looking for something to put sense and story to what’s happening.

Chris said our brains actually process the world in narrative and story. If we can help our children and ourselves to engage in stories and narrative of characters that have walked through significant catastrophes and trauma and survive, than we can borrow some of that bravery and hope for ourselves to ingest it for now.

Tracy thinks about her own story: she’s known trauma and desperation, that feeling that you can’t trust God because He doesn’t seem good, faithful or present… And she’s come out to the other side of that. She calls these her “buoys of hope” that she can swim back to when the water gets deep and the waves get high. She can hold on to the buoy of hope until the storm calms down. You can’t do the work for other people, but if do your own and then you can be with them and walk along side them, holding space for them because you’ve wrestled with God. It’s unnerving right now. What wakes her up in the middle of the night is a loss, will things ever be the same? No, it won’t. We will be forever changed. What will it mean for her children? for the country? what will it mean for travel? There’s just a fear the loss.

Check out Chris, Beth and Tracy’s services and groups:

www.careduringcorona.com

Well, first I guess I would have to believe that there was or is an actual political dialogue taking place that I could potentially be a part of. And honestly, I'm not sure that I believe that.