The Power of Language with Rachel Archambault
*Content Warning: In this episode, Rachel shares her lived experience of surviving a mass shooting incident. Please honor yourself as you engage with this episode.
Our words matter. And when it comes to trauma-informed care, it is one of our most accessible things to begin shifting. In today's episode, Katie's in conversation with guest Rachel Archambault where they dive deep into the power of language in trauma-informed care. Rachel, a Broward County speech and language pathologist and survivor of the mass violence incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, joins us to shed light on the important role of language in trauma-informed care. This episode discusses the uncomfortable truth behind phrases like "get over it" and "everything happens for a reason," and delves into more empathetic alternatives that honor our full emotional spectrum. By sharing her journey, Rachel underscores that trauma-informed care is a journey, not a destination, impacting not just professionals but everyone.
Learn more about Rachel:
Rachel Archambault, MA CCC SLP, is an SLP Program Specialist in Broward County Florida. Previously, she was an SLP at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida. On 2/14/18, a traumatic event happened at her workplace. This led her to look up resources for her students that had undergone trauma. Rachel created @PTSD.SLP to serve as a place she could post resources, answer questions, and support SLPs using trauma-informed care. Rachel is also a cohost of the Speech Science Podcast. She recently created PTSD SLP, LLC to provide trauma-informed consultations and presentations to educators and healthcare providers. Rachel was presented an ASHA Innovator award in 2023, University of Central Florida's 30 Under 30 Award in 2021, and is an ASHA Distinguished Early Career Professional.
Connect with Rachel:
Website: www.ptsdslp.com
Instagram: @PTSD.SLP
Show Transcript:
Content Warning for Today’s Episode:
Welcome to a traumain informed future. This podcast helps us envision how we can create a traumain informed future for us all. I'm Katie Kurtz, a traumain informed training expert who believes in honoring the origins of this approach by ushering it into the future in a way that's inclusive, doable, and non negotiable. If you are someone who wants to exist in spaces that allow you to access safety, build trust, and honor your full humanity, then you are in the right place. A traumainformed future is possible when we come together to create it, and that begins right now. I want to start today with both an invitation and a content warning for our conversation. I am talking with an incredible guest that offers so much information and so much value in their lived experience and their learned experiences. And I want to share that we do discuss in this episode their lived experience of surviving a mass violence incident here in the United States.
So there is discussion about gun violence in this episode and the traumatic realities of workplace violence and mass shootings. So please take care. Honor yourself and your nervous system, and if you do have capacity to listen, I hope you do. This is a really amazing conversation with Rachel Archambeau. Rachel is an SLP program specialist in Broward County, Florida. Previously, she was an SLP, or speech and language pathologist, at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. On February 14, 2018, a traumatic event happened at her workplace. This led her to look up resources for her students that had undergone trauma.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:02:59]:
I'm your host, Katie Kurtz, and today I am very excited to be in conversation with Rachel Archambo and I provided a little information about Rachel and her background but I am so excited to welcome you here today. Thank you so much for joining us.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:03:16]:
Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:03:18]:
So, Rachel, you and I are fairly new to each other, which is really exciting. We had a chance to touch base prior to this podcast, but I was really eager to connect and be in conversation with you. And I think our conversation today is going to be like all our conversations. I say this all the time on podcast. They're so good, and it always is. Like, we need to have more. And that's why this podcast exists, so that we can really wade in the nuance of things and just be in community around this practice of trauma informed care. So I would love for you to just share in your own words who you are, what drew you to this practice, and also how you're arriving today.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:03:57]:
Sure So my name is Rachel Archambo. I'm a speech language pathologist in south Florida, in Fort Lauderdale area, or the greater Broward county area. I'm a speech language program specialist in this area. So that means I support all of the speech language pathologists at the high school level, but really all levels, elementary, middle, high school, and centers. I got into trauma informed care. I think, like a lot of us do, that it comes after crisis, after something traumatic happens. And I went on Google and I said, how do I work with myself who had undergone trauma and a community? So on February 14, 2018, I experienced a mass casualty event at my workplace. I was in my second year as a working professional, and our school went through a mass shooting, and I did not know how to care about students, not being able to read like, one level below grade level, or not being able to say there are sound.
That's typically what speech pathologists do. But we had to go back to the scene of the crime essentially every single day and continue just as things were normal. I remember before COVID we heard this is the new normal every single day. And when that phrase was brought up just a few short years later during COVID we were like, oh, that's such a retraumatizing phrase or a triggering phrase to us that, not again. I don't want to hear that phrase again. So, yeah, I researched how to figure out how to be good to myself, who had undergone trauma, and my entire community, and I found trauma informed care. And what I realized now, almost six years later, is after what happened at my school, we should have been given trauma specific services, not trauma informed. Trauma informed would have been fantastic to have before we needed trauma specific after.
And I've kind of made a name for myself. In the last five to six years, speech pathology has had zero training on trauma informed care. I know you and I talked to Katie about, you were raised on trauma informed care in your profession. It didn't exist in ours. So right now we're seeing a lot of people, a lot of speech pathologists, saying, what do we do? We're worried about mental health. What is this? So I'm glad to see that it's finally coming around in my field, but it's a little late. It's a little hard to work this way or not in their undergrad graduate level, but they're interested in it and that gives me a lot of hope.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:06:41]:
Thank you so much for sharing your personal connection to it. You're right. I think many of us either are drawn to this approach because of our lived experience or we, like myself, realize through learning this approach.
Wow. My lived experiences actually were trauma. And it's an interesting thing that kind of happens and I've witnessed through it. And I just want to name and acknowledge and bear witness to the compounded nature of trauma that you and your students and your colleagues and community went through. Because we know that any type of major violence or mass shooting is a compounded trauma. Right. We have our individual experience where we're directly or indirectly impacted. We have our collective experience, the community and then the cultural ones, especially as we see this unfortunately reoccurring within our culture and unfortunately, quote unquote, normalized in american culture. So I really appreciate you sharing that.
And I just also want to acknowledge that, yeah, it's so interesting that within speech and language pathology that this is new and also not surprising. Right.Because even though I always say it. I was raised on trauma informed care. It's still not embedded in graduate programs. Trauma alone usually isn't. Even counselors, therapists, social workers, it's still not taught, even though we know trauma is the root cause of virtually everything and it's still not the standard of care, even though it was really heralded within health and human services. But it is interesting to me, and I'm curious, can you talk to us a little bit about speech and language pathology? Because I'm even curious, does that fall under healthcare or mental health services? I know you're in education, but I've seen speech pathologists in a variety of settings. So I'm curious, just for those of us who may not be familiar, can you share a little bit of background of your profession?
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:08:41]:
Absolutely. So many people, their first experience with speech language pathology, or I'll shorten it to SLP because it is a mouthful. They hear of their little cousin going to speech because they can't say a certain sound. And whether that's one on one in a private practice, that's an option. Or in my case, my brothers couldn't say certain sounds, and we had a woman come to our house and do speech, which is where I saw it for the first time, because I didn't go to speech, but my brothers did, and it was at our kitchen table. So that's what people think about. Traditionally, speech pathology is split between healthcare and education, and there's also corporate, but that's a little bit different. So typically, you'll find speech pathologists in education working in school system, private, charter, public, higher ed universities, teaching SLP students, or you'll have the medical route, and that could be acute care.
Working with people who are just admitted into the hospital for strokes, brain injury, we deal a lot with cognition and language. We also have to do with swallowing. So when we talk about a stroke patient coming in that they need a global evaluation that they are not able to speak currently, or they're not able to understand what you're saying, or they have to go on no food, no water, diet, because we don't know what their swallowing looks like, is it going into their lungs? So there are so many settings that we can work, and I've worked in both education and medical, and trauma informed care should be applied in all of those settings, and specifically those that we know what trauma they have occurred to get there. Some of them are working with me because of the trauma that they have had. I'm in Florida, like I said, and we have a lot of near drownings, so we have a lot of kids that come in that are with me because of a traumatic event that happened to them or in every other setting. Most people that are coming to us, we're not going to know the trauma that they've experienced. So that's why trauma informed care is just so important in all aspects of dealing with humans, and we do that as speech pathologists.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:10:54]:
Thank you for that. My experience with slps, I'm familiar with it just because it's such an adjacent field to mental health, and having worked in schools in the past, familiar with that, but really also in the medical field, just having worked in healthcare and also as a caregiver, my mom just actually had a barium swallow test, so, like, working with and language pathologists on those things. And, yeah, it's one of those things that we forget that when we're providing that kind of support, that it's still body work. And I say this a lot on this podcast, that if you're working with people's bodies, it is absolutely imperative that you hold a trauma informed lens because of the nature of that work, the vulnerability of that work, and the issues are in our tissues. So we never know what may come up. And especially within healthcare, we're at our most vulnerable when we're in hospitals. And it's imperative that we are equipped with not just knowing what trauma is. That's not enough anymore.
We need to actually know how to take that understanding and apply it and integrate it. And I love that you talked about the distinction between trauma informed and trauma specific. There's a lot of semantics, right? Like trauma responsive, all these different things. But just for those who may not know, that means people who are actually addressing trauma, they're actually looking at trauma that happened, an event or an environment or experience that happened that was creating. And we know violence of any kind is innately going to cause a traumatic response in our nervous system. So when people are trauma trained and offering trauma specific or responsive services, they're there to actually work with the trauma itself. So again, I'm not surprised. Sadly, having done so much Cris work in my past that wasn't offered, but it just hurts my heart that was not offered and that we are still having this conversation that trauma informed care is not even in education.
There's a lot of great work in education systems around trauma informed care, but we still aren't there. And I'm curious because I know you're within the school systems. What are we seeing right now in schools with Trauma informed care? I've been out of the game for a while. So tell us what's happening. Are you seeing it start to pick up a little bit, or do you have any hopes for what's to come within the education system?
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:13:19]:
I'm hopeful, but the reason why I'm hopeful is because I think education has gotten to a breaking point, that people are asking, we need this or we cannot continue. So, thankfully, my district has reached out and asked me to present to my district all of the people on my level, which is probably a couple hundred people on trauma informed care. And it's like, well, in February, that's a little late into the year, that you're asking for help in this, that people are walking into schools every day and possibly causing harm, that they don't understand that they are inflicting and most of it is not purposeful. But I don't think anyone goes into my profession or the related professions intending to cause harm or purposefully doing that. They want to help. We are in helping professions. I'm hopeful that trauma informed care is going to be talked about more, but what I do see is, especially in the public school system, when funds are cut, we are not being trauma informed because we can't provide the best services. So, for example, we don't have a school psychologist at every school.
They split multiple schools. So if we could hire more school psychologists or social workers. Also, they split multiple schools if they had one at one school, that would allow more people to get the services they need. And after the trauma that we had at our school, they did. They put one there. But now that all of those kids have graduated, essentially they've removed that. They've gone back to everyone else, has to split multiple schools. So it's just like fighting the crisis when it's happening or after it happens, and it's not building us up to really have a trauma informed system.
The individuals, I think, are the ones that are holding all the weight. They are the ones that are saying, I want to be trauma informed. How can I do that? And those are the people that are reaching out to me, asking for presentations. They're the ones asking their administrators, hey, can you please get Rachel or someone to talk about trauma informed care? And I think those are great steps that we're advocating to the people above us to be more and more trauma informed. But it's a really tough time, especially when funds are cut all over the place.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:15:33]:
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I got to say it. This is why voting is important. And voting for school levies and supporting your schools, your public schools, is so key because we hear all the time, we're in a mental health crisis. The surgeon general came out with adolescent mental health is becoming an emergency. It is an emergency. And we don't just have mental illness.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:15:58]:
We just don't have mental health.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:15:59]:
Right.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:16:00]:
There are some biological things. We were born with mental illness, but we look at the mental health crisis we're in. We also can't talk about mental health without talking about trauma and the accumulation of stress. And having been raised by educators and having a lot of educators in my life, it's so important to consider, and as a social worker, I know very well that one social worker for a whole district is just, you're barely able to function and reach the needs. And also there are a lot of needs out there that just resources don't exist for. And that's a whole other conversation that could be a podcast. But Rachel, a lot of people listening may be in schools, they might be working in schools, or they have kids going to school. What does trauma form care look like in a school setting? Or what would you hope? Maybe a few things you'd love to see.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:16:56]:
Well, first of all, I think acknowledging that what happened to me is a very real fear of many people, and I think it's dismissive when people say, well, that won't happen to you because we continuously see it. We see it all the time, over and over again. And one of the things, the language that's used as a speech pathologist, we talk a lot about giving language and the importance of language. One of the terms, we heard a lot, we heard a lot of terms, but a lot of the language that was being used was not trauma informed, it was dismissive. It was, don't worry about that, it's not going to happen again. And we were still in survival mode. Our brains were still taking a hold of us and saying, you're not safe here. So when administrators or district or whoever it is saying, don't worry about it or get over it, it's time to move on.
These are very real fears that people have, and many of us don't see that any real change has solved it. So our safety, when we talk about Samsa and the trauma informed pillars, our safety needs to be number one priority, and many of us don't feel safe. So I think building up these six pillars of trauma informed care, especially choice as well, we need to be giving teachers, staff members choice, students choice in a lot of different ways in order to make them feel safe at school education. It's just so hard with the funding component, and I can talk forever about what that does to the system when we aren't able to fund the resources that we need, whether that's the staff itself, like, we don't have bus drivers. So does that mean kids aren't going to school or their parents are taking them, but that means they're 2 hours late to work. Another thing in the system is I work with students that have ieps, individualized education, plans for disabilities, some sort of disability. And when we hold these IEP meetings and you have a staff member who says, oh, this parent didn't show up, they don't care about their kid, that's not thinking through a trauma informed lens. There are certain things like the language component is just so important to me, and I question people now I'm like, why do you say that? Why do you think that they don't care? And then ultimately, when they find out that the parent is working a minimum wage job, can't take off work because that's how they buy their food, then they're able to put it into their mind, okay, that makes sense.
You shouldn't have to do that, is my opinion. You shouldn't have to know the reason behind it. Why are we starting from that deficit mindset of saying that parent doesn't care? It's a really strange perspective to start from. So I think that there's a lot of changes that need to be made in the education system. But I do think the benefit of this collective trauma that we've experienced over the past three years. People are asking for trainings on trauma informed care. They are recognizing it as a trauma, which there's many people who say it wasn't traumatic, but that's the nature of trauma. I think people are asking what else they can do, and I think that's going to pave the way for trauma informed care across all settings.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:20:10]:
I'm a big believer in language, and I always start everything I do with shared language and understanding, because words matter. And I think we forget that empathy is a learned skill, and we learn empathy through witnessing it modeled and mirrored by others. And trauma informed care is the same way. When people practice it and integrate it into their everyday lives, we begin to see models and mirrors of what it's like. We receive that care and then we start to see other people adopt it. And that's why I think we are at such an interesting time. I sit at the intersection of so many industries, and it's really exciting. And I too am very hopeful, even during a time right now, that it's hard to grasp that hope.
But we are starting to see this connection. Our brains love that, either or thinking. We get really siloed into stuff and it's, hey, everyone, it's all connection. Like helping people see the connection between everything. We can't deny the realities of the cultures we're living in and the systemic trauma, the systems we're living in. And education is a system. And historically, education has been harmful for people who attend. And there's some great examples right now of where schools, how I don't have children.
I can't imagine what it feels, actually. I can't imagine. I can't imagine feeling petrified and unsure of sending your child to a school because we don't know. We are never going to know what's going to happen or to go to work and not know. And that hyper vigilant state of concern and keeping your eyes open and all of that, and that wears and tears on our nervous system and that ripple effects out. Trauma informed care, like you said before, is probably going to affirm what a lot of people are already doing. They just know why they're doing it. And we need people to practice it right.
We need that integration so that we have the models and mirrors to see and reflect back to one another.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:22:23]:
I can think of so many different examples of back at the school. I think the biggest aspect of trauma informed care is reflecting on our own selves, whether that's our emotional regulation or just our healing. So when we had an entire community that was healing, it's not at the same time, it's the same date, but we're at different places in our healing. So I remember coming back, we had two weeks off, the students had two weeks off, and we had gone through a couple trainings. Nothing about trauma informed care, but it was just like, you're going to be experiencing this. Here you go. And when the students came back, the staff really were on their own timelines of what they needed to do to heal. So you had some teachers that were going full force.
AP classes. We are starting today. We are not taking it easy at all. We've got a test in May and we have to study for that, and that's what we're doing. Then you had the opposite. You had some teachers who were doing like, video games for. It was February when this happened, till June. Like the first week of June is when we get out.
Then you had the parents that were emailing teachers saying, this teacher is going too fast, they're going too hard. They need to calm down. And then you had parents emailing, you're not doing enough. Hurry up. You need to do this for my child. We're not going to be able to please everyone. People are on their different healing paths, different timelines. And you also had people that were saying, don't you think you should be over it by now? And that was a really interesting comment to hear from people that they think two weeks in we should be done, or however many weeks.
We also had an added component in the trauma of. We just had the trials finished. I think June was the last one. So we had two different trials. The court system is retraumatizing in itself, so they had to bring back certain victims, the families, and be there with the person who committed all this. So we had another year that was very heavy. It was very reminiscent of the first year that it was just very heavy. So that put a lot of us back into that healing curve that we're all over the place.
So it's just a lot of things to consider when people don't understand that each day might be different, and it's the same for our students in education. We need to be very mindful of a student being one way one day and not being so okay the next day and then being okay the next day, it changes, and that's okay.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:24:51]:
I'm so glad you named that. Oftentimes when I train on trauma and really just helping people understand the basics. Right. Of what actually is trauma. Because we, as a culture and society still are functioning from a very old, like, a 50 year old definition that's very narrow, that trauma is the event and environment, and it's usually war, violence, or injury.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:25:14]:
Right.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:25:14]:
And what we know and what we have research has backed up is that it's not the event and environment. It's our response to that. And that means there's a variety of events and environments and relationships that can create a trauma response, because that's exactly what our bodies are built to do. Yeah. Trauma is a response to keep us safe and survive. I think the root of the word trauma comes from the word wound. So sometimes people refer to trauma as an injury to our nervous system. But we can't talk about trauma without grief.
And grief isn't something you just get over. We would never say to somebody who broke their leg, it's been three days. Your leg hasn't fixed yet. Your bones haven't mended. We don't say that to people because, logically, that does not make sense. And I think the reason why we have people say such insensitive things during really sensitive times is because we, as humans, don't have, and I'm going to say it, Americans do not, in our culture, do not have the capacity to be with emotions. Emotions are a spectrum, right? Like, I think of the little happy faces, right? Some people are still in the mad, glad, sad era of kindergarten, and we haven't learned, and I don't love the term emotional intelligence. It gives me hierarchical look.
Yeah. I don't know what else to say it, but even in emotional intelligence circles, I look at all the things that people put into emotional intelligence, and the thing missing is emotional expression and capacity. We're not here just to regulate and control our emotions. We need to express them, and we need to find spaces we feel safe to express them, and we need to build our capacity to witness and bear witness to trauma. Because we have our phones, we are looking at trauma unfold constantly. And to be a survivor of a mass casualty event like you have, you can't escape it, right?
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:27:17]:
No. And I've had to do a ton of self work, and one of the reasons I'm no longer at the school, so I'm still within the same district that it happens, but I'm at a different level. I'm more of an administrative level without being an administrator. And I like working with the adults. I kind of burnt out with the parents that were very heavy. And being there every day, it's just a heavy place to be. It's a constant reminder, just like you were saying, about americans with emotions. I don't think that we are comfortable with any other emotion other than happiness.
I think a lot of these phrases are misused intentions to cope. They are trying to help us get out of it. But what I talk about in my presentations is they are dismissive. It's move on, don't have time for that. Get to happy, or just don't talk about it. I talk about how we have in certain classrooms, I see these posters that say, leave your problems at the door, and what a privilege that would be is to leave those problems at the door. So just some of the things that we say. I talk about violent language a lot.
I didn't realize that within the five years that I stayed after everything happened, we had essentially removed it from our vocabulary at the school, but no one trained us to do that. It was just like, ooh, we maybe shouldn't say that here. That's a weird thing to say. So an example of that would be like, shoot me a text. Shoot me an email. When I got into this role, I hear it a million times a day, literally all the time, all day. And then when they look at me and they go, oh, I know your story. Then they're able to put two and two together and say, oh, I don't really like saying that to Rachel, and I'm not really sure why.
Then they change their language. So it's like once they have an idea of what someone's gone through, one of the settings that we can work in is a veterans affairs clinic. Just like psychologists can look at all of these violent phrases. I would never say in a veterans affairs because I don't know what their triggers are. They are most likely pretty violent as well. But that doesn't mean I can say it in an elementary school, even though the likelihood that they haven't experienced these violent situations, which many of them have. We just need to be aware that we don't know what people have experienced. And I can remove it from my language without hurting myself, without hurting other people, even if the intention was never to hurt.
That's what I hear in apologies all the time. That wasn't my intention. Doesn't matter. It can hurt.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:29:47]:
Intention versus impact and creating that alignment is so key. And I agree with you. I think language is one of our most accessible starting points, and it's a habit. Right? We say things and we have to catch ourselves and rephrase and take accountability for that. You're right. I think it's again, a testament of not being able to have capacity to be with anything other than happy. And it is incredibly dismissive and dehumanizing when we are unable to see the vast complexities of our humanity, which include a variety of emotions. It is absolutely, quote unquote normal.
Don't love that word either, but I'll say it quote unquote normal. To respond with anger and fear and sadness and a variety of feelings when you experience something so significant and violent. And that's how we respond. And of course everyone's going to have a different response. And that's what I was saying earlier. We use this example, it's quite frequently when we're talking about traumas that we can experience the same event and have very different responses, and we can experience the same event and have very different healing trajectories. And unfortunately, some people never find, or may take longer to find a healing pathway. But we have to resist this urge to have everything fit in a box and then be tied up and solved in two weeks. That's not how anything in life works.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:31:19]:
Totally.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:31:19]:
Just as systems want it to.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:31:21]:
Yeah. And that's why I think so much for the event that I went through. If we had been trained in trauma informed care, we had a bunch of emotionally dysregulated adults running around for several years trying to regulate dysregulated children. It was a mess. If we had been given or educated or trained on coping strategies ahead of time. I think about it a lot. Who would still be diagnosed with PTSD? The diagnosis doesn't make it traumatic or not, that's a whole other topic. But I think these adults had been given coping strategies.
One of the reasons I'm so hopeful for the future of education, or just the future in general, is I find that the younger generations are much more emotionally intelligent. My best friend's son, when he was three years old, was telling me he felt frustrated. And I'm like, oh, not just sad or mad, he's frustrated. And we are teaching children social emotional language skills so early so that they are able to name that emotion and understand what their coping strategies are to get through that. And we had to work from our way backwards after crisis. We had to, with our survival brains on, try to learn about ourselves, our emotional regulation, and get coping strategies in the moment. That's so difficult to do. So that's why it's so much better to be trained on all these things beforehand in case anything happens, which hopefully it never does.
Maybe you're just really reflective on your body and your mind, but it's really hard to do that. Working your way backwards after crisis.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:32:58]:
Absolutely. Rachel, I have two questions for you that you can choose in which order you answer them. So the first one is, what do we do when we do share our feelings, our humanity, our stories, whatever? Or we're in the presence of someone doing that and we hear somebody respond with, they should get over it or leave it at the door. My favorite, everything happens for a reason. Those phrases that are very clearly a projection of someone's own discomfort and lack of capacity to be with someone's humanity. Any suggestions on what we can say or do when we face that? Whether it's within our work setting or even our community or family settings?
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:33:48]:
It’s tough because those are all toxic positivity phrases. And I have a couple of slides on it in my presentations, and it's really interesting to look out into the audience and I see their eyes just open and they go, oh, my gosh, I say that. I say that all the time, and they come up to me after and they feel so terrible that they've said it to me. They've said it to whoever. They go, that wasn't my intention. And I totally understand. And I think by giving them the basis behind it, they're able to say, I recognize why it's not helpful anymore. I also think it's really hard to educate when people are dysregulated.
Right. So we have the learning brain and regulating and relating, especially in the school system, when the staff especially are so stressed. It would be really, in my position, really difficult to go up to them during a session or during one of their classes and say, you really shouldn't say, everything will be okay. But I do think it's worth a conversation after of just like, modeling it. Number one, I love to model it when someone is with me and they express something that's difficult, I say that must be difficult or something that's validating their emotions. I always go to validating emotions rather than those toxic positivity phrases, even if you don't agree with them. That's a question that I got once about. They believed validating emotions meant agreeing with someone, and I don't agree with that.
I think validating emotions is just saying, you hear them, you don't have to necessarily agree. I think those are the ways to start. I would come at it after modeling. If you see it continuing to happen, I would say, hey, this kid I found really responds to this change of phrase. Instead of, I wouldn't name it toxic positivity. I wouldn't say these are toxic positivity phrases and I would stay away from those. I would just say, this child, this student, reacts better when you approach things this way, or you say, you understand why he feels that way or that must be tough, or tell me more. I think some of those mini counseling skills are really important, but I think we just need to model so people around us start picking up that language.
The more you hang out with people, the more you absorb the language of each other. So I think modeling is the best way to go about it and then correcting when you can, but not from a shaming perspective, an educating perspective. And maybe that person is open to it and maybe that person isn't. That's why I think modeling is the best way to go.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:36:16]:
Same. I love modeling and being a mirror for people. I think it's the most effective way to create impact and also especially with trauma informed care. My second question was like, okay, so what can we replace those phrases with which you gave us some? I don't know if you want to add any more validating emotions could be.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:36:37]:
A whole range of things, but naming the emotion. So if a child is telling you that they're really upset that they missed homecoming because they couldn't afford it or they couldn't get off work or something like that, that does suck. In high school or wherever, I'm sorry. Or tell me more about that, that active listening stuff, letting them know that you're truly interested. And then also, I know when people, adults mess up, students mess up. When we're not fully regulated, we might snap and just say, I don't care about that. Or we say something that we wouldn't say when our trauma informed mind is completely on. I never heard an adult apologize until I was in college.
It is totally okay for an adult to apologize to a child. Whatever age they are. So I think some people, that power imbalance is difficult or that power imbalance is what they go off of authority. It's still okay for you to apologize for how you acted, and that's part of that modeling, so that they are able to recognize in themselves that, ooh, I wasn't supposed to yell at my friend because he took something of mine. I can talk about it. Modeling is always the way to go, but I think those are the main features of what we can do.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:37:54]:
I love that. A lot of times there's a lot of assumptions and a lot of myths around trauma informed care, and one of which is that it's, oh, super soft and coddling, or it's super complicated and clinical and I'm not a therapist. And it's no, actually, like, trauma informed care, in essence, is communication skills.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:38:11]:
Yeah.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:38:12]:
And one of them is learning how to listen without judgment.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:38:16]:
Yes.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:38:16]:
And to let people feel seen and heard. I can't emphasize how important it is just to let people feel seen and heard. Not to fix, judge, or solve, but just let people witness them in the moment. We don't have to agree. We might think their choices and great, that's fine, but just acknowledge that you've seen them and heard them and pausing and being like, oh, yeah, I'm so sorry that happened. Or there's so many simple language shifts that we can make. And yeah, it takes some practice because we're going to jump in without thinking and we do it. I misspeak all the time.
This is a practice, right then, an arrival, or it's an evolution. But I think what you're sharing is so important that language matters. And it's such an accessible shift for us all to start with. And when we begin to model and mirror those language shifts, we create that ripple effect. And I've witnessed it just in my inner circle, even the language I use with my friends and family. I'm shocked sometimes when I hear one of my elders or my aunt say something, I'm like, oh, you're listening. We're picking it up. I nerd out.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:39:24]:
I'm just like, oh, it's working completely. No, I'm always in shock when my friends, I had a friend recently that was like, do you have the space for me to vent? And I just was like, what? You just asked me before? Because maybe I wasn't in the space to do that. And I've had some other friends tell me when I talk about having that relationship with one of my best friends saying, do you have the space for this. They say that they couldn't imagine saying that in just their friendship. That's not something that they have considered. And why not? And this has made our friendship so much stronger because we have boundaries. And that's that whole gentleness thing that you still need to uphold boundaries. There's so many things, but I was looking at a list that I have of validating things, and one that I brought up was, if you don't agree with what the person is saying, but you still want to acknowledge that you're there, it sounds like you had a really difficult day.
They're just telling you a really bad day. I think that my mom could have listened, said this one to me. Doesn't matter that she's not agreeing with what I'm saying with her. She's just acknowledging that I'm venting to her. And I did have a really bad day. I use this with my high school students all the time. Or you're trying your best. I'm listening. That sounds hard. Thank you for sharing. These are all just things that you're not voicing an opinion necessarily. You're just saying that you're there and you're paying attention, and that's so important.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:40:51]:
Absolutely. The phrase, do you have space? Do you have capacity? Is one of my most favorite things. I've been doing that with my friend, group and in my partnership and in my family for several years now, and it's become the norm to check in and be like, oh, I had a terrible day. Do you have capacity for me to vent? And it gives me the choice and consent to be like, yeah, I do have some space for that. Or, oh, today's a lot, can we touch base tomorrow? And it's such a beautiful way to strengthen trust and relationship and safety within those relationships. And again, it honors our boundaries. And that's what space is, capacity. If we think about when you go into a large event space, it says, oh, the capacity is 150 people.
The same goes for our personal capacity. We can only hold so much. And that simple check in is legit. One of my most favorite things. And, yeah, these little shifts are what make up the approach. And the biggest thing behind it is just knowing why you're doing that. A simple validation statement is a way for us to slow things down.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:42:01]:
Right.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:42:01]:
And to pace ourselves and to not jump in with solutions when that can just shut people down. It can send a message, whether it's your intention or not, that this person is not. When we invalidate people, it can create a slew of things and also that it's just a way then to create power sharing. And I know there's a lot of thoughts and feelings about power dynamics with kids and adults, but if we can create some mutual respect in that way, I know from working with kids it goes a long way. And it actually creates multiple levels or invitations of levels of safety, not just physical safety, but that emotional, psychological, cultural, and moral safety that is so needed.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:42:49]:
And one thing that I hear in education, and I talk about safety is my number one priority. I want to make the person, the student that is in my room, whoever it is, feel safe. And after everything happened, we would hear teachers that are saying, oh, I'm all my students safe person. Like, I have to be there. And maybe that's the case that, like, 95% of them feel that person is their most trusted adult. That's the person that they go to. We had an issue that fire alarms were still going off, like, just randomly, and we had kids that would run to their safe person, and I would have a room, a tiny little room full of a lot of kids. And I think that spoke to more.
Am I a safe person? Rather than them telling me that or assuming that I'm everyone's safe person, I see who is in my room, who chose to come to me during their time of need. And is that because I provide them validation? Am I building that relationship with them just naturally? Not any forced bonding activities. And I talk about those. A lot of these classroom teachers try to make their classroom the most homey, the most bonded, but that also is not a safe practice to many people. So we need to be very mindful of that. And just trauma informed care, we need to ask ourselves, who might we hurt? Is what I always ask myself. Who might I hurt by asking this question or doing this? And can I prevent it? Can I not do this? How would I not do this? How could I be more inclusive? I ask myself, my brain is on trauma informed care 100% of the time. And my friends ask me sometimes, isn't that exhausting? And I've just gotten to the point that it comes naturally.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:44:32]:
I think the shift was difficult, but I think this is the state that I want to be in. This is, I think, how to build the best relationships, and I've built incredible relationships through this mindset of not trying to harm people or who could I harm?
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:44:54]:
Yeah, what a beautiful example of embodiment. I so appreciate you sharing that. Something I emphasize all the time is that trauma informed care is not an arrival, it's an evolution. I get asked a lot, too. Like, how does this come so natural? It's because it's something that I practice all the time, and it just has become an embodied practice. It's how I show up and live. Am I perfect at it? Absolutely not. Am I trauma informed 100% all the time? No, of course not.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:45:22]:
Right.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:45:23]:
But it's top of mind, and it's become like my glasses or my contact lens. It's just the lens through which I lead my life, and it's top priority. And I think what you shared is an example of how when you do integrate, when you do practice, how it does become an embodied practice, it becomes natural, it becomes organic, it becomes the lens through which you lead your life, not just your work, but your life. And it takes time and commitment. But I'm sure you can attest to the benefits and the possibilities and the support it offers to you and the people that you provide that to.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:45:58]:
I truly think of just the benefits for myself of how trauma informed care has changed me as a person towards myself. And I think of how that could have been applied before the trauma that I experienced and how my trauma would have been different having this training or mindset ahead of time. And I think that it's a heavy question, but I'm so glad that I have it now. I'm so glad that this has become second nature, that I'm just able to do it. And that's what I want to do, is be in this mindset.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:46:38]:
Thank you so much, Rachel. This has been such a great conversation, one once again, that we could spend hours in.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:46:45]:
Yes, I would love to.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:46:46]:
Before we share just where people can connect with you, to invite you into the gentle spritz of closing this conversation with our three questions. So if you could describe trauma informed care in one word, what would it be?
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:47:01]:
The first word that came to mind is just human.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:47:11]:
Yes. Love that. I feel like I need to create one of those word, like those old school word clouds with everyone's answers because they're so good.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:47:14]:
You should them, because I explain all the time that if you are working with humans or talk to humans, you need to be trauma informed. Even not humans try to be trauma informed. But especially these professions that you are working directly with other people, you need to be trauma informed.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:47:30]:
Same kindred spirit here.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:47:32]:
Yes.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:47:32]:
What is your current go to for nervous system care?
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:47:36]:
So my favorite breathing activity is when I'm stressed out is I like the four, seven, eight breathing activity. So it's breathing in for four, holding for seven, and breathing out for eight. And I do that a couple of times. Probably my current go to is I'm just like, chilling on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket and mindlessly scrolling. And I think that's just helping me escape a little bit. It's not my favorite coping strategy, but it's the one that I'm currently going to that I'm a little overwhelmed at the moment. I've taken on a lot of things and I just want to lay down.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:48:12]:
Yeah. And being physically wrapped is such a. Of course, it brings us back to being swaddled and held as babies.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:48:22]:
So love that. Love that for you.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:48:25]:
And what does a trauma informed future look like for you?
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:48:29]:
I want people to be knowledgeable, using a mindset of trauma informed, whatever it is, education, care, practice across the board. I would hope that in the way, way future we would never have to use it, but I think that's not a possibility. I think trauma will exist. Trauma will always exist. It's how we approach it, how we educate ourselves beforehand, how we reflect ourselves, how we self reflect, but want more people to be reaching out, to be asking these questions. How do I work with people who have undergone trauma? How do I work with the general population that I don't know what trauma has occurred, if any have occurred. And I like that people are asking questions, and that leaves me very hopeful.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:49:18]:
Yeah. A mindset and a skill set. Absolutely love that. Thank you so much, Rachel, for being here and sharing space with us today. How might people connect with you and your work and just learn more about what you do or maybe invite you to their school or just be in your orbit? Yeah, I'd love that.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:49:36]:
So for those of you on Instagram, I've been going as PTSD SLP for the past five years. And then I just recently, this year, created my LLC under the same name, PTSD SLP LLC. And I'm doing consultations and presentations all over the country and into Canada. And I'm really excited for people to be asking about what trauma informed care is. So please feel free to go to my website. It's ww ptsdslp.com and I've got a contact form there and feel free to reach out.
Katie Kurtz (she/her) [00:50:09]:
Awesome. With all those links are in the show notes, so yes, definitely, please connect with Rachel. Thank you so much, Rachel, for joining us today. It's been so lovely to connect with you, and I don't know about you, but it's always just so nurturing to be in spaces with people who get it and who are in it. And we need that because it's a long game and we need community. And to know that we're out, like we're out here, we're doing it, and to know that we can keep on going. So thank you so much.
Rachel Archambault (she/her) [00:50:37]:
Thank you so much. I feel the same way.
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