Silence

Nick Arnett — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 17:32:19 +0000

Helping teach basic CISM last week, I was struck by the relationship between allowing silence and giving up control during a debriefing. One of our team’s informal slogans is “When in doubt, stick a sock in it,” to remind us to allow times of silence. That’s hard because we (debriefers and responders) tend to be people who like to feel as though we are in control – which applies to debriefings as much as anything else.

I’m fairly sure that the extent to which I fail to allow silence during a debriefing, I’m failing at the fundamental goal of giving the group back a sense of control. My silence tells them that they choose who participates, when to speak and what to talk about. They own the debriefing, I just facilitate, saying as little as possible.

So one of the questions I’m going to be more deliberate about asking myself when being debriefed after a debriefing is “How much silence did I allow?”

There is another benefit to allowing silence. In a group of people who are care-givers, there are going to be those who, despite our efforts, will not participate because they put everyone else’s needs ahead of their own. If there is a sufficiently long silence, they may finally given themselves permission to speak… if only because they think that’s best for the group!

I shouldn’t feel this way because…

admin — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:21:30 +0000

I spent the last couple of days helping with a Basic CISM class and as usual, came away with more tips and ideas to pass along. Today’s item came up near the beginning of class, as we talked about the obstacles to making debriefings happen. I realized that a lot of the reasons we don’t take the time to debrief come up when we complete the sentence, “I shouldn’t feel this way because…” Here are some of the ways that we finished it:

It was a routine call.
It happened a long time ago.
I can always get another dog/cat/whatever.
I didn’t know him or her very well or for very long.
It wasn’t my fault.
I’m tough.
I have to keep “professional distance,” shouldn’t get emotionally involved.
I’m just the dispatcher, so I didn’t actually see it.
It’s not my stuff, it’s theirs.
We have to avoid liability.
It’s not my job.
I have another call to handle.
I’m too busy, don’t have time now.
We’re under-staffed.
My co-workers need me on the job.
I’ll fall apart.
My peers will think I’m weak.
I’ll talk/drink/exercise/whatever later.
The call went well, it had a good outcome.

What makes these obstacles so powerful is that everyone one of them is true in some sense. The greater truth is that some incidents will get under our skin and if we don’t debrief those, the opposite of each of these will become true – the routine call won’t be routine for you, the incident from long ago will interfere with the call you’re on now (the first thing it takes away is situational awareness and thus your safety), your co-workers will figure out that you actually can’t “handle” everything (which they already knew, of course), you’ll end up not being busy because you’ll be out on disability… and so forth.

While we on the subject of making debriefings happen, I’ve also noticed that of all of the people involved in emergency responses, it is the dispatchers who seem quickest to recognize that an incident was critical. Our team advocates empowering dispatchers to contact CISM team leaders directly, outside of the normal chain of command, when they suspect a debriefing might be needed. That policy is working well for teams we know.

How do you complete the sentence?

Bay Area Critical Incident Stress Management Team » Dos and Don’ts

Silence

I shouldn’t feel this way because…