It entails a high level of resilience to work in helping professions. This is especially true for women who must constantly be present for the people they serve at work as well as their family, sometimes at the expense of their personal well-being. Prevention is better than cure, it’s true. This session will deep-dive into the causes and effect of stress and trauma and tools and resources to prevent these and maintain resilience.

Brenda Dietzman and Wendy Hummell joins forces to deliver this powerful webinar. Brenda has 28 years of enforcement and corrections experience. Upon retiring, she co-founded Wayfinder Consulting to provide organizations and individuals with guidance on topics like resilience and leadership. Meanwhile, Wendy has spent 24 years in law enforcement. She is now the Health and Wellness Coordinator for the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office sharing her expertise in health and wellness, peer support, and resiliency.

Specifics of this discussion include:

• The selfless and service-oriented reason why individuals decide to join the helping profession.
• The all-too-common evolution of those in helping professions from idealistic rookies to calloused and jaded after a couple of years.
• Unpacking the definition of resilience, adversity, and trauma.
• The same effect despite the difference in the cause of primary and vicarious trauma.
• How the world we’re living in with the pandemic is affecting helping professions by bringing heightened stress and some scenarios that demonstrate how it specifically is impacting women.
• The importance of building personal resilience through proactive measures to enable to prepare, help cope, and grow through the adversity and trauma that comes with helping profession jobs.
• How traumatization occurs and the value in developing as much social, physical, mental, and spiritual resources to cope with external threats that lead to traumatization.
• Wendy’s own story that demonstrates the physiological imbalances and health struggles she experienced.
• Reflecting on our personal experiences working in the helping profession and our tendency to not take good care of ourselves.
• The cycle from stressor to nervous system response that leads to an immune system response and ends up in chronic disease.
• The link between the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems that emphasizes how the things we’re exposed to in our jobs ultimately affects our immunity and wellness.
• The role of cortisol in our survival as it activates our response to threats.
• How the constant release of cortisol due to heightened exposure to stressors can lead to weight gain, accelerated aging, heart problems, cognitive decline, and inflammatory diseases, among others.
• How estrogen-progesterone imbalance in women impacts the menstrual cycle, fertility, breast health, and menopause and the body’s workaround of turning progesterone into cortisol when cortisol is depleted.
• How self-care, connecting with family and friends, physical activity, and easeful living can build resiliency and address the health issues that may stem from hormonal imbalance and compromised immune system.

Topics addressed during the Q&A were about:

• The concept of VUCA that was initially used in wartime and how it may be applied to the world in general during the pandemic.
• Resources to learn more about resilience and the bodily functions surrounding it.
• How the effect of trauma remains the same regardless of its causes.
• Helping people who are experiencing trauma but refuse to acknowledge it.
• The nuances between how men and women deal and manage their stress and trauma.
• Helping others who seem to think that they’re the only ones struggling.
• The stress that comes from having to go back to the office on a full-time basis after months of remote or hybrid setting due to the pandemic.
• Engaging agencies to invest on the workforce’s resiliency and wellness by relating it to how it impacts their budget and agency productivity.
• How stress causes inflammation and the possibility of cancer which is an inflammatory disease.

Other Webinars with this Speaker

• Understanding Compassion Fatigue for First Responders and Criminal Justice Professionals
• Improving Resilience in 5 Minutes a Day
• Resiliency for Women  (this webinar)

Resources and Handouts (Paid Links)

• Book: The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
• Book: Balance Your Hormones, Balance Your Life by Dr. Claudia Welch

Audience Comments

• “Fantastic PRESENTERS! Self-care is critical to women’s health and well-being! — Anona
• “Wendy Hummell is a great speaker and has so much insight and great ideas!” — Aubrey
• “Obviously awesome experts on the subject! Very, very informative. Thanks for answering so many questions of mine, as I was thinking of them! Please continue to educate us on this topic. Thank you!” — Roseann
• “The topic itself was so rich and full of great information! I enjoyed the entire webinar! “– Kiera
• “Everything! This was an amazing, well-rounded webinar. There was so much information packed into the hour. This is quite possibly my favorite webinar to date. Thank you for bringing this information to us!! — Denise
• This was a terrific webinar! I learned some things I never thought about before. Thank you so much Wendy, Brenda, and Justice Clearinghouse! — Kathy