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325 – The Cost of Burnout, with Dr. Alexis Kennedy
Manage episode 432554307 series 100692
Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Dr. Alexis Kennedy as the two discuss the importance of self care within the parameters of professional careers.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy
Dr. Alexis Kennedy is a forensic psychology researcher, and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has led federal and state grants to study violence against women and children, and as an expert with more than 30 years of working with human trafficking victims, she knows intimately the risks of developing burnout and compassion fatigue. Dr. Alexis Kennedy works with first responders, health care workers, attorneys, and other helping professionals throughout the US and Canada to stay in important but difficult work without sacrificing their own health.
Key Points
- Burnout and compassion fatigue can take an emotional toll on professionals working with human trafficking victims, that can lead to significant mental and physical exhaustion.
- Dr. Kennedy emphasizes that self-care is crucial for maintaining effectiveness in high-stress jobs. Professionals must recognize the need to recharge and manage their well-being to avoid burnout. This includes developing healthy routines and taking breaks.
- Physical and emotional signs of burnout include changes in sleep patterns, appetite, digestive issues, and chronic pain. These symptoms are indicators that stress is impacting one’s health and should be addressed proactively.
- Vicarious trauma can affect individuals who work closely with trauma survivors as the secondary exposure to trauma can be as damaging as direct trauma, leading to symptoms similar to PTSD.
- Dr. Kennedy provides practical advice for managing stress, such as maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, creating a calming bedtime routine, and avoiding blue light before sleep. She also mentions the importance of finding balance and avoiding overwork.
- Peer support plays an important role in recognizing and addressing mental health issues, including suicide risk. Tools like the Columbia Lighthouse Protocol can help identify individuals in need of support and facilitate appropriate interventions.
Resources
Transcript
Sandra Morgan 0:14
You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. This is episode #325: The Cost of Burnout with Dr. Alexis Kennedy. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. I am so excited to welcome Dr. Alexis Kennedy to be with us today. She is a forensic psychology researcher, and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has led federal and state grants to study violence against women and children, and as an expert with more than 30 years of working with human trafficking victims, she knows intimately the risks of developing burnout and compassion fatigue. She works with first responders, health care workers, attorneys, and other helping professionals throughout the US and Canada to stay in important but difficult work without sacrificing their own health. Dr. Kennedy, I am so excited to have this conversation today. Welcome.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 1:52
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Sandra Morgan 1:55
So you can call me Sandie, can I call you Alexis?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 1:58
Absolutely.
Sandra Morgan 1:59
Okay. So when I first heard about you, I had been in Las Vegas meeting Judge William Voy who had started a CSEC court, commercially sexually exploited children, and he was really on the cutting edge of looking at these kids with a different lens. You’ve been there from the get go with him, it’s like you’ve been swimming in trauma for decades. Can you give us a very tiny glimpse of that?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 2:36
I actually started working in this area before it was called human trafficking, it was simply prostitution, exploitation through prostitution back then, and I’d been doing it for a decade before I even moved to Las Vegas. I was really shocked when I got to Las Vegas, how different the kids were being treated than you see in other countries. They were being criminalized and treated very differently. So of course, I jumped in to try and make a change. The thing is that these are really difficult stories to hear, these are really difficult situations. People who want to learn about it, want to help, we do it because we care, but there’s a cost to hearing these difficult stories, a cost to trying to change systems that are very slow to change, and that does take a toll on your mind and body, whether you notice it or not.
Sandra Morgan 3:24
When I started talking to you recently, you used a phrase. It captured my attention and I am sure there are going to be people listening, that have been with us for decades in this, and you use the phrase “getting out and handing it on?” Why do you need to get out?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 3:47
Well I’ve been, 32 years now, hearing these stories, interviewing, taking information, and even if you have the best sort of reset button or way to process and hold all those stories, eventually you’re going to fill up how much you can take and how much you can handle. But it’s hard to leave when we feel like we’re the one with the answers, which is a problem with ego. I mean, that’s the exciting thing about education and the growing awareness around human trafficking, when there’s more people at the table, then we’ll be able to say, “Here’s my knowledge, here’s my expertise, here’s my suggestions, I’m going to step aside and hand the baton off to you.”
Sandra Morgan 4:31
That’s so healthy because burnout, what are some of the risks for burnout?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 4:38
Burnout is something that can happen in any career and any job. It really is the idea that your body and mind and emotions are overwhelmed, and we can’t really address it if we don’t know where the source of stress is coming from. It’s a lot more complicated, once I started researching it, then people realize. It’s different than just simply stress. You had your daughter on, the other Dr. Morgan, and she framed stress really well, because it is something that we can use as a tool and have something that energizes us, but we also don’t want to have our foot to the gas pedal at 100 miles per hour, for year, after year, after year. For those of us that are working in fields with an urgency, like helping human trafficking victims, we’re not really good at turning it off when we go home. We don’t do this nine to five job where we stop thinking about the people we see that we’re trying to help as soon as we go home, on our vacations we’re completely relaxed, we’re very bad at helping ourselves. We’re good at helping others and not very good at helping ourselves. Burnout really can be addressed if you understand where all these sources of stress are coming from, and figuring out ways that you can take a break, or give yourself a little more kindness, give yourself that chance to recharge, that we don’t when we’re gas pedal to the floor, changing the world, doing everything for everyone.
Sandra Morgan 6:01
I call this episode The Cost of Burnout. For me, after our first conversation, I started looking through your website, you’ve got recharged.how, and of course, your alexiskennedy.com. I began to really look at the cost of burnout from a personal perspective, but then from a network perspective. I have friends and listeners in 148 countries, we need every one of you to keep doing what you’re doing, recruit your replacement so you can hand things off at the right time. The cost of burnout is we drop the baton. We aren’t there for that child in the courtroom, or in the brothel on a side road. So your ‘why’ for making this transition, can you give us a little of an understanding of how, number one: this addresses burnout for you, personally, and how you envision this for the rest of us?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 7:19
The interesting thing about the compassion fatigue research, it actually came out of the world of nursing where a lot of ER nurses were saying, “You know what, when I’m at work, I’m amazing. I give it all,” and by the time they get home, they flop on the couch and they don’t move for another 48 hours until it’s time to go back for the next shift. They said, “I like being good at my job, but I don’t want to leave 100% of everything at work,” and in contrast, the doctors they were working with work really similarly, at 100 miles per hour. They didn’t want to take those breaks and build that self care, and it was considered weak or too woowoo. What will happen with them is they’ll go 100 miles per hour for their career, and then when they finally do retire, a week into their retirement, they drop dead of a heart attack. So we can burn the candle at both ends, but there’s a cost to it. If we want to stay in a difficult job like human trafficking, advocacy, or any kind of research, we have to slow down and build in self care, and build in times to recharge. Because the people who go and say, I actually had students make me a t-shirt at one point that said, ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’ It was kind of cute. but actually now in retrospect it was a big, red flag.
Sandra Morgan 8:32
I always say, “I’m going to sleep on the plane. Don’t worry, I’ll sleep on the plane.”
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 8:37
I realized, I want to retire. I mean, I want to have a period of my life where I can work at a less furious pace, even though the social issues continue, and the stuff that needs to be solved is still there. But not everybody even makes it to retirement. A lot of people if they are giving 100% at work, and all of a sudden something else happens, a home crisis, a sick parent, a sick child, they’ve got no reserve left to handle that. If they’re trying to handle the stuff outside of work, and one of the best ways to recharge is social connection and friendship, a lot of our jobs are very socially isolating. I know that if I go to a dinner party and people ask what I do, and I talk about human trafficking, I instantly get that glazed look where they’re like, “Oh no, please don’t talk to me.” We don’t have that social recharge, that people don’t necessarily want to talk about what we’re doing at work. That means that we’re putting everything into work, and if you don’t have outlets and don’t have brakes, when you do collapse which you will if you’re going 100 miles per hour without that balance, you can take down not just you, but the people around you, and the entire program. And that’s a problem because there’s such an urgency to help the victims, the clients, the people that we’re advocating for, it’s almost ike we don’t want to feel sorry for ourselves or give ourselves any sympathy, because what they’re going through is so much worse. But it’s not a competition of victimization. The reality is, even if you come from a completely idyllic background, and have an amazing friend group and have amazing homelife, the stories we’re hearing start to weigh down on us, and that that weight is going to take stress on our body, on our nervous system, on our digestive system, all of these things are interconnected. When the body starts to break down, then we don’t have as much empathy, it affects the way we thinkm it’s all interconnected. In medicine, we tend to look at just the body in isolation, but it’s holistic. When your body breaks down, it’s often the warning sign that you’ve got too much emotions that you haven’t been able to process. Often it’s when we stopped sleeping, we realize, “Wait, maybe it’s not just about my bed, maybe it’s about all the stories I’m trying to process while I’m sleeping.” So we have to take the physical warning signs as an indicator that maybe we need to look at, holistically, our whole life, balance, stress, and what other things that we’re trying to juggle.
Sandra Morgan 11:16
For people like me, because I’m going to just own this, this is my private, pre-therapy, education appointment with you. For people like me, I need more than feelings and ‘how are you on a scale of one to 10?’ I can’t measure that, really. I need more physical, tangible signs. If I track my sleep, that could be an indicator, what other kinds of physical health risks can I look for?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 11:54
Changes in appetite or the way you digest things, if you’ve always got an upset stomach. Most of our stress hormones are actually made in the digestive system. That’s one of the things, I’ll see my students during exam period, those that have irritable bowel syndrome, when the stress goes up, their ability to eat goes down. We don’t think about digestion but how regular are you, how’s your system running? That’s a really important one. We carry a lot of stress, we hold stress in different parts of our body. If you wake up with a neck that won’t turn all the way around, or you’ve got this pain in your hip, that’s often a sign that you’re not stretching, that you’re holding a lot of things in your body, so those aches and pains are a warning sign as well. I actually got called out by my dentist, and he said, “Are you really stressed?,” and I’m like, “I teach stress medicine.” He’s like, “Well, you’re clenching your teeth at night to the point that they’re starting to crack.” It was interesting because I didn’t notice it. I knew that my jaw was stiff, I guess sometimes waking up, I can’t control what I’m thinking about when I sleep. A lot of trauma victims have that as well, where they have teeth problems because they’re just clenching or grinding their teeth at night. So, trying to get everybody educated. If you go on vacation and you’re the person that on the first day of vacation, you get sick and you’re sick for the rest of vacation, that means that you’re not in balance during the rest of the time, and we want our vacations to be fun, not sitting in bed trying to get over the latest cold. Stress depresses our immune system, so if you catch a cold that’s going around, that’s another indicator that you might be out of balance and pushing too hard.
Sandra Morgan 13:39
You mentioned listening to the stories. How does vicarious trauma show up in this situation?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 13:48
It actually can be the equivalent to primary trauma. It can manifest in terms of PTSD. A lot of people who’ve been in this field end up developing PTSD from not just the stories that we hear, but our bodies mirror the emotion. When you’re sitting across from the victim who’s talking about a life or death situation, our body picks up on that, and it turns up our fight or flight system because our brain has the amazing ability to make these stories real. We see someone reliving when they were in danger, life or death, and our body’s alarm systems rev up, going, “Oh, danger!” Even though we may be sitting in an office and we’re just hearing a story, that constant turning on of your fight or flight system is something that ends up burning us out a little bit. But with the PTSD, even if it’s not PTSD, a lot of times when we hear a really upsetting story, also in the moment we’re calming the person down or trying to reflect to them that they’re safe now, we’re presenting positive outcome future, that’s what we’re trying to help them get to, when we go home, have those quiet moments, that’s when it goes through. I would notice I’d be at my kid’s soccer game and instead of watching him, all of a sudden my brain went back to the story I heard and my body, all of a sudden, gets into this busy mode of, “What can I offer?,” and, “Did I do enough?,” and, “What are their resources?” So, just recognizing that that gas pedal gets constantly pushed when we least expect it. Where it’s most obvious is in sleep, when you’re sleeping restlessly, or you’re dreaming. Sleep is so important, it’s the single most important medicine that we have but of course, because nobody can patent it, there’s not a lot of conversation around it. What happens when we sleep is just incredible. Not only do our bodies flush, our muscles reset, our digestive system resets, our whole brains flush because we have to get rid of the neurotransmitters that are lingering around that we didn’t use. If you’re not getting a good sleep, and not getting the different sleep cycles, you’re not processing the stuff you saw during the day, because at night is when we sort the stories. It’s when we come up with our creativity, where we make connections we might not have otherwise done, it really is the most important part of our day in a lot of ways. But if you are overworked, overwhelmed, not finding a way to decompress from the stories that you’re hearing, that lack of sleep is going to make you eventually unhealthy physically, but it also depletes your ability to do your job the next day. We’re not as sharp and we don’t sleep, we’re not as good at handling emotions, we’re not as good at hearing difficult stories. So it’s not selfish to prioritize sleep, it’s actually the best tool you can use and engage to be able to be the best version of yourself at work.
Do you teach us how to sleep?
Actually, it’s kind of amazing, we all have the answers. The best thing I love about teaching about stress management is it’s all common sense, I don’t have to convince people. The research is now showing us that we really need a routine. If we go to bed one night at nine and the next night at midnight, we’re messing up our circadian rhythm, we’re fighting our basic biological instincts. We also mess up our bedtime routine because in the old days, the light would go down, your candle would get dim, you’d blow it out, your body would know it’s time to sleep. When we’re in bed at midnight, scrolling through our Instagram to look at some funny dog or cat videos to try and decompress, that blue light from that phone is is going straight into your eyeballs, straight into your brain saying, “it’s still light out, don’t go to sleep.” So the things that we do before bed that we think are calming us down, are actually sending all these contrary messages to our brain. The latest research shows that even if you can only get six hours of sleep a night, you want to go to bed and do the same six hours every night. Because if you’re on the weekend saying, “Well, I’m gonna go to bed at 5pm and just get a 12 hour night’s sleep,” that’s not going to work because you’re fighting the way that our body is set up to respond to light and rhythms and basic systems.
Sandra Morgan 18:10
Are there any guidelines for this routine that include what I eat? Some people medicate, they take things like melatonin, magnesium, all of those. Should I be paying attention to those ads that pop up when I’m scrolling on Instagram to calm down?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 18:31
Well, North Americans are very addicted to having a quick pill to fix things, but the research shows that it’s more holistic than that. Going to sleep at a regular time, turning off the electronics and the blue light and maybe listening to an audible book as you’re trying to fall asleep, or putting a red light in your bedside table and reading a paper book, those are all things that will…
Sandra Morgan 18:58
A paper book?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 19:00
They exist still.
Sandra Morgan 19:01
Oh, wow. Okay, go ahead.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 19:03
Something without blue light so that we are sending that message to our brain, through our body, that the sun is setting and it’s time for us to calm down, then our body produces melatonin. Melatonin is a thing that gets everything ready to say, “Okay, it’s time to sleep.” Melatonin gets us to sleep, it doesn’t really keep us asleep. A lot of that can be done through our own strategies. Making sure your room is really dark when you sleep, that’s something some people are always sensitive about and have to have blackout curtains. But there is a real truth to the fact that your body, even through the skin, will absorb light and take in that information and say, “Oh, actually, it must be daytime so we should get up.” If you ever go to a hotel and it’s an unusual alarm clock, and you open your eyes in the middle of the night and think, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s like the power of the sun it seems so bright,” we do sleep better in dark environments. We also need cooler environments. 65 to 68 degrees is the right temperature to sleep, because one of the systems our body goes through is that when our temperature drops at the end of the day, that’s what signals the melatonin and the rest of things to start sleep. So people that are trying to sleep in too hot of a room, that’s sort of difficult. Even if you go to sleep under the sheets, you’ll notice you wake up with your arms out and your feet out, that’s because your body needs to have a certain temperature to stay asleep. Changing your temperature is another one that’s really powerful.
Sandra Morgan 20:30
So it’s not selfish of me to say no because I need to go to bed?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 20:37
Correct. It’s your best practice to be the most efficient person you are the next day. People want you to be good at your job, they want you to not be cranky, and impatient, and just really emotionally depleted, and sleep is the thing that allows us to reset. I’s the first thing we give up but it’s actually the most important thing.
Sandra Morgan 21:01
I’m going to definitely think of you as I develop better routines for regulating sleep, because I think you’re absolutely right. I’m looking at some more questions that I have here, we may have to have you come back, but you are coming for Ensure Justice in March. I want to talk about screening tools, especially in areas where we’re talking about peer support and suicide prevention. We talked a little bit about people in high risk professions, in law enforcement, in military, can you tell us about how those kinds of tools might help us?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 21:49
Often we don’t see our red flags, but our co-workers will see the red flags on a minimal level. We have those colleagues who we know are hangry that when they’re hungry, you don’t want to talk to them, so sometimes you’ll bring them a muffin before you have to ask them something difficult. We don’t always notice when we’re really out of balance and really toppling over, whereas our colleagues will. That’s particularly true for when people are at very low points and feeling suicidal. We have this myth that talking about suicide will cause it, but all of the research is showing it’s the exact opposite, that we need to be open about the fact that people who are going through depression, anxiety, difficult emotions, suicidal thoughts are kind of normal. What we want to do is figure out who are the people who have moved beyond suicidal thoughts to actual suicidal plans? And by asking them and doing a warm handoff and saying, “You know what you seem like you’re really struggling right now. Let me walk you over to our counselor, let me call the suicide hotline, pass me your phone and we’ll do this together.” People are afraid to talk about suicide because they think, “Well I can’t diagnose it, I can’t fix it.” We don’t need to do that, we just need to notice it, identify it, and then give a handoff so that we can take people to the resources that they need. It’s difficult to do when you see someone in crisis, we’re afraid to doing the wrong thing, but doing nothing is going to be the wrong thing. So one of the tools that’s being promoted throughout the United States is the Columbia Lighthouse Protocol, and it’s a peer to peer screening tool that gives people a simple six questions about suicide ideation and whether or not people are making plans. If it’s yes to any of those questions, to then help them get in contact with the the suicide hotline or a resource that you have at work. We know that because of stress and trauma, the rates of suicide have been very high in the military. The groups that have implemented this tool have seen a reduction in their suicide. When I do it with firehouses and working with them, they’ll often say, “Well, I don’t need it personally but I know some colleagues who need it.” They also say, “I wish you would train my wives, or my partners and spouses, because they’re the ones that know when I’m really struggling.” So it’s something that the more widespread we get, the better equipped we’ll be to have those hard conversations.
Sandra Morgan 24:22
Wow, okay. One of the things in our first conversation that shocked me, was our conversation about meditation and yoga. Because wellness practices are commonly recommended for stress relief, but this idea that this can be unsafe, I need you to unpack that for me.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 24:49
It’s interesting because we think that meditation is a complete, blank mind and that that’s what we’re trying to get to. Meditation is more about being present and noticing what’s going on. And for a lot of the victims that I’ve worked with, meditation is not safe. When they sit still and let their brain run wild, they go back to revisiting the things that they’ve tucked away, the traumatic life or death situations. So just sitting in silence can actually be very triggering, and can be very traumatizing. There are groups like the Trauma Recovery Yoga Group that was started in Las Vegas, where what they do is they worked with the, again the VA hospital and traumatized people there, and if you do a guided meditation where you’re being talked to the entire time and asking you to turn your mind to your feet, now think of your ankles, or going through specific positive meditations, that is safe, but just putting on a bit of music and asking people to sit still can actually be incredibly triggering. It’s true of a lot of treatment modalities, like even if you’re in a yoga class, it’s not always safe to touch people in a yoga class. If you’ve got someone who’s got a history of sexual victimization, and the instructor goes over and grabs them by the hips to readjust them, that can be incredibly triggering and traumatizing. It’s understanding how trauma affects the nervous system, and how we have to provide that extra guidance and support, is going to be the healing modality, but you can’t just tell someone to go on YouTube and watch any old video or any old meditation, you may be setting them up for a really rocky ride and a really difficult experience.
Sandra Morgan 26:36
So can I find more on your recharged.how website?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 26:41
Yes. I’m constantly putting out little videos when people sign up, I do newsletters, and I do free training webinars. I have one that I love doing, which is ‘Why You Should Go On Vacation.” In North America, we’re terrible about taking our vacation time. It feels like the world is still burning, wherever we’re leaving, how can I possibly take a break from that? But it’s critically important to take that break or you won’t be able to go back to your job. There’s only so many years you can burn the candle at both ends.
Sandra Morgan 27:13
As I look at the things on the website, and I consider the risk of not prioritizing this self care, this health agenda, it can take down an entire agency, there is a cost to burnout. It’s not something glorified, you’re a hero because you never take a day off. What would you say to someone who is having a hard time taking that time?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 27:13
It’s really a question of, gosh that’s a tough one. Well, I guess the simplest way to put it is if you want to continue to help people and take care of other people, you have to take care of yourself. There are no prizes for sleeping very little and being a martyr, that’s not going to make you an efficient worker, it’s not going to make you a patient advocate, it’s not going to make you a good colleague, it’s not going to make you a nice person to live with. Look at all of those relationships and say, “How can I be the best version of myself?” Self care isn’t selfish, it’s actually critical. But self care has been couched with this idea that it’s just pedicures and kale salads, some people will say, it’s much more complicated. It’s the idea that we are athletes, we’re in this marathon of helping people. Athletes, they prioritize sleep, they know that when they eat better, they’re going to feel better the next day, they know that if they push too hard, they’re going to get injured the next day> We have to think about how do we keep our bodies and minds in peak performance? And that is by taking care of ourselves so that we can get up and run that marathon the next day.
Sandra Morgan 29:06
Alexis, you are just amazing, and you already gave us decades of amazing research for the people we want to serve. But you said to me in our last conversation, I feel called to teach the things I need to learn. What do you want people to do? What are the action steps they can take now to get the kind of training to make the changes that you’re recommending?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 29:40
I think they have to realize that you’re part of the solution, and if you want to celebrate that and pat yourself on the back and say, “Look at me, I’m making a huge difference in people’s lives,” you also have to pay attention to yourself and that means taking care of yourself. It’s hard because when we do a hard day’s work, have really hard situations, you’re tired on the way home, you don’t want to stop and make a salad, you’d rather get fast food at the drive through. The reality is, it’s a gift to yourself every time you eat healthy, sleep well, drink enough water. We have to reframe it. It’s not “I have to go on a diet, I have to stop doing this, I don’t want to be bad.” We really have to reframe it into the positive that “I want to keep doing this important work so I need to fuel myself in the best possible way.” And that also includes surrounding yourself in your off time with the right people. Often as helpers, and I see this with all the first responders and therapists that I work with, we have a really high tolerance for crazy. We are often the person that’s friends with someone that nobody else wants to be friends with. If your phone rings, and you see it’s that person who’s gonna talk for an hour and not ask you a question, and your stomach drops and you think, “Ugh, I have to take this,” don’t take it. No. Choose to be with people who energize you and make you feel really good, and you don’t have to fix everyone, you don’t have to be everyone’s solution.
Speaker 1 29:40
Oh my goodness, Alexis, I’m going to listen to this podcast over and over again, it’s like you give me permission. I think that’s a gift, I think that’s a gift. We will have you back on, we’ll do some deep dives in some of these practices. I do want to keep sending people to your website. Tell us again, the website.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 31:14
It is www.recharge.how.
Sandra Morgan 31:23
I love that the ending is ‘how’ because that’s what usually we need to know. We need to know how to do something. As we are closing here, I just want to take this opportunity, Alexis, to thank you for your decades of service and how you have turned your own journey into teaching things the rest of us really need help with as well. As a psychology researcher, I want to be one of your test subjects for helpers in this work, so thank you so much for being with us today.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 32:25
Thank you so much for letting me share this information I’m really passionate about.
Sandra Morgan 32:29
And I’m looking forward to having you with me here at Ensure Justice, March 6th and 7th, 2025. Now’s the time to put this on your calendar. We’re inviting you also, if you have never been on the endinghumantrafficking.org website, go on over, find the resources, links in the show notes to things Alexis and I have talked about, the anti human trafficking certificate, all kinds of resources. If you’ve never become a subscriber, just click that. You won’t get a bunch of email but you will get show notes every two weeks when there’s a new conversation. We’ll be back in two weeks.
334 ตอน
Manage episode 432554307 series 100692
Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Dr. Alexis Kennedy as the two discuss the importance of self care within the parameters of professional careers.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy
Dr. Alexis Kennedy is a forensic psychology researcher, and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has led federal and state grants to study violence against women and children, and as an expert with more than 30 years of working with human trafficking victims, she knows intimately the risks of developing burnout and compassion fatigue. Dr. Alexis Kennedy works with first responders, health care workers, attorneys, and other helping professionals throughout the US and Canada to stay in important but difficult work without sacrificing their own health.
Key Points
- Burnout and compassion fatigue can take an emotional toll on professionals working with human trafficking victims, that can lead to significant mental and physical exhaustion.
- Dr. Kennedy emphasizes that self-care is crucial for maintaining effectiveness in high-stress jobs. Professionals must recognize the need to recharge and manage their well-being to avoid burnout. This includes developing healthy routines and taking breaks.
- Physical and emotional signs of burnout include changes in sleep patterns, appetite, digestive issues, and chronic pain. These symptoms are indicators that stress is impacting one’s health and should be addressed proactively.
- Vicarious trauma can affect individuals who work closely with trauma survivors as the secondary exposure to trauma can be as damaging as direct trauma, leading to symptoms similar to PTSD.
- Dr. Kennedy provides practical advice for managing stress, such as maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, creating a calming bedtime routine, and avoiding blue light before sleep. She also mentions the importance of finding balance and avoiding overwork.
- Peer support plays an important role in recognizing and addressing mental health issues, including suicide risk. Tools like the Columbia Lighthouse Protocol can help identify individuals in need of support and facilitate appropriate interventions.
Resources
Transcript
Sandra Morgan 0:14
You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. This is episode #325: The Cost of Burnout with Dr. Alexis Kennedy. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. I am so excited to welcome Dr. Alexis Kennedy to be with us today. She is a forensic psychology researcher, and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has led federal and state grants to study violence against women and children, and as an expert with more than 30 years of working with human trafficking victims, she knows intimately the risks of developing burnout and compassion fatigue. She works with first responders, health care workers, attorneys, and other helping professionals throughout the US and Canada to stay in important but difficult work without sacrificing their own health. Dr. Kennedy, I am so excited to have this conversation today. Welcome.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 1:52
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Sandra Morgan 1:55
So you can call me Sandie, can I call you Alexis?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 1:58
Absolutely.
Sandra Morgan 1:59
Okay. So when I first heard about you, I had been in Las Vegas meeting Judge William Voy who had started a CSEC court, commercially sexually exploited children, and he was really on the cutting edge of looking at these kids with a different lens. You’ve been there from the get go with him, it’s like you’ve been swimming in trauma for decades. Can you give us a very tiny glimpse of that?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 2:36
I actually started working in this area before it was called human trafficking, it was simply prostitution, exploitation through prostitution back then, and I’d been doing it for a decade before I even moved to Las Vegas. I was really shocked when I got to Las Vegas, how different the kids were being treated than you see in other countries. They were being criminalized and treated very differently. So of course, I jumped in to try and make a change. The thing is that these are really difficult stories to hear, these are really difficult situations. People who want to learn about it, want to help, we do it because we care, but there’s a cost to hearing these difficult stories, a cost to trying to change systems that are very slow to change, and that does take a toll on your mind and body, whether you notice it or not.
Sandra Morgan 3:24
When I started talking to you recently, you used a phrase. It captured my attention and I am sure there are going to be people listening, that have been with us for decades in this, and you use the phrase “getting out and handing it on?” Why do you need to get out?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 3:47
Well I’ve been, 32 years now, hearing these stories, interviewing, taking information, and even if you have the best sort of reset button or way to process and hold all those stories, eventually you’re going to fill up how much you can take and how much you can handle. But it’s hard to leave when we feel like we’re the one with the answers, which is a problem with ego. I mean, that’s the exciting thing about education and the growing awareness around human trafficking, when there’s more people at the table, then we’ll be able to say, “Here’s my knowledge, here’s my expertise, here’s my suggestions, I’m going to step aside and hand the baton off to you.”
Sandra Morgan 4:31
That’s so healthy because burnout, what are some of the risks for burnout?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 4:38
Burnout is something that can happen in any career and any job. It really is the idea that your body and mind and emotions are overwhelmed, and we can’t really address it if we don’t know where the source of stress is coming from. It’s a lot more complicated, once I started researching it, then people realize. It’s different than just simply stress. You had your daughter on, the other Dr. Morgan, and she framed stress really well, because it is something that we can use as a tool and have something that energizes us, but we also don’t want to have our foot to the gas pedal at 100 miles per hour, for year, after year, after year. For those of us that are working in fields with an urgency, like helping human trafficking victims, we’re not really good at turning it off when we go home. We don’t do this nine to five job where we stop thinking about the people we see that we’re trying to help as soon as we go home, on our vacations we’re completely relaxed, we’re very bad at helping ourselves. We’re good at helping others and not very good at helping ourselves. Burnout really can be addressed if you understand where all these sources of stress are coming from, and figuring out ways that you can take a break, or give yourself a little more kindness, give yourself that chance to recharge, that we don’t when we’re gas pedal to the floor, changing the world, doing everything for everyone.
Sandra Morgan 6:01
I call this episode The Cost of Burnout. For me, after our first conversation, I started looking through your website, you’ve got recharged.how, and of course, your alexiskennedy.com. I began to really look at the cost of burnout from a personal perspective, but then from a network perspective. I have friends and listeners in 148 countries, we need every one of you to keep doing what you’re doing, recruit your replacement so you can hand things off at the right time. The cost of burnout is we drop the baton. We aren’t there for that child in the courtroom, or in the brothel on a side road. So your ‘why’ for making this transition, can you give us a little of an understanding of how, number one: this addresses burnout for you, personally, and how you envision this for the rest of us?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 7:19
The interesting thing about the compassion fatigue research, it actually came out of the world of nursing where a lot of ER nurses were saying, “You know what, when I’m at work, I’m amazing. I give it all,” and by the time they get home, they flop on the couch and they don’t move for another 48 hours until it’s time to go back for the next shift. They said, “I like being good at my job, but I don’t want to leave 100% of everything at work,” and in contrast, the doctors they were working with work really similarly, at 100 miles per hour. They didn’t want to take those breaks and build that self care, and it was considered weak or too woowoo. What will happen with them is they’ll go 100 miles per hour for their career, and then when they finally do retire, a week into their retirement, they drop dead of a heart attack. So we can burn the candle at both ends, but there’s a cost to it. If we want to stay in a difficult job like human trafficking, advocacy, or any kind of research, we have to slow down and build in self care, and build in times to recharge. Because the people who go and say, I actually had students make me a t-shirt at one point that said, ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’ It was kind of cute. but actually now in retrospect it was a big, red flag.
Sandra Morgan 8:32
I always say, “I’m going to sleep on the plane. Don’t worry, I’ll sleep on the plane.”
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 8:37
I realized, I want to retire. I mean, I want to have a period of my life where I can work at a less furious pace, even though the social issues continue, and the stuff that needs to be solved is still there. But not everybody even makes it to retirement. A lot of people if they are giving 100% at work, and all of a sudden something else happens, a home crisis, a sick parent, a sick child, they’ve got no reserve left to handle that. If they’re trying to handle the stuff outside of work, and one of the best ways to recharge is social connection and friendship, a lot of our jobs are very socially isolating. I know that if I go to a dinner party and people ask what I do, and I talk about human trafficking, I instantly get that glazed look where they’re like, “Oh no, please don’t talk to me.” We don’t have that social recharge, that people don’t necessarily want to talk about what we’re doing at work. That means that we’re putting everything into work, and if you don’t have outlets and don’t have brakes, when you do collapse which you will if you’re going 100 miles per hour without that balance, you can take down not just you, but the people around you, and the entire program. And that’s a problem because there’s such an urgency to help the victims, the clients, the people that we’re advocating for, it’s almost ike we don’t want to feel sorry for ourselves or give ourselves any sympathy, because what they’re going through is so much worse. But it’s not a competition of victimization. The reality is, even if you come from a completely idyllic background, and have an amazing friend group and have amazing homelife, the stories we’re hearing start to weigh down on us, and that that weight is going to take stress on our body, on our nervous system, on our digestive system, all of these things are interconnected. When the body starts to break down, then we don’t have as much empathy, it affects the way we thinkm it’s all interconnected. In medicine, we tend to look at just the body in isolation, but it’s holistic. When your body breaks down, it’s often the warning sign that you’ve got too much emotions that you haven’t been able to process. Often it’s when we stopped sleeping, we realize, “Wait, maybe it’s not just about my bed, maybe it’s about all the stories I’m trying to process while I’m sleeping.” So we have to take the physical warning signs as an indicator that maybe we need to look at, holistically, our whole life, balance, stress, and what other things that we’re trying to juggle.
Sandra Morgan 11:16
For people like me, because I’m going to just own this, this is my private, pre-therapy, education appointment with you. For people like me, I need more than feelings and ‘how are you on a scale of one to 10?’ I can’t measure that, really. I need more physical, tangible signs. If I track my sleep, that could be an indicator, what other kinds of physical health risks can I look for?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 11:54
Changes in appetite or the way you digest things, if you’ve always got an upset stomach. Most of our stress hormones are actually made in the digestive system. That’s one of the things, I’ll see my students during exam period, those that have irritable bowel syndrome, when the stress goes up, their ability to eat goes down. We don’t think about digestion but how regular are you, how’s your system running? That’s a really important one. We carry a lot of stress, we hold stress in different parts of our body. If you wake up with a neck that won’t turn all the way around, or you’ve got this pain in your hip, that’s often a sign that you’re not stretching, that you’re holding a lot of things in your body, so those aches and pains are a warning sign as well. I actually got called out by my dentist, and he said, “Are you really stressed?,” and I’m like, “I teach stress medicine.” He’s like, “Well, you’re clenching your teeth at night to the point that they’re starting to crack.” It was interesting because I didn’t notice it. I knew that my jaw was stiff, I guess sometimes waking up, I can’t control what I’m thinking about when I sleep. A lot of trauma victims have that as well, where they have teeth problems because they’re just clenching or grinding their teeth at night. So, trying to get everybody educated. If you go on vacation and you’re the person that on the first day of vacation, you get sick and you’re sick for the rest of vacation, that means that you’re not in balance during the rest of the time, and we want our vacations to be fun, not sitting in bed trying to get over the latest cold. Stress depresses our immune system, so if you catch a cold that’s going around, that’s another indicator that you might be out of balance and pushing too hard.
Sandra Morgan 13:39
You mentioned listening to the stories. How does vicarious trauma show up in this situation?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 13:48
It actually can be the equivalent to primary trauma. It can manifest in terms of PTSD. A lot of people who’ve been in this field end up developing PTSD from not just the stories that we hear, but our bodies mirror the emotion. When you’re sitting across from the victim who’s talking about a life or death situation, our body picks up on that, and it turns up our fight or flight system because our brain has the amazing ability to make these stories real. We see someone reliving when they were in danger, life or death, and our body’s alarm systems rev up, going, “Oh, danger!” Even though we may be sitting in an office and we’re just hearing a story, that constant turning on of your fight or flight system is something that ends up burning us out a little bit. But with the PTSD, even if it’s not PTSD, a lot of times when we hear a really upsetting story, also in the moment we’re calming the person down or trying to reflect to them that they’re safe now, we’re presenting positive outcome future, that’s what we’re trying to help them get to, when we go home, have those quiet moments, that’s when it goes through. I would notice I’d be at my kid’s soccer game and instead of watching him, all of a sudden my brain went back to the story I heard and my body, all of a sudden, gets into this busy mode of, “What can I offer?,” and, “Did I do enough?,” and, “What are their resources?” So, just recognizing that that gas pedal gets constantly pushed when we least expect it. Where it’s most obvious is in sleep, when you’re sleeping restlessly, or you’re dreaming. Sleep is so important, it’s the single most important medicine that we have but of course, because nobody can patent it, there’s not a lot of conversation around it. What happens when we sleep is just incredible. Not only do our bodies flush, our muscles reset, our digestive system resets, our whole brains flush because we have to get rid of the neurotransmitters that are lingering around that we didn’t use. If you’re not getting a good sleep, and not getting the different sleep cycles, you’re not processing the stuff you saw during the day, because at night is when we sort the stories. It’s when we come up with our creativity, where we make connections we might not have otherwise done, it really is the most important part of our day in a lot of ways. But if you are overworked, overwhelmed, not finding a way to decompress from the stories that you’re hearing, that lack of sleep is going to make you eventually unhealthy physically, but it also depletes your ability to do your job the next day. We’re not as sharp and we don’t sleep, we’re not as good at handling emotions, we’re not as good at hearing difficult stories. So it’s not selfish to prioritize sleep, it’s actually the best tool you can use and engage to be able to be the best version of yourself at work.
Do you teach us how to sleep?
Actually, it’s kind of amazing, we all have the answers. The best thing I love about teaching about stress management is it’s all common sense, I don’t have to convince people. The research is now showing us that we really need a routine. If we go to bed one night at nine and the next night at midnight, we’re messing up our circadian rhythm, we’re fighting our basic biological instincts. We also mess up our bedtime routine because in the old days, the light would go down, your candle would get dim, you’d blow it out, your body would know it’s time to sleep. When we’re in bed at midnight, scrolling through our Instagram to look at some funny dog or cat videos to try and decompress, that blue light from that phone is is going straight into your eyeballs, straight into your brain saying, “it’s still light out, don’t go to sleep.” So the things that we do before bed that we think are calming us down, are actually sending all these contrary messages to our brain. The latest research shows that even if you can only get six hours of sleep a night, you want to go to bed and do the same six hours every night. Because if you’re on the weekend saying, “Well, I’m gonna go to bed at 5pm and just get a 12 hour night’s sleep,” that’s not going to work because you’re fighting the way that our body is set up to respond to light and rhythms and basic systems.
Sandra Morgan 18:10
Are there any guidelines for this routine that include what I eat? Some people medicate, they take things like melatonin, magnesium, all of those. Should I be paying attention to those ads that pop up when I’m scrolling on Instagram to calm down?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 18:31
Well, North Americans are very addicted to having a quick pill to fix things, but the research shows that it’s more holistic than that. Going to sleep at a regular time, turning off the electronics and the blue light and maybe listening to an audible book as you’re trying to fall asleep, or putting a red light in your bedside table and reading a paper book, those are all things that will…
Sandra Morgan 18:58
A paper book?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 19:00
They exist still.
Sandra Morgan 19:01
Oh, wow. Okay, go ahead.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 19:03
Something without blue light so that we are sending that message to our brain, through our body, that the sun is setting and it’s time for us to calm down, then our body produces melatonin. Melatonin is a thing that gets everything ready to say, “Okay, it’s time to sleep.” Melatonin gets us to sleep, it doesn’t really keep us asleep. A lot of that can be done through our own strategies. Making sure your room is really dark when you sleep, that’s something some people are always sensitive about and have to have blackout curtains. But there is a real truth to the fact that your body, even through the skin, will absorb light and take in that information and say, “Oh, actually, it must be daytime so we should get up.” If you ever go to a hotel and it’s an unusual alarm clock, and you open your eyes in the middle of the night and think, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s like the power of the sun it seems so bright,” we do sleep better in dark environments. We also need cooler environments. 65 to 68 degrees is the right temperature to sleep, because one of the systems our body goes through is that when our temperature drops at the end of the day, that’s what signals the melatonin and the rest of things to start sleep. So people that are trying to sleep in too hot of a room, that’s sort of difficult. Even if you go to sleep under the sheets, you’ll notice you wake up with your arms out and your feet out, that’s because your body needs to have a certain temperature to stay asleep. Changing your temperature is another one that’s really powerful.
Sandra Morgan 20:30
So it’s not selfish of me to say no because I need to go to bed?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 20:37
Correct. It’s your best practice to be the most efficient person you are the next day. People want you to be good at your job, they want you to not be cranky, and impatient, and just really emotionally depleted, and sleep is the thing that allows us to reset. I’s the first thing we give up but it’s actually the most important thing.
Sandra Morgan 21:01
I’m going to definitely think of you as I develop better routines for regulating sleep, because I think you’re absolutely right. I’m looking at some more questions that I have here, we may have to have you come back, but you are coming for Ensure Justice in March. I want to talk about screening tools, especially in areas where we’re talking about peer support and suicide prevention. We talked a little bit about people in high risk professions, in law enforcement, in military, can you tell us about how those kinds of tools might help us?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 21:49
Often we don’t see our red flags, but our co-workers will see the red flags on a minimal level. We have those colleagues who we know are hangry that when they’re hungry, you don’t want to talk to them, so sometimes you’ll bring them a muffin before you have to ask them something difficult. We don’t always notice when we’re really out of balance and really toppling over, whereas our colleagues will. That’s particularly true for when people are at very low points and feeling suicidal. We have this myth that talking about suicide will cause it, but all of the research is showing it’s the exact opposite, that we need to be open about the fact that people who are going through depression, anxiety, difficult emotions, suicidal thoughts are kind of normal. What we want to do is figure out who are the people who have moved beyond suicidal thoughts to actual suicidal plans? And by asking them and doing a warm handoff and saying, “You know what you seem like you’re really struggling right now. Let me walk you over to our counselor, let me call the suicide hotline, pass me your phone and we’ll do this together.” People are afraid to talk about suicide because they think, “Well I can’t diagnose it, I can’t fix it.” We don’t need to do that, we just need to notice it, identify it, and then give a handoff so that we can take people to the resources that they need. It’s difficult to do when you see someone in crisis, we’re afraid to doing the wrong thing, but doing nothing is going to be the wrong thing. So one of the tools that’s being promoted throughout the United States is the Columbia Lighthouse Protocol, and it’s a peer to peer screening tool that gives people a simple six questions about suicide ideation and whether or not people are making plans. If it’s yes to any of those questions, to then help them get in contact with the the suicide hotline or a resource that you have at work. We know that because of stress and trauma, the rates of suicide have been very high in the military. The groups that have implemented this tool have seen a reduction in their suicide. When I do it with firehouses and working with them, they’ll often say, “Well, I don’t need it personally but I know some colleagues who need it.” They also say, “I wish you would train my wives, or my partners and spouses, because they’re the ones that know when I’m really struggling.” So it’s something that the more widespread we get, the better equipped we’ll be to have those hard conversations.
Sandra Morgan 24:22
Wow, okay. One of the things in our first conversation that shocked me, was our conversation about meditation and yoga. Because wellness practices are commonly recommended for stress relief, but this idea that this can be unsafe, I need you to unpack that for me.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 24:49
It’s interesting because we think that meditation is a complete, blank mind and that that’s what we’re trying to get to. Meditation is more about being present and noticing what’s going on. And for a lot of the victims that I’ve worked with, meditation is not safe. When they sit still and let their brain run wild, they go back to revisiting the things that they’ve tucked away, the traumatic life or death situations. So just sitting in silence can actually be very triggering, and can be very traumatizing. There are groups like the Trauma Recovery Yoga Group that was started in Las Vegas, where what they do is they worked with the, again the VA hospital and traumatized people there, and if you do a guided meditation where you’re being talked to the entire time and asking you to turn your mind to your feet, now think of your ankles, or going through specific positive meditations, that is safe, but just putting on a bit of music and asking people to sit still can actually be incredibly triggering. It’s true of a lot of treatment modalities, like even if you’re in a yoga class, it’s not always safe to touch people in a yoga class. If you’ve got someone who’s got a history of sexual victimization, and the instructor goes over and grabs them by the hips to readjust them, that can be incredibly triggering and traumatizing. It’s understanding how trauma affects the nervous system, and how we have to provide that extra guidance and support, is going to be the healing modality, but you can’t just tell someone to go on YouTube and watch any old video or any old meditation, you may be setting them up for a really rocky ride and a really difficult experience.
Sandra Morgan 26:36
So can I find more on your recharged.how website?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 26:41
Yes. I’m constantly putting out little videos when people sign up, I do newsletters, and I do free training webinars. I have one that I love doing, which is ‘Why You Should Go On Vacation.” In North America, we’re terrible about taking our vacation time. It feels like the world is still burning, wherever we’re leaving, how can I possibly take a break from that? But it’s critically important to take that break or you won’t be able to go back to your job. There’s only so many years you can burn the candle at both ends.
Sandra Morgan 27:13
As I look at the things on the website, and I consider the risk of not prioritizing this self care, this health agenda, it can take down an entire agency, there is a cost to burnout. It’s not something glorified, you’re a hero because you never take a day off. What would you say to someone who is having a hard time taking that time?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 27:13
It’s really a question of, gosh that’s a tough one. Well, I guess the simplest way to put it is if you want to continue to help people and take care of other people, you have to take care of yourself. There are no prizes for sleeping very little and being a martyr, that’s not going to make you an efficient worker, it’s not going to make you a patient advocate, it’s not going to make you a good colleague, it’s not going to make you a nice person to live with. Look at all of those relationships and say, “How can I be the best version of myself?” Self care isn’t selfish, it’s actually critical. But self care has been couched with this idea that it’s just pedicures and kale salads, some people will say, it’s much more complicated. It’s the idea that we are athletes, we’re in this marathon of helping people. Athletes, they prioritize sleep, they know that when they eat better, they’re going to feel better the next day, they know that if they push too hard, they’re going to get injured the next day> We have to think about how do we keep our bodies and minds in peak performance? And that is by taking care of ourselves so that we can get up and run that marathon the next day.
Sandra Morgan 29:06
Alexis, you are just amazing, and you already gave us decades of amazing research for the people we want to serve. But you said to me in our last conversation, I feel called to teach the things I need to learn. What do you want people to do? What are the action steps they can take now to get the kind of training to make the changes that you’re recommending?
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 29:40
I think they have to realize that you’re part of the solution, and if you want to celebrate that and pat yourself on the back and say, “Look at me, I’m making a huge difference in people’s lives,” you also have to pay attention to yourself and that means taking care of yourself. It’s hard because when we do a hard day’s work, have really hard situations, you’re tired on the way home, you don’t want to stop and make a salad, you’d rather get fast food at the drive through. The reality is, it’s a gift to yourself every time you eat healthy, sleep well, drink enough water. We have to reframe it. It’s not “I have to go on a diet, I have to stop doing this, I don’t want to be bad.” We really have to reframe it into the positive that “I want to keep doing this important work so I need to fuel myself in the best possible way.” And that also includes surrounding yourself in your off time with the right people. Often as helpers, and I see this with all the first responders and therapists that I work with, we have a really high tolerance for crazy. We are often the person that’s friends with someone that nobody else wants to be friends with. If your phone rings, and you see it’s that person who’s gonna talk for an hour and not ask you a question, and your stomach drops and you think, “Ugh, I have to take this,” don’t take it. No. Choose to be with people who energize you and make you feel really good, and you don’t have to fix everyone, you don’t have to be everyone’s solution.
Speaker 1 29:40
Oh my goodness, Alexis, I’m going to listen to this podcast over and over again, it’s like you give me permission. I think that’s a gift, I think that’s a gift. We will have you back on, we’ll do some deep dives in some of these practices. I do want to keep sending people to your website. Tell us again, the website.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 31:14
It is www.recharge.how.
Sandra Morgan 31:23
I love that the ending is ‘how’ because that’s what usually we need to know. We need to know how to do something. As we are closing here, I just want to take this opportunity, Alexis, to thank you for your decades of service and how you have turned your own journey into teaching things the rest of us really need help with as well. As a psychology researcher, I want to be one of your test subjects for helpers in this work, so thank you so much for being with us today.
Dr. Alexis Kennedy 32:25
Thank you so much for letting me share this information I’m really passionate about.
Sandra Morgan 32:29
And I’m looking forward to having you with me here at Ensure Justice, March 6th and 7th, 2025. Now’s the time to put this on your calendar. We’re inviting you also, if you have never been on the endinghumantrafficking.org website, go on over, find the resources, links in the show notes to things Alexis and I have talked about, the anti human trafficking certificate, all kinds of resources. If you’ve never become a subscriber, just click that. You won’t get a bunch of email but you will get show notes every two weeks when there’s a new conversation. We’ll be back in two weeks.
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