(Kari) 
Welcome to our webinar on how to build resilience when your job involves helping others in crisis my name is Kari Uhlman. I'm a Washington State EAP counselor. 

(Matt)
Hi my name is Matthew Gilbert I too am an EAP counselor. 

(Kari) Today what we're going to be talking to you about is how our mind and our bodies respond to stress when supporting others who are in crisis, we'll talk about possible impacts on your emotional and physical well-being, strategies to build resilience, and support and resources that are available to you. As we move through this webinar you may want to have a pen and paper or electronic device available so that you can capture a few ideas or take notes. Also if you find yourself feeling overwhelmed as we move through this webinar just know that you can reach out to EAP for additional support. Our number is eight seven seven three one three four four five five and also at the end of this presentation what we'll do is we'll talk further about the EAP services that we provide and how to connect with us. So let's begin. As you're joining us today you might be working with clients or customers, students, employees, or staff who are struggling and in crisis and as you're working to support others you may find yourself impacted by the significant stress, fear, and helplessness that they're experiencing and this stress might make it difficult for you to manage your emotions, focus at work or forget about work during your personal time, or you may be even struggling with sleep. The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and lost daily and not be touched by it’s as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet. So as caring humans the stress of helping others in crisis can impact us in significant ways and we want you to know that it's expected that you would have a reaction in a response as you're working with those that are in crisis and Matt and I as counselors we are in this with you as well. We know the challenges that come with working with others who are in crisis and we live with us every day and you know sometimes we have our struggles too so what we found is that there are some strategies that you can use so things that you can do that can help you be able to help yourself in order to help others so what we'll do today is that and I will talk about understanding a little bit more about what's going on internally for you and then we'll talk about some strategies that you can use to support yourself so that then you can support other people. So let's take a look at the impact that stress can have on us. 

(Matt)
Great thank you so much Kari. I think what I'd like to do is just start off by identifying survival mode and when we're in survival mode we are often in a physiological response it's referred to as the fight, flight, or freeze response. This is our body's primitive automatic natural response to prepare our bodies to fight, flee, or freeze from a perceived attack harm or threat to our survival. In many cases in our current world when this survival response is activated we cannot always flee, fight, or physically run from our perceived threats and when we are faced with this modern-day tiger or otherwise known as perceived threats. For example, perhaps you're working to support a student that may be in distress, an angry customer on the telephone, maybe it's a distraught constituent calling in to speak with their House Representative in an effort to provide support we work to stay engaged with a distressed person as we often sit in our offices or remain with our clients or students and attempt to control our own emotions and manage our own way through the experience itself we may even find that we are feeling like we have little to no control over ourselves and our environment so as a result stressors often present themselves in the form of fight, flight, or freeze and this may cause us to become occasionally aggressive, hyper-vigilant, over or under reactive which in turn causes us to act or respond in ways that can sometimes be counterproductive. When we work in a crisis driven environment our bodies can go into survival mode even when there isn't an emergency. Over time this can be very draining and it can also make it difficult to distinguish true emergencies from other types of non- emergent situations. Our bodies might be responding as if there's a tiger in front of us rather than the person who's actually in front of us. Is the person in front of us truly a threat as it would be facing a tiger in the world or our own accumulated stress more like this cat on the right side of the slide, simply a customer seeking support and maybe even some comfort? So let's talk more specifically about the stress that you might be experiencing when working with others who are in crisis and we're going to start off by looking at what's referred to as secondary traumatic stress otherwise known as vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma or secondary traumatic stress can result from working with someone who's been traumatized or when you are exposed to another person suffering and today Kari and I we're going to be talking about secondary traumatic stress in the context of your profession and being exposed to others dramatic stories and experiences as part of your job including the possible resulting development of your own traumatic symptoms and reactions. Secondary traumatic stress can change an empathetic helpers inner world and lens due to repeated engagement with others, experiences of grief and exposure to their trauma related experiences, thoughts and emotions in your work you may be exposed to others trauma or suffering during what's referred to as direct or indirect contact so let's take a closer look at what those two terms mean direct contact. Direct contact is when you have direct contact with those who are working directly with the person who is actually in crisis and this might include those who say work in law enforcement or Department of Corrections or DHS or the state hospitals both eastern and western state hospital or maybe it's the Department of Veterans Affairs and certainly schools and college personnel, victim service providers, mental health professionals, court personnel, medical professionals, ESD employees, employment security division employees, food handlers and so many other more professionals we just don't have time to identify in this presentation but all of you who work directly with those are in crisis are referred to as having direct contact with those who are suffering or traumatized. Now indirect contact are those that perhaps sometimes experience secondary trauma traumatic stress rather may not have that direct contact with those who are suffering from a particular crisis but perhaps they are exposed to the traumatic information through things such as reading case files or reviewing medical records or court reports or in some cases school records and certainly investigation meetings and other indirect exposures. Now there are certain vulnerability factors to consider there are in fact multiple vulnerability factors that put a professional at risk for experiencing secondary traumatic stress including perhaps even have your own personal history of experiencing trauma, a history of one's own mental health issues or experiencing what's referred to as moral distress such as the distress of a family member not being able to be present when their loved one is dying, struggles with addiction. Experiencing traumatic grief in the workplace such as the death of a colleague, friend, or co-worker or perhaps it's a fear of being threatened or even attacked at work and fear of personal health safety such as the concerns around being around those who are exposed to the coronavirus so these factors can put a person at a higher level of risk for experiencing secondary traumatic stress now repeated exposure to traumatic material or customer interactions during a pandemic can alter an employee's thoughts which can range from playing down the secondary trauma and in some cases I haven't realized what's happening at all to say feeling a shift in their beliefs about the world and their role and their perception of self in that role or in the world around us. So let's talk about some possible signs and symptoms of secondary traumatic stress. 

(Kari) 
Everyone experiences stress differently and here are six areas that you might be feeling experiencing stress or distress at this time. What I'd like to do is touch on each of these areas and notice for yourselves if you're experiencing any of these symptoms. Let's start with the emotional realm. The emotional experience of secondary traumatic stress can feel really painful and overwhelming. Emotions might include anger, sadness, anxiety, depression, feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, powerlessness. You might be experiencing irritability, mood swings, or possibly some emotional numbing. You might feel really distracted or emotionally exhausted or you could be having challenges with feeling sympathy or empathy towards others. In the cognitive realm cognitive symptoms can include intrusive thoughts or images repetitive images of the other person's trauma it might include difficulties making decisions, feeling cynical, difficulties with concentration, maybe some confusion. You could be experiencing a lowered self-esteem or possibly issues related to perfectionism. Behaviorally symptoms might include sleep disturbances such as difficulties getting to sleep or staying asleep or possibly nightmares, you might be struggling with feelings of loneliness, difficulty separating out work and personal life or perhaps engaging in some negative coping skills such as smoking drinking, over or under eating, acting out or maybe even binge shopping. Physical symptoms that one could experience might be headaches, stomachaches, body tension, body pain, you might be feeling very lethargic or on the other end of the continuum feeling hyper arousal just have your body just being very revved up, you might have increased fatigue or other physical pains. Here I just want to note that it's really important if you are having physical symptoms to check in with your doctor, your primary care doctor, if you or others are noticing that you're having symptoms that they're concerned about. Sometimes we don't notice that for ourselves it's other people that let us know. I think for this reason that this is important is when we're stressed sometimes we can just downplay what's happening to us physically and say oh it's just because I'm stressed that I'm having so many stomachaches. It's really important to get anything medically ruled out so something to consider around the physical realm. Spiritually symptoms can include a loss of hope, a decrease in sense of purpose, feeling disconnected from the world or feeling overwhelmed by the pain and suffering of so many across our nation and across the world. In the workplace you might be finding that you're wanting to avoid people, you're wanting to avoid clients or patients or students, your co-workers your colleagues or your supervisor, so that can happen when we're having symptoms of secondary traumatic stress, we want to avoid, we could also find ourselves being late for meetings, feeling a lack of motivation, a reduction in productivity and a reduction in job satisfaction. There are more symptoms we didn't of course go over all the symptoms that are possible so I just want to let you know that there's a PowerPoint presentation available on our website and it lists all more symptoms possible symptoms and so you just go to eap.wa.gov and click on COVID-19 resources and where you find this webinar you'll see a copy of this presentation and what I would encourage you to do is to look at the symptoms and just identify which you are experiencing at this time and so that if you find yourself having more symptoms in one area versus the other that gives you good information. For instance if you find yourself having mainly physical symptoms then it might be an indicator that it's good to go talk to your doctor. It might be that doing some things like changing your eating habits or getting more exercise might be beneficial to you. On the other hand if you're finding that your symptoms are mainly in the emotional realm that might be an indicator it's time to talk to a counselor or talk to a religious or spiritual leader that you find that you have in your life and so by identifying the types of symptoms that you have then you can create a plan so something to consider. So building resilience is key to managing secondary traumatic stress symptoms so now let's talk a little bit more about how to build resilience. Matt can you get us started? 

(Matt)
Absolutely thank you so much Kari. We're going to get started, let's begin. When we think about building resilience let's begin by defining the term resilience by definition resilience really is defined as a person's ability to quote unquote bounce back from hardships or difficult life situation in fact resilience often involves the interaction between a stressor of some kind and the individual’s ability to then overcome and work through that stressor resilient individuals are able to rebound from difficult situations all while regulating their own emotions devising and enacting a plan while continuing to interact in the world around them and perhaps currently you may not be feeling all that resilient today. Well just know that you can talk with an EAP counselor for support and to create a plan that's unique for you and your role and those life experiences. Now today Kari and I we will be offering ideas about how you can cultivate your well-being, practice self-efficacy, and build on pre-existing inner strengths and we're going to do this by focusing on six key areas finding meaning, optimism, self-awareness, mastery, self-care, and support and Kari's going to get us started with finding meaning. Thank You Kari.

(Kari)
So what do we mean by finding meaning? When we're talking about finding meaning we mean, I mean, making sense of what we're going through, understanding what your purpose is so let's start by looking at a quote by Viktor Frankl. In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds meaning. Right now with everything that you're going through it might feel difficult to find meaning in your current experience but what might be helpful to know is that psychological research shows that being able to find meaning in a difficult situation can help us build resilience. Viktor Frankl, a little bit of information about him as we just read his quote, he was a leading psychiatrist and is widely known for his groundbreaking work and work on the on finding meaning. He was a Holocaust survivor and he wrote about his perspective of living through this ordeal in his book Man's Search for Meaning. Frankl believes that finding meaning in everyday moments can enable trauma sufferers to think beyond their suffering so he believes that meaning can be found through many things like work, creativity, human inter-action and experience, and the manner in which we respond to suffering. So how do we find meaning, understanding and purpose, in these challenging times? Well for some of you this may feel really clear. You might be clear on what your purpose is and for many of you though it might require some reflection so you might consider asking yourself some questions and since we're looking at this from the perspective of work a few questions that you might ask yourself are what is important to me about the work that I'm doing right now? What is important to me about the work that I'm doing right now or what drives me to come to work? Thinking about these questions might be helpful for you to have a better sense of what your purpose is at this time. There are lots of ways that you could also reflect to help you gain a better understanding and sense of purpose. During these challenging times you might consider journaling or for some of you it might be art journaling using collage or drawing or something like that for more of a visual perspective, it might be talking with a trusted family friend, family member, friend, co-worker supervisor, maybe a religious or spiritual leader. For some of you it might be engaging in meditation or prayer or contemplation, you could also consider talking with a counselor such as an EAP counselor to help you discover and understand how to find meaning in these really difficult times and in the situation that you're in. So perhaps you know with your current in your current job the meaning that you're finding I think it can be helpful to think about you know examples of how people are finding meaning during these challenging times. So for you it might be that finding meaning your purpose right now is helping to support others or perhaps it's providing those who are in crisis with information or resources, it could be simply making someone's day or life a little bit easier or showing up to someone with kindness or compassion or it might be that the work that you're doing is not about you know your purpose it's not about the work that you're doing but it is about supporting yourself or your purpose is to support your family or to better your life your family's life or perhaps there's a goal that you have that you're working towards perhaps you're wanting to go back to school so you're saving up to be able to do that or you're interested in moving into a leadership or other position so the position that you're in right now is assisting you in your career path. So your purpose it’s individual to you but I think it can be beneficial to think about what your purpose is and take some time to reflect on this. Once you have a sense of your purpose another thing that you can do is to make it a little bit more concrete so you might want to write a few words about your purpose on a sticky note and have that somewhere that you can easily see while you're working, you might want to cut out a picture from a magazine or that you've downloaded from the internet that is a visual reminder of your purpose or a picture of a family member or something like that. You might consider maybe a rock or something like that as simple as that you have in your pocket that is there a reminder that when you touch the rock it reminds you of your purpose. It could be that you do something like take a little battery-operated candle and there's those little battery operated candles and you can take a sharpie and you can write on there your purpose and then you can have that candle that you turn on either at the beginning of your day or at key parts during your day to help remind you of your purpose. So it's just helpful to have a concrete way to have an ongoing reminder of your purpose and this can be an anchor for you as you're going through your day and you're meeting the different challenges that come up the difficult situations that come up throughout the day can continually bring you back to your purpose it can be one strategy to help you in being able to work with others that are in crisis. So another strategy or skill that you can develop to become more resilience is building optimism. 

(Matt) 
That's great. Thank You Kari. I appreciate that and as you just mentioned another important way to promote and improve upon being resilient really is the practice of optimism and optimism really is the skill of focusing on the positive and those things that you do have influence or control over without denying the negative or minimizing the impact. Optimistic people tend to generate motivation to work through a challenge improved positive moods, higher achievement, and a greater sense of control. They tend to feel better and perform better and they tend to have more positive relationships as a result. Optimist make quote/unquote lemonade out of lemons, they see the positive in most situations, and believe in their own strengths this quality can positively affect mental, emotional, and physical health. Being an optimistic is more than looking on the bright side and way of viewing the world that allows you to maximize your strengths and accomplishments and minimize your weaknesses and setbacks. Developing a more optimistic worldview can help you become more resilient. Optimism allows you to see the positive aspects of any situation and use it to your benefit. The good news is that optimism can be learned so let's talk about a couple strategies to help build upon being more optimistic. First identifying what you do have control over us is really important to create a list of what you do have control over at this time whether it's at work or at home and focus your thoughts and energy and think about what do I really have control or influence over in those two areas. Also you want to seek the positives outlook for the positives and focus more of your time and energy and your thought process on seeking those positives. For example you might feel closer to some of your colleagues as you feel united in the challenges that we're facing today you might be realizing that indeed you have inner strength, courage, and even more resilience than you originally thought you may have had or you may feel like you really help and support others who are facing significant challenges. Also reframe and replace negative thoughts. Consider reframing situations to appraise them or to imagine externalizing them and looking for the positives. In other words you want to avoid things like all-or-nothing thinking, over generalizing, jumping to conclusions without having all the evidence or all the facts or perhaps engaging in catastrophic or worst-case thinking. We want to where to replace those automatic negative, cognitive distortions or thoughts with thoughts that serve us. Here are a couple examples of what that might look like. For example here's a negative perspective, my manager did not acknowledge me in the team meeting today they are probably disappointed with my work the reframe would be something to the effect of I'm jumping to conclusions so far my manager has been pleased with my work and they may just be having a bad day. Here's another example of a negative perspective, I'll never get this project done on time, imagine what that feels like, I will never get this project I'm doing on time. Here's the reframe, if I remain focused and take it one step at a time eventually I will make progress. Okay here's one more, I don't want to tell my supervisor about my last call because it went so badly. Here's the reframe, even though my last call didn't go so well my supervisor can help me think through how it can go better next time so if you know when you experience a negative moment or a challenging moment you always have the opportunity to pause slow down and think about it through a different lens. Consider identifying a few key or perhaps repetitive negative thoughts that you've been having lately at work or in your personal life and think about how you might reframe them. Next we're going to take a closer look at how to increase another important resilient attribute and that is self-awareness. 

(Kari)
Yes, self-awareness is the ability to engage in reflective awareness to develop a sense of self and understand our own unique identity. So developing and enhancing our self-awareness helps us in our ability to be able to make decisions take responsibility for our actions and better handle negative emotions. With improved self-awareness we're more aware of the connection between our thoughts, our emotions and behavioral reactions and actions so as you increase your self-awareness you can become more aware of your reactions and then more effectively moderate them before your reactions take over the situation. Self-awareness includes an understanding of our personality, our own unique strengths and weaknesses, our likes and our dislikes and so there are many tools that we can use to help us develop a better understanding of our unique personality our unique self. You can gain self-awareness by taking personality tests such as the Myers-Briggs or the Enneagram. Another one you might consider is the Gallup Strengths Finder. There's a strengths assessment that you can take when you purchase the book Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton. They provide information on strengths that individuals have. There's also a code in there and you can go online and you can take a strength assessment and discover your top strengths. So that's just another avenue or a way to understand yourself better. I just want to let you know that at the end of this presentation there's a slide that has the resources on it so it does have the information around the book now discover your strengths in case you're interested in that but there's a lot of different options that you could consider so you could do one of those personality assessments, you could also do journaling writing or through art, self-help books, reading or talking to a counselor can help you gain self-awareness. For some individuals mindfulness meditation might be helpful, yoga, some of the body practices like yoga or Tai Chi, or Qi Gong might be helpful or there's other you know these are all avenues for increasing your awareness of your thoughts, your emotions and your physical body and then this increases your ability to know yourself and understand what's happening internally. So when we develop our self-awareness it can help us recognize when we're experiencing stress or pressure and then help us to create a plan to build our resilience. Another thing to consider is identifying what what's triggering you and so that you can create a plan. So with secondary traumatic stress this can cause people to either overreact to emotional stressors or possibly under react or numb out to stressors. So if you actively work to identify your emotional stressors you'll be bit better able to understand your triggers and come up with ways to deal with them. So consider for yourself identifying what are some of your potential work triggers and once you maybe create a few of those or a list of those whichever works best for you then you might reflect on you know one or two of them why is this triggering you and what's behind this? Perhaps you are helping those that are currently unemployed and you were unemployed in the past and so it brings up fears and worries that you have that you remember from the past and so you know that's kind of what's happening internally for you. So understanding why this trigger why this is triggering you can be really helpful. The next thing to consider is to know what is your reaction to the trigger. So for some people they might shut down, they might feel the urge to you know run away or leave the situation, might feel upset, angry, sad, tearful you know what are the reactions that you're having to this particular trigger and then once you've kind of reflected on those pieces then that helps you to be able to consider okay what kind of plan do I need to have in place in order for me to be able to navigate through these triggers? You know when you're confronted with these triggers. What's a plan and it might be that you have you know something around you that comforts you or something around you that reminds you of your purpose as we talked about earlier, maybe it's something that you talked to your supervisor about and help you know get a plan based on talking with your supervisor, perhaps you meet with EAP e to help you come up with a plan to be a thought partner to help you come up with a plan around these triggers. So increasing your awareness of potential triggers and then creating a plan it can be really a helpful tool in navigating the stressors that you're experiencing in your current job. Daniel Goleman, a psychologist specializing in self-awareness and emotional intelligence, he believes that people with a solid sense of self-awareness generally also have more confidence so we thought it would be helpful to talk more about self-confidence and mastery. 

(Matt)
That's right Kari. You know mastery it's just another important strategy to promote tapping into our resilience and it's really two-pronged. The first component of mastery refers to one's ability to have the knowledge and skill set necessary to complete one's job satisfactory successfully and satisfactorily. The second component of mastery refers to having the ability to regulate the negative emotions that often accompany doing one's job and having mastery over job skills as well as one's negative emotions builds confidence and self-worth which can then protect one from feeling overwhelmed. Self-efficacy or confidence is the optimistic self-belief and our combined our own competence or chances of successfully accomplishing a task and producing a favorable outcome. Self-efficacy plays a major part in determining our chances for success. In fact some psychologists rate self-efficacy above talent in the recipe for success. In order to build self-efficacy and your resilience it requires us to gain experience in overcoming obstacles through effort and perseverance. A source of creating self-efficacy can be through observing our role models, seeing others similar to ourselves who have succeeded by their sustained effort raises our beliefs that we too possess the capabilities to master activities needed to be successful. Consider who in your workgroup or school or agency might be role models or perhaps it's someone in your life or perhaps someone in our culture today that you can look to you as a role model. What qualities do they demonstrate? What makes them a role model and what characteristics might you emulate? There's another idea associated with mastery. That's referred to as imaginal experiences. A psychologist James Maddux has suggested another way to build self-efficacy and that is through imaginal experiences this is the art of visualizing yourself behaving effectively or successfully in any given situation and it's similar to an Olympic or professional athlete visualize yourself managing difficult experiences with ease or responding with confidence compassion and in some ways it helpful it's helpful to look at that crisis through the lens of imagining an outcome to help you further achieve those goals and objectives. Next we're going to talk about self-care and Kari is going to help us with that. Right Kari?

(Kari)
Yeah, thanks Matt, so stress affects many aspects of our lives physically, emotionally, personally, professionally. It affects relationships we develop with others and with ourselves. Self-care is not just a matter of exercising or getting enough rest, all those things are really important, it also involves being attuned to your needs and having healthy boundaries too. So as much as we can we need to view self-care as a preventative measure and not just something that we do when we're feeling overwhelmed to continually utilize self-care. We cannot take care of others as we've talked about earlier unless we take care of ourselves first. So self-care is not a selfish act. I just want to put that out there that it's really important to be able to serve others, to take care of ourselves. On the screen in front of you see a self-care wheel that I just wanted to go over and the self-care wheel includes six different components the psychological, emotional, spiritual, personal, professional, and physical and I want to let you know that you can download this self-care wheel at www.OlgaPhoenix.com and it can be used for educational purposes. So you can feel free to download it. There's also another version of this that is blank so that you can add in your own self-care ideas. So on the screen in front of you these are just some possible ideas in each particular category of things that someone might do for each of those categories and the concept of this self-care wheel is say for instance you're not getting exercise you're not taking care of yourself physically then that part of the wheel might be a little bit off-balance so if you think about this wheel rolling down the road if one or more those parts of the wheel are out of balance then the wheel is really wobbly and so by thinking about all these categories when we're thinking of self-care you can just be beneficial to keep us in balance. So consider downloading the self-care wheel if that's something that feels that would be helpful for you. For some of you, this wheel might be completely overwhelming. There might be too many categories or the names of the categories might not fit for you so I just want you to know you can of course create your own self-care wheel by just pen and paper creating your own self-care wheel or you could make a list and just make a list of things that would be helpful for you. If you're feeling really overwhelmed you might be finding that it's hard to think about self-care right now. Just know that it can just take a few seconds so it might just be standing outside for a moment, it might be just glancing out the window at the birds for a little while so you can have things on your self-care wheel or plan that only take a few moments. It might be just eating a little bit healthier or you know it might be something more encompassing such as the self-care wheel whatever feels the right for you in the moment that you're at. You might consider taking your self-care wheel or your plan and putting it on your refrigerator or somewhere where you can easily see it so that it's right in front of you easy to access for those times where it's a little bit more challenging or really challenging and that can be really helpful. There's so much more we could talk about self-care and we actually have a self-care webinar that you can watch on-demand or live so if you go to eap.wa.gov and click on COVID-19 Resources then you'll see our a variety of our webinars and you can look for the self-care webinar and watch that anytime on demand so to help you build or maintain resilience see it's really important to also talk about support so Matt's going to help us think a little bit more about supports in our life.

(Matt)
That's right Kari, thank you. Yeah supports its it really is another important attribute practicing being resilient and what I mean by that is having or building a support system so let's review a few ideas just to kind of help promote some ways to help you find that support. For example you might consider having a buddy system the Washington State Department of Health the Department of Human Services as well as the CDC or the Center for Disease Control and Prevention all suggest using a buddy system as an effective method for those being deployed say to hazardous situations or zones as a strategy to decrease burnout in stressful work situations. Similarly you could identify a person in your work area and maybe talk to them about this idea of creating a buddy system. You could each commit to formally or setting on a scheduled time together to meet or maybe informally just kind of checking in dropping in and looking out for each other. Together you could talk about your experiences, you can encourage healthy habits, you can acknowledge challenges or you might help each other problem-solve, and identify other strategies to help find a stress relief. This is of course not a replacement for a professional support or counseling but it really is a way to informally create a support system. Having someone from your work area to might be helpful as they have an understanding of what you're going through. Also consider collaboration you know collaborating as a team collaboration is an essential piece of being what it means to be resilient in the workplace. When we're stressed relationships are often impacted and you might find that some relations relationships begin to break down and individuals can sometimes either splinter into smaller groups or in some cases isolate themselves altogether. Often you can see people begin to see the world in terms of us against them or even worse in terms of me against you. Consider how your team can let me work more collaboratively together and support each other. Also remember that not everyone reacts to stress in the same way so do your best to let go of those judgments and maybe even show some compassion you know necessarily know what other stressors your teammates or events that your teammates are struggling with both personally and or professionally so it's also important to be mindful and thoughtful about those differences that the two of you may have whether it's perspective, culture things like that seek and utilize supports and support systems. You know for some of you may want to reach out to family or friends for support and others may feel like I don't want to be a burden on my family or my friends or maybe you don't feel like they have the family or friends that they can lean on at this time. Just know that there are options available such as the ones we've already talked about but also virtual support groups that you can find online for example NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the 12-step program for example. Sometimes it's just most beneficial to me to reach out to a professional who has some knowledge and experience design to really support you and where you're at. If you're having physical symptoms which you and/or others may find concerning please, please consult with your physician. Most doctors’ offices are providing telehealth or other access for treatment or have nurse hotlines established where you can ask preliminary questions. We're hearing of some people avoiding going to medical doctors’ offices or in some cases the emergency room due to concerns around COVID-19 or not wanting to burden professionals. Listen if you are having a medical emergency please continue doing those things that you would have done pre-COVID attend to your doctor can reach out to your physician at attend or go to the emergency room or call 9-1-1 as needed. If you're currently working with a mental health counselor or have a history of working with a mental health counselor continue to seek out that support schedule your appointment or schedule an appointment and reach out for support. Remember your mental health needs are just as important as your physical health needs and of course we at the EAP we're also here to support you. We're going to talk a little bit more in detail about your EAP benefits and the supports and resources that are available to you, Kari. 

(Kari) 
Yeah, thanks Matt. So we want you to know that we are here for you. You can contact EAP by calling eight seven seven three one three four four five five and when you call us you'll be connected to one of our wonderful intake professionals and they will guide you through the process to get connected to a counselor. This service is free and confidential. It's available to you. It's available to your adult household members so family members in your household that are 18 or older can also call that number. If you have children or adolescents that you have concern about then you can call us as a caregiver and we'll talk to you about you know what you're concerned about support you help you come up with a parenting plan or help you get connected to the appropriate resources for the age of the child or the adolescent. Right now what we're doing is we're meeting with clients over the phone or over the web so just know that services are still available to you and that we want to keep everyone safe and we have counselors available from throughout the state and so there's a counselor in your local area but also we're meeting over the phone so it might be someone who might not be in your local area as well. These are expert professionals that are here to provide practical help and we can help with everyday concerns whether they're small or they're there you feel that you're are and they're more in a crisis everything in between. We are here to provide caring and compassionate and respectful care to you that is culturally relevant and really looking at you as the whole person so we look at you from your personal self and also from your work self and just you as a human and so please know that you can reach out to us by calling that number eight seven seven three one three four four five five. Another option is you can go to our website its eap.wa.gov and when you go to our website you can also connect with us that way. You'll see online referral requests. So if you would rather than wanting you know if you're not wanting to call someone here at EAP you can go online to that online referral request, enter your information, hit the submit button and then an intake professional will give you a call back to help you schedule an appointment. Also on our website we have a lot of information there you can sign up for one of our monthly newsletters. We have a newsletter for employees. We have a newsletter for supervisors. We have information on suicide prevention, we have other on-demand webinars that could be very beneficial and other information that's there. Also if you go to that same website eap.wa.gov and then click on COVID-19 Resources. You'll see that we have other webinars both live and on-demand that are available to you and we're always adding new webinars up there. We'll be repeating many of the webinars. We'll be adding new ones so you might consider bookmarking that page the COVID-19 resources page so you can come back and see what's new, what new information or webinars are listed up there. Speaking of information at the bottom of that COVID-19 resources page you have to scroll down a little bit but there's a lot of information and resources that you that could be beneficial to you there's it for me if you're in a partnership, there's information for family members, you know being a parent there's information on domestic violence, mental health, drug and alcohol and for veterans so just a lot of information available on that webpage so I encourage you to check out the COVID 19 resources web page. Well it has been a pleasure to be with you here today and to talk to you a little bit more about how to some strategies to support yourself as you're supporting others. I just want to say thank you so much for the work that you're doing. I so appreciate all the work that you're doing in the world and Matthew it's been a pleasure to work with you here today, thank you.

(Matt) 
Thank you Kari and just to echo your sentiment I do just want to thank you for allowing me to be a part of this conversation and to thank all of you that are listening in today to this particular and important webinar. Thank you and we wish you all the best and we hope that you do find us in the future in one of our future live webinars as well as possibly even reaching out to the EAP personally. Thank you so much and carry on and have a good day thank you thank you everyone.