Heidi McBratney is an expert in traumatic stress as well as various other modalities in healing the soul back to wholeness. She has practiced counselling, energy medicine techniques and has been teaching for more than 30 years. In this episode, Heidi talks about how simple things, such as taking a deep breath, can be a very powerful tool in guiding people through crises.
Heidi guides and supports people in the process of developing their innate ability to grow and flourish from difficult situations, and establish a new life path with balance, clarity and overall health. She has taught awareness and recovery from trauma for various educational facilities, organizations and agencies.
She focuses on providing guidance on how to support oneself and one’s community in achieving balance as well as peace of the mind, body and soul. She has worked with a variety of communities, including those with mental health concerns, criminal histories, survivors of disaster and other life traumas.
With a master’s degree in Counselling Psychology, Heidi is a certified member of the Ontario Association of Mental Health Professionals, a diplomate member of the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, and a compassion fatigue specialist through the International Institute of Traumatology.
Heidi believes that the more simple the guidance, the more powerful the impact. She emphasises the need to minimise the load of daily information intake and encourages to slow down in order to practice focusing on one thing at the time.
According to Heidi, a good leader is not someone who has the answers, but someone who can hold oneself in balance. She states that being in balance during unpredictable and unknown situations starts with knowing that we’re all in this together. She thinks that what makes us good leaders is admitting our vulnerabilities, while doing our best encouraging others.
“Sometimes actually just being present is the problem solving itself,” Heidi notes.
She values the use of humor and believes that having a good laugh to releasing stress hormones in the midst of a crazy situation. She invites everyone to bring awareness to the acts of kindness that are happening while the world is standing still.
If you’re interested in learning more about Heidi, send me a DM and I’ll put you in touch with her.
- [Narrator] Welcome to Leading Through Crisis, a conversation series exploring the idea of leadership in challenging times.
- Hi and welcome to Leading Through Crisis, I'm Celine Williams and I'm joined today by a dear friend of mine, Heidi McBratney. Heidi has worked as a counselor and a consultant for individuals, families and companies to assist all in reaching their maximum potential despite life situations. She finds that the more simple the guidance, the more powerful the impact and first off, Heidi, thank you for joining me, I'm really excited to talk to you about this.
- Thank you Celine.
- Absolutely and I actually wanna start with that idea that the more simple the guidance, the more powerful the impact, especially now when I think there's a lot of information and a lot of noise around how to manage yourself or others or whatever the situation in these kinds of unknown times. So I'd love to talk about this idea of keeping it simple.
- Let's start where you said there's a lot of information right now and I think any of us who open our emails, there'll be literally hundreds of emails that come from all kinds of directions about what's going on or turning on news. So it's too much, I want you to think about us as a computer and we're inputting so much information so quickly right now 'cause we're in a massive transition that the computer is getting overloaded. So we actually have to stop that computer, slow it down, not try and run multiple programs at the same time because it's gonna slow the computer being able to process it all. So we really wanna just go to one focus at a time, how do we do that? What does it mean? What's it simple? Simple is one, breathe and what I mean by breathing is as leaders, we have to be the example 'cause people are looking for us to be that pillar of strength, that pillar of light, because they're thrown off of balance right now. And we could have long conversations with people about how to do that but most of that's gonna get lost in the translation, that's more information being inputted into the computer that adds to the overwhelm. So if we just can be the leaders who just exemplify that calm, that we have our own feelings, that yes, we may have our uncertainties and we start breathing and we'd be doing that consciously. It's a very simple thing and we think, how can something so simple, be so powerful? And I am gonna give the analogy of using a paramedic. Paramedic goes on the scene, people are in crisis, they've been in a car crash or there's upset there. And if you say to that person, calm down, it's not gonna happen, they're gonna go up through the roof. Any of us know that when someone's told us to calm down is we wanna kill that person. And, but if that paramedic just starts a conversation, so what's your name? And just basic stuff, they distract off to something else. So do you have any kids? Totally nothing to do with what's going on and they keep aware of being that calm, the paramedic. Eventually what happens is a person who's really heightened starts to come up to that level and calm also. The paramedic is doing that purposely to help that person find their balance, their alignment again. So as leaders, if we can find our alignment just by being that alignment and being conscious of it and breathing, we're gonna support the people around us 'cause they're gonna call in a panic or what do we do? Or how do we solve this situation? Or what might even be going on personally, their own doubts and concerns in this time. It's if as the leader, we're just there and we'd be very present with them, just present, hearing them, we don't even have to problem solve it, that sometimes actually just being present is the problem solving itself. Because that way that person almost has that sounding board, that we're acknowledging them, we're having some support and compassion in just hearing their concerns and we can be as simple as kind of going, yeah, I hear it's really uncertain times right now, yeah, I hear we're all trying to figure it out right now and none of us have answers and we're all in this together and we truly are, at a worldwide level, in this together. So are you okay if I explain a bit about why breathing is important? I wanna give a bit of a technical so that the leaders understand why does, why would this make sense. So in our human bodies, we have four brains and there's the brain that allows us, our heart to beat and to breathe and we have a limbic brain that's responsible for the basic survival of life, making sure we have food, making sure that we're safe and in there is called a fight, flight, freeze system, then we have the neocortex that allows us to learn and problem solve all the things we do in our daily jobs and then our frontal lobe at the top, also nicknamed the God brain, which is more seen in people who do a lot of meditation, a lot of breathing. A lot of us, especially in times of uncertainty, are living mostly from the limbic brain, that fight, flight, freeze system, where like, haaaa, it's an actual physical system, it's not just an emotional thing. That system is kicking out cortisol and adrenaline and running and different hormones that start to run our system and it causes us to see, perceive from only a way, a place of danger and so many people are seeing danger right now but if you look at our world factually, it's actually very calm. The roads are calm, I went to Costco the other day, it was the best experience ever in Costco, 'cause they had these ordered lineups and only so many people at a time and people were respectful of each other and it was like, oh yeah, regularly gonna Costco is insane. So it's changes our perception. When we start breathing, the way I'm suggesting, deep breaths and we keep that vibration high is you're allowing your physical system to go out of the limbic brain and move out of there into the neocortex or into the God brain where we can have a different perception, where we can look and kind of go, you know, actually the world's kind of calm. People aren't always calm but the world's a little bit calm right now. So that's one. The other thing that I would suggest is look at how nature works. Again, a very simplistic idea. So an example is going to be, we've had a lot of rain the last few days where we are is, you don't hear the birds out a lot. Right now, it's springtime so the birds are out but when it's raining, you don't hear them. Why? Because they've gone and they've hunkered down, they found a little safe, cuddly spot and they're just hanging out. They're not trying to make things happen, they're just hanging out and riding the wave of the storm and as soon as the storm stops, the rain stops, you hear them, and now they're all excited, they're gonna go get the worms and all that, they're very busy then. We're in a bit of a storm right now and part of what we need to do is hunker down, be still a little bit more, not try and make everything happen the way we're used to happening and we can't, even if we tried, 'cause our world is in self isolation right now and we're starting to find that stillness. And so if as supporting other people, we can encourage them to find that stillness inside them because that's all that there is, hunkered down through the storm right now, ride through the storm and that there's gonna be rainbows after the storm, there's gonna be lots of worms to gather after the storm but right now we just gotta relax and be in it. But one other simple thing I would say is use humor. We're in difficult times and when we're in panic, when that limbic brain is active and we're seeing all in a negative way, we're watching the news we're waiting for the next thing, what's gonna happen? We wanna have some control yet none of us have any control right now. So we wanna go and find the funny stuff and the humor in it and I think I've seen some of that, I'm not on social media but my partner is and he was showing me some of the funniest stuff that people are coming out with now and it's just this really good laugh in the midst of a crazy situation, right? And as leaders, I think we need to do that more. We need to find that different perspective where we can laugh and say, well, I guess all the meetings we planned, that's all gone to hell in the pot, nothing we can do about that now and we laugh about it. Now, I remember one of my own personal experiences was when I was down at 9/11, 'cause I got called down to 9/11 to be part of the trauma teams that were supporting and so at the time I went down, it was only six days after the buildings fell at The World Trade Center. And so we were witness to quite a few things that were very difficult and very traumatic but we would come back and gather at night for a couple hours sleep, which you didn't really sleep 'cause you had too much going through your mind, much like all of us right now and you would use this black humor. And we almost got kicked out of where we were staying because we were laughing so hard. Now, if an outsider who had no idea what we were doing during the day heard us, they would have thought we were just weird, awful people but it was a way to release all that tension and stress hormones, the cortisol or the adrenaline so it could go out. We need ways to do that so humor, walk, as leaders, if someone's, I know we're doing social distancing but walk with us, like if you're on the phone with one of your supports, say, okay, let's go and walk together even though you're nowhere close to each other, you could be in different countries, go and walk around your house or walk around your building 'cause that walking is starting to release those stress hormones. And again as we're and we can tell the people why we're doing that, we're doing that 'cause we need to release, we need to release off some stuff so we can find that breath again and that balance, that stillness. Can I give a different perspective that I think you probably know Celine is,
- Absolutely.
- Our world is kind of, our world's in isolation but is it? There's some pretty amazing stuff happening right now and these are things that they've been shown and if you listen for it, instead of all the hard horrific stuff, you see the kindnesses that people are doing for each other, making sure seniors and their communities are taken care of or people who may be have the COVID and we're delivering food at their door, not meeting them, here you go, so that they're taken care of. We're seeing all of these acts of kindness of humanness come through and we need to bring our awareness to that because what happens when panic sets in is we don't see that. We only see that like. In our world, this amazing stuff is happening. Like in China, they can see blue skies for the first time in decades 'cause of the release of the smog. Our emissions are down, there's dolphins swimming in the Venice Canal that they've never seen before and someone I talked to today is from India and they said they just saw dolphins off the coast of India. They've never, ever seen dolphins off the coast of India. Now, if that's possible where our world has had to become a little still in one week Celine, that's one week where it's cleared up this world so much that nature is responding. Wow, we're powerful human beings if we find that stillness and so, as people supporting people, we wanna remind them how to find that, how to pull out of that panic, what we can do is we listen to them 'cause sometimes we just need to kind of like mamamamama, burn it all out, get it out so that we can take that deep breath. Okay, good, now that I've gotten all that out of the way, now I can breathe again. So these are the simple things that we don't think about 'cause we're used to using our neocortex, got a problem, solved, got a problem solved, well, there's no way to problem solve this one. You're not gonna fix what's happening but you're going to solve what's happening in here and you can show people how to solve that by doing it first yourself. So your breath, finding a stillness, releasing the stress hormones in whatever way you do that. Taking a walk, working out in your own house sort of thing before encouraging the people you're supporting, work off that energy that's all pent up in there. My husband, we were joking, 'cause we were frustrated with something and we said, do you remember Bozo the clown? And this might be past your generation Celine but Bozo the clown was a plastic bozo that had sand in the bottom and you punched him and it would come back at you. And so Blair, who his partner, it was just his birthday. So Amazon is great, I ordered them a Bozo the clown. And so we have a Bozo the clown now and so we can go and just get some of that energy out and so that we can find that stillness again inside. So one is, I want people to realize that what's happening is not just an emotional thing, it's a physiological thing but they have power with their physiology and they have power with their emotions and first start with the physiology 'cause that's the easiest place to start 'cause if you help manage the physiology, you help manage the emotions. If you get out of that excess energy, you're gonna be able to be calmer and you're gonna be able to see a different perception that we kind of go, hmm, okay, yes part of me is scared but what's really reality here? 'Cause is everyone I ask is, who do you know who has COVID? And there's very few people who know someone, it's really interesting. Right?
- Yeah.
- And those, sometimes that very factual stuff helps give us a new perspective.
- I agree, I love that you shared all that because I'm one of those people that if I know the facts, the details, the information, if my thinking brain is like, okay, phew, there's some science, whatever you wanna call it behind it, then I can lean into whatever the suggestion is or the idea is a lot more powerfully because it's not just an idea that's come from my brain, if that makes sense. So I love that you presented all of that. I have to say the changing the physiology and change in, I used to know someone who, I don't remember if it was someone I worked with but they would always say, if anyone was getting upset or reactive or stuff was happening, they would be like, change your state, change your state and they would get you to get up and do a jumping jack or walk around wherever you were 'cause the whole thing was, you change your physical state, you change your emotional state. So, you can't get yourself out of it they would just clap at you and go "change it." And it was very supportive, I'm making it sound aggressive but it was a very supportive thing to remind you that, oh yeah, I can do this. I can do some jumping down, whatever it is. A very powerful reminder that there are ways that we can do it for ourselves and we can actually lead people to do it for themselves as well.
- Absolutely.
- And I did just want to say that you're I think one of the challenges that I hear from leaders is around the idea of just being, because they are so used to always it's, they are doers, they are problem solvers, they always have the answer, they're the go to person and that, just being is uncomfortable for them, I think more than the average person, truthfully, quite often. And the question I would have for you is, for people that are struggling with that, for leaders who are not a hundred percent comfortable in that being state is there and I recognize breathing and some of those things but are other, any, anything that they can do to get more comfortable with it?
- So, it sounds maybe a little funny but to make the practice of being, something they have to do. So it's, again, it's a shift in that perception so they're still doing something, they're doing the being. They're, doing the breathing, they're doing the release of the energy in the physiology. They're doing the having to listen and be present to someone and knowing that, just doing that is what's helping that person problem solve. So it becomes a shift in the perception of the leader.
- Right
- Because if we think about leaders, yes they do, they're very active people, you and I know that, they accomplish a lot but to be able to accomplish a lot, they are the visionaries. So they've had a vision and all they're doing is following the vision. So all the doing that they do is activating what they've already envisioned about where they wanna get to. Well, right now you wanna get to calming the people you're supporting. So you have to have the vision of seeing it calm and seeing yourself calm and then that leads you into the doing and the doing is actually the being.
- I hate the term hacks. Like I don't like but I like that it's almost a hack for an overthinking brain to get around right. So much as I don't like the term, it actually really applies here, it's very effective in this case. Is there anything, before we wrap this up, that you would want to add to this conversation or suggest or that we didn't get to that you wanna offer as part of this concept and this conversation around leading through crisis?
- I wanna say that, I think as leaders, if you hold this in a way that is as balanced as it can be in what feels very unknown and unpredictable is to know that number one, we're all in the same boat. So no one is going to expect you to have all the answers, even though they wish you had all the answers as a leader but we're all sitting in that same boat right now. What differentiates maybe a leader is not someone who has the answers but someone who can hold themselves in some sort of what you perceive or other people perceive as a balance that you can get that ease or that breath. So I think that's what makes us leaders and to admit that we have our vulnerabilities too. I'm doing my best, we're all going to do our best and encourage that we're all in this together and it's unknown times and we're all gonna walk this together and find what the new way is going to be 'cause we're all gonna think differently after this, all 7 billion people of us and how we do our work, that whatever we're involved in, we're gonna think differently about it and there's a real positive to that because we're all coming, we're being pushed into a stillness right now whether we like it or not, we're scared of it or not. So there's a whole big learning curve going on whether you wanted to learn it or not, you're gonna learn it.
- Yes.
- And what we as leaders can do is we take advantage of that, we take advantage of this unknown place knowing that we don't have a choice so let's ride the wave and so I want you to think about a wave, this, let's ride this wave and learn how to be really good surfers and keep practicing so we ride on top of the wave and let us let it carry us in and we teach the people that we're supporting, how to ride that wave also and IE this too will pass and there'll be changes from this and we don't know what those changes are. There will be changes and we'll all find a new way of being together. So that plus side of what can seem like the negative, the other one thing I'm going to say that seems like an obvious but I'm gonna state it is, pay attention to what you're paying attention to. So if you're paying attention to all the statistics and scary stuff, guess what that's gonna do to your physiology? It's gonna just activate the whole thing. Put on good music, dance around your place where you live. I saw the other day, there was on social media, it was in Italy and of course they can't get together 'cause they're all in self isolation. So guys up on his balcony and he's pouring the wine bottle down to someone holding their glass two stories down. That's fantastic, what a great way to be together.
- Yeah. It's, I've been doing, there are choreographers who are offering dance classes on Instagram live and I'm every day I'm like, I'm gonna do it with different dance instructors. All these people, I don't know but it's a fun thing to do. So there is still a lot of positivity and I think it's a great reminder to be mindful of what we're consuming and what we're putting in and knowledge is power so knowing some of the statistics so that you have facts as opposed to not facts, I fully appreciate that but if all you're reading is that news, then it, to your point, maybe resets how and what you're consuming and when because it does affect you. Like that's a really powerful and important reminder right now, more than ever. I wanna thank you for taking the time out to chat with me about this. In the show notes for this recording, there will be a way for people either to contact you or to contact me and I will put them in touch with you because I recognize that you don't have social media, but Heidi is available to talk to people, if they want any help managing themselves or companies are looking for help, at this time Heidi is available and I'd be happy to contact, put you in contact with each other as part of this. So again, thank you so much for sharing your expertise and taking the time out to chat with me, I very much appreciate you.
- Well, thank you Celine and I wanna thank all the people out there who are leaders by just being the best version of themselves that they can be in any given situation and I wanna thank you all for helping other people to remember how to do that for themselves.
- Well, thank you, I appreciate you.
- Thank you Celine and me you.
- [Narrator] Thanks for listening to us talk around leadership in challenging times. If you would like to learn more about us or any of our guests, you can find us online at www.leadingthroughcrisis.ca If you like the show, please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts from.