A Hero's Welcome Podcast

Trauma Response: Supporting Mental Health Clinicians in Crisis

• Maria Laquerre-Diego, LMFT-S, RPT-S & Liliana Baylon, LMFT-S, RPT-S • Season 2

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When tragedy strikes a community, mental health professionals rush to provide support—but who supports them? This candid conversation explores the often-overlooked challenges faced by therapists in the aftermath of a recent mass shooting in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

We dive into the harsh reality that mental health providers are expected to function as first responders without receiving the recognition, resources, or support given to other emergency personnel. Despite carrying traumatic stories day after day, therapists are left to navigate their emotional responses while continuing to show up for clients in crisis. As one provider notes, "We had trauma caseloads before this incident in our community. This is just an added layer."

The discussion reveals the systemic failures that leave clinicians vulnerable during community crises. Professional associations collect dues and enforce regulations but remain absent when therapists need advocacy and support. Insurance companies impose arbitrary session limits that contradict everything research tells us about trauma recovery timelines. Meanwhile, clinicians are expected to practice "self-care" without the structural support that would make it possible.

What might meaningful support look like? Simple gestures such as providing meals during crisis periods, coffee deliveries, massage therapy vouchers, or movie tickets for mental breaks can acknowledge the humanity of those expected to be endlessly available. Beyond individual actions, the conversation calls for policy changes recognizing the marathon nature of trauma work and providing long-term resources to sustain those doing this essential healing work.

Share your ideas for realistic ways to support mental health clinicians during community crises. Together, we can create better care systems for those who care for everyone else.

A Hero's Welcome Podcast © Maria Laquerre-Diego & Liliana Baylon

Liliana Baylon:

hello everyone. I'm even thinking is it a hello? It is a hello for everyone who's listening and unfortunately, we're going to have a conversation that, for all of us in mental health, is becoming the norm. So one of the reasons why we are here in this special episode is that I know something happened within maria's community. Maria, do you want to share what happened for our listeners?

Maria Diego:

Yeah, thank you. So let's see, we're recording this on a Tuesday, so Friday. Just a few days ago we had a mass shooting at one of our local parks here in my community. At this time, three individuals have died from this mass shooting and there's 15 more with injuries from it. Those affected ranged I want to say that it's from 16 through adulthood. This was an unsanctioned kind of car meetup event at a very popular park here in town that ended up really tragically, resulting in at least three lives lost.

Liliana Baylon:

So everyone who's listening just notice what's happening in your body, because it doesn't have to be this specifics, but all of us have attended to something in our community similar to this. So, then, the idea that prompted this episode, when Maria and I were doing check-ins, is how do we hold space for our community when our community is impacted by trauma, right?

Maria Diego:

Fortunately, it's becoming more and more the norm for our society and our communities to experience these Right Like I, would consider Las Cruces a very small town. It pretends to be a big city because we're the second most populous city in our state, but that means nothing. If you've been here, we're still very much a small town, and this has really rocked our community. It's the first major incident like this that I've been here for.

Liliana Baylon:

So, as we're holding space, as mental health therapists, for our clients, for our communities, for our neighbors, it doesn't matter what trauma it was. Then what we're discussing is we tend to, as mental health therapists, we tend to like jump in into action and rescue when in reality, we need to do a step back. Or, as Lisa and Diane will say, can you have a dual attention? Yeah, and we do a step back and a structure of what is it that is needed, right? So you were talking when I was doing a check-in with you on how the community and your agency was shocked.

Liliana Baylon:

So we went to the shell shock, the anticipatory anxiety, which obviously I cannot talk this morning, right. But then we tend to see the floodgates open. So we're getting so much information, we get bombarded from the news, the phone calls. If you are in social media groups, everyone wants to jump in and either say something or offer something. So then most of us who are in it, when you think about the eye of the tornado, when you're in it, we're looking up in. When will normal life resume? Yeah?

Maria Diego:

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely yeah. And we you know this happens late on a Friday night there was, you know, investigations and calls for information throughout all of Saturday. Sunday, there was turnout at the park for memorials, for, you know, support, again trying to request information from anyone who might have been there, right. But it's all this kind of flurry of activity and, you know, in our community, gathered together they held like a resource spot where people could come for resources and it really didn't start to hit the rest of the community until Monday morning, right, when we all had to go back, we had to get ready to go to work, we had to get ready to take the kids to school and suddenly, at least for us, we were then bombarded, me both personally and through work contacts. You know, my, my child knew someone who was there. You know that was a cousin of a family member. That was my cousin.

Maria Diego:

What do I do? Where do I go? Who can I see? Because, right, like on a weekend, real life is kind of suspended. So it really wasn't until Monday for a lot of people not everybody, but for a lot of people that it was like oh no, this was something real. I'm starting to see the immediate impact of this. And, like what do I do, I'm starting to see the immediate impact of this.

Liliana Baylon:

And like what do I do? So then, to put it in a structure for everyone who's listening? Right, the floodgates open and then it's how do we answer the call? Who do we know in the personal level, who got affected in the community level, and how do we respond to it, especially when we're being tasked as mental health therapists? Somehow we automatically in the fine print we did not read, which is how are we going to be answering to caring for our community In this moment?

Liliana Baylon:

It's not, and I'm going to go very political here. Here is not. The politicians who are answering, who always want to answer with you, are in our prayers. To the administrations we tend to cut a lot of resources, yeah, and to agencies who are struggling to provide these services to our community because we don't have what we need. Yeah, absolutely Right, in that task, again that all of us and we can laugh, laugh, not like I'm crying, but I'm not crying which was in our master's program, very tiny lines, which is you will be tasked for caring your community, for caring for your community, but in that, how do how, are we mindful and balance all of this?

Maria Diego:

Right, it's difficult, right. So there is this immediate surge of other resources trying to step in and be helpful, which I'm not knocking and it is necessary, it is helpful. But we also know that there's kind of a delayed impact on the trauma response sometimes. And how do I? You know, I own a group practice, I have kids in this community, my family lives in this community. How do we be mindful in our response? How do I stay balanced and stay, you know, taking care of myself while providing that support? And it's, you know, it is interesting how different sectors I'm going to call them in our communities respond to these things.

Maria Diego:

It's Tuesday, it's only Tuesday, this right now, but I've gotten three different phone calls requesting interviews on the impact of trauma and EMDR and if that's helpful in situations like this, which are fantastic opportunities. But that is not my priority right now. Right, like, I need to make sure that my therapists are okay because they're seeing session after session and most of them right now are trauma after trauma. Right, we had trauma caseloads before this incident in our community. This is just an added layer that you know. We couldn't have anticipated this.

Maria Diego:

And how do I you know we were chatting before like, how do I stay balanced and mindful? Because, yes, the helper part of me wants to like, rush in and give all the things and you and I know, and in all of our conversations, like that's not the answer, that doesn't serve long-term. And so how do we navigate this so that it doesn't come across as that we're not responsive? Right, we don't want to be non-responsive, yeah, and we can't all show up as first responders, because then there won't be anybody else when the rest of the fallout starts to show up yeah.

Liliana Baylon:

So I knew, for all of you who are listening, that this happened because Maria we were. We do regular check-ins, so Maria share with me. So I've been doing check-ins with her and part of our conversation is how clinicians are going from trauma after trauma, which then is like so who's attending to the clinicians? So the clinicians are running in to take care of the community, so who's attending to us? What association is reaching out to say, hey, we know about this happening in your community. We want to be part of the solution. That's my fantasy, by the way, don't mock it. And how are they supporting us? They say that they care about us. Well, how are they supporting us? How are they talking about this? The community associations in our field talks about self-care and taking care of ourselves. So what would that look like when we, as you just stated, we're dealing with regular trauma with our clients, and it's so bad that we call it regular trauma?

Maria Diego:

But what other name is there? Right? It's like baseline trauma.

Liliana Baylon:

We're all walking around with a baseline and then things like this happen and no one is giving us policies to take care of our communities, take care of us. So then, what does taking care of ourselves look like or sound like Right?

Maria Diego:

Right, right, no, absolutely, because I mean, I am thankful we have yourself included. We've had an outpouring of how can I help? I can offer EMDR via telehealth. I'm happy to offer pro bono sessions, which is fantastic, and I've got a running list of what. You know, what resources we can connect people with, like I, you know, I'm my therapist too. They're like you know, I can offer additional crisis sessions. I'm like, thank you, and how do you balance that? Because, yes, yes, I love that you're going to step up and you're going to offer more hours and be available for more clients, and I also need you to be taking care of yourself, because this, this cannot be a sprint. This is a marathon. And while you know, while, yes, we can offer some short-term crisis interventions, um, the lingering effects on clinicians, yeah, it doesn't just go away. After that, 55 minute timer goes off thank you, right.

Liliana Baylon:

So then it goes back to so how are we are going to? And wait a minute. I sign up to be a mental health therapist. I sign up to respond to first responder, even though we don't get the benefits of first responders, I'm still bitter about it. I don't get discounts on cell phones or anything. I don't get special coffee. That's right. I want my coffee, um. And then we have to go and advocate. So most of us who are mfts, we know that because when we went to our master's program, that was very explicitly said to us. You know, part of your job is to advocate. However, we didn't have a structure for how. How will that look like? So how do we advocate for change, which tend to go into politics, and most mental health therapists and associations state we don't get into politics, we do not talk about politics. Really, this is affecting us. How do we cannot be the agents of change here?

Maria Diego:

Absolutely, absolutely and as much as we would like to. Right, like I, I want to say, like I grew up very naive about politics. But, as you said, I met you until I kind of escalated in my own career where it was starting to become very obvious that decisions being made in one sector of the world was directly impacting me in my work, right, and the clients that we serve and our ability to do the work that we need to do and have a livable wage and all of those pieces. Like politics is part of our field, whether we want to embrace it or not. Failing to see that only leads to more complications and heartache, right, and so like what would that? What does that look like?

Maria Diego:

I mean, what do I want for my clinicians right now? I want I don't know. I mean, I know money isn't the answer for anything, but I want stipends so that they can take time off from from client, from seeing clients, and engage in actual self-care for them, whether that's hiking in our mountains, whether that's bed rotting for two days, like whatever. Like, I want funding for clinicians who need to step away and take care of themselves. I want true self-care offers like coffee shops show up at my office. Bring a coffee shop to my office right, bring your little truck over and fuel us for the day or you know healthy lunches.

Maria Diego:

You know, it would be what a nice gift of giving back to feed the responders who are responding.

Maria Diego:

Right, and you're right, we don't get included in first responders.

Maria Diego:

We do when it's convenient for funding or those types of things, but we are, you know, I know that there right now there's, you know, there are things happening in our community for their first responders who did have to respond to that incident and they should they should be getting treatment and and we also deserve the same level of treatment and respect and support.

Maria Diego:

Yes, right, like, how nice would it be for my clinicians who are doing back to back to back sessions for someone to come in and be like, hey, we don't know what else to do, but we brought lunch for you guys, or we've brought sweet treats and coffee, um, or you know, there's a massage school in town we're offering, we're going to give you guys each a free massage when you can schedule it. Here you go Mindfulness retreat, like something, but something that looks at taking care of the clinician themselves. Yeah, because, yes, you know, we we preach that the best therapists have therapists themselves, so I've made sure that my therapists are getting in to see their own therapist regularly, but I think it would go a long way for clinicians to be seen as a whole person also doing first responder work.

Liliana Baylon:

Yeah. So again, yes, first responders, firefighter, police officers, like all of you deserve this and please include us, do not exclude us, because we're part of you. We are called to provide mental health sessions for you and the trauma that you're holding, so don't forget us. Advocate for us as well, and then, in the advocacy, like we are naming everything that is needed, right, but I think we need empathy from our politicians, we need empathy from our states. We need resources, as you're naming. Don't leave us behind when you are the first one who needs us every time that something like this happens. Absolutely.

Maria Diego:

And we require long-term support. I think that's. The other thing is like the offerings that do come are immediate and once this has died down, that all gets pulled back when the reality is. That is when our work really truly starts to get going right. If we're doing, you know, trauma work with those that were present, whose loved ones have passed away because of this incident, whose loved ones are now gravely injured because of this incident, this isn't, in two months, going to be just fine for them. My clinician's schedules aren't going to stop being this full after two months have passed right, whereas like medical response, right, we can get you stabilized, there's a treatment plan we can give you. You know, in two months you're going to be in a cast and you'll be able to resume life. The trauma work that we do is longer term, it's slower going and the support needs to last the length that we need it to, not some arbitrary number created by someone who's not doing the work.

Liliana Baylon:

Thank you for calling that out right. So we have the research. We had a book that every association talks about, which is the body keeps score. Oh my God, they use it like a Bible, yet they forget about us in that Bible. So we need you. The other thing is I love that you named this which is systems to say, okay, there's a trauma, I'll give you eight sessions. Oh, okay, because there's only one layer of the trauma. Okay, we know, as mental health therapists, that that's not enough. So this is where the politics of our associations come in play. How are you advocating for change? How are you advocating so that we, as clinicians, do not go through burnout and then fantasize about going to work at a store?

Maria Diego:

so that we don't have in the middle of the night so that nobody can talk to us.

Liliana Baylon:

Yeah, I mean maybe maybe I'm the only one who has that that fancy uh, I have said it in other episodes that my fantasy is working in a library so that I can read and no one talks to me and we can laugh about it. Right and at the end of the day is what is the support ongoing support that we as clinicians and systems can provide for our clients, when we know the effects of trauma because we have so much research on it? And then what is the support the systems, including politicians and agencies and our associations, are gonna do to support us as clinicians? We need change, that's what we're saying.

Maria Diego:

We absolutely need change, um, and it and it's system-wide. I mean you and I are mfts. We've disclosed that. We are system speakers. It is what we do, um, but it is system, it is system-wide right, like we need. We need cross-sector communication and understanding about what it is right. You were just speaking and we didn't have our podcast during COVID, but we did, but it brought up right, like help the helpers, like we. We went to trainings on how to help the medical staff who were being, you know, a front line for the COVID. You know, we I went to, I went to specialized trainings on that. We were offering specialized appointments for the helpers and we were the helpers. We are also part of the help the helpers that we overlook because we're in a service. Yeah, we're in a service-based industry. Yeah, we're in a service-based industry.

Liliana Baylon:

Yes, thank you for naming that, because I was still. Obviously I'm bitter. I'm a bitter woman. That's going to be in my shirt from now on, and part of it is joking aside is because I care, because I see you and I have like powerful discussions that not everyone has access to in regards to what is the deficits in our community, in the mental health community. How we held accountability, responsibility and accountability to associations who have no problem micromanaging and taking money from us, but somehow they don't take into account this and advocate it for us. How he said that in our state we are micromanaged but those boards are protecting clients, not us, right? And then, like I can go on and on. Obviously, I'm not going to run for politicians because they'll kill me right away.

Maria Diego:

Let's be honest, neither you or I would make a great politician, don't think?

Liliana Baylon:

But because we're MFTs and we think of systems, we think beyond our clients, we think beyond ourselves, we see things differently. And then I get it. You and I also were being very vocal about our health struggles. What would that look like outside and inside our field? Because of that, the amount of empathy that we have for our clients, the things that we make more sense to us than to others because that shared experience with our clients. So there's like a lot of things that come up for you and me and through this podcast we're trying to shed a light so that others can see them too.

Maria Diego:

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, we've acknowledged in past episodes too that we are both privileged, that we have nothing to lose by being vocal about these things.

Liliana Baylon:

I mean we will lose. They can take a lot of things and they can kill us.

Maria Diego:

Part of the reason for the podcast is for other clinicians in similar situations don't feel alone, right? Because before we were connected and started having these conversations I know I shared with you. I was like I felt like I was the only one trying to navigate this right on. What does that look like and why did it take me so long to figure it out that it wasn't just me and that's the way that systems want to keep us siloed and not share information. But part of today's recording was I know my community is not the only one. Sadly, we're not the only one. We're not the only one.

Maria Diego:

This year we won't be the only one. That happens in New Mexico, let alone our country, and it feels really alone right now. Right, I'm lucky to have the outpouring of support from clinicians nationwide that I've connected with and I'm the one fielding the calls. I'm. You know our center is the one trying to like get as many people in for services as possible while protecting our clinicians. It does feel really lonely and I don't want anyone else to feel like, oh, they are truly the only one going through this, because they're not, and if we could talk about it more often, that feeling would go away.

Liliana Baylon:

Yeah, love this. Yeah, love this. Thank you, maria, for this special episode and talking about not only what it's like to have different roles as the community gets impacted with this trauma, but also highlighting the structure of it, the things that we don't talk about and the lack of support for us. So, community, if you're listening, please advocate. Send coffee that's the priority, not water Coffee. We need to be caffeinated. Coffee has water in it, that's true. Send food. We need to eat and most of us, all of you know, all of you therapists, know that when we have back to back, we forget to eat. Yeah, yeah. So if you send us food, the food will be there, the smells will be there, we'll be like I have to eat, I forgot to eat. Yeah, so if you send us food, the food will be there, the smells will be, there, will be like I have to eat, I forgot to eat. Send us food to take care of us and if you are a first responder, please include us.

Maria Diego:

We also need help, yeah and we want and we want to help you, right, we wanted, we wanted to go both ways. Yeah, and this and listeners like, if you, let's start, let's start a long list of realistic support and self-care that can be given in times like this, right, like, one of the other things that came to mind is like movie tickets, so that clinicians have a break and can go and enjoy a movie and turn their brain off for a little bit. But, yeah, I want to hear from everybody else, like what if you, if you had your magic wand and we used it for for this, what would you include on that list? What are the things that would be helpful in caring for the clinician who was caring for the hurting community?

Liliana Baylon:

Oh, love this. So again, everyone listening? Maria just gave you a call of action Reach out to us, let's share it, let's create, share it, let's create our Christmas wish list. Hopefully we don't have to wait until Christmas, but let's create it so that we can put it out there and share that, so that people know what is it that they can do to support us, because we are humans who need also support and thank you, liliana, for the space this morning for this, are you kidding?

Liliana Baylon:

thank you for sharing. Thank you for listening until next time. Till then,

People on this episode

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Liliana Baylon, LMFT-S, RPT-S

Host
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Maria Laquerre-Diego, LMFT-S, RPT-S

Host