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Shelter in place The orders have confined up to 300 million people to their homes since March. Staying indoors may make someone less likely to get Covid-19, but for many people, the home is not a safe place.
The counselors, therapists and hotline workers involved in crisis support say that many people become vulnerable by the same orders designed to protect them. Call centers have temporarily closed their doors, requiring workers to attend hours of emotionally intense calls from makeshift home offices. Her clients, many of whom must “take refuge” with the abusers, have had to be more discreet, arriving in brief moments of freedom, sometimes in whispered tones.
“Where they generally have eight or nine hours a day of freedom and peace, they now have their partner there with them 24 hours a day,” says Richard Ham, program services manager at the national domestic violence hotline. “So that little space for personal care doesn’t exist anymore.”
Ham says calls to the hotline have not increased since the orders began. He suspects that this may be because victims have less time to themselves. This relative calm could, he fears, trigger a boom once refuge orders are terminated.
“What we usually see at times like this is that after this is over, so We got all the calls that tell everything that was going on during this time, “he says, noting a similar dynamic during the long vacation.
Home confinement is also changing the way counselors provide services, and many already feel the pressure as their work collides with their personal lives.
Erika Brosig is clinical director of Victim Services, a Pennsylvania nonprofit organization that helps victims of sexual assault. Since the offices closed, she has been working from her room.
“There is a lot about this that is familiar to survivors,” she says. Weeks of shelter-in-place orders can trigger an “oppressive feeling of being trapped in your home and not being able to get out” for victims, whose daily lives are uprooted by the order.
Counselors must also deal with the isolation and combination of their work and personal lives. “I have to change, at the end of the night, back to being a mother and a wife, instead of being a therapist and crisis counselor,” she says. “But you don’t have to close the office door and walk away. It’s coming out from behind the desk and into the rest of the room. “
These counselors are aware of the psychological dangers of our new normal, but they are also vulnerable to the same discomfort that affects others who are forced to work remotely.
“You don’t have to close the office door and walk away. It’s coming out from behind the desk and into the rest of the room. “
Erika Brosig, Clinical Director, Victim Services in Pennsylvania
“Someone who provides counseling or therapy throughout the day is listening to the really difficult stories that people are experiencing,” explains Ali Perrotto, who runs the Sexual Assault Counseling and Resource Center in rural Pennsylvania. “Over time, they could start having their own nightmare experiences, or something like that, related to a story they heard that day.”
This “indirect trauma,” as Perrotto calls it, can be psychologically damaging to counselors. Internalizing this trauma is always an occupational hazard, but it is especially important now that so many counselors work from home.
Remote workers are at increased risk of isolation and exhaustion. Crisis centers generally have regular team meetings to prevent indirect trauma. These have also been connected as workers discuss difficult calls and try to keep the community on apps like Zoom and Houseparty.
“Many times [counselors] I just need someone to listen, which is a great beginning in the work we do, “says Danielle Ehsanipour, Lifeline director for The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization that focuses on suicide prevention efforts for youth LGBT. The organization switched to remote work last month. “There is also an interactive component and an opportunity for feedback. We really like those reporting sessions to be collaborative. ”
Some components of crisis service can be recalibrated for the new remote world, but not one: accompaniment. Advocates work with survivors of domestic violence and sexual violence as they navigate a complex world of hospitals, police departments, and courtrooms, traveling with them for hearings to request a restraining order, for example, or for medical exams.
