Season 3 is here thanks to a generous gift from the BC Law Foundation! Thank you BC Law Foundation. Dr. Amar Dhall is back for round 2 to talk about introception, bio-hacking the nervous system, the importance of trauma-informed practice, emotional intelligence and to share details on our upcoming retreat in Whistler BC from April 11-13, 2023. Join us!
Season 3 is here thanks to a generous gift from the BC Law Foundation! Thank you BC Law Foundation. Dr. Amar Dhall is back for round 2 to talk about introception, bio-hacking the nervous system, the importance of trauma-informed practice, emotional intelligence and to share details on our upcoming retreat in Whistler BC from April 11-13, 2023. Join us!
I'm Myrna McCallum, Métis-Cree lawyer and passionate promoter of trauma-informed lawyer. Welcome back to The Trauma-Informed Lawyer Podcast. As you know, I believe that law schools and bar courses are missing a critical competency requirement in their curriculum, trauma-informed lawyering. Becoming a trauma-informed lawyer will, among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs, and biases, call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy, guide your practice to avoid doing further harm to others and ask that you commit to remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn't know you needed before beginning your career. Your education starts right here, right now.
Welcome back to season three of The Trauma-Informed Lawyer Podcast. Can you believe it is season three? I cannot. I wasn't sure that I was coming back with a season three at all. If you follow me on social media and you know that I was posting a little bit about just feeling out of my depth and a little overextended, little overwhelmed, a little, all kinds of things, and I wasn't sure I was going to come back with season three, but then the BC Law Foundation contacted me and said, hold on, hold up, wait, we want to support you. The work you're doing is important this podcast has tremendous educational value for the legal profession we want to help. And man, did they ever come through. One, they gifted me a grant of $21,000. That grant has gone to Gordon and Ren at Cited Media. They are a professional podcasting production team that the BC Law Foundation connected me with, and we are currently working on ideas and show schedule for this spring.
So together we're going to bring you this six-episode batch of professional episode. So it's going to be really interesting. It's going to be a learning opportunity for me, and you'll probably hear the difference between like, Myrna just winging it and then Myrna getting all this really great advice on how to do a podcast well, and I'm really excited about that. So thank you BC Law Foundation for saving The Trauma-Informed Lawyer Podcast. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm really excited about what the season is going to bring and who you're going to hear from on this show. I have lots of ideas. There's been a number of folks who've reached out saying they want to be on the show, and you're going to hear from Dr. Gabor Mate again. Yes, you are. He was my first interview and that's probably, I think it's the most downloaded episode of my show in all of its history, so I'm pretty excited about that for now.
However, I've got Dr. Amar Dhall, he has come back for round two. For those of you who listened to all the episodes you would've heard Amar and I talking about emotional intelligence and the Art of Living maybe about a few months back. Lots of good questions and awesome feedback were generated and coming my way after I had released that episode, so not only did I ask Amar to come back and do a bit of a follow-up. He and I decided to collaborate, and I'm really excited about this collaboration because A, I've never done anything like this, and B, it's going to be in person. So for anyone who has been looking for community and connection and meaningful learning and an awesome experience, Amar Dhall and I are going to be in Whistler, British Columbia from April 11th to the 13th, and we are providing you with an exceptional one-of-a-kind learning experience.
It's a professional development retreat. It's going to be held at the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre just outside the village of Whistler. If you are interested in learning more about all things that I talk about in this podcast, all things that fall under the umbrella of trauma-informed lawyering, trauma-informed engagement, and emotional intelligence, I could go on and on. Please join us in Whistler for more information. You could go to my website, www.myrnamccallum.co, and then if you look at the bar at the top of the page, you'll see "2023 Whistler Retreat". Click on it. You're going to get more information about the course and registration is now open. Early bird registration ends actually February 14th, so if you want to join us, get on it. What else can I say? Lawyers who are in British Columbia, you will earn 16 CPD credits for attending this course with me.
Okay. I'm really excited about all the possibilities that 2023 is going to bring, and my new mindset for this year is I'm just getting started and the best is yet to come, and I sure hope that you feel the same way. All right, let's get into this conversation.
Okay, Dr. Amar Dhall, I'm so excited that you're coming back to have this conversation. One, because the first time we had a conversation, we talked about emotional intelligence in the Art of living. That episode was such a huge hit. I was getting all kinds of comments and feedback and just like, "Oh my God, Dr. Dhall made me think of this, and I start to look at things this way and that way." And it was just, I think for a lot of our listeners, it was aha, moment after aha, moment after aha moment plus, folks wanted more. The last time we were here, we talked about the emotion of emotional intelligence and the Art of Living. One of the things that I had heard from some listeners was wanting to hear a little bit more about perception, but we didn't do a deep dive.
Amar Dhall:
One thing that I'll say to give a little bit of context as we talk about interoception is one of the things that we're going to get to draw out in the retreat is a lot of the discourses around trauma and being trauma-informed. But I think of a more pragmatic way of looking at this subject is to see trauma and well-being as existing along a continuum. And in the kind of depths of trauma, the seeds of well-being a sound, and one of the bridges to get across from trauma response to well-being is interoception. And the reason why that's okay, I'm going to say that interoception is someone's ability to be aware of their sensate experience. So their sensations. Now, often people or something that's cognitively challenging as lawyers get reduced to the cognitive element often and people can not really pay attention or are trained out of what it is to be present to their body as well as their mind at the same time.
So interoception, as I said, is someone's ability to track their sensate experience, it allows people to pick up more nuance and information from their environment. The part of the brain that correlates with interoception is the insular cortex. Let's say someone has a number of traumatic episodes in their lives, they can move through the world in a way where they're quite disassociated or disembodied. One of the physical correlates of that is a very skinny insular cortex. The process of going through repair or healing, whatever that is for someone, ends up, one of the things that end up happening is, well, for them to connect with themselves or reconnect with themselves means learning more a how to identify emotion and sensation more clearly. And the corollary of that or the physical correlate of that is actually thickening the insular cortex.
When people get there, not only have they shifted their trauma, but they've also increased their emotional intelligence because it's, I guess what I'm saying is the process of learning interoception is something that essentially, to use a kind of crude analogy, it's an upgrade of our hardware. You could say our brain capacity gets bigger structurally or certain parts of it. So let's start with that. How does that land?
Myrna McCallum:
Well, that lands pretty well. So what are some of those practices? How do you grow that? How do you build a practice around this?
Amar Dhall:
So there are a few, and some of them can be counterintuitive. I mean the low-hanging fruit is to say mindfulness, but mindfulness is a term I don't really like because it's been co-opted by the well-being movement. And the well-being movement has got its own challenges with the way, particularly over the last few years, the way there's been a real susceptibility to conspiracy theories and a rejection of data and so on. So I think mindfulness, as it relates to well-being, is a problematic term to use, but if it's kept in its essence, it's actually one way to build interception.
Another really simple one, well, and simple doesn't mean easy. I want to be really clear on that, is encapsulated in a saying by the Navy SEALs where they'd say by the US Navy SEALs where they say slow is smooth, smooth is fast. And what that's getting at is if I'm functioning fast, things get missed. And in the Navy SEAL line of work things getting missed is a lethal risk in a lawyer's life, it may not be as lethal for them, but it'll have really big consequences.
So one of the ways to develop interoception is to recognize, to learn, even if it's just a feeling when I'm racing and I've kind of been shaped by the busyness and I'm moving as fast as I can, what I actually would need to do if I'm going to cultivate my interception is to learn to slow down and to feel myself more to work in a way that's more measured. And when that happens, more possibilities will emerge. So at this point, that's kind of a bit of a leap of faith, but the point that I'm making is slowing down in order to speed up is the point. So mindfulness slows things down.
I'd also say, and this isn't a straight line to developing interoception, but I think it's perhaps the most profound or the most powerful, is to actually explore what is truly meaningful for the individual. Because when I do that, I begin to actually realize that maybe there are ways that I'm living my life that aren't really aligned with who I am. And the way that I will have gotten there is by stopping myself from actually being alive to that dissonance or that incongruence. So by getting alive or starting to ask the question of what is meaningful to me, I then create a space for me to begin to actually feel the impact of my choices and that is going to support interceptive awareness. And so there are three simple ones, but there's myriad, there's lots more that will go in the workshop that's practical, but here we're just having a chat rather than running a workshop. So it's a bit, I'm kind of limited a little in what I can say.
Myrna McCallum:
For sure you are, but that is really helpful, and I think we'll give that particular listener who asked that question a little bit more to kind of chew on, but I was thinking about your message about slowing down to speed up or to go a little fat way to do be more productive, I guess. And I'm just thinking about how, I think probably a lot of lawyers, especially younger lawyers, are likely experiencing the legal profession as an urgency culture. You're never off, you're never, the cell phone's never off, emails come in 24/7 and you got to respond really... It's almost like being a first responder, and it creates so much anxiety we know that a lot of lawyers experience anxiety because statistically speaking, when people do mental health reports, whether on the profession, whether I'm in Canada or US or maybe elsewhere, we're having a common experience. I don't know. What do you think about that, the urgency culture that we're experiencing?
Amar Dhall:
I've got this hypothesis, I wrote about it in the article, in the book that you've edited that's been published away, your co-editor around. What are the types of personalities that are even attracted to the practice of the law and statistically they're going to be high performing and more prone to anxiety or carry more anxiety with them into the law firstly. So that's one point. Then in terms of the culture of urgency, well, we were talking off-air before about the kind of over what I judge to be law existing in a silo. There are lots of other disciplines in the wider world where healthier ways of being actively sought or even anyone that's really interested in peak performance has to look outside kind of a myopic view of technical skill as being the yardstick of success or effectiveness or where the road ends.
What we want are humans who are able to meet changing demands, flex flexibly and display technical mastery for sure, but then there's a whole bunch of other skills that are actually required in order to make that person effective. To come back to your point of what do I think about the culture of urgency. I think there's a risk that we kind of cut off our nose to spite our face, and that we're in culturing that. I genuinely believe we're getting to a point of maturity in conversations like this, the ones that you lead and the kind of thought leaders that you both connect with, and the kind of thought leader that you are, where you are beginning to get people to see that propagating a more holistic way of being is not antithetical to high performance. So the culture of urgency to me equates to panic, which equates to ineffective and maybe the elusory sense of efficiency as opposed to humans who are on a point path and performing at a high level in a way that's sustainable.
Myrna McCallum:
Yeah, totally. And I just want to say before I forget this, you noted the book that you contributed to, and I know people are going to be like, "What book is this?" I'm just going to say it before I forget it. The American Bar Association is publishing a book I think in March of this year. It's called Trauma-Informed Law Pathway to Healing and Resilience for Lawyers, and I'm a co-editor on it along with Kim Wright, Marjorie Florestal, and Helgi Maki. Dr. Amar Dhall is one of the contributors. There are many contributors from across the globe, a book that will be the first of its kind, and it's pretty awesome that the American Bar Association is publishing it. So I just wanted to put that out there.
I also want to say, I was just pulling up an email I got about you and some feedback someone shared, and I'm just going to share it with all of us. I'm not going to name names, but this individual wrote and said stories of where we come from and what we have each uniquely experienced play such a big role in how we approach life and lawyering and handling one another's stories with humility, kindness, empathy, and just all-around emotional intelligence is crucial. Dr. Dhall connected so many dots for me on one, why we as lawyers are so commonly drawn to and good at left brain rational approach to all problems and how emotional intelligence is an indispensable superpower to develop. That was awesome.
Amar Dhall:
That is awesome. That's a beautiful reflection to get and it also sounds like the person who wrote this is hopefully also seeing that they can bring more of themselves into their working life and that it will be, it is a superpower actually, it seems almost perverse or paradoxical, that to dispel the idea that you need to leave your humanity outside the room to be a good lawyer and that actually the data shows the people who bring it in with them live longer, earn more money, have better practices, better relationships everywhere. Yeah, it's a lovely comment to get.
Myrna McCallum:
Totally is. And I mean when that comment came in, it got me thinking about an interview that I was listening to, I told you about it before, a podcast with Daniel, a guy named Daniel Pink who was talking about right brain and left brain thinking and how the future of professions, the legal profession and others is really the people who are going to thrive in that profession are going to be ones who embrace the right brain thinking approaches. More empathy, I guess more emotional intelligence, right?
Amar Dhall:
Absolutely. Well, and I think if we're going to reduce good law to computation, well that is really ideally suited to AI. So I think actually the left-brain dominant way of thinking is probably the part of legal reasoning that is most susceptible to becoming irrelevant.
Myrna McCallum:
This is what Daniel Pink was saying. Anyway, for anyone who likes to read books, go find Daniel Pink. He's got a couple of good books up there. So let's just dive into our little collaboration or our major collaboration. After we did the podcast, I felt that the conversation, as terrified as I was, to have the conversation with you because I wasn't sure I was going to be able to keep up. It went really well. And then I ran to trauma-informed justice courses online in July and November. I asked you to come in and speak on the emotional intelligence of superpowers, and you did, and that's really fantastic that you supported by working that way to lend your voice, your time, and your knowledge and the feedback was always, always super positive.
And so from there, it just has naturally unfolded. You and I have decided to put on a retreat in Whistler, British Columbia from April 11th to April 13th with an optional incubator day for those who want to stay on the 14th. And you're going to come on over from Australia and we're going to gather a room full of folks who work in law and justice and talk about some really critical topics that they probably are not used to getting information on or training on because I think a lot of the topics have not really been embraced by law schools, law societies, like the people who make lawyers. And which I think is an incredible disservice not only to the lawyers themselves but to the people that they serve.
Let's talk a little bit about what those three days are going to look like or what our hope is or what our intention is for the folks who come and spend their time with us.
Amar Dhall:
The opportunity to come over and work with you in the same room is exciting and Whistler is an amazing part of the world to be in, I think. And at that time of the year, we'll get some snow as well, yeah?
Myrna McCallum:
Yes.
Amar Dhall:
That'll be pretty spectacular. One of the things that excites you earn is having listened to your podcast is the opportunity to co-create the dialogue with you. It's what comes from the space between the ways you and I have both approached this subject of trauma-informed law, walking our respective paths and learning what we've learned. So I think it's the opportunity to do that collaboratively rather than me doing it on my own is actually really exciting and very, very rich.
Myrna McCallum:
Yes, very rich indeed. And I'm like, I knew one day I was going to meet someone, and I was going to deliver something together with someone else, and I knew that that individual would be a therapist, but it had to be a lawyer turned therapist and it had to be under the right circumstances and at the right time. And then all the stars aligned when you and I connected and started to envision together the possibilities. And so I'm really excited about this and I'm pretty excited as well about the timing of it.
Like 2023 is going to be a year I believe that is going to blow up people thinking about trauma-informed practice as it intersects with law justice and also recognizing and prioritizing the mental health needs of the people who make up this profession of, we're coming out of a pandemic and going into an endemic sort of state. And people are still reeling from what that experience was, the losses that they experienced, the isolation, having mental health issues exacerbated, having to really do a deep and honest look about whether the practice of laws for them or whether working in that office or for that firm is the right place for them. And I just think that this retreat, educational opportunity we're offering people is fantastic for those who are committed to bringing humanity into the profession.
Amar Dhall:
Picking up on what you were saying around. Well, in the first instance is the practice of law for me and having the space for that. I think the fourth day, the optional day, the practice incubator is where we get to take some of these ideas out of the theoretical. And actually, this kind of aligns with what you said earlier, and I'm going to ask you the same question is what's your vision for us coming together? So for me, it's that to understand the nature of trauma has been a stepping stone to me living a really meaningful life. We spoke offline where I was sharing with you, I'm really passionate about law and being able to still connect, but then there's also a part of me that really didn't fit in the space where I was practicing. And so being able to explore being trauma-informed, seeing how it's actually reshaped me as a person, and not losing touch with the legal industry and law as a field is something that I'm very grateful for.
Why I'm saying this here is I think the practice incubator is about supporting people to find a way of not just going, oh, I've got a cognitive understanding of trauma, but looking to really operationalize it in a way that not only will work in practice, but it may also create a sense of more fulfillment through the work. Lawyers have a really unique skillset. We are the gatekeepers to people's freedom in respect of the system. We are an ally, or we can be allies to support people to end relationships in a way that isn't painful and traumatic. There's these incredibly beautiful aspects that of humanness and kind of being there for humans, going through, looking at the way people get, find remedy for a wrong, it doesn't have to be, it's not in traumatic and a horrible experience. We can steward people on their journey through life as a group with or in a way that doesn't come at our own expense or their expense or a third party's expense.
So for me, my hope for this gathering this retreat is well first the opportunity to connect with people who are like-minded with people who get this and are open to it, but to actually begin that process of how do we get to that fissionable quantity of plutonium necessary for us to trigger a nuclear reactive change around awareness of trauma and putting a human face on lawyers and law and the practice of law. So that's where I'm at. How about you?
Myrna McCallum:
I love that. Well, first connection some time ago, you and I had a conversation where you invited me to think about community and who my community was, and I had a really hard time with that one because I think isolation, having been so isolated, doing so much over Zoom, you miss so much like connection. And so I was feeling like I was without, and what I'd love to do and what I'd love to see is first of you and I connecting even more than we currently connect and dreaming up the possibilities together of what can be and what has never been before, that idea is really exciting and compelling for me. Secondly, I want to see people who work in law and justice also embrace connection and maybe even reconnection to themselves because I've just heard so many people, whether they are lawyers or police officers or judges talk about having to park their humanity to go into the courtroom or go into the hearing room or go into the office to do the job that they're called to do.
And I just really think especially after getting to know you Amar, that if people would just embrace their humanity and actually use it as a force to make them even greater at what they do and not be afraid to bring empathy into spaces that have been so cold and devoid of humanity that could open up all kinds of beautiful possibilities. And so I would love to see this retreat help people reconnect to themselves and recognize that they don't have to carve off parts of themselves to do this job that they love to do or feel called to do. The other pieces for folks who've been harmed by the work that they've done, whether they know the depth of the harm they've experienced or not. I would love for our retreat to offer them opportunities to explore how they could repair all of that. And I know a lot of our conversations and a lot of the primary driver is trauma and trauma-informed lawyering or trauma-informed advocates or trauma-informed decision making.
However, I also want people to think about trauma in a really broad way. Some people have these ideas that trauma is just for those people who have this horrible big T thing happen to them and they don't see themselves as having been traumatized. But I want to say even for those people if you are struggling with things like anxiety or depression or hopelessness or helplessness or other things that you don't consider to be trauma, but they've impacted who you are, when you show up to do the job that you do, then this retreat is for you and it will offer you the value and like dare I say at the end of it, Amar, that people walk away seeing the potential for healing in themselves but also healing in their profession.
Amar Dhall:
Absolutely. That's beautifully said. A couple of things that you said that really, I think are on the minute with what's happening in this conversation we're having about trauma and as a reflection of what's going on in society. And what I mean by that is at the moment I think we're seeing the dismantling of the established order around the dominance of white male kind of hegemony. Let's say, and we're beginning to hear a lot more plurality of voices. I think intrinsic in that the process of these voices, all these voices finding space in public discourse, it requires at the very least a recognition of trauma. But I think the part of what's energizing is good health, and what we're talking about is emotional hygiene and relational hygiene around how do I show up in a world in a way where my voice, I haven't got a loud voice because I'm standing on top of your shoulders in order to project my voice.
But we open the forum up to an understanding that what has appeared, the idea that survival of the strongest is actually not the same as saying survival of the fittest. And that when we connect to being fit for purpose, fit for life, fit for connection, fit for success in professional life, that there is a whole lot of other skills that are necessarily required that are not just being able to brutalize someone in an adversarial system to notionally win the argument. So I think this is implicit in what I'm hearing you say, the process of finding voice and reclamation of connection with self and from that place of connecting to self, connecting to others. I think in one sense, as part of me that goes, oh, this sounds so detached and hopeful, but for goodness sake, I mean as a species, we do it everywhere.
I mean, we live in cities. It's not like lawyers live in a lighthouse by themselves. We come together to form groups. We live in families, we live in tribal groups, and we live in communities. So I think what we are talking about is integrating the lawyer into the community in a way that has more emotional currency. And as I said earlier, the data shows that when lawyers do this, they earn more money. So it's not that you need to be fixated on the six-minute billable increment and juicing the orange for every little bit. It's the same as for any lawyer that's kind of sitting in that tension of how do I begin to think differently about things when this is the culture and what will happen to me, the existential threat to my practice if I do things differently? Well, I'm not going to say there's an easy solution right now because it's a much more elegant process that people go on.
But the idea of just thinking how would you feel if the people who work you know engaged to do work for you reduced you to a billable increment and completely stripped you of your humanity. When doctors do it, people would say they've got a terrible bedside manner, it doesn't matter how good a surgeon they may be. So I think there are different ways of looking at things, and it's precisely by opening up this discourse, bringing the connection of which we speak, that these solutions are going to bubble up. And I can tell you this, my partner, we actually, she had a tooth she needed a root canal. And so we actually went to the person that's supposed to be the best. And my partner is terrified of the dentist. So for her, the whole thing was in the red zone of her comfort, which is why I was there with her.
And all this dentist would say as well, I'm the one that's written the book and here's the book. And it was literally sitting on his table, and it was a Springer Scientific Publication. And we came out of there and she was traumatized. She was traumatized not by what he did or the... It was the way that he worked. And so the next time she goes to the dentist, it's harder for her to do. And all it would take is for this dentist to have not opened himself to seeing that to serve his people, his clients. If he just had a little compassion, his practice would be busy because he'd go, wow, this guy is the best and he's a good person. Not, well, if you really need to see the best, you go there, but make sure you've got your support around you because it's not going to be an enjoyable experience.
So my point for lawyers is we can begin to, I would suggest that it would be really behoove us to think more widely about how we are showing up and not treating others the way that we ourselves don't like to be treated by the professionals with whom we work.
Myrna McCallum:
I mean, I'm totally feeling the experience that your partner had with the dentist because I have the same sort of thing. One of the reasons why I have a really good relationship with my dentist is because she knows that I need to be told every second, not every second, but every chance what they're doing. Okay, I'm going to lower the chair. It's only going to be lowered for about five minutes, and then I'm going to bring you back up. I'm now going to do this, and then you're going to hear some drilling for about two minutes. And I need that to then be able to go, "Okay, okay, I'm safe." And she will also say, "Okay, do you need a break? Can we continue? Do you need a break? Can we continue?" And really, I mean I need to send her a gift at Christmas to every Christmastime. I'm realizing because that is, I think lawyers need to do that as well because otherwise you don't tell people what you're doing, why you're doing it, and you don't take a moment to check in with them to see if they're okay.
Did they need a break? Did they need anything? It creates fear. They walk come in already suspicious and fearful and then they walk away terrified. And it's no wonder lawyers, we have the reputation that we have. And Amar, when you were just talking about your partner's experience, I was also thinking about Gabor Mate, I'm reading his book, The Myth of Normal right now. And one of the things he says is trauma isn't always the thing that happened to someone. Sometimes it's created by the thing that didn't happen, like the protection, you didn't get the attention, you didn't get the love you didn't get. And I could totally see why your partner traumatized after not even be being recognized as somebody who could be afraid in that space.
Amar Dhall:
Absolutely. And to circle back to what you said, because it was a comment that said so much, you said, ah, I should be sending a Christmas present every year to my dentist it was a beautifully human moment where the story I'm telling myself, and I'll ask you is there was gratitude there for being seen and treated with respect and dignity and as a person. And that did had nothing to do with how good a dentist they were. It was just that they met you with what you needed. And this is really what I'm saying with becoming trauma-informed in the first instance is about being able to humanize the process that people go through, and take out some of that sting as opposed to having a dentist to just treat you a piece of meat to actually just give you that respect. Doesn't cost them anything, but actually, it creates a lot more connection opportunities and you are way more likely to refer that dentist work.
Myrna McCallum:
Absolutely. Totally. 100%. And so it's all about being seen and being heard. I mean, I think everybody wants that or everybody needs that.
Amar Dhall:
It's before we move on, because to me, this picks up on what we said earlier, very one of the first things I said about building interoception, which is slowing down to speed up. Slow is smooth, smooth as fast. So you what your dentist is doing there instead of going, I need to get through you in 12 minutes so I can bill you and then get to the next client. They're not necessarily working that much slower, but they're just slowing down their own focus on the task to just invite an awareness of themselves, an awareness of you. And in doing that, their practice actually accelerates in its effectiveness. It's more effective as a practice rather than thinking efficiency equates to just how many teeth have, I drilled today?
Myrna McCallum:
That totally makes sense. I'm all, I'm thinking about presence right now and not present as a gift, but presence isn't being present, which maybe is kind of a gift too.
Amar Dhall:
Totally.
Myrna McCallum:
And I'm always saying to lawyers when you sit down with someone, the first thing you need to do is put your phone away and maybe ask the other person to put their phone away and make a commitment that we're going to have phone-free interaction because this is how it all begins. And let's talk a little bit in the time that we have left in this episode, let's talk a little bit about our retreat that we're offering folks.
And so for folks who are listening, this is open to anyone anywhere. If you work in law and justice, come and join us in Whistler. I mean, registration is limited because Amar and I have already agreed that we don't want to have a massive event for our first event. So we're trying to keep it pretty well contained. We're just going to go through a little bit of the agenda so you know what you can expect. And I don't know, Amar, if we should talk about all the different sessions of which we have 12 or if we should just give an overview of what to expect on day one, day two, day three. What do you think?
Amar Dhall:
Ooh, great question. What's the answer?
Myrna McCallum:
I don't know. How about we start with just the headaches, and we'll pull out some key topics. So day one, we're going to focus on trauma on day one because people have a feeling about trauma. They feel a certain way when they hear the word, when they think of the relationship that trauma has to their lives. So somewhere within there we're going to talk about, and I love how it was Amar's idea that the very first intro should be titled, Trauma is Not a Dirty Word. Tell me, Amar, why did she think that would be important as an opening to our three days together?
Amar Dhall:
Because I think there's still a stigma, maybe not with your listeners, but there is a stigma in the field around being able to talk openly. Mental health is seen as a weakness and a vulnerability. And this is not just in law for lawyers. I'm also talking about in law enforcement where certainly in Australia where I've experienced working with people in law enforcement where their emotional vulnerability is seen as a word suddenly, if someone does that, the phrase that they use as broken biscuits here where if someone was to say that they're actually going. Of course, people don't have the language to say, "Oh, I'm in a trauma response." Trauma is this big coverall word that spans many different symptoms from not being able to sleep at night to having relationships break down to having physical health problems with physical health. There's so many different ways that trauma can express itself.
So that first session, Trauma is Not a Dirty Word, is around firstly normalizing it and second, normalizing the word and also beginning to equip participants with the language they need to really askew people who aren't as well-informed defining the discourse or hijacking the way this is spoken about. I see people who are getting alive to trauma-informed language in law are the next wave of leaders in the field without a doubt because it is inevitable that we go in this way. So this is really supporting those people to begin to have more ammo.
Myrna McCallum:
Love it. I think that that's fantastic. I mean, another part of day one that we're focusing on is how trauma shapes personality, right? High achievers, low achievers. And I mean, we see this a lot in law, and I think it's an important topic to focus on.
Amar Dhall:
Yes. So I'm going to reiterate what you've said there. So trauma doesn't just mean that people become non-functioning in society. Some people become higher functioning in a society where there is a fixation on the accouterment of success or nice things, nice cars, lots of clients, lots of money, good body. All of these can be coping strategies that are actually fueled by traumatic experiences and so there'll be lawyers, a lot of lawyers fit into this category. And so one of the natural points of resistance that comes then to becoming trauma-informed is this little doubt that can be when as I begin to join the dots internally, if I become trauma-informed, maybe I won't work quite as hard. Maybe I won't achieve quite, so these status symbols that I've gotten or the way that I'm seen, may be problematic or it's unsustainable.
So we are just going to look at the mechanism by which this happens. And again, the, so that's point number one. So maybe speak to those lawyers. Secondly, it's also to show that we're all human. And when coming across someone in the course of my practice where they are highly traumatized, it really is to try and level the playing field in terms of having less judgment about how they show up and how much of a reflection their behavior is of them, which is to say not as much as you may think. So it's to give, create awareness around that.
Myrna McCallum:
Totally. I mean, it's really important and I think we're capping off the day talking about law and trauma, how those two things intersect. And I think we have to have that conversation because I know so many of my listeners work in areas within law and justice where trauma meets them every day. And we've got to think a little bit about what the impacts are on us personally, but also systemically, and how our culture is shaped, how our values become shaped. And then it's a good segue, I think, into boundaries, which is another subject area that we're going to focus on day three. I think we're going to wind the day down by doing a little bit of a reflection time to explore how it shows up and what the impacts are and where we see it in the spaces where we work.
Amar Dhall:
Absolutely. So one of the things that you and I spoke about with the, and you also may want to talk about the credits, the CLE credits that people get, but we talked about making... Would we make a course where you get certified as trauma-informed? And one of the points of resistance you had, I think is distilled into this session four, which is to be trauma-informed. If someone approaches their learning with integrity, it's not really enough to go, "Oh, I've got this cognitive understanding of trauma and I'm trauma-informed." What really needs to happen is for all of us to listen and to share how I meet trauma through my work and only if I'm really going to become trauma-informed. That is an essential part of the journey to understanding its true body, mind and soul.
Myrna McCallum:
Yeah, absolutely. So that's our day one, that there's another, we're also going to focus a little bit on the science that date, but day two is emotional intelligence. That's the theme of the day. So we're going to talk about what it is to be emotionally intelligent lawyers and leaders because many of us are leaders within law and justice. So what does that mean? And then we're going to segue into how trauma ride shotgun triggers, because trigger is a word that people drop left and center. And we have to talk a little bit about what that means and what we can do about it when it happens when we're feeling it in the spaces that we work or in the conversations that we're having or everywhere.
Amar Dhall:
I'm not sure we'll get to it in this particular retreat, but we'll certainly pay some attention to supporting people to support their clients when they're triggered as well. So begin to actually give some first aid tips there.
Myrna McCallum:
Definitely. And folks need that. And if it's not your clients, then your colleagues or you're opposing counsel because-
Amar Dhall:
Or your kids or your partner…
Myrna McCallum:
It has broad application. And then we're going to get into some strategies around self-regulation. Why? Because we can't offer what we don't have. So if we can't figure out for ourselves how we could stay in the face of somebody rattling our cage, so to speak, how to stay calm and focused and thoughtful and rational, then we can't really offer all of those wonderful gifts to others. So that's going to be a topic of the day in biohacking your nervous system for performance. I think this is really Amar, this is your domain, so let's talk about it a little bit.
Amar Dhall:
Sure, thank you. Yeah, I think it's also your domain just looking at how you bet you are reshaping. I think so. I think, well, you understand the way, if I was going to ask you how has understanding trauma and actually really learning as much as you have supporting you to live better.
Myrna McCallum:
Yeah. Okay. I could give you an answer. So yeah, maybe it is a little on my domain, but it's important. How can all of this help us to live better? Because who would, as Nelson Mandela says, all of us want peace, right? We all have that in the comments. So the end of the day we're going to wrap up and I think is this last segment of the day going to be also a little bit discussion based. We're all going to lend a little of our experience to the conversation.
Amar Dhall:
And we want to do is really, because this is at the end of day two, is there's a lot of, as you mentioned, we talk a bit about, well, we'll talk about some science, we'll talk about emotional intelligence, trauma triggers, how to regulate and co-regulate others, how trauma shapes both high and low achievement. So what we're going to do in this session is really bring it all together and support people to see how they actually can reframe their understanding of going from becoming increasingly trauma-informed to actually becoming more emotionally intelligent. And actually, it's not just, you know, said at the start, and this is true, this is a safe place for any lawyers who are burnt out, anxious, depressed, struggling in whatever way they are. They will definitely have more insight into themselves and how to navigate that without setting their career on fire. They will definitely get to understand that.
And the beauty of this is that as they go on this journey, not only is it, well once the fire, the house is on fire, but once I put that fire out, I can begin to plan an extension and remodel the inside of the house. And actually, it's going to be better than it was before. So this is using these same insights and understanding to begin the planning process.
Myrna McCallum:
I had a bit of a chuckle there because I was just thinking, yes, after I burn down the house and I can rebuild it and start again, hopefully, you don't burn down the new house. That's the plan.
Amar Dhall:
Well, you won't, because when you think about this is the beauty of this is how I think getting, this is why I didn't peak in high school is because I think one of the most beautiful, poignant aspects of life is to not define myself by my worst moments. And sometimes that's hard to do, but so there's a bit of willpower there. And when I don't define myself, when I don't get consumed by self-judgment and I actually then get to go, where's the learning in this for me and how am I going to do things differently? What were the beliefs or values that I had that followed that me to undo myself and make a real heartfelt commitment not to do the same thing again. So I think that hopefully we won't burn the house down a second time. Yeah, I agree with you. And I think we can also maybe design it so that it's fire retardant.
Myrna McCallum:
Love it, love it. Speaking of fire retardants, burnout and boundaries, that's the theme of day three. And I mean, it had to be an entire theme because we know no matter where you are in the world, lawyers, people working in justice, you are addressing confronting burnout. It's bananas at the high rate of speed that people are experiencing burnout. So on our last day together, well on day three we're going to be talking a little bit about the difference between burnout, compassion fatigue or empathic strain as some like to call it precarious trauma. But we're going to do a two part of around boundaries. What risks do lawyers and leaders face without boundaries in the workplace? And of course, what are they and where did they come from? Why is that important do you think are for people not only to identify, A, I have no boundaries. B, okay, I need some, but this other piece, where did they come from? Why is that important?
Amar Dhall:
Well, I think it enables or grants someone the ability to really God's understanding and insight. And if I'd say that all change begins with insight or awareness. So this is the beginning of that awareness. The other part is law as a discipline. So I mean the law lawyers in the kind of big end of town get paid really well. A lot of lawyers do quite okay, so the research that's been done in just in business and enterprise around what leadership looks like. Who are the kind of people that come in and turn these failing companies around and turn them into amazing successes? What do they do? How do they do it? What kind of personality types do they have? What's been found, and this is really through Harvard Business School, they've shown this, that the essence of good leadership is to be able to coach people rather than command and control. And this is how lawyers do boundaries in practice is command and control 99. Again, the research is overwhelmingly unambiguous in this regard, saying that lawyers do boundaries too fiercely with themselves and each other. The consequence of that is burnout.
That technique of management or leadership is only really good for steering people out of a crisis, but as a modus operandi, it doesn't work, which is why. So to come back to where about understanding boundaries, where they come from, it's understanding not just where my personal boundaries come from, but where these boundaries in law come from. Where so much can be expected of people in group practice and learning how to actually maybe push back on them or find a way of relating to the practice of law that's actually resonant and life-affirming rather than incredibly pressure-filled. And as a result, really finite in its longevity. So this will help people understand how to begin to strengthen that muscle of pushing back on giving too much because what burnout is me giving more than I have to give, which means really the antidote to that is being able to set a boundary. And holding myself, particularly if I'm in social justice, what I'm doing when I go to that place of burnout is I'm choosing someone else over myself.
And that's that notion that it's a fairly, there'll be times when that has to be done and it's a beautiful noble sacrifice, but as a way of life, it is absolutely unsustainable. And I won't go too much into it here because it's kind of was going to segue into the topic itself, but it's an easy way to think I'm a good person. I'm a giving person is if I'm constantly in burnout, but then I'm actually living my life just on credit. And if you think of that, that's no way to live a life. You end up pay, the interest always comes due at some point. So it's about understanding these dynamics.
Myrna McCallum:
If what were to do a bit of a deeper dive into trying to understand where their boundaries come from it can also create an opening for people to begin to explore and cultivate a little self-compassion, right? Because we need that in this profession, we need that in all professions.
Amar Dhall:
Absolutely. Well, I can't really be compassionate. I've got something else going on, but I can't be compassionate, truly compassionate for someone else if I can't live it for myself is what it comes down to. And so it's yeah, I think what you're saying is a hunting spot on. Spot on.
Myrna McCallum:
We cannot give what we do not have so hard to be compassionate with others if we don't even give it to ourselves. We're going to end day three talking about... I love this title. This is your title Amar, I love it. Trauma is not a death sentence. Post-Traumatic Growth, Mindfulness and Abundant Thinking for Justice Professionals.
Amar Dhall:
Well, I think it's our topic, our title, but yes.
Myrna McCallum:
Well, I like the whole trauma is not a death sentence. I think that was your piece. And you and I previously talked about abundant thinking, which I really love. I love that we're ending the three days on talking about post-traumatic growth because too often we hear a lot about post-traumatic stress or post-traumatic stress disorder, but we don't hear about post-traumatic growth. So what is the flip side of post-traumatic stress? What is the gifts that could come from that? And post-traumatic growth is something we've got to explore.
Amar Dhall:
And I think the thing I really like about this conversation, or this subject is it is what one of my mentors would call psychologically mature. And what I mean by that is if we're going to talk about what the real gifts are and what is a real assemblage point around which to constellate a life, it's not money, it's meaning no one gets to the end of their life and says, oh, I wish I'd worked more, right? That there is this moment of clarity that people get. And I've worked with people all the way up to end of life and like I said, the bill comes due with poor boundaries and bad decisions and living a life where the assemblage point was not really aligned. So what this is saying is it doesn't, trauma isn't a death sentence. Whatever your nervous system and body and mind learned can be unlearned.
So that's in the first instance. The second is the real gift of trauma is it is this fight to work through it is to go and sit in the fire and to have the kind of inauthenticity burned away. And what is left is what is truly meaningful. And then the provocation of that is to contemplate, well what am I going to do with this? Am I going to try and go back to sleep and act like I don't know this and get back on the same mouse wheel I was on? Or am I actually going to see how I can hang on to the best parts of my old life but relive them, reengage with them in a way that actually brings more meaning into my world? And that is really one of the most important beautiful life-changing gifts of working through trauma and post-traumatic growth is actually building resilience, understanding oneself and actually getting clarity on what is truly important. So yeah, it's awesome.
And the other thing we'll do with abundant thinking is kind of blow up the idea that it's woo-woo and we could talk about pragmatic optimism and where that kind of sits in as distinct from a lawyer's role is to be pessimistic and think about all the things that can go wrong. So how do we actually hold this polarity around being risk averse or at least risk aware, but still not do it in a way where we sacrifice our pragmatic optimism about life on the altar of technical aptitude.
Myrna McCallum:
Totally. I think it's going to be fantastic. I'm really excited as I like listen to us have this conversation about this retreat. I'm really excited. Okay, so we're going to have these three days together with people, but we're also offering this trauma-informed practice incubator on day four, which is like an optional one for those who want to stay and spend the day with Amar and I to do a bit of a deeper dive, there's going to be an opportunity for that.
Amar Dhall:
And that is a much smaller number that we're going to have there because what I would really like is for those of you that are looking to actually bring trauma-informed ideas or practices into your practice of law, I would really like to have space to support really looking at the realities that you are navigating and supporting you to actually come up with ways of bringing that in. Because both, I know Myrna, this is something you do and it's also something I do is to support practitioners find trauma-informed solutions to complex problems, whether there's currently no trauma-informed solutions.
So I think in some ways for those, this is where the rubber hits the road, not just personally, but where people can really take this into their life and actually live it and expand the benefits of being trauma-informed, and just to pick up. It's like at the very least and it's just pragmatic thinking to go back to the way you spoke about your dentist and the way I spoke about my partner's dentist being trauma-informed makes the most the easiest thing to do, but there's just maybe these tweaks, we don't know what we don't know. So yeah, really inviting a space for people to be at the forefront of embodying that change in the workplace.
Myrna McCallum:
So that is the four days that we are offering you, and let me just give you a few more details. So it's April 11th to 13th with an optional day for those who want to stay on the 14th. It's going to be in Whistler, British Columbia. We're having the retreat is being hosted and held at the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre, which is a very beautiful building, right in Whistler. Go to my website, myrnamccallum.co, click on the link that says retreat. All the info is there. I've got a block of hotel rooms booked. So if you decide to come up and come and stay, you can get a discount on a hotel room rates. Hotel rates are actually better than they normally are because it's the tail end of the skiing season, so less busy, lunch and breakfast is provided. And once they're there, it's all a walkable community.
You don't have to worry about how to get around. And we're also going to have a dinner one night, we're going to have a formal dinner, we're going to have a little bit of fun. And for folks who are regulated by the Law Society of British Columbia. I just got approval today for 16 continuing professional development credits. So if you come to this retreat, you get 16 CPD, which is like a cherry on top. And for those who are operating in different provinces, I would invite you to make an application with your regulator. And if you need additional information from me to complete that application, I'm happy to give you any info you need. Registration is open early bird rates are on now until February 14th, I think-
Amar Dhall:
And there'll be a talent show. Yep. Bring your guitars or we want to actually connect with you all as people. So you want to say something about that?
Myrna McCallum:
Yeah, that's right. So Amar and I talked about doing something like who's got talent kind of, or you say you think you've got talent competition, so we're going to do something fun the night that we have at dinner and everyone is invited to just relax. You're in a safe space and among friends and just put yourself out there and the-
Amar Dhall:
Yeah, because we know lawyers, you are... Or people in the justice sector. You're a creative bunch. You've got multifaceted brilliance scenarios. So it doesn't matter what it is. Doesn't need to be musical, can be spoken word, can be interpretive dance. I really hope we get some interpretive dances. And it's an opportunity to share yourself with this community that Myrna has is bringing together like a lightning rod around this awareness of trauma-informed justice and being able to kind of champion this. So yeah, it's also why there's no online option, is it? This is about face-to-face feeling connected and re-engaging with life.
Myrna McCallum:
Yeah, absolutely. Re-engaging with life, connecting with people, being truly present with each other and having a little bit of fun. And I mean, I think it's going to be fantastic. It's one-of-a-kind retreat. I know this because as I said tomorrow, last year I was going through something, and I was looking all over the world. There was a point last year where had anyone said, oh, you got to come to Zimbabwe to get, I would've gotten on a plane, but there was nothing. And so we've created that something. Yeah, I think it's going to be phenomenal.
Amar Dhall:
It's an honor to be involved and it's already fun, frankly, Myrna, you're a hoot.
Myrna McCallum:
Right on. Well, thank you for that. So yes, so folks, we hope you'll join Amar and I in Whistler in April for this innovative, groundbreaking, one-of-a-kind retreat that gives you that missing link and helps you to bring more of your humanity into the work that you do. And dare I say, maybe we generate some healing from this experience.
Amar Dhall:
Beautifully said.
Myrna McCallum:
That's it. That's the episode, our first episode of season three. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. I hope you're inspired to come to Whistler and join Amar and I for three days, maybe four. And I think it's going to be a powerful experience for all of us and a learning experience for all of us because I expect to learn as much as I share. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any feedback, comments @thetraumainformedlawyer on Instagram, you can also find me @theTILPodcast on Twitter, and of course LinkedIn, The Trauma-Informed Lawyer Podcast. You could go by my name. Please leave me a rating and review on Apple Podcast and on Spotify. If you loved this episode, this podcast, please do that. Currently, I'm a five-star podcast on Apple Podcast. I'd love to keep it that way. And if you'd like to join Amar and I in Whistler, go to my website, myrnamccallum.co, and click the link 2023 Whistler Retreat. Take care of yourselves and each other. Until next time. This episode was recorded on the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Tsleil-Waututh people.