How to Debrief and De-Escalate Emotions After Traumatic Events
Hannah Fullmer was working at a U.S. zoo when she heard a panicked call on her radio that an individual needed help. A code wasn’t part of the call—just a quick request for assistance.
Fullmer assumed that it was for help at the lion run, where a female and male lion had recently been introduced to each other. She thought there might have been a mistake in the feeding process for the two and she was going to assist with a lion-on-lion conflict.
But when she got to the scene, she quickly realized that assumption was wrong. One of the lions was out in the run and it was threatening a human staff member who was inside the enclosure.
“I realized that I had no weapon, I had no tool, I had nothing to protect myself or others,” Fullmer recalls. “I safely retreated to another area where I could secure myself and then start our protocol for closing that scene smoothly.”
Tragically, the zoo worker was killed in that interaction with the lion. Zoo officials also made the difficult choice, with local law enforcement who responded to the scene, to euthanize the lion that was involved. Fullmer, who was on the zoo’s weapons team at the time, played a key role in assisting law enforcement with this effort.
It was a traumatic experience for everyone involved. And then, it quickly became apparent that local law enforcement was going to treat the incident as a homicide investigation instead of an accidental encounter with a dangerous animal. They took witness statements, asked questions about who had access to the lion’s enclosure, who had the keys, and who was potentially at fault.
“There were a lot of components that at that moment I wasn’t really thinking about,” Fullmer says. “I was just simply thinking about my own safety and the safety of other humans and other animals. Once [the investigation] started to unfold, it became really difficult to process.
“In my mind, I stayed very much in that first responder mindset of what are the facts, monitor the timing, here’s the information, and providing that as clearly as possible to ensure that the investigation went smoothly,” Fullmer adds. “Within that space, there’s just not a lot of opportunity for emotional space.”
The next day, a sheriff’s deputy was out at the zoo to continue the investigation, and Fullmer asked if they had a protocol for trauma therapy—something the zoo itself did not have at the time. The deputy responded: “Oh, you think you need that?”
The interaction left Fullmer feeling dismissed, invalidated, and shocked. So, she reached out to peers who’d had a similar experience at their zoo—Erin McNally and her partner—for help. They answered the call, coming to Fullmer’s zoo to provide critical incident stress management (CISM) tools under the guidance of a licensed clinician.
What is CISM?
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) defines CISM as a “system of education, prevention, and mitigation of the effects from exposure to highly stressful critical incidents.” It is most effective, according to OSHA, when handled by specially trained individuals, sometimes referred to as crisis intervention specialists.
CISM follows a specific process, including critical incident stress debriefing (CISD). These debriefings are a facilitator-led group process conducted soon after a traumatic event has happened with the individuals who are under stress from trauma exposure.
“When structured, the process usually (but not always) consists of seven steps: introduction, fact phase, thought phase, reaction phase, symptom phase, teaching phase, and re-entry phase,” OSHA explains. “During the group process, participants are encouraged to describe their experience of the incident and its aftermath, followed by a presentation on common stress reactions and stress management. This early intervention process supports recovery by providing group support and linking employees to further counseling and treatment services if they become necessary.”
CISM was initially created for the first responder community in the 1970s and is a process to train peers to help other peers. The International Critical Incident Stress Foundation offers a variety of resources and trainings to become a CISM practitioner to assist first responders.
In a zoo environment, often veterinary staff, animal care personnel, and security and safety team members act as first responders for incidents that occur, McNally says. This realization helped her understand how CISM could be applied to help support zoo staff members when they have experienced a traumatic event—including violence from an animal.
McNally founded Growing Resiliency for Aquarium and Zoo Employees (GRAZE) with Shannon McKinney. McNally serves as the director of crisis response and is a certified critical incident debriefer. In its work, GRAZE typically conducts a CISM debriefing at least 24 hours after an incident—not immediately after the event.
“When we go through something traumatic, we have a trauma membrane that’s open,” McNally explains. “If we sit somebody down and we try to talk about certain things too soon, we can actually do more harm than we can do good.”
Initially, GRAZE divides individuals who volunteer to participate for debriefings based on how they were affected by the incident. For example, crisis intervention specialists might create one group of the staff members who directly witnessed the incident and another group of the staff members who handled creating a secure perimeter around the incident. Dividing up affected staff this way can help provide answers to questions they might have about their part of the incident without causing additional harm, McNally adds.
“The groups can be very helpful for folks to help their brains fill in some of the information,” she says. “It’s not necessarily to add to their trauma, but it’s to be able to aid the brain and calm it down—answer some of those gaps that it’s asking about.”
The debriefings are designed to acknowledge what happened, what people experienced, and that it was significant and impactful. This helps de-escalate how people are responding to the incident.
Fullmer says that the CISM debriefings allowed the opportunity to talk to her peers and explore what they saw and felt without judgment or feeling stuck in grief, flashbacks, or emotional experiences.
Creating a judgment-free zone to discuss the incident is extremely important as part of the recovery process, but it can be difficult. Humans are naturally judgmental—it’s an instinct designed to help keep us safe—but fear of judgment around reactions taken in a crisis can prevent people from moving forward.
It’s common practice for crisis response training to focus on creating muscle memory, so that personnel respond as planned when an incident does occur.
“But when it is real time, when it’s real life and really happening, there are details that cannot be controlled,” Fullmer reflects. “There’s almost always some divergence from that drilling, that training. What I have seen and heard from others is that when that in-moment decision has to be made, there is this inherent fear of judgment, of, ‘Did I do the wrong thing?’
“One of the things that brains like to do after a crisis is fill in the why. Why today? Why me? Why this? Why something else?” Fullmer continues. “We’re seeing that sense of control or empowerment after a critical event. It’s easy for our brains to then self-judge and self-criticize.”
One of the things that brains like to do after a crisis is fill in the why. Why today? Why me? Why this?
Additional Support
CISM debriefings are not designed to be a space for psychotherapy or counseling. Some individuals may need that additional support after a violent incident has occurred, McNally adds.
“The critical incident stress management approach is really to restore adaptive function in an individual, normalize signs and symptoms after highly stressful events,” she says. “It really is that initial triage, if you will, but it may not be all that an individual needs—especially if it’s a crisis or a traumatic event. That is something that might need some long-haul care.”
Fullmer left the zoo where the lion incident occurred a few years later and has since joined GRAZE as the director of supportive services and is completing her Master of Science for clinical mental health counseling to become a licensed clinician for GRAZE as well. She’s also a certified Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) instructor.
The National Council of Mental Wellbeing created MHFA to help destigmatize and normalize mental health challenges that occur in daily life by creating a non-judgmental space to talk about them and pivot—when needed—to discussing professional mental health resources.
“It’s really the parallel to first aid, CPR training, triage, essentially of showing up,” Fullmer adds. “Let’s make things as safe for now as possible. Then, how do we connect to other appropriate professional services or that self-care if needed?”
People process trauma in a variety of ways and their exposure to the event can result in different responses, says Diana Concannon, PsyD, PCI, associate provost, strategic initiatives and partnerships, and dean, California School of Forensic Studies, at Alliant International University.
The variance in response to trauma is why it’s important for organizations to provide different and diverse resources for employees who need additional support after a debriefing, such as connection to an employee assistance program, creating an in-office space for employees to voluntarily meet with a clinician, and sharing resources that employees can utilize outside the workplace.
Organizations can also help managers monitor their direct reports for signs of distress, such as increases in absenteeism, changes in personality at work, or erratic behavior, Concannon says.
“It is absolutely normal to have an abnormal reaction to an abnormal event in the immediate aftermath of the event…but if it persists, then an elevated level of support might be warranted,” Concannon adds.
Most people understand what they need in times of trauma, Concannon adds, so it is key for organizations to respect those requests and provide for them, including time off, elevated professional support, and family support. Doing so can also help people affected by the incident regain a sense of control that was lost during the event.
“Trauma often has that effect. Our worldviews get shaken. Things we counted on are ruptured,” Concannon says. “So, being given information that gives us the opportunity to engage and take back that feeling of agency is extremely helpful.”
It is absolutely normal to have an abnormal reaction to an abnormal event in the immediate aftermath of the event.
Mindful Managers
In the wake of violent incident at work, Fullmer says it’s important for managers to remember that they are humans, too. She was a manager when the lion attack occurred at her zoo, and she was still responsible for feeding and caring for the rest of the animals at the zoo while law enforcement carried out its investigation.
“I went into autopilot to get those things done and get them done safely,” Fullmer says. “It was not until I started to actually show impact that other people on my staff realized that it was okay to be impacted.”
She shared with her team that the incident was affecting her sleep, she’d increased her drinking, and she was having flashbacks that disrupted her day-to-day life because her past coping mechanisms were not working for this traumatic incident.
“You saw this wave of relief over other people that they thought they were the problem,” Fullmer says. “That they weren’t doing it right because they were struggling. What they were seeing was me not struggling, even though I was.”
That experience changed the way Fullmer related to her team during future crisis—including an on-site epidemic that affected many of the animals at the zoo. She humanized herself and shared with teammates that what they were experiencing was difficult and the emotions it made her feel in response. That openness helped to create the feeling of psychological safety for people working in a high-risk profession.
“If our physical safety has been threatened, we have to lean in on the psychological safety as managers to make sure that we’re encouraging folks to ask for what they need and talk openly about what’s going on. Because if I need them to do something that is high risk, I need to know that they can do it,” Fullmer says.
Along with this practice, Fullmer says she also implemented a policy that if at any time someone felt they could not do their job that day, they needed to tell her, and she would take them off the rotation.
“That created a sense of safety, and the feedback that I got was very beneficial,” she adds. “I never actually had anybody tell me they couldn’t do it. But simply them knowing that they could without repercussion was something that was very helpful.”
Megan Gates is senior editor at Security Management. Connect with her at [email protected] or on LinkedIn.
