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Transcript of Podcast Episode
Tragedy, Trauma and Mess: How a Psychologist Helped the Survivors of Grenfell
Foundations: How and why did Hannah become a psychologist?
Today, I’m talking to Hannah Abrahams. Hannah is an educational and child psychologist who’s worked beyond the therapy room in both the public and private sector, starting out as a primary school teacher before training as an ed psych in 2005. She’s been involved in projects that would seriously intimidate most of us, including setting up a school and supporting the community after the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower. Not to mention setting up and building her own private practice. Welcome to the podcast, Hannah, there’s so much that I want to ask you about and so much that we could talk about. So let’s start at the beginning. What inspired you to leave teaching and become an ed psych?
Gosh, what a big question, and what an introduction. It actually made me really emotional listening to that. I think I always knew that I wanted to work with special needs children, and in my second year of teaching, it was really made concrete. There was a little boy that I had in my class who had been diagnosed very early on with autism. And we formed a really strong bond and a really good understanding of each other. And I think that absolutely cemented the fact that I knew that I wanted to go and work as an educational psychologist and kind of work in a more systemic way supporting staff and families and working very collaboratively. Yeah, the picture of him and my mind is so clear, but I remember coming into the class one day just going, yep, I absolutely have to follow this. So I think I had an idea from very early on.
I also did work experience when I was 16 in a school for children who were deaf, and they taught me to sign really quickly. Obviously, I was not fluent. But I think for me it’s always been about communication, and interestingly, about communication with people who find it more difficult to communicate in the neuro-typical way. So I think from a really young age, I was really interested in building relationships and building bonds. And I think that ed psychs have an incredible gift of being able to do that in all sorts of different settings. So I hope that answers your first question.
Yeah, it does. I mean, I was just thinking about how strong that motivation must’ve been. Like you’ve literally, I can see, the audience can’t, but I can, and see like Hannah gets really animated when she’s thinking about that boy. I’m thinking, was that what got you through what must’ve been really difficult? Because training as a psychologist is hard, especially as a second career.
Yeah, I think I had a real clear vision, I was very lucky because I had a very clear vision right from the start. And I’d read psychology at university with a kind of view to, I know I want to follow this. But I also think that I wanted to work with children in the sense that at that age I was probably quite naive and thinking, well, you can make a bigger difference with younger people. And I suppose it’s maternal instincts and mothering instincts as well that kind of kick in. So I think that very much played a part.
Training to be a psychologist is incredibly tough. You will know too. It’s really, really tough. And I think there is the difference of becoming an ed psych, because when I trained you had to be a teacher, and we had all these teachers who’d come in, who’d felt incredibly confident and competent being in a classroom, and then when you’re training to be a psychologist you’re questioning everything, and suddenly you feel like your skill base is zero, and you’re looking around for validation the whole time. And it was very… What’s the word? There was a very uneven feel about walking into their schools when you knew you understood a school, but suddenly you were coming in as the outsider.
And I think that was the part of the training as a psychologist that was the really, really tough bit, is that suddenly you just felt completely deskilled. But actually we understood how schools worked, and the pressure that teachers were under, and the pressure that families were under, and the different systems in place. So I think that plays a massive part in rebuilding your confidence when you’re training.
I think it’s interesting, because I always question, when psychologists only train others, and the meaning behind that, and what are their needs ultimately? Because being in the front line is a very different place to be. So it’s political, but I’ve always noted it and noticed it and questioned it, but maybe that’s because I’m not a lecturer.
That’s really interesting. So is that something that would ever appeal to you to do a bit of that?
Yeah, absolutely. And I’ve done more and more of it now since I’ve been in private practice than I did before when I was working in the NHS and the state system. But it’s not something that I feel incredibly confident at. I think that’s something that I have to skill myself up with regards to working as a psychologist, and I think that’s part and parcel of who we are often in our nature.
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I think when you were talking about what it was like to retrain as an ed psych, I was thinking about just over a year ago, maybe 18 months ago, I did a course in online therapy. It made me feel like I knew nothing about therapy.
When you do.
Something I’d been doing for a really long time. But as soon as I was in that learning environment again, back in the role of the student, I started questioning everything, started thinking I was completely incompetent, felt totally deskilled, until I got in the saddle and started seeing people online, and I was like, “Oh, here are all my skills and knowledge to help me.” Excellent.
It’s funny, isn’t it? I mean, I think we ping pong between kind of a safe space to a, “Oh my goodness me. How can I post a be know what I’m doing?” I mean, I had a really interesting experience a few weeks ago when, I’ve started going into more work settings, you know, working with lawyers or people who are in more corporate settings. And the feeling of imposter syndrome as I walked into these beautiful buildings, kind of thinking, “Do I know what I’m talking about? Have I got a clue?” And then watching people’s eyes and knowing that actually, I know what I’m talking about most of the time and I’m still learning so much, but actually they gained, and I gained from them as well. And it’s very much about perception, isn’t it? And there’s another psychologist I know who always talks about, just remember what you can do. And it has to be this constant little narrative in our heads, doesn’t it? So yeah. It’s about confidence.
Yeah. And that feels like the model of growth to me. You have to go through that feeling of feeling totally deskilled in order for your skills to come out and help you and to see how it all integrates and turns you into the psychologist that you can be.
Yeah. And I think that that’s part and parcel of being a good practitioner is to be reflective as much as you possibly can, and be able to pull the positives as well as the bits that you know that you need to adapt and change and learn more about. So I think in the world of private practice, the gift that I’ve been given is that I’ve met incredible people and I’ve been given the space to become much more creative than I could in other situations.
How Hannah found a psychological way to help the survivors of Grenfell
So for example, when I was working at Grenfell, we had to listen to the community. I was doing things like going into cooking sessions and learning how to make amazing tajines. I was sitting in sewing groups. I was making slime with 30 children whilst we were talking about setting up a memorial for the children. And I wouldn’t have had the capacity to do that in my old day job to the extent, because I had to be literally in the streets with the community and building trust. And that’s a very different part of psychology that I’ve learned about and that I’ve embraced, and that has given me a heck of a lot really.
Yes. I think that this is part of your story that people are going to be really fascinated about. Because I know when the tragedy happened, I’d actually just recently given birth, and although I wasn’t living a million miles away actually, I felt like I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t help. But I did receive an email saying, “We’re looking for psychologists, skilled in trauma therapies.” And I remember feeling very bad about the fact that I was just breastfeeding around the clock, it just wasn’t going to be possible. But there was also another part of me that, a bit like we were just saying, was like, “How could I possibly help?” Couldn’t figure it out. So could you talk a bit about what that process was, how you got involved, and then the things that you were able to do to support that community?
So probably about eight years ago now, I learned about an incredible charity called Grief Encounter, which basically works with bereaved families and children. I mean, I think probably others would have heard about CBUK and Winston’s Wish, and Grief Encounters sits within that realm. But they’re a smaller charity. And I went on a six month training with them, and it was incredible. And I worked with a lot of the children that they were working with, and I ran groups, and I went on retreats with the families, and I became very much a part of the charity in terms of the support I was offering as a psychologist.
And when Grenfell happened, I mean, I live relatively close, but also the first school that I ever taught in is around the corner from Grenfell. So the little boy that I was talking about earlier is, he grew up around there. And there was something very much inside of me that kind of was lit in terms of, okay, I work in trauma. I don’t work in trauma every day. But if I have a team around me, we can do something here, we can do something tangible, and we’re not going to go in and wave magic wands… I often hear and I often observe in crises in school that we suddenly have 10 counselors around on a Monday morning after there’s been a tragedy on Saturday. It’s like, no, we’re not doing that.
But I did meet with Grief Encounter and they said to me, “Hannah, can you do it?” And I waivered, because the enormity of this situation is beyond comprehension. But I agreed, and with a lot of trepidation and a lot of fear, we went down there. And we had connections with the other charities. And I also had connections with the council as well. And slowly but surely these meetings starting to happen about, what can we do and how are we going to make a positive mark, and just ultimately be there? And there was a lot of watchful waiting that happened.
And I built these connections with people who ran, I don’t know whether you would have heard of something called Grenfell United. So a lot of the survivors formed together to build this community. And there are other communities that were kind of popping up. And I worked, I also built relationships with the heads and the deputy heads of some of the schools that were literally right in the vicinity. And there was a lot of listening, and there was a lot of watching, and there was a lot of changes made along the way. So you can’t go in with a perfect plan. There isn’t one.
The importance of waiting and learning
And there was and still remains incredible mistrust. So I think about six months of my work was about building trust. And that was being on the ground. So working with people who were going into the community centers, going into the children’s centers, being with the staff, playing in the sand, all of those things. And slowly but surely all of these different groups came together and we built the trust in these families, and we knew when they wanted to talk to us and when they didn’t. And that changed on an hour by hour, day by day, week by week basis.
But eventually the Metropolitan Police came to us and said, “We want to do something.” Because their need was so great as well. If you can imagine the level of trauma, you can almost describe it as ripples of the waves against the shore. It just kept coming. And I think, obviously it’s still going, but at that point it was so tangible. The liaison officers were working directly with the families who were not living where they had been, obviously, or where they wanted to be. And ultimately what we did is, the families started to say, “We need a space to memorialize what’s been going on. And we need a safe space.” So we had a couple of very private areas where we used to meet with the families twice a week.
And over the course of the other six months, we started to work very therapeutically with the children. The parents, it was kind of like wavering in and out, and it was very frightening for them, because we were using big words, death, there was death in the air. But the children needed to use that language and we needed to help them to make sense of the utter confusion that they’d been thrown into. And over a very slow, gentle course of time, we listened to them, we built this memorial with regards to how they wanted it to be.
So the climax was, is that ultimately, the week before the very first year of Grenfell, we had every single family who’d been affected standing at the school, which is called Kensington Aldridge Academy, with the Metropolitan Police who had been working very closely with the families, with CAHMS, with us, with CBUK, with everybody who’d been involved in this project. And we had the most beautiful memorial that was completely private. And the children were all engaged, they sang, we had incredible artwork that we’d done with the kids. They’ve written poems, they’ve written letters to loved ones. We’d released, they had to be special balloons, but they were special balloons, from the top of the tower. That’s what the kids wanted. And none of it was filmed. It was so private that nobody knew that it was going on. But it was incredibly powerful and very beautiful.
And I think one of the most powerful moments for me was that we’d had somebody sing the prayers, the memorial prayers at the bottom of the tower, and the children understood, there was total silence. And it was actually a beautiful day. And suddenly after the singing had finished, I suddenly heard these little squeaks, and the kids had started to run into the school and they were playing hide and seek, and it was just a normal game in the midst of the most horrific thought processes that were going through are so many of our minds.
We set up a beautiful tea for them, so they all had tea. But from going from the kind of like utter despair to playing hide and seek, reminds you of children’s ability to be resilient. And I think we had harbored the fact in them and with their parents that they still needed to be children, because there was a lot of adult language going on that you don’t want five and six year olds to be using. There’d been a load of soaking up information. I think probably the most horrible way I can describe it is that when somebody is in the depths of the most horrific grief, they kind of vomit their grief out. So there’d been that going on a lot. But there was still this laughter and this play, and this engagement, and this community.
And I think ultimately the biggest job that we did was to help this community sew and weave their connections together. And this will be ongoing for years, and years, and years. And I anticipate that when the tower comes down, then the eruption of the depth of despair will be reawakened, and as the inquiry goes on. But I suppose in a nutshell, that’s how I’ve been involved. But a lot of it has been about just allowing the conversation to happen.
There’s just so much that is so powerful in that story. I don’t think I’ve even got the words for it at all. But it seems like you needed to show great courage to be that flexible, to do the waiting, to do the listening, to not charge in with a plan. Because I know, when I’m faced with maybe one person sitting in front of me who’s been through something that horrific, the safe place that my mind goes to is some kind of protocol, whether that’s the EMDR protocol or trauma focused CBT protocol. I’m in my textbooks like, “Right, session two, I’m going to do this.” And of course that’s not what they need.
We couldn’t do that.
Yeah. That’s never the right way.
And it was really interesting actually, because there was a lot of, “Here’s a form…” Not from us. “Here’s a form. Fill in the form. If you come on this morning at this time to this place we can assign you with…” And it was like, no, no, no. They have just lost everything and they need to just be, like wake up in the morning and understand how to make a cup of tea and sit still for three minutes. I think the other thing is, is that if you think about the enormity of the situation for them, there were meetings, upon meetings, upon meetings, upon meetings about getting clothes, where to go. Okay, their hotel room had damp in it. Or the baby was poorly. Or somebody that they needed to see in Morocco couldn’t fly over, and how could they get to a computer to help them to change the ticket? It’s basic needs that needed to happen.
And I think you’re right, there was a lot of, the council, and I hate to say it, but CAHMS and adolescent mental health services, there was a lot of form filling that was being shoved in people’s faces. And yes, I put myself on the line because I was kind of like, “Can’t do this.” The sewing group was so beautiful, because essentially it was set up by a woman who lost her best friend in the tower, and they used to meet and they used to sew together. So she needed to do something that spoke her language.
And I think, look, I’m a white woman, I don’t speak all the beautiful languages that are spoken at Grenfell. So that was another piece of my work. So I had to learn so much about the cultures and the different expectations, and it’s not the norm to go and talk to somebody. That’s not the norm in many of these cultures.
And one of the things that we were incredibly gifted in doing is that we built relationships with a theatre, which was round the corner from Grenfell, called the Playground Theatre. And essentially it was a community theatre. And we met the most amazing guy who was a musician, who was able to bring in circus acts, comedians, artists. We had some famous actors who came in and met the children, and just to give them the space to normal, creative, fun, engaging, just take the weight away a little bit. And then whilst the children were playing and engaging in those activities, I was able with my team to talk to the adults. So you’re creating these safe spaces. And absolutely none of it was protocol, but I think the level and the web of confusion that surrounded the situation meant that we were ultimately ingrained in part of that too. Does that make sense?
Yeah, of course. And I think providing that consistency in that you were always there, you and your team were there consistently trying to help, even if you didn’t always know exactly what that was going to look like, that’s an attachment for those people who’ve lost all of their certainty in the world.
Exactly.
And I can see how just having the patience to let that grow and develop, lets them tell you what they need. And often I think even in individual therapy, if you get out of the way a little bit, the mind will tell you what it needs to heal. And what I’m hearing is that happening on a much bigger scale, on a community scale.
Exactly. And that’s really scary. Because as you say, we’ve all gone to university and we’ve got the textbooks, and we understand the process of CBT. It’s a process. This is a different process. And I think you’re spot on, it’s about knowing that those people are going to be there when they say they’re going to be there. And if you want to communicate with them verbally or by playing with slime, you can on Monday, but on Tuesday you might want to look them in the eye, and that’s okay.
I mean, it just sounds so powerful, and at the same time I’m thinking, to be you at that time must have been really difficult as well as probably rewarding.
Really. I think difficult is probably an understatement. There were many times when I came home and I was like, “Oh my god.” I wrote a lot. I started to write. I also did things, I think part of the training I remember at Grief Encounter was about letting go of some of the trauma, because ultimately intrinsically you soak some of that up, and you can have supervision to the hilt… I mean, I think my supervision for it to start with wasn’t as intense as it should have been, and that’s a life lesson and that’s a reflection.
But I used to do things, because I don’t know whether the listeners or you’ve been to around Grenfell, but particularly in the winter, not so much now because the tower is covered, but when know we were there right at the beginning, it’s black. It’s sooty, it’s dark, the trees were bare. And I used to come, and I used to drive the car, find a green space, and walk in green. Even if the sun was setting, I just needed to be in green. So I think for me the power of nature and the power of outdoor space and just to literally quite physically breathe it out became part of my therapeutic pattern. I needed to just literally blow it out.
And I think that, I wrote a little bit too about boundaries, and I think it’s about being incredibly aware of when things just become too much, and knowing that we need to self care and self preserve. And I am certain that there are so many individuals, if we think about the paramedics, firemen, CAHMS, the teachers, I mean, definitely the teachers, because we ran many sessions with the teachers, but the level of post traumatic stress is just huge, absolutely huge.
And I imagine there’ll be people realizing that they’re suffering with post traumatic stress for the next 10, 20, 30 years.
The importance of boundaries in trauma work
Without a shadow of a doubt, without a shadow of a doubt. And I think, what you see in human nature is that people are ultimately altruists, they are givers. And we saw that at Grenfell. But sometimes to the detriment of their own being. So I was seeing a lot of people who coming from around the country, I mean I’m not exaggerating, literally used to get on a train from Manchester or Glasgow, because there was a need in them to be there, all a multilayered variety of reasons. But I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, you’re traveling three and a half hours, or seven hours, who’s protecting you? How are you protected? Why do you feel the need to come so far?”
So did that become one of your jobs as a psychologist, to be the person that says, “Guys, boundaries mean something.”
Yeah, for sure. And I spoke a lot to the team about it a lot of the time. And you start to notice things, and I think you definitely start to notice this in private practice, and I do, and I think Grenfell definitely taught me, people start sending emails at 9:30 on a Sunday night, or a mom’s concerned about their child’s at 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning, and you’re left with it. And it’s like, “Okay, no, I need to have this time. This is my time with me, or my family, or my sports, or whatever, or my painting.” But I think in private practice the lines become blurred so easily, and part of that is to do with wanting to develop a practice. The fear of like, “If I don’t reply to this now I’m going to lose this.” But actually you’re not, and you have to remember where your needs lie.
Yes. And I think the gift of private practice is that you can do stuff that is flexible and responsive and is more what you think people need than what you’re told to do by somebody else. And that’s amazing. But definitely what comes with that is, you have to set those boundaries because nobody’s doing that for you.
Exactly.
You can’t blame an organization either. I know I found that the most difficult bit actually, I’m very clear when I’m available and when I’m not available, and when I’ll respond to emails and when I won’t, and what needs to come to a session versus what I can just reply to you quickly. I’m always very clear about that with my clients. But the first time somebody questioned it and I couldn’t say, “Them’s the rules.” I was like, “Oh, this is hard. I’ve got to own this now.” And at the same time, I mean, it sounds like you had a team in a way around you, but presumably not necessarily a team full of psychologists.
No.
And what I miss in private practice is somebody else looking at me and going, “You do realize that you’ve got too many cases that are like this.” Or, “You’re hearing too many sad stories at the moment and not getting enough supervision.” There’s no one apart from me to monitor that.
Yeah, and I think that that’s definitely a life lesson, and I think it’s one, you know when we talked right at the beginning about the importance of reflection, that is definitely one that I’ve come back to in practice repeatedly. And I started to even learn the cycle of the year, in terms of, it’s going to be okay to August, but come November, December, maybe not so much. So have you booked your supervision in? Are you clear that you’ve got two days where you can do something just for you, and that you know that it’s all right not to answer the phone on that morning? And you start developing really tactful but successful strategies that ultimately protect you and the needs of those around you.
And I think, definitely at Grenfell, I was working with psychologists and psychotherapists, but I was also working with people who didn’t have the same training as me at all, and their boundaries were kind of somewhere over the hills.
Not thought about at all.
No, exactly. And then it starts to seep out in other ways and other behaviors. And I think that’s also why, which is what you’ve done is so brilliant, and I’ve got friends of mine in terms of, I met a team of psychologists both locally but also online, which now is turning into much more tangible work because we work face to face. But we have a human need to be and to talk and to listen, and to kind of go back to each other and reflect and say, “Maybe you don’t need to take that on right now. It’s okay to let that one go.”
Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why I’m building peer supervision into the community, because when you’re not getting that from a team… And a lot of us, even in the NHS, actually, it’s more common now to be the only psychologist in the team. And I worked in a team like that briefly. And you don’t have anybody that you can be like, “Oh, I’m thinking that possibly the boundaries are being overstepped here.” Because everybody’s working a different model and it’s your job to highlight that to the team. And that felt like a huge weight on my shoulders. So I just think peer supervision that you get in training and then it’s kind of hard to get anywhere else is absolutely crucial to our mental wellbeing.
Absolutely. And you cannot give unless your cup is full. You cannot give from an empty cup. And I’ve developed the most incredible friendships and relationships by psychologists that I’ve met since I’ve gone into private practice. And I think, you learn so much each other, and then your creativity, and that sense in me, because I love art, for example, so I’m able to use that so much more than I ever was. We can talk about things and what works successfully and what doesn’t, just in a calm… And it kind of becomes an even more protected space, doesn’t it? I think. Because you know that those are the meeting times that you’re coming together, and I’m very strict about it now, I’m kind of like, “Yeah, this is what’s happening.”
Yeah, that sounds really powerful and really sensible. And there’s so much that I want to ask you about, but I’m aware that you’re really busy and you need to get going.
I don’t mind. We can talk for another couple of minutes. It’s fine.
Well, I do have a selfish question that I ask everybody that I’m interviewing, and that is, if you could get somebody come on this podcast for me to interview, who would you want to see?
Oh, Daniel Siegel.
Okay.
I’ve heard him talk loads at conferences and things like that, but I think what he’s done is so… It’s really clever because it’s so accessible and he talks in a really engaging and warm and kind way. But I want to hear his story about how he got to where he got to. That’s what I’m fascinated by really. And people like Philippa Perry who wrote… I know that she’s talked a lot, and I think the recent book that she’s written, again, it’s engaging and it’s full of hope, I think, ultimately. And I think that’s what people are buying into. But I’m interested in her and her relationship with Grayson, and just how that all evolves and how that plays a part in how she is as a therapist ultimately.
I think that human element is fascinating, isn’t it? Because it’s really easy to look at some of these people and think, they must’ve had these amazing ideas from the second that they trained or the minute they started.
Yeah, it’s that imposter syndrome again, isn’t it?
Exactly. I read The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read.
Yeah, that’s the book, yes.
And it really helped me, actually, just because of the stage that I’m at with my kids at the moment. It was exactly what I needed at the moment that I needed it. I feel incredibly warm towards Philippa Perry for that reason.
Yes, so do I, yes. [inaudible 00:35:23] all the way.
But I did also have this sense of, how did you come up with this? How did you do this? And what enabled you to be able to communicate it in that way and reach that audience? Because it’s not something that I would have thought of doing. And it’s just hearing somebody talk about how they thought of that. Just like today, for me, hearing how you thought of the interventions that you put in place around Grenfell. It’s like it starts to make it seem less impossible when you speak to the human about what it felt like to do it and how messy it felt.
Yeah, and all these things are messy. I mean, you know, we haven’t talked about it, but organize people coming with incredible ideas, like saying, “I want to set up a school.” It’s like, What?” But actually making these things happen. And knowing that there is a huge amount of messiness in these things, and there continues to be, and everything is evolving and changing. But the gift is, is that we can use a lot of our reflective practice to help people to unstick the mess or the knotted up ball of wool. But it’s all right for the messy bits to exist too. And if we were all living in perfection then there would be another sort of mess.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that seems like a really great message to finish on. I mean, I’m definitely going to have to get you back on though.
Oh, that’ll be very good.
I’ve got list of stuff.
We’ve had such a lovely chat, haven’t we? And you’ve made me think about things that I really haven’t thought about and really haven’t talked about for a very long time.
Good. And those messages that need to get out there. And I reckon a lot of people hearing this are going to feel really inspired and want to connect with you. So your website, and I’m going to put links to everything in the show notes so that people can just click through, but your website is HannahAbrahams.com, and I believe it’s being done up at the moment.
Yes.
Exciting times. You are on Instagram as ChildhoodMinded, I believe?
Yeah.
And Facebook as Hannah Abrahams Psychologist.
Yeah, and I do a bit of Twitter, but not very much.
I’m the same. I use Twitter to stalk, but not much else. Brilliant. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Hannah.
It’s been so lovely to talk to you, Rosie.
It’s been brilliant. Thank you.
Take care. Bye.