Supporting Educators: Tackling Compassion Fatigue and Secondary Traumatic Stress

Host: Georgina Livingstone, Be You National Operations Manager, headspace
Guest Speaker: Bianca McLeish, Founder of The Teacher Wellbeing Academy and former educator with 20yrs classroom experience

Georgina Livingstone:

Well, hello, and welcome, everyone. Just as we, let our online participants join the space, I'll take a moment to welcome you, and thank you for joining our webinar today.

Today, we're going to be talking about supporting educators, tackling compassion fatigue and secondary traumatic stress. We very much appreciate you giving us your valuable time today for an hour. My name is Georgina Livingstone, and I'm the National Operations Manager for Be You with headspace.

A quick note to let you know that this webinar is being recorded, and the recording will be made available on our Be You website.

If you're here today, that means that you will also receive a shiny participation certificate for attending today's event, and this will be sent to you automatically via email.

So, welcome again, and we're looking forward to today's event.

Before we… before we start, I would like to acknowledge the country that I'm joining you from today. I'm joining today from Meanjin in Brisbane, and I'm on the lands of the Jagera  and the Turrbal people.

I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this country, and pay my respects to elders past and present, and importantly, recognise their connection to land, waters, culture, and community.

So Be You is a national organisation with national reach, and we know that many of you are joining us from all over Australia, so we extend our respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and elders across our nation.

No matter what our event is, we always take the opportunity to remind you to take care of yourself. We're talking about compassion fatigue today, and secondary traumatic stress, so being mindful of what we bring to this moment in terms of our personal experiences.

Our experiences in supporting others, or even seeking support, is something that we want to highlight at the start.

We want to ensure that our session today is a safe and inclusive space for everyone, so… I invite you to take a moment.

Take a breath and remember that you can take a break and step out if you need to.

Also, have a think about who you might be able to chat to after this session to share your experience if you feel like doing that looking after ourselves as we, as we talk about these topics is a really important part of, being compassionate to yourself.

In terms of questions, we would love to hear any questions from you today. You can post those questions to Bianca, our fabulous guest speaker, and the team using the Q&A function, which you will find at the bottom of your screen.

We try our best to respond during the session to questions, but we will follow up with you afterwards if we're unable to respond today.

Please just be mindful of confidentiality and privacy throughout the session, and ensure that, anything that you put in there is de-identified, in terms of names and, you know, personal details.

Just coming back to help-seeking, we'll share a link to some support services at the end of our session today, and of course, you've always got your school EAP (Employment Assistance Program) that's available, should you wish to tap into that.

Very quickly, if you're not familiar with Be You, we want to let you know that Be You is free and tailored to support your unique school needs. We have a national team in every state and territory, where we have consultants, and our consultants have worked in schools, in roles just like yours.

And can work with you on whole-of-school wellbeing in a way that works for you and your school.

I think it's really important to highlight that working with us doesn't need to be a huge project or a huge investment. Our (Be You) Consultants will support you to look at options to work on whatever it is that you might want to be working on, whether it's student or educator wellbeing, or thinking about critical incident prevention or response. We want to be right size and right time to support you in whatever you might need, and we'll make sure that you know how to get in touch with us when we send out follow-up comms.

You might already know your Be You Consultant.

Alright, on to the main event.

I am delighted to be welcoming Bianca McLeish to our session today.

Bianca is a wellbeing consultant; she's an author of Teacher Wellbeing Transformed and a former educator with more than 20 years' experience in the education sector.

Bianca has served as a student wellbeing Coordinator for Catholic Education Diocese of Rockhampton, where she supported schools and educators in fostering positive wellbeing outcomes.

We were just chatting before, and Bianca has actually worked across many of the different sectors, in, the education space, so brings with her a real wealth of knowledge of how different systems and sectors work.

She holds a Master of Education in Positive Mental Health and Wellbeing, and she's passionate about helping educators navigate emotional overload, build resilience, and restore nervous system balance. And most recently, she's founded the Teacher Wellbeing Academy.

Through her compassionate and evidence-based approach, she empowers teachers and school leaders to prioritise their wellbeing so they can thrive both professionally and personally.

And I think the fabulous thing that Bianca brings to our conversation today is that she has walked in the same shoes that many of you are walking in today, and I'm particularly excited to hear from Bianca because of her

Capacity to really intimately understand what it's like to be an educator in 2026.

I am now going to hand over to Bianca, who you are all here to see. So, over to you, Bianca. Thank you.

Presentation: Understanding Secondary Traumatic Stress and Compassion Fatigue

Bianca McLeish:

Thank you, so much for that lovely introduction. I have been on many of these Be You events, but I have been on the other side, so I'm very excited to be here today and honoured to be talking about such an important, topic, secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue in school settings.

So today, I am going to be discussing a neuro-informed way of understanding secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue. We're going to look at how they arise from your nervous system.

And why, particularly awareness and regulation are key to reducing their impacts.

Secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue in school settings

But before we start, the thing that I want to acknowledge first is your role as a first responder. Just like many other first responders, you, regardless of your role in school settings, are probably responding to stressful and quite impactful events, traumatic events at different times.

And something that's really interesting, and I certainly didn't know, until I read, a report, that was a study done by Dr. Adam Fraser, in Deakin University called The Silent Cost, and it is about secondary traumatic stress. It's fantastic, if you haven't read it, I think the link will go up (in the chat during the event).

And in here, they talked about one really important thing, which is that secondary traumatic stress for educators is actually higher than many of our first responders.

• It's 21% higher than psychologists.
• It's 23% higher than mental health nurses.
• It's 34% higher than paramedics.

Now, before I move on to discuss this, I do want to say I know that we have psychologists on here today, registered for this webinar.

And I'm not dismissing at all the wonderful work that psychologists are doing in our schools, and the amount of support they do, to support the students and the whole school community during times of trauma and critical incidents, and just their daily work with, particularly with students.

What I'm highlighting, though, and we will look at more as we go through this webinar, is that other first responders, and psychologists included, actually have training.

Within their training, they, have specific training around how to manage stress, and they also have ongoing, support to for debriefing and, like, professional supervision.

So, I think that's something that we will look at as we go through, that perhaps why the statistics are a lot higher for educators than they are for some other first responders.

Bianca McLeish: What Is Secondary Traumatic Stress?

So, what is secondary traumatic stress? So, it's the stress response that arises from hearing about or witnessing others' trauma. So, it's like your own body, actually, your nervous system.

Starts to feel like it's going through the event, even though you're only hearing about it, or witnessing it.

I'll give an example, because, like George said, I have been in schools a lot.

In my office, as a regional student wellbeing Coordinator was in a school.

And, in the morning, often, there was a young prep student who had a lot of separation anxiety and has experienced some trauma and adversity in their life and most mornings, you would hear this little person, screaming, crying, completely distressed, and it would usually last for a while. Of course, the school was supporting her, through this hard time.

Now, I was nowhere near this student, but hearing that distress on regular occurrences my nervous system would activate. My fight-or-flight response would activate, because I was hearing that distress.

And that is what we need to understand about what secondary traumatic stress is. It's that our emotions, or the students' emotions, or what we're seeing, is actually absorbed into our own nervous system.

So, for teachers, when this is happening ongoing, which it often is, it can feel like you're carrying a student's pain, and this often leads to, like, that real hyper alertness, intrusive thoughts, sleep disturbance, and emotional depletion.

 

Bianca McLeish: Secondary Traumatic Stress vs Vicarious Trauma

Now, before we go on, I just want to share a bit of a difference between secondary traumatic stress and vicarious trauma. So, I know when I first was in education, the words vicarious trauma were talked about a lot, whereas now we talk more about secondary traumatic stress.

So, I suppose the key difference is, and the reason we're talking about secondary traumatic stress today, is it's more situational and reactive. It's about stress and emotional overload, and

It often happens, more in the moment, and it's probably occurring more often.

Vicarious trauma is sort of more of a slow build. And, over time, it's quite transformational to the person.

And it can actually really change their worldview, their sense of safety and meaning, and even change their ability to relate to others. So today we'll be talking about secondary traumatic stress a lot more, and in the current research, this is the term that is used a lot more at the moment, is secondary traumatic stress.

Bianca McLeish: What Is Compassion Fatigue?

We're also going to be talking today about compassion fatigue, and it is a state of emotional and physical exhaustion that can occur when educators care deeply for students who are in distress over long periods.

And the impacts that we'll often see is that it often shows up as a reduced empathy, motivation, and well-being.

So, this can often occur, and I've seen this occur, over time, those long periods, particularly in primary schools where we know that our, educators are often with students all day long, every day.

I have seen cases, often, where really highly experienced, very compassionate and supportive and trauma-informed educators every year are, having students within their classrooms who need a lot of support, who've been through adversity, trauma, have some challenging behaviours and disabilities.

Now, this is where, over long periods of time, when these same teachers every year, every day, are deeply caring for these students, over time, this can lead to compassion fatigue. So, it is occurring, and it is something that we need to acknowledge, and that's what we're going to be looking at today as we go through.

Bianca McLeish: Secondary Traumatic Stress and Compassion Fatigue

Now, this is what I would say is the most important slide of the afternoon.

And that is that secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue are not signs of weakness.

They're normal, nervous system responses to caring for others in distress.

So, when educators support students in trauma, like we said, for long periods, their bodies stay on alert.

Because you're hearing Seeing, witnessing, and your nervous system is designed to keep you safe, so it is activating.

Without time for recovery and regulation, the nervous system can just stay in that overdrive, which, with all the educators, leaders I've spoken to, is where a lot of people sit.

They sit there for pretty much most of the term, and hit the end of term, and that's when we see exhaustion, we see illness, and what can happen is you can… your nervous system can be in a state of dysregulation.

Which has some very significant impacts, which we'll start to look at a little bit as we go through and look more at the nervous system and get that understanding.

Bianca McLeish: How Secondary Traumatic Stress Develops

So, how does secondary traumatic stress develop? We've touched on that a little bit. It's when an educator repeatedly could be hearing, traumatic disclosures. It could be supporting distressed students on a regular basis.

Witnessing dysregulated behaviour, managing crises or worrying regularly about vulnerable children. Now, I know we have a lot of different roles here on this webinar today. People in different roles would be probably, having different areas of this, because not everyone in a school is privy to certain information about children's vulnerability or traumatic disclosures.

So, whereas some roles, that… that is what would be leading to secondary traumatic stress.

For a lot (school leaders) that I speak to on a regular basis, and I would say the increase that we're seeing in schools in secondary traumatic stress every day in educators, would be the witnessing of dysregulated behaviour. That is something that, most educators, whether that's a teacher assistant, a classroom teacher, a guidance officer, principal, a leader, a wellbeing lead, many people are witnessing dysregulated behaviours, and then that is leading to secondary traumatic stress.

Bianca McLeish: How compassion fatigue emerges

So then how does compassion fatigue, differ from this, and how does it emerge?

Now, the word compassion: compassion itself is not the problem. It is fine to be compassion. It's a very important part of being an educator, being in a school system. Regardless of your role, compassion sort of comes with the profession.

The problem is when an educator's nervous system is repeatedly activated without sufficient recovery, and this is where we find that word fatigue coming in.

So, just if you see the little, sort of, infographic on the side there, the compassion fatigue pathway.

It's when we're exposed to others' trauma. And I like the fact that we've got the word others there, because even though we are talking a lot about students here, within a school and dependent on your role, it could be parents' community trauma. It could be staff trauma, if you're the principal, or in a leadership role. So, it's important to remember it's not just students. It's exposure to others' trauma.

Your nervous system will activate if there are insufficient regulation and recovery, then chronic sympathetic arousal will happen. Which is what I talked before about, that dysregulated nervous system. When you are chronically in a stress state response, you're activated, what we sometimes refer to as survival mode.

Then that prolonged activation continues to occur. And every single one of us, our nervous systems, cannot sustain that. As we're going to go on and talk about our nervous systems a bit more and get that awareness, it's designed for short periods of stress, not constant, prolonged activation. So that leads to exhaustion and shutdown, which results in compassion fatigue.

So…this is where we get into really, (the) stuff that I love to talk about. I could talk about all day, which is nervous system awareness and regulation.

Bianca McLeish: We talk about teacher stress

We talk about teacher stress regularly, whether it's in the staff room, whether it's at professional development level, we talk about it a lot. But skip over one of the most important parts, or the most important part of it, is that it's the nervous system where stress is occurring. Every interaction, decision, and challenge.

That is made throughout the day is filtered through your nervous system.

Now…

Bianca McLeish: The Nervous System and Stress

As I said, we know there's lots of roles on here today, people in different roles in school communities. One thing that every single one of us that's sitting here today has in common is that we all have an autonomic nervous system. And our autonomic nervous system has our sympathetic and our parasympathetic nervous systems.

So, as I said before, the sympathetic nervous system is what is designed to activate if your body feels unsafe.

As we talk about secondary traumatic stress, that can be witnessing, as we said, that dysregulation, hearing it, like, even just hearing the upset in a child's voice, hearing the disclosure, hearing the details.

Even though it's not you, your brain and body are designed to keep you safe, so hearing those things sparks your sympathetic nervous system. It's automatic.

Even though you can tell yourself logically in your brain, I am safe, this is not about me, it is an automatic response.

That fight-or-flight response then starts doing things physiologically in your body, so that rapid breathing and that increased flow to muscles, so that's when you'll start to feel those things in your body, like, you know, your stomach or your tension in your shoulders, and sometimes you won't even realize it, that it's actually happening.

What's really important, of course, is that we also have the parasympathetic nervous system, our rest and digest. And that's so important for all of our body to reset and have that good restorative sleep that we need, it's making sure our breathing is slow, and our heart rate has reduced down.

These are very important because, as we'll see on the next slide, If our nervous system is in sympathetic activation for long periods of time, ongoing every day. If you're walking into that classroom and knowing that every day there is a student, or many students, that might be showing dysregulated behaviours, and you're ready for it.

You're on edge. Your nervous system is activated. It's hyper alert. It's looking for what's going to happen next. So, it's staying in that chronic… what we call, like, a chronic activation.

What happens over time is your parasympathetic nervous system does not kick in. There's not a balance.

So, this is what we call a dysregulated nervous system. And a dysregulated nervous system, as well as we talked about, which can lead to secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue, also has a lot of other emotional and physical and mental impacts, which ultimately will lead to burnout, because as I said before, if this chronic activation occurs, and continues to occur, it's not sustainable, and your body will start to try and make you slow down.

This is what we want to look at today. How can we slow down? What can we do to try and help that sympathetic nervous system?

We are going to keep having students, which have been through traumatic experiences.

We are going to keep having dysregulated behaviours. Dysregulation is going to occur.

We are going to keep having ongoing stressors. So, is there any way that we can help to balance this out a little bit? And yes, there is, so we'll look at that now.

So, a neuro-informed way to work with your body, with your nervous system, rather than against it, is learning to manage your stress.

Bianca McLeish: The Stress Response Cycle

So, Dr. Amelia and Emily Nagoski, termed what's called The Stress Response Cycle and completing your stress response cycle. So, most people understand the whole fight or flight. So, this is… this is… it's an innate biological process, basically, to keep us safe.

Something like a threat's identified, a lion attacks your village, then a stress response is activated, so your body reacts with physiological responses, like we said, that fight or flight.

Increases the heart rate and release of adrenaline. Now, that's all to make sure your body's able to keep you safe.

So, what would happen is you'd mobilize that energy, you'd run, or you fight the lion, and then that stress energy is released.

And then you would move into the last, the final stage, of the stress response cycle, which is that activation of the relaxation response, so the parasympathetic nervous system.

And that's usually something that, sort of, it could be, like, celebrating with the rest of the villagers, so that, like, happiness and joy. And the cycle is complete; the stress response has been activated and has been moved through.

Now, this is what we want to happen, but as you'll see on the next slide, this is not what always occurs.

Bianca McLeish: Stress Accumulates

Educators in the high-demanding roles that are part of school systems.

Stress is getting blocked. So, I'm just going to give this example.

So, a threat is identified. During a class game, student experiencing domestic violence, so you know of this situation, so you know this student has trauma in their life is accidentally pushed.

The student reacts by yelling, shoving the other student, calling the game stupid, and running from the room.

Your brain has detected that as a threat. Something has occurred.

Your body has gone into a stress response, it's been activated.

So maybe your heart starts racing, and your stomach churns, that adrenaline's sort of happening. Your body is ready to say, what are we going to do about this? Something is… needs to be responded to, and you're feeling…that energy and that emotion of what's just happened within the classroom.

And, of course, your mind's worried. What's happening to the student? What about the rest of the students? What's going to happen next? All these things are happening straight away. Stress has been activated.

Now, what often happens is something like, you report the incident. And you continue teaching, because that's what has to happen, and you hope that another staff member is supporting the student. But you're starting to feel concerned also about their return back to class. So, all of these things are going through your head.

So, really here, as much as I put that as mobilisation.

No stress hormones have actually been mobilized at all, and if anything, the stress is now held. It's stuck in this stage.

Have you moved through that stage? No.

And going into the fourth stage, relaxation, have you got to the relaxation point? Probably not.

Because what generally happens is, at night, you worry about the student's welfare, because you know that the school principal has had to call home about the incident, so you've gone into worry….Now, what's going to happen the next day when you return to school is your stress is still going to be accumulated in your body.

You have not had that time for that relaxation and that, recovery that's needed, and the stress will continue to accumulate.

So… that's concerning, but there's something that we can do, and that is completing the stress response cycle. So how can we do that?

Bianca McLeish: How to complete the Stress Cycle

Well, as I said, Dr Emily and Amelia Nagoski, who talk about completing a stress response cycle based on stress physiology and neuroscience, have said there are many things that we can do.

The very first one is that physical moment.

Physical movement. As I talked about, when you get to that point of the Cycle, where the stress hormones are there, we need to move. So, it can be walking, dancing, stretching, yoga, it doesn't have to be a big gym workout.

It can actually be a progressive muscle relaxation, like actually tensing and releasing your muscles is actually moving that stress energy. So, it helps, because it uses up those stress hormones, and your body feels like it's released some of that stress. Of course, another way to complete the stress response is deep breathing, because it activates the parasympathetic system to calm the body.

A physiological sigh is one that I find is perfect in the moment. It's when you take in that long breath, a short breath, and then… and then a long, deep exhale.

This is evidence-based to tell your nervous system that you are in a safe space, so you can move into completing that cycle.

Now, crying or emotional release, the amount of times people say, I just don't know why I'm crying, it's because your nervous system knows you need to… it needs to release stress.

It does it because it's discharging that physiological energy that has built up. So, it's important to allow those tears. They need to happen.

By it happening, it's actually completing a stress response cycle and bringing your nervous system back into that, balanced regulation.

You can also use expressive writing, which I know a lot of people do too, sometimes just write down what they need to feel.

Social connection is another way to complete the stress response cycle. It co-regulates the nervous system through safety and empathy.

Talking with a trusted friend, hugging, shared laughter, and this, I know, is something that's very well utilised in schools, which is fantastic.

Creative expression just provides safe emotional discharge, which is really great for a lot of people, that journaling, some people just need to sing, do art. The whole point is there's lots of ways to complete the stress response cycle. I think this is what's important.

And grounding or mindfulness. So, shifting attention away from the threat, that might be occurring, or the potential threat, or perceived threat, because often what we're thinking is a threat is actually just a perceived threat, it's not a real threat.

We are actually physically safe, but we don't feel it.

So, shifting the attention from that threat to the present moment, is a way that it can help. 5-4-3-2-1 grounding sensory awareness activity, is fantastic.

I'll talk about that one a little bit more when we give an example later. It's a great one to use for yourself. It's a great one I've spoken to a lot of educators to use when they need to bring themselves into the present moment and sort of calm down. It's a fantastic one to use with students, or for students as well, to support them when they're dysregulated.

So, what does it look like when we complete the stress response cycle? How is it so important, and why is it so important?

Well, let's look at the same situation here.

The same exact threat has occurred in the classroom.

The same exact stress response has been activated, because as I said, whether you realise it or not, it's often happening automatically.

But the difference is, when you complete the stress response cycle, you're intentionally doing something, you're noticing, then you're intentionally doing something to mobilise the stress energy, and then to move through relaxation. So, in this example, the same thing has occurred. You've reported the incident.

But then, rather than continue to keep teaching, which is often what we feel we need to do, you lead the class in a movement break to reset. So, join them for a GoNoodle activity, or some sort of fun class activity, or a movement break, a drink of water, whatever it might be, but something that you are doing mobilizing that energy with, your class.

Because the other thing to consider here, too, is in this situation, you also would have students that would be dysregulated from the event that's just occurred.

And sometimes, without meaning to, we think, ‘let's not talk about it’, ‘let's just keep going’.

But if we intentionally do something through that mobilisation, through our body, as I said before, it can be even a progressive muscle relaxation, but something that's saying, okay, I know I'm having a stress response right now, I'm going to mobilise that stress energy, and then moving into that relaxation response. So it might be that later in the day you talk with a trusted friend.

And get that connection, talk about your worries. And then before bed, just to ensure that your body is feeling safe, and you've given it that cue that we are in a safe space now, taking three physiological sighs before bed.

Now, that's just an example, and like I said, you need to find what works for you.

Bianca McLeish: Completing the Stress Response Cycle

This is evidence-based. Completing this stress response cycle is going to help move that secondary traumatic stress that you may have experienced that day and not held it in your body.

What it also does is allow you to go into the day, the next day, and you have gone through that restorative relaxation. You have had a restorative night's sleep. So, you're going to show up then for that student who you are worried about, because you know that they have adversity and trauma in their life, and you are going to go in with a clean slate. You are going to go in in a more compassionate state, because your nervous system is balanced.

So, as we move through, this, I would have to say.

Is where so many times we get stuck, because there is so many conflicting and demanding things happening in a school.

Bianca McLeish: What do you have control over?

When I did a leadership conference recently, I found there was a principal who… we talked about all that other stuff, but this really landed for him.

Because he was trying to control so much.

And it's really important sometimes to realise that you can't control all things.

So, I'm sure many people have heard of the circles. Stephen Covey talks about the circles of control, influence, and concern.

And what he talks about is, when we spend time and energy focusing on the things in our ‘circle of control’ and our ‘circle of influence’, we become more proactive and less reactive.

It's very easy to spend a lot of time in the circle of concern worried about, you know, the student's home life. You know, the parents, they're not doing anything to help that student, or… system-level policies, like, where's the procedure for that? As I said, we definitely need system change. I completely agree.

But if you're the classroom teacher and that's out of your current control right now, but what is within your control is the intentional choices you make.

Bianca McLeish: and the behaviours you do each day. And what is within your influence, which I'm obviously going to focus on a lot, is how you manage your stress.

You are in control of completing your stress response cycle and intentionally making time to activate that parasympathetic nervous system, knowing the benefits that will come from that.

These are just examples, by the way, this is not obviously set in stone or anything, but…you are in control of your choices. So, you can make choices that then help within your circle of influence. So, you'll see there I even have things like the way students respond. You can influence that.

Because you can influence the tone that you set in your (class)room. We've done a lot of work around co-regulation and trauma-informed practices and trauma-aware classrooms, and through your behaviours.

Your regulated nervous system.

The way that you set the tone in your room.

That will actually influence the way the students respond.

You can't obviously control a student's past experiences; you can't control a student's behaviour.

But you can control your wellbeing. You can control your expectations on yourself, and giving yourself some self-compassion, as we talk about compassion today.

Another thing that you have influence over is your professional learning.

If you would like to, to know more about how to support, students through trauma-aware practices, former informed practices, about how to support your well-being more. You can have influence over your professional learning.

So, I think…this is a really important thing, knowing that we can have influence over our autonomic nervous system, over our stress responses, and by having influence over that, we can't stop witnessing that dysregulation every day. We can't stop those student disclosures, but what we can do is control the things that we can, which is ourselves, because we're only humans.

Alright, so… I think, if we look at the next slide.

Bianca McLeish: What training and ongoing support do educators receive to manage stress and trauma?

One thing that I started with at the beginning, is if teachers and educators and school leaders, our first responders.

What training and ongoing support do educators receive to manage stress and trauma? We know it's occurring.

And this might be something that…which we'll look on later, but this might be something that we can actually put some influence on as well. So, like, I had a bit of a look, and…paramedics and police receive training in trauma responses, grounding techniques, peer support, and emotional regulation under pressure.

They're doing this in their undergraduate degrees, but I don't think there are many undergraduate education degrees that are looking at this. And then we're wondering why so many of our early career teachers are stepping into classrooms and experience it in secondary traumatic stress, and ultimately, potentially compassion fatigue, because we don't have the training that we may need.

So, one of the biggest things would be, obviously, what I've talked about today, nervous system awareness and regulation training, but things like that emotional regulation under pressure and peer support would also be great in training, and also the ongoing support afterwards.

So, there's a lot of information on this slide, but what we wanted to look at here was what training and supports are available at different levels for individual educators, schools, systems, and departments.

By no means is this complete list. Some of this has come from the silent cost report that I talked about, impact and management of secondary trauma on educators. Some of these were suggested in there, and this is also just some that, I've seen across different areas and research, throughout my work, so…

Individual educators with their own training, Queensland University of Technology, QUT, has a micro-credential in trauma-aware education. Some of these are at a cost.

Emerging Minds trauma-informed learning modules are not at a cost; they're just some things that people can go and do some of that training themselves as an individual educator.

Of course, the Be You modules as well are also, fantastic, and offer that training as well in different areas.

Now, ongoing support is more about what's available than ongoing, when people are going through critical incidents and traumatic… secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue.

So, it's really important that individuals are seeking support from peers and supervisors for regular debriefing engaging in reflective practice or mentoring sessions, that these are actually intentionally put into sort of a staff meeting time, 5 minutes or 10 minutes at the start, where we're going to have some time for reflective practice or mentoring sessions.

Just recently, I talked about the fact that we have a lot of professional learning and professional development, you know, around the curriculum, and around pedagogy, and around all the really important parts of education.

But when are we actually putting time into professional learning about nervous system awareness and stress regulation, and having that time to just reflect, and speak with others. It's really, really important for individual educators to reduce secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue.

At a school level, I was lucky enough, I got to sit in the Be You suicide postvention planning sessions for some of our, secondary schools in the diocese I was working with, and that is fantastic training, because it puts everyone on the same page around the language that will be used. It has formal processes, for planning and for debriefing as well.

At a school level as well, whole school trauma-aware professional learning, such as Berry Street Education Model, or Relate through the MacKillop Institute. I've done Berry Street Education Model training and learned a lot, through that.

Ongoing support at a school level things like offering regular opportunities for reflection, like I said, in staff meetings and PLCs, like professional learning communities, having that time for reflection, making it a priority and intentionally, not just a sidebar when we had a critical incident, but actually talking and having that time, because it's important.

And trauma-aware leadership coaching and supervision, I think, very crucial.

Our school leaders are taking on a lot. They're holding the nervous systems of the parents, the staff, and the students within their communities, and they only have one nervous system to hold all of that.

At a system and department level, I've worked at a system level, I know there's a lot of things that conflicting, and competing demands, but things like evidence-based nervous system and regulation training for early career teachers, if that could be happening at a department, government levels, national level, imagine how we could be supporting our young teachers coming in to help them be sustainable in the profession. Things like subsidised postgraduate or micro-credential programs, particularly for wellbeing leaders, school leaders, would be really fantastic. And policy-level trauma-aware education frameworks as well.

And once again, ongoing support. So, we all know that schools, can access the EAPs (Employee Assistance Program). I think this needs to be really forefront.

That everyone knows that, and it needs to just be continually talked about, and those numbers need to be available at all times, and bringing in external support agencies, in staff wellbeing initiatives, and establishing another one, school wellbeing networks and for collaboration and reflective supervision sort of models as well would be a really good way to show that ongoing support.

So, this is not the answers, these are just suggestions who acknowledge that secondary traumatic stress is occurring, it's occurring significantly in schools, for educators and many, school roles, and so is compassion fatigue.

So, if we can look at whether it be individual educators, schools, systems, or departments, some of the things that we can do, I feel like this might be a good place, where we can start, and…it's good conversations to actually start having At your school level, About what… what's occurring how people are feeling, to identify what needs there are within your schools. And I would have to say that's one of the most important things, is listening. Like, listening to what people are actually feeling.

Because I know as a classroom educator, I would think, well, vicarious trauma or secondary traumatic stress, that's not something that I'm going through.

Because I'm not hearing student disclosures, I'm not hearing chromatic things, but remember, it is often about witnessing dysregulated behaviours in the classroom on ongoing times as well. So, I think that's really important, just to acknowledge the work, that you're doing, that you're all doing, in your roles.

And acknowledging, first and foremost, we are humans, and we have, nervous systems that are automatic. We need to work with our nervous systems and not against them, not add more to the day, but just become aware.

Of what's happening in our nervous system, and then aware of regulation strategies to complete that stress response cycle.

So, thank you. Big topic, lots to talk about very quickly, but I'm sure there might be some questions. It's a very broad topic, especially with lots of different roles here.

So, there might be some questions or some things that people would like to discuss in more detail. So, thank you for having me here today, and I look forward to following up if there's any questions that people have specifically that they want to ask of me, or a broader question, for the whole group.

Be You team, as well. So, thank you.

Georgina Livingstone:

Thank you, Bianca. And I think such a… such a really insightful presentation that you, have just shared with us. Bianca, we have a moment now where we are going to do a little bit of a Q&A.

Georgina Livingstone and Bianca McLeish: Q&A

Georgina Livingstone:

So…I'm just going to move, to some questions that we have received from our audience. I've got a great question here from Joanne Dae, from Catherine McAuley Westmead, in Sydney, New South Wales, and…: Joanne has, has asked the following question:

She's keen to know, how do we respond with compassion without becoming overwhelming or being reactive? How do we look after ourselves so we compassion… we can be compassionate and respond with compassion?

It's a great question.

Bianca McLeish:

It is a… it is a really good question and then as I go back to, we are human. I think that's something… I think self-compassion is a place where educators often need to start, and that is, it's okay sometimes to know that this is…,  this is challenging, and whether it be that you've witnessed something, and you're trying to be compassionate with that student.

Or it might be that you've… you've heard something, and you're trying to show compassion, but unsure how to do it. I think it's really important to, first of all, acknowledge one thing, and that is emotional regulation.

It's almost biologically unavailable when your nervous system is dysregulated, which means Compassion is reduced, empathy is reduced. These things are more challenging when your nervous system is dysregulated. So going back to what we looked at today, let's give an example. So, if you're… perhaps you've witnessed, a student become very dysregulated. And then you're trying to show compassion to them.

The first thing to acknowledge is possibly that you've had a stress response. The student could have possibly, in their own dysregulation, may have hurt someone, they may have sworn at the teacher, whatever it might be.

And then in your role, you've been asked to go and co-regulate with this student, and support this student, and show compassion to this student. And you would be wanting to show compassion.

You may know that they are going through a lot of adversity and trauma themselves. However, as I just said, even though you're trying to show that compassion, if your nervous system is in a state of fight or flight, because you're thinking, I've just seen this student, and they've been, you know, swearing or hurting someone like that, it's normal for you to actually be in that state of fight or flight first as you go to: speak with the student. So, I've talked a lot with people about

getting yourself into a regulated state before you're able to co-regulate, before you're able to show compassion and empathy. And that can be as simple as talking before about the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding activity. So in that example, if you've just seen a student that may have sworn at their teacher, or hurt someone, and they're very heightened.

And you're trying to show them compassion. You could perhaps on your way to walk towards them, be doing some… some breathing. You could be doing a 5-4-3-2-1 grounding, activity, and that's a great one to do with the student, depending on the student's age, but I've done it with many age groups.

So that is, you know, what's five things that we can see? So you could do it with the student, because it's a way to sort of relate to them, but it's also a way to actually, like, calm your nervous system, calm their nervous system. You know, what's four things that we can feel the cool breeze, or the sun, whatever it might be. Three things that we can hear. We can hear the birds. Two things that you can smell, and then one thing you can taste. I have done this so many times myself, to ground myself into a situation. With students, students absolutely love it, because it brings them into their own bodies, and it helps them to, become regulated themselves. So…

That is how I would say you can be more compassionate and not become reactive and overwhelmed, and that is by using nervous system awareness and nervous system regulation to bring your nervous system into a state where you are feeling calmer. When you are more regulated, your body knows, I am safe, and it knows I am safe not from you telling it.

You can't think your way out of stress. Can't just say, oh, I've got to go talk to this student now, I've got to be really compassionate with this student, because they've been through a really hard time, and like, you know, I've just got to push that anger and suppress my emotions. It won't work. The students will feel it.

They will 100% feel it through your body cues, but if you are using the breathing techniques that we talked about, the muscle progression, any of those things to bring your body into a state of regulation you will then be able to co-regulate with that student. You'll be able to show compassion.

To them, but also to yourself, because you've worked through your own, stress response, and come to a regulated state. So, it is challenging, and I think it's something that I know I certainly didn't realize, and that is we talk a lot about emotional regulation,

Yet, emotional regulation, being able to be empathetic, to be patient, to be tolerant, and to be compassionate, is not very easy to do when your nervous system is in a dysregulated state.

So, we start with the nervous system regulation first, and then the emotional regulation comes online. Your brain goes from that amygdala where it's in that unsafe state, to then that prefrontal cortex, when your body feels safe, you will get into that place of where you can think clearly, where you can be more compassionate, and you can show empathy. So, hope that sort of answers that question.

Georgina Livingstone:

Thank you. Yes, it does, Bianca. I'm having problems with my camera, so I'm going to practice my radio hosting skills as we proceed. We've got another question, for you as well.

So just bear with me while I grab that. This is from an educator who's part of a new wellbeing team, and they ask, as a new wellbeing team, what are some of the first steps that you would take to improve school or teacher wellbeing. So, really practical steps that a new wellbeing team could take.

Bianca McLeish:

Yeah, absolutely, that's a great question.

I work with lots of wellbeing teams over time, so… and some that, exactly what you said, starting out, and when they start out, there's so many things that they want to do, to improve, and it is often the student wellbeing, the school wellbeing, and the educator wellbeing. So, I would say one of the first things to do is a bit of a school wellbeing audit. I know lots of schools, you know, use surveys.

But I would be more inclined to… to listen, to just observe, and observe what's happening, to listen to people in the staff room. It's amazing what you can actually pick up to identify the wellbeing needs that maybe, are not addressed, things like that. So, the first thing I would do is, yeah, some sort of wellbeing order to really find out, what your particular context, what is needed, in that space.

The other thing, I think, would be to…

From that sort of proactive stance, as we've talked about today, is to look at what Professional learning, could beat a formal and an informal level, but, like, what people are needing. So, as I've said, obviously, nervous system awareness and regulation, understanding their own selves, because what happens then when you're talking for example, about dysregulation. That word dysregulation, student was dysregulated, or someone is dysregulated, when you're using more of a sort of a trauma-aware approach to behaviours.

When that language is similar, when everyone's using that same sort of language as dysregulation, or talking about stressors, things that, sometimes people will be like, that student caused me stress, or that situation caused me stress, or report cards caused me stress. Stress is physiological. It's actually the stress or the thing the event is different for every single person. So, identifying that is really important, and just having that language, so having that, the needs, what's professional learnings do we need, what are people needing? And as part of that, I would definitely be looking at how you can, at a school level, add in some sort of, like, reflection, and just that debriefing, just in that informal way, but that way of going, it's okay to say, hey, this happened today.

And it… and it's made me feeling a little bit like this. Has that happened with you, you know? And just having that time for it, whereas people don't have the time for it, so we don't reflect on it. But at times when I've led a few staff meetings where we have literally, that's what we've talked about, we've talked about nervous system awareness and regulation, and what's happening in your body in reflection, and making time for yourself.

People at the end of staff meetings were like, ‘thank you. no one ever just talks about us and what our needs are’.

So, as a wellbeing team, I think if you were wanting to listen and really hear, your staff, that's one of the most important things that you can do to support your educator wellbeing.

And I will have to say, because I say it all the time, and that is that when educators are, regulated, that ripple effect flows down, so it will impact, then, your student well-being, your school, so yeah, starting to work out what is the needs

Intentionally making time, find out what people need, and putting that timetable into your school, and then that will reflect down into your student body as well.

Georgina Livingstone: Question 2

Fantastic. Thank you, Bianca. We've got some great questions coming through in the Q&A. We may not be able to get to all of them in the time we have left, but I suppose I am keen to hear from you about this one, and this is in relation to being in a wellbeing leader role within, a school and part of a system, approaching leadership directly, saying, you know, look, we're seeing a lot of secondary trauma, from our educator, or from our workforce, and having the capacity to try and influence, leaders to go beyond just suggesting access to the EAP. So tips for how we could be proactive with our leadership teams in advocating for more systemic kind of responses.

Bianca McLeish:

Yes, absolutely. I would have to say, as I said, after doing a leadership conference lately. I would say that from that leadership perspective, the reason that they're suggesting EAP is because they don't have other knowledge. We sometimes assume that the leaders in the school understand how to manage the stress, understand, yeah, the nervous system, understand secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue, but I'm probably thinking that there'd be lots of leaders out there that need that understanding as well, because they're carrying and juggling lots of balls.

I think it steps back one more point to a system level, to actually, at a system level, need to be working with leadership teams, on trauma aware strategies on trauma-informed practices within schools, on nervous system awareness and regulation, so that the leaders actually have an understanding of what to do. Because I don't think that it's a given, and I think that's why they would be referring to EAP, because I don't think that they would probably have the knowledge there.

So, I think, we need to look back at a system and department level and know that as exactly what this person has said, it is happening, it is occurring, what can we do? And do it more at the school context level, rather than, like, EAP is fantastic, but it's not your school, your context, it would be so much better to have something within the school.

It could be if the school has the capacity to come up with a solution, provide, like we said about a reflective supervision, not the reflective supervision as such, but an opportunity for, like, reflective coaching.

Someone in the school to take on as a middle leadership role, that perhaps they could say, we're seeing this a lot, I'm willing, or someone in the school's willing to offer this, that might be a proactive step.  

But I really think we need to go above that, and we actually need to give these skills to the leaders as well. So, a really great question, probably haven't answered that particularly, but after just recently doing a leadership conference, I can state that this is not something that is known of how to manage this stress, how to respond to this.

So, we need more training and more understanding for everyone, I think, is key from a system and department level, a national level down.

Georgina Livingstone:

Thanks, Bianca. And yes, I mean, I think what you've shown us today is, you know, some of those foundational, tools that we can use to understand what our nervous system is telling us, and some steps that, on an individual level, we can take to, you know, to look after ourselves. And I really loved your line, and I think this is where we'll land, that compassion is not the problem.

So, thank you so much, for sharing your wisdom with us this afternoon, and for taking us through this very important topic.

We really appreciate it. So, I'm sure you'll be getting a lot of love, through the Q&A from our attendees today, thank you.

Bianca McLeish:

Oh, wonderful, thank you so much, and once again, thanks for giving me this opportunity, it means a lot, so hope everyone has a lovely day.

Georgina Livingstone:

Thanks, and just before people dash off, please don't leave us just yet. Stay with me. I am here as your radio host for another 2 minutes. We want to remind you, that Be You can and wants to walk alongside you. We have a special educator wellbeing package that we're offering at the moment that involves bespoke tailoring for individual schools, and that's done in collaboration with your Be You Consultant.

This is funded, just like Be You is funded, and we've designed it in a way that, as much as possible, it is not a resource-intensive ask from your side.

Our Be You Consultants do the heavy lifting and want to work with you at your pace. So, please screenshot this slide, get in touch if you'd like to learn more.

We'll also be sending follow-up comms with all the ways that you can reach us as well.

We also really value your feedback, so, at the end of this session, there will be a one-minute feedback, opportunity, that you'll be directed to a short survey, so we would love you to take the time to share with us your thoughts and your feedback, so we can improve, and we can do some reflective practice ourselves.

And on that note. I would like to thank you for joining, joining us today with Bianca and me as Radio Be You, and we wish you well for the rest of your day today, and please be kind to yourselves.

Thanks again.

References

Be You mental health and support services : https://beyou.edu.au/about/immediate-support/support-helplines

The Silent Cost, 2025, Deakin University, Dr Adam Fraser, The Flourish Movement: https://vassp.org.au/wp-content/uploads/The-Silent-Cost-Final-Report-2025.pdf

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, 2004, Stephen Covey: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change - Stephen R. Covey - Google Books

The Teacher Wellbeing Academy: https://theteacherwellbeingacademy.com.au/

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. Emily Nagoski, PhD & Amelia Nagoski, DMA. Ballantine Books (Random House), First published: 26 March 2019 ISBN: 9781984817068  

Training and resources

https://beyou.edu.au/

Berry Street - child & family services, family… | Berry Street

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