Stress limits our ability to make rational decisions. In this particularly stressful time, many of us are feeling elevated, and the acute levels of distress are taking their toll on our communities. But most of us are not trained therapists. How might we, as non-clinical professionals, accurately identify and appropriately respond to constituents and colleagues experiencing high levels of stress?

• Learning Objectives:
  • KNOW: Participants will learn the signs and symptoms of acute distress. They will be able to differentiate between normative responses to stressors and persistent responses requiring mental health intervention. 
  • DO: Participants will learn how to respond and support community members experiencing acute distress. They will be able to intervene while maintaining professional boundaries, and recognizing their role as a non-mental health provider.
  • FEEL: Participants will feel empowered to respond appropriately when one of their constituents or colleagues is struggling and equipped to be a resource for their community. 

A trauma-informed mindset is good for all brains. What does it mean to be trauma-informed in light of the levels of distress we are seeing in our Jewish community spaces across age ranges? What can Judaism and Jewish practice teach us about taking a stress-sensitive and trauma-informed approach? And, might we leverage that learning in our Jewish spaces in this moment of need?

• Learning Objectives:
  • KNOW: Participants will understand the basic tenets of a trauma-informed approach and appreciate how Jewish practice and connection can be robustly supportive of mental health and wellness. 
  • DO: Participants will develop skills and strategies for engaging their communities on both micro and macro-levels with an appropriate trauma-informed lens. Participants will also engage in Jewish texts/rituals/traditions which are related to trauma and mental health.
  • FEEL: Participants will feel confident in their abilities to provide support to communities and individuals in a trauma-informed environment.

Stress and anxiety are part of the human experience, but over the past few years, we have accumulated dramatic levels of chronic, cumulative, and acute stress. On top of it all, for many people connected to the Jewish community, the war in Israel and Gaza combined with accelerating incidents of antisemitism feed a unique and deepening struggle. 

What are stress and anxiety, and how do they impact us and our ability to navigate those moments in which we experience antisemitism? How might we mitigate the impacts of stress, and work to expand our “resilience zone?” This session will provide a theoretical framework to understand the impact of stress on our mind and body and will provide strategies to help us become more stress-informed to better support ourselves and our communities. 

Learning Objectives

• KNOW: Participants will build a foundational understanding of stress, anxiety, and trauma and be able to describe and recognize their implications.
• DO: Participants will be able to leverage their knowledge of the neurosequential model in order to help themselves regulate stress and expand their resilient zone.
• FEEL: Participants will feel empowered to focus on stress regulation in efforts to better support themselves and their community.

In the weeks following the events of October 7, 2023, many of us have found ourselves receding into a state of burnout and compassion fatigue that we may not have experienced since the heart of the pandemic. 

How do we balance our passions and our needs while still protecting and sustaining ourselves as individuals? Placing our values along a continuum, we will investigate how and where our values are supporting and potentially subverting our ability to care for ourselves. We will dissect the nuances of compassion fatigue and burnout, practice recognizing our personal trends, and explore how to effectively hold boundaries in the name of self-preservation.

• • Learning Objectives: 
    • KNOW: Participants will identify the values that motivate and define us, and explore how those values fuel and fight our tendency to feel burned out.
    • DO: Participants will build strategies to implement realistic and effective boundaries to help fight personal burnout and compassion fatigue.
    • FEEL: Participants will feel empowered in understanding our burnout trends and optimistic about our ability to use that understanding to better care for ourselves.

We are often faced with heightened emotions when navigating difficult conversations and differences of opinion.

How do we slow ourselves down? How do we recognize, anticipate, and make space for our emotions, while also keeping them from escalating, allowing us to stay present in the current moment?

This session will walk through the Trigger Cycle: unpacking a trigger’s effect on our mind, body, and behaviors, and creating space to explore where we might have agency to stop that cycle from repeating itself.

• Learning Objectives:
  • KNOW: Participants will be able to explain the 7 steps of the Trigger Cycle, and understand the relationship between our emotions, our somatic experiences, and our (re)actions.
  • DO: Participants will practice ways to cut off the Trigger Cycle at different exit points. 
  • FEEL: Participants will feel more confident in maintaining a sense of self in the face of a trigger and capable of prioritizing relationships with others through challenging conversation topics.

BaMidbar is able to provide clinical professionals to facilitate support groups and processing spaces as needed. BaMidbar is also offering free one-on-one support calls at this time.