In September 2017, I was in the second year of my graduate program when Hurricane Maria hit. My family is from Puerto Rico, and the entire island lost water, electricity and cellphone service. We didn’t hear anything from our family for more than two weeks. My cousin, a pilot, flew supplies to Puerto Rico, and when he was there survivors would give him notes with contact information so he could call their families on the mainland and let them know they’d survived. He shared these notes with my mom, who spent weeks making calls and telling strangers that their family members were alive. I joined forces with other Puerto Ricans to create East Tennessee for Puerto Rico, a temporary organization devoted to sending supplies via reputable channels.

I have so many other stories from this time that are emotionally draining, but to quickly summarize, I was on the verge of tears for several months.

Of course, I was still in graduate school. I still had work to do. I couldn’t stop being productive.

Adding to my stress as I waited to learn whether my family had survived, one colleague asked me every day if I’d heard from them. I also became the sounding board for others to express their political frustrations. People took this chance to come and tell me how angry they were at the federal government over its response to the hurricane. Suffice to say, these discussions didn’t help me cope with my own pain and sorrow and instead put me in the position of having to engage in a broader political conversation. I found myself explaining Puerto Rican and U.S. political realities multiple times a week, all while dealing with my own traumatic personal situation. And I still had graduate work to do.

We know that graduate students are often overburdened or burned out. On top of long hours spent in the lab or on their academic work, graduate students are continuously inundated with external stressors through regular social media consumption. International students have the additional stress of immigration requirements, and minoritized students cope with micro- and macroaggressions.

The fact is, trainees can’t stop no matter how stressful the world is, but pretending there’s not a problem makes the situation worse. In her highly popular Dare to Lead, Brené Brown highlights that a good leader understands that if you don’t tend to the feelings and fears of those you’re working with, you can’t expect them to make any progress. Individuals at any career stage, age or position can’t be productive if they’re too focused on frustrations, anger or traumatic events, and burdening them with explaining the situation only creates more frustration and anger.

So, for professionals charged with supporting graduate students and trainees, what resources and opportunities can we offer to our students in times of traumatic stress? Here are some big actions with low lifts that you can take within your organization.

Schedule Group Self-Care Activities

Host a series of self-care activities within your office, in partnership with your institution’s counseling center. If your organization lacks a counseling center, consider reaching out to counselors in the local area who might have resources or be willing to talk in person or virtually to your colleagues and/or trainees.

Host Dine-Arounds and Netwalking Events

These events are offered each year at the Graduate Career Consortium’s annual conference, and are excellent and simple ways to encourage community connections without busting your budget. In both activities, you only need to create a simple sign-up sheet using Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel, with suggested restaurants and locations in the area. Each restaurant or location should have an associated topic for discussion, such as “books you’ve read lately” or “your favorite assignment,” to keep the conversations personable and fun. Participants show up at a predetermined location—possibly your office!—and then set out for the restaurant (dine-around) or location (netwalking) together. As the career professional, your role is to create the opportunity and the sign-up sheets and market these events at least once a month; the student’s role is to take advantage of the opportunity.

Create or Find Resources

A quick web search can identify resources on various self-directed self-care activities, such as starting a book club with friends. Simply creating a website or handout with this information eliminates the stress of searching for these opportunities for those who are otherwise already overloaded.

Reach out to counseling centers and create a list of local mental health and community resources, such as nonprofits offering services in your area. If you’re at an academic institution, make sure to include both on- and off-campus resources, as the on-campus resources are not necessarily accessible to commuters, international trainees or visitors to your institution. You should also aim to represent multiple communities across a diverse range of categories, including income levels, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, gender and more. Should a trans student come to you for advice, the resources applicable for their specific needs will differ from another’s, and you want to make sure you’re prepared with an answer beyond “I don’t know.”

Publicize Resources Regularly

Make this list of resources broadly available by posting signs with a QR code to access the website and ensure that it is advertised regularly in department and schoolwide newsletters. You could create a series of social media posts to spotlight specific resources throughout the year.

Confront Trauma Honestly, Openly and With Compassion

If an event has impacted a portion of your institution’s community, send a department-level statement to students acknowledging the hurt and trauma, and highlighting services for those impacted. These types of statements often feel treacherous, while, in reality, many times they are overthought to the point of meaninglessness. If a tragedy has occurred in your community that has impacted students, you cannot possibly solve all the trauma that has occurred. Instead, you can offer acknowledgment and tools to help. If you feel nervous even about sending a message of solidarity and hope, remember: Total silence destroys relationships you might have developed. Trainees won’t come to you if they feel like your department doesn’t care.

Practice What You Preach

You also need to lead by example. If you don’t practice what you want advisers and faculty to preach, you’re just a hypocrite. Do you have a self-care schedule? Do you talk about the self-care you do, comfortably and openly? Do you engage in regular mental health checks with your staff or coworkers? Do you encourage vacation and breaks? Do you take your vacation time? If you don’t do these things, what ground do you have to stand on to tell someone else to? Physician, heal thyself!

Make Space for Active Listening

Consider introducing a “conch shell” to your office. The original inspiration for this concept, adapted from the decidedly lacking–in–self-care Lord of the Flies by William Golding, is that whoever holds the conch shell is granted the grace of speaking without interruption. Those coming to see you can indicate that they would like to discuss a sensitive topic by grabbing this item. If you keep your “conch shell,” be it a sign, a spoon or something else fun, near your doorway, this gives an advisee or direct report the chance to pick the item up and bring it into the office on the way in. When they pick up this item, the door needs to close.

You can also keep a box of affirmations on your desk; these should be kind, self-affirming phrases that advisees can pick out to take with them. You can also pick up an affirmation for yourself when you need one!

Finally, if you ask a student, “How are you?” be prepared for an honest answer. Keep in mind: You set the rules for this discussion. You’re in charge. You need to set the appropriate boundaries and make sure the conversation stays focused. A framework you can adapt for these conversations is Brené Brown’s BRAVING Inventory, which emphasizes boundaries, reliability, accountability, confidentiality (the “V” in BRAVING is for “vault”), integrity, nonjudgment and generosity. Below, I’ve translated Brown’s framework into career development professional situations:

• Boundaries: This is a professional conversation. You need to know what you can and can’t discuss, and you need to let them know. Let your advisee know if you’re getting close to a topic you’re mandated to report. Give them the choice to continue or not.
• Reliability: Don’t make a commitment you can’t keep. If you’re not certain that you can deliver on what you’ve said, give them the courtesy of honesty.
• Accountability: You may or may not have made the mistake yourself, but in this conversation, you represent your organization. If their adviser said something cruel, you could empathize, apologize for what they’ve gone through and do your best to make amends.
• Vault: We’ve all had situations where we’ve shared something in confidence and then heard it from someone else. Don’t share information learned in confidence.
• Integrity: Practice what you preach. If you recommend self-care, do your own self-care. Speak from experience rather than guessing at what might work for your advisee.
• Nonjudgment: Set the stage at the beginning by asking the student if they need a solution or just to vent. Remember the boundaries of your conversation. Practice active listening. Seek to truly understand their perspective while avoiding judgment. Listen closely to what they’re saying. Visibly take notes so that they know you’re listening closely and ask clarifying questions based on your notes.
• Generosity: Think about when you’re snappy, when your mood is low, and how this impacts how you interact with others. If the student is in a bad place, they may hurt your feelings. They may be extremely unprofessional. But keep in mind that this may be the first professional conversation they’ve ever had. Rein in your judgement and frustration and consider the why of what they’re saying instead of the what.

Time for Action

I’ll leave you with a final call to action: Take one minute to decide what your first step is going to be to ensure that you’ve made it clear that you and your department are ready for tough, uncomfortable conversations about situations that you may not have personal experience with. Use the momentum to create a strategy of support for students undergoing difficult situations. Lead the way toward professional compassion and you will become the example your advisees and direct reports will emulate throughout their careers.