Susan (00:02)
it's easy to understand. It just takes practice.
So you do have to consciously practice to make the conscious choices to not go one way all the time. You know, so you'll see it like my my family of origins quite you fallen apart like none of us are really connected to well because unless you're all really wanting to come together to practice this type of change.
Kristi McVee (00:22)
Exactly.
Susan (00:24)
It's just you're just going to get dragged. So I don't want to be dragged anymore. Like I've spent a lot of decades in my life feeling that and I don't need that anymore.
Kristi McVee (00:26)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee - Intro (00:32)
Welcome to Conversations with Kristi I'm Kristi McVee a former WA police officer, specialist child interviewer and child abuse detective. For years I worked on the front lines investigating child sexual abuse, where I saw the risks, the patterns and most importantly, the ways that we can protect our kids. Now I'm here to share that knowledge with you. This podcast is all about real conversations, giving parents, carers and educators the tools to keep their kids safe, both in person and online.
Through survivor stories, expert insights and practical advice, we'll navigate these tough topics together so you feel informed, confident and empowered. Because when we know better, we can do better and our kids deserve nothing less. CONTENT WARNING Some topics and conversations can be triggering for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised as your mental health is important. Please refer to my website and the show notes for available support services.
Kristi McVee (01:29)
Hello and welcome back to the Conversations with Kristi podcast. I am so excited to be talking to the wonderful Susan Dunlop. Sorry, my gosh. I have had two podcasts today and I can't speak now. And of course we've been talking flat out before we started Press Record and here I am, I can't even speak, but that's great. I'm really excited to talk to you Susan because I know that you've got some really important insights into child development especially, but how we can
Susan (01:38)
It's okay.
Kristi McVee (01:58)
and recognise some of the signs of not only if a child's being abused, but also when we are on the other side of it, when we're trying to heal and how we play certain roles in that. But thank you so much for being here. We have had the longest chat before we pressed record and I was like, we better press record, we're never gonna get this done. But yeah, thank you so much for being here.
Susan (02:15)
you
A bit of a half hour session before the session.
Kristi McVee (02:21)
Sometimes it's like that and people, yeah, I love that we can have those chats, but sometimes I'm like, my gosh, I'm like talking way too much. But this is about you, Susan, not about me today. but tell me like for the listeners who are gonna go, who's this Susan Dunlop? Say Dunlop, Dunlop, I can't speak. Who is this Susan Dunlop person? Can you just tell my listeners a little bit about yourself?
Susan (02:39)
Dunlop.
Sure. So I'm Susan Dunlop. I live in Noosa in Queensland, Australia, and I've been a leader in business. I train self leadership.
And before all of that, I left Sydney with my three young children to come and live someplace beautiful. And way back before that, I lived in just common old suburban Sydney in a Catholic family home, did all the usual stuff in the 60s, 70s, 80s, as most of us know. And yeah, unfortunately we had abuse in our family. So I'm lived experience of that. And I think in Australia you call it harmful sexual behavior. So yeah.
Kristi McVee (03:18)
Yeah.
Susan (03:20)
I decided at one stage in 2011 that I would become a voice in the silent landscape of sibling sexual abuse because no one talks about it and I thought well if no one's going to talk about it I'm old enough and wise enough to say something and so I explored it as much as I possibly could, I researched it and yeah I've learnt a lot and in the learning you know that help comes healing and now I'm on the other side of that to advocate and make change.
Kristi McVee (03:29)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah and look it's it's
I think there's many different phases to the healing. You know, there's that I don't want to tell anyone, I don't want anyone to know that this has happened to me, I just want to get on with my life. And I saw that in children as well, but I saw that in, you know, historical survivors of abuse, of all different types of abuse. And then there's that phase where you go, I really do want to talk about this, I need people to know what's happened to me because it's, you know, there's shame or guilt involved or there's also
it's framed who I am.
And so, you know, there's so many like different phases to, you know, abuse healing and abuse survival and all of that stuff. But one of your, one of the things that I found really interesting in when we've had conversations is how much you know about child development around this and how much you can see, you know, you do it really well in speaking about the developmental differences of like, you know, what happens when you have been abused or any type of abuse, not just sexual abuse, but any type of abuse.
Susan (04:46)
Mmm.
Kristi McVee (04:47)
So how do you think that understanding the development of children plus, how does that show up in your own life as an adult? Where does that come from? how did, I guess, you mentioned that you're a lived experience, you've got lived experience, but where did it show up for you and what's changed over the years as you've gone through it?
Susan (05:07)
And it's definitely,
you were saying earlier, that keeping everything held in tight for a long time, because I remember thinking, if I let it out, what's going to come out? What's happening? I don't know what I'm going to find. And I didn't want to find it because I was busy being a young mum. And then I was busy moving to another state and then busy building a company. And I didn't want anyone to see me with those masks down, I suppose that I was keeping in place. So I didn't have time to fall apart. And I believe.
Kristi McVee (05:26)
Hmm.
Susan (05:35)
from the work I do, I know there's a readiness for change, there's a readiness to approach things and it's okay for us not to be ready as we move through. Talking about children though, I've definitely learnt there's the connection between being stalked in your own home, having no safety in your own home, definitely has an impact on you. Where we hear people talk about the fight, flight, freeze response, usually you're talking about that
Kristi McVee (05:42)
Mmm.
Susan (06:00)
on a one off occasion, but when it's in your house and you don't know when it's going to happen and it was, you know, it was over a few years, it could happen any time of day, anywhere you were at your house, on holidays, at your grandparents, anywhere. I had that, basically my adrenal reflex was switched on all the time and I didn't know that. So there's always that undercurrent of that. And I brought that through into the way I operated then as an adult, like busy, busy, busy girl, just always doing stuff.
Kristi McVee (06:17)
Yeah.
No, you don't.
Susan (06:27)
So I could see that and I think when you get to take the moment to go back and really have a look and walk back through everything, you you sort of feel that compassion for the child β and you can see that it shapes the silence that you were in, the shame that you had back then, the feeling that you were the only person.
Kristi McVee (06:37)
Yeah.
Susan (06:46)
That doesn't go away. It takes a really long time. It's a bit like that Robin Williams, I think is it in Good Will Hunting. There's like a meme that goes around and he's talking to the young fellow in that and he keeps saying to, what did he say? says, it's not your fault. It's not your fault. And he keeps repeating it. And I think even now I'm in my fifties.
Kristi McVee (06:48)
No.
Susan (07:09)
You need that repeated to you, unfortunately, lots of times, because of some reason back there, self-blame kicked in and I can blame myself about anyone else's issues anytime. Somehow I did something about that.
Kristi McVee (07:10)
Yeah. Yeah.
my gosh.
my gosh, I
know and I can relate not from the sexual abuse perspective or from like that but I can relate from the fact that emotional, psychological, physical abuse, you know, it was my fault. I was a bad child. I was a bad this. I was a bad that. So, you know, when we look at it from that perspective, you know, you can just imagine what we carry through to adulthood. I know what we carry through to adult. You know what we carry through. But it's not until, I feel it's not until
Susan (07:45)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (07:47)
we slow down through parenthood because we have to focus on our children and then it kind of like comes and slaps you upside the head and goes, hello, here's your trauma to deal with. β I don't know about you, but that's what happens for a lot of people.
Susan (07:59)
Yeah, yeah
I definitely
had it with, like I started a company that it grew so much. I just pictured I was going to run a lifestyle business, know, filling nursing agency shifts, sitting at the beach, sitting at the kids sports carnivals. And my phones ended up ringing from 5 a.m. until 11 p.m. at night, seven days a week. So great adrenal business, must say, because I had to fill shifts really fast all the time. So.
Kristi McVee (08:20)
Mmm.
Because you didn't need any more adrenal overload.
Yeah.
Susan (08:28)
I was good at it, definitely was good at
it. So I was doing all of that, but underneath there was always this feeling of me being awkward, being different. And it didn't take until after I sold that company, really, to connect the dots. And I feel as I've said a few times that I feel like it's almost like you just don't see yourself. How will I put it? It's like...
There's this person that was being who I was and now I can see it from a wisdom space. go, that was trauma. that was you. That was you proving yourself to your parents that you could do it. But that didn't serve you anymore after a while. So you had to stop that. And then I went into my next evolution as a leader. So I was learning self-development and all of that. And so then I would step up through that. But there was definitely the part that goes back to the childhood that really was hard
Kristi McVee (08:57)
you
Yeah.
Mm.
Susan (09:17)
to ever shift was that avoidant thing in me. Avoidant and needing to fly and I remember when I first saw my psychologist she went, oh I see you're a flight risk are you? went, yep I'm gone, if I can go I'm gone. yeah so I had to bring that into perspective and see it in me and that was a really good thing to do for myself.
Kristi McVee (09:31)
Yeah.
It's interesting you mention that I remember because my I have my parents separated really young and my mom left when I was six, seven, I was with my dad and my stepmom and stuff like that and how that manifested out in my so I had an abandonment trauma, you know, as you do as you would and because I had no contact with my mom for years and I got married quite young. I've been with my husband for a long time and when I was in my early 20s, I remember
Susan (09:53)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (10:04)
β
we went to marriage counselling because we were, I was planning my exit every five seconds. And I would say things to him like, well, when we get divorced, we were married maybe a year and I was talking about leaving and breaking up and all of this stuff. I was already, and I've been doing that my whole life, planning my exit. And I didn't, it wasn't until I sat with it and went, well, I'm still with him, we're together nearly 30 years, but it's so crazy that we,
Susan (10:22)
Mmm.
Kristi McVee (10:31)
I think I sound similar to what you're saying about that moving away from pain. I'll leave before they hurt me kind of thing
Susan (10:37)
Yeah, yeah, and we had
abandonment in our family generationally as well, which I again, I felt so much for the people who experienced that in the generations before me, but I hadn't pieced it together as me not having that support, you know, there's that betrayal or denial and, you inaction that you go through after a bad disclosure, say, that you think, I was abandoned.
Kristi McVee (11:00)
Yeah.
Susan (11:00)
Okay,
but I think because I was ready to do the work at the time I was, it hurt a lot, but then you could actually sit with it. You could sit and go, okay, so what can I do about this now? What can I learn about it? What can I give myself as a ritual or a way of processing it just to be able to let it hurt a little bit less every day and then move forward.
Kristi McVee (11:07)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think that's piece. I kind of get bit trapped in that we talk about, I'm talking about prevention constantly, prevention, prevention, prevention, but there's so many people probably who listen to this podcast or follow me where unfortunately it's happened. Something's happened. They haven't been able to prevent it and they're stuck in this place of like, well, what do I do now?
how do I help my child or my family or my, how do I, hopefully they've been protective and hopefully they've done something and they've removed the risk factor, the person who's harming, if not, what do I do next? And so I guess from my perspective and talking about child development, like you mentioned in your work, you talk about child development and you talk about certain protection strategies and certain things that we can,
Susan (11:44)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (12:12)
how does it play out and stuff like that so can you just go through some of the stuff that you've learned in your long you know your long long career long history long hit like love I hate saying that word but you know what have you learned about all of this stuff and where do you see what can you what am I trying to say Christy come on get with it what can you impart with parents or people listening
Susan (12:21)
You
I'll talk
to it from what I had to find out for myself that I didn't realise, okay. So because I'm talking about that, I was the flight risk. So you've got flight, flight, freeze. And when I first became what I'm now a three vital questions certified facilitator, okay. So it was a leadership model in America. And in the curriculum that I took myself through first, because I needed to do it to see, you know, what, what was left over for me from how I'd been operating in life. I found in one of the
few modules this part that really just stuck with me and it was psychologist Karen Horny back in the 1940s and she connected the dots of that the work we do is called the drama triangle and the drama triangle is we go to these default roles in times of stress okay so we otherwise and I'm not talking about
being the victim of abuse, I'm talking about the state of victimhood, okay, or mindset of victimhood. So we otherwise go into the role of victim and feel sorry for ourselves, feel bad, stuff's always happening to me, all that type of thing. Or you can go into the persecutor role that you're going to fight, that you're going to prove yourself, or you're going to go into the rescuer role. And a lot of us go into the rescuer role. That's really one of most common ones people say they're used to.
But what Karen Horne did, she sort of pieced it together. So she said, key protection strategies are moving away so the child will isolate. If I withdraw, I'm going to be safe. And moving against is the child controls. So if I dominate, I stay in charge. So that's your bully and all of that.
Kristi McVee (13:58)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah.
Susan (14:07)
moving towards is the child pleases so if I'm helpful I'll be loved. So they match with Dr Stephen Cartman who created the drama triangle in the 60s before I was born. He created the roles of victim, persecutor and rescuer and their roles okay so we aren't a persecutor, we aren't a victim and we aren't a rescuer, we play the roles of them because it helps us get through these times. So I found it really interesting that psychologist Karen
Kristi McVee (14:29)
you
Susan (14:35)
this in the 40s and then you know Dr. Stephen said this in the 60s and it just made me feel at peace it's like wow that's what my family was like we had this chaotic family that you know is out of my mother's control she had no experience of having siblings she was a single child dad was a single child
And they brought up four children in a reasonably disharmonious, unharmonious β marriage. know, money stresses in the 60s, 70s, all of that, having to work, not be around, and then giving the eldest son the responsibility of being in charge of siblings. None of that is, yeah, none of it's ideal. So it was...
Kristi McVee (14:57)
Hmm.
And a lot of families were like that. No, a lot of families were doing that too in
the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s. And we're seeing less kids be, and if we look at today, it's not so much that we're leaving kids unsupervised, but we're leaving them now on devices, which is a whole other thing. it seems like, and I said this earlier in another podcast, it seems like we,
there was like this, you know, this absent parenting, like we had so many absent parents, they weren't parenting unless they had to, and if they had to, it was like coming down on you like a hammer. Yeah, and so like there was no guidance.
Susan (15:42)
Yeah.
No, and my daughter, the youngest daughter, she calls it transactional communication. And I think that's what we that's what it was. reckon it's like, OK, I've got to ask you, have you done your homework? Good. Have you got your uniform out? Great. OK, have you made the dinner? No. All right. You know, so you the transactions of the day take priority. then, you know, I think people haven't got the bandwidth to keep their presence with the child longer than that a lot of the time. And I think
Kristi McVee (15:50)
β good one.
Mm.
Susan (16:11)
There was no presence that was really the issue. Mum wasn't happy and I think she wasn't present. So, you know, and it's funny, like I know I saying mum, but dad probably was the same, but I think because mum was in the home more. β So I feel that the lack of presence hasn't changed. Like parents don't model any better behaviour by the way they're sitting on their devices just as much as the kids are. So, you know, you're distracted.
Kristi McVee (16:20)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
I think also,
yeah, you're distracted, but I think it's also like we can't, just because our kids are in, like I was laughing about the fact that once upon a time it was like, see you at dark. And I could have been running the local drug ring or like, you know, whatever. And my parents wouldn't have had a clue, right? And I laugh about that now. It was a great childhood in some respects, but then, you know, if anything serious happened, we didn't go to our parents about it because we knew we would be the ones who were in trouble for something that had happened to us, which was outside.
outside
of our control. β
Susan (17:03)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (17:08)
That hasn't really, that modeling of parenting hasn't helped us get to be set up for parenting today. And unless we make actual changes, which is what you're talking about in that system, that drama triangle when we realize which part we play, that persecutor, victim and rescuer part, it's why we've got parents who enable their children to hurt other people. It's why we protect our kids when they're the bully.
Susan (17:13)
No, no.
Kristi McVee (17:35)
why we don't do what we're meant to do which is lead our children to be better people so that they can be good adults.
Susan (17:35)
Yeah.
And I see there's a lot of work being done with people saying communicate with your children, know, talk to them about this, talk to them about that. But if you look back at what you just said, if you're looking back in to my parents' generation or even my generation, like I wasn't good at communicating either as a parent. I did better than what my mother did, like I was much more in my daughter's spaces. But I can't say I was great at it because my parents weren't great. Her parents weren't great. His parents weren't great.
So there's a lot of just being okay and having some self-compassion, I think, in the fact that that's just the way it was, but the work I do is about making conscious choice and it takes practice to make the conscious choice. So it's about looking at what you're doing by default and you'll start to see it all the time, you'll see yourself playing the victim, the persecutor or the rescuer and you're what...
Kristi McVee (18:29)
And you can play it all in one go too.
Susan (18:31)
It's crazy. Once I saw it...
I would walk into my office and just pick what was going on, you know, and then it also made me relaxed thinking, they're doing that. That's okay. I understand what that's about. And then I could see me doing it. And I had to find ways of like, see things as they are was my motto as a business owner. was like, see things as they are, not worse than they are. And that would just let me take the next step without going down a drama triangle, you know, spiral into the floor, you know, so you just.
Kristi McVee (18:58)
Yeah, okay. So when you talk about the drama
triangle, if you explain that a little bit more, because what I'm interested in with all of this stuff is you're saying that, as a child, so if we look at a child's response to abuse, for instance, and we'll just touch on like generalized.
Susan (19:03)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (19:14)
ideas you know if I would withdraw I'll be safe so this is a child who might have been really active in like a sport or or with a person who they loved them because they were being groomed or whatever and then all of a sudden they just pull themselves away and they pull themselves out of the family pull themselves out of the situation they're withdrawing from you they might have been really constantly chatty to you so that's when we would say that would you say?
Susan (19:40)
I it's, as I said, it's not about the state of the actual victim of an abuse situation. It's a mindset thing. Yeah. So the mindset is, well, you know, why me? Why is this always happening to me? And it makes you fall into that space of the victim role.
Kristi McVee (19:46)
Right, it's afterwards, mindset afterwards.
Susan (19:58)
I think in our work we talk about being you go from victimization to victim and then you can move up through to the healthy alternative, which is the conscious work. Yeah, so it's not, it's not as simple as being, yeah, the connection to the actual thing. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (20:05)
Yeah, okay. I got that. I've been there. Yeah. In the moment.
But I reckon I can see that
in, I can actually see that also in when children react and when things are going on in the home. know, when you said the, you know, the difference, so the moving away, moving against and moving towards, like we talk about fawning, right? And fawning is very much that moving toward. And we don't talk about it enough in that when, you know, we talk about fight and flight and, but the fawning part is when you're used to
Susan (20:30)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (20:41)
you know that by being that helpful person or being that people pleaser that you will not be a bigger target. And so I can see those three things in when abuse happens as well. You know, I can see it.
Susan (20:45)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. What does that mean? They are, they're actually
our, they are our adrenal responses aren't they? They're the thing that you go into. So the freeze is something I'm definitely talking about in the conversations that we're having in the conversation cafe I run, that most of us talk about how we can't remember a lot of the stuff when we fell into that free space. But I think, yeah, there's, there's
the actual, the drama triangle is heavy on us. It's exhausting to play as well. So when you're actually doing it, it's not fun. It's not good. It's about...
Kristi McVee (21:18)
Yeah.
Susan (21:23)
What I came to understand was it's about avoiding some of the harder emotions that are part of something. And I learned in my, what do call it? Trauma-informed coach certification. They were talking about how we humans leave trauma loops open because we don't know how to close them out like an animal would when they're being chased. They actually go the whole cycle where we don't know how to stay with a heavy emotion and close it. So we don't end up
Kristi McVee (21:41)
Okay, yeah.
Hmm. It just keeps spiralling, keeps
going, coming around. think you're, look, I've, and then you're back again. I've done that work. I've had that conversation when I was recovering from working in the police and PTSD. I remember saying this out loud to my husband, I've already fucking dealt with this. I thought this was done. Why am I, why is this coming up again?
Susan (21:50)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So it comes up
as triggered. So that's the thing is like what was really interesting to learn was like there's a problem will come up or something will be coming up.
and it brings, it triggers off a heavy emotion and it's usually a past memory of someone doing something in the past and it makes you just go straight into, it's so annoying or that's really bothering me. And you think, okay, so how am going to fix this? So you start running around to sort out the problem, you know, with a quick fix. And then because your emotions start to change, like the heaviness of that emotion can start to shift because you're thinking, it's actually, it's going away.
you actually don't close that cycle, you know, so if you can be kind to yourself and sit with the emotion a bit longer, like when you said, this has happened before. You think, wow, what's this coming? What is it? And actually have stayed with it. I think that's the gift of it is to stay with the emotions longer. And that's not normal for us. We're not none of us have given ourselves time to do that. Or, you know, we haven't had a parent say, just sit there with your hand on your heart and see what's coming up for you right now. You know.
Kristi McVee (22:43)
Mmm.
No, we haven't and we
avoid like as a society we avoid big emotions, we avoid anger, avoid sadness, we avoid you know and we avoid it all the time because it's hard and because...
Susan (23:10)
Yeah.
Mm.
And vulnerability, know, vulnerability
is a big thing to lean into.
Kristi McVee (23:23)
And even people I feel safe with, hate being seen as vulnerable and because I'm the rescuer, know, like I, mean, I was the ultimate rescue. I went into a police officer's role to rescue everyone else. And so, you know, like I take it, I have to be forced to be looked after. People have to force me. I became hyper independent, but you know, when I have healed the most is when like someone, when I've had time to actually sit with it and be the,
Susan (23:28)
Mm.
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (23:50)
in it. I think we have to feel it to heal it. if you know so yeah I totally get that.
Susan (23:51)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's what it's about. It's actually
about feeling it. So I think if you applied all the words that feel the drama way, you've got so many words you could apply to that. And they're all heavy and they're, you know, I've taken a whole school staff through this and they're in Hong Kong and some of the people were saying over there that
just their normal family dynamics is just full on drama. It is the three roles just constantly. She said, no wonder I come to work so exhausted on a Monday. You know, so she, yeah, just acknowledging that our personal lives are like that. So that actually impacts how you show up then in your work and, you know, and also then how you show up with your kids. So you, you're modeling that all the time. And our parents modeled that to us.
Kristi McVee (24:24)
exhausted.
Susan (24:39)
and you know the media, the shows on TV, everything is modelling that way of being, it's the default. So we all can relate to that really well, where trying to choose a conscious way forward is not quite the normal. yeah, no.
Kristi McVee (24:50)
It's easy and it's not as easy. You know, it takes
work. It takes acknowledging that's what's happening. I often say to people, or I've said it to my husband, is it me? Am I creating this? you know, and sometimes by just saying that I'm like,
Susan (24:56)
Yeah.
You
Kristi McVee (25:07)
just checking, like putting the thermometer into my life. And you know, some people really are fueled by drama, so they just keep creating it. But like you said, it's a trauma response, right? So it's one of the many.
Susan (25:18)
Yeah, yeah. And in our world, we're
actually the fellow who founded the work I do, he had permission from Dr. Carman to rename it the dreaded drama triangle. So it's DDT as in toxic, because if you do live it, if you don't just go to it in times of need, like when the adrenal thing kicks in, if you're living it, it becomes quite destructive. It's not good for your relationships at all. So I mean, like a workplace with this going on.
Kristi McVee (25:32)
Yeah.
it's so destructive.
Susan (25:47)
Not good. A family with it going on? Not great. So if you can see that it's there, there is a know that you're doing it, you get to choose whether you do it or not. It's actually, not like you don't have a choice. You do have a choice.
Kristi McVee (25:47)
Horrendous.
you
Kristi McVee (26:00)
So how do you identify whether you're in the drama triangle? If you've never heard of it before and you're wondering, like, why is this always happening? And why am I always in this space? Or maybe you don't even realize you are. How do you identify? Is there any questions you can ask yourself or anything you can identify in what you're doing or what's happening?
Susan (26:13)
Mm.
Well, I would say you can tell by how you're, are you reactive?
Are you needing to get things done straight away? So that's reactionary. Or are you taking a time to stop and think before you choose what you need to do? So to me, being reactionary, playing the victim role, the thoughts will be like, life's happening to me, poor me, you feel helpless, you're feeling victimized, discounted. The type of behaviors involved, you're going to be reacting, you're going to give up and you don't
much energy and then there's the persecutor is is when you're feeling like I've got to win I know best, β yet defensive, on guard, that you're discounted so you have to lash out, that you're self-righteous, you dominate and you control and you and basically what I remember when I first heard about that is about putting down versus building someone up.
Kristi McVee (26:56)
Gotta have the last word, is that one?
Yeah.
Susan (27:12)
So
that's a feeling of what a persecutor's like and if someone's talking to you in a real persecutor way or acting that way to me you feel it feels harsh at you so they're feeling harsh and the rescuer is I must save others from harm and if I do good I'll be worthy it's telling people not asking them
it's I feel sorry for them, poor victim, fears not being needed, feel superior to the victim and when they jump in to save the day the trick is that you're going to sacrifice yourself, you're going to say of course I'll stay back and do that but you don't want to but you're going to do it and often what the problem with the rescuer role turns out to be is no one likes being the victim.
Kristi McVee (27:47)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Susan (27:53)
And if you
treat someone like the victim, if you say, that's all right, I'll do it for you. Generally that person doesn't really appreciate that. And you start to feel unappreciated and then you feel like the victim. So rescuer moves to victim role. Victim victim seems to turn into a persecutor by accident because that's what happened. And you start moving around the roles again. So you start shifting around. So it's. You'll know it.
There's a book that's actually the origin book of this work is called The Power of Ted, like as in Ted Talk but Ted, by David Emerald and it's only like a three hour read or three hour listen and everyone we do this is our foundational book for the work I do and everyone who listens to it or reads it says I feel like he was talking about me. Yeah so did I.
Kristi McVee (28:36)
Well,
people who go into these sorts of roles are generally people who felt like they weren't being supported or, you know, like it's quite, it's very common for people who were victims of abuse as children to become, you know, people who help other people and...
Susan (28:43)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, and David
and I spoke about developmental trauma because I was doing my coaches course while he and I were having chats and he's like, yeah, gosh yeah, with the Western way is not the best way to do things. Is it the way we were raised or, you know, the abandonment piece and all of that's all part of it. So, yeah.
Kristi McVee (29:06)
Yeah, and
what do you reckon? Yeah, well that that is really good. You gave some good examples there because I was like, and I was smiling and nodding and like going on. Because I have been all of those at one stage in my life or against my husband or my daughter or like hand on heart, not intentional, but we we fall into that that triangle very quickly and easily.
Susan (29:29)
Yeah. β
Kristi McVee (29:30)
Because
we don't have the tools. No one's taught us. No one's shared that with us before. So I think that's really important to know. And I think, you know, if you don't know about it, it's something that you can learn about. we don't walk around wanting to harm each other and harm ourselves. And we don't walk around with this. There's very few of us who want to actually hurt the people we love.
Susan (29:33)
No.
No.
But I just picture in my work, I think I was asked the vision of what I would like to do with this work when I became a trainer in it back years ago, 2021, I finally got my certification. And so I'd love to bring this to school kids and to parents, because what happened in my household wouldn't have happened if I had been shown to be self-empowered as a child.
and all you people are doing amazing work like you're talking about consent and the body parts and all of that you're actually making a change that none of us had so I think the world is changing in that space though I do hear then that stats are showing that you know abuse is still happening and now we're moving into other types of like the porn stuff's become bigger than it used to be and all that but I just sort of feel like yeah and I think if we can
Kristi McVee (30:30)
Of course, yeah.
Yes, of course. It evolves.
Susan (30:40)
at least see ourselves and own that we're being like this as parents, as teachers and start to practice modelling the tools or the more conscious way. Your kids are going to pick up on this so quickly. If you're doing it with authenticity, yeah, if you start being real, present, vulnerable, you know, saying, gosh, sorry.
Kristi McVee (30:53)
I've seen it happen with my own child.
Susan (31:00)
Can I just start again? I think I might just do a do-over of that. I just sounded a bit victim-y right then, didn't I? And if they know you're talking the language, it makes it a beautiful, common, new, empowered language that you all do talk. And then everyone feels okay to screw it up and to come back and go, oh, I'm going to give that another try. Gosh, I'm having a bad day. I wonder why I'm being like that. What made me do that? What made me come down on them? You know, what was it in me? Cause it's in you, usually what's made you come down on
Kristi McVee (31:11)
Yeah.
you
Susan (31:29)
someone else, you know, so, yeah, so I needed it for me is all I'm saying. I needed this to make a change in myself, you know.
Kristi McVee (31:33)
Yeah, you just
made me think about there's a an amazing First Nations, what would I call them?
in the Northern Territory called Hoops for Health. And I learnt about this organisation at a conference that I was speaking at and they came in and talked about their program. so Hoops for Health is about playing basketball, but it's not about playing basketball. They use basketball as an in to talk to young people, kids, community, know, people at risk. But they go into prisons and they talk about, so they're playing basketball with people in prison and they're talking about emotional intelligence terms and they're using emotional
intelligent terms and they're talking about this like these things like the drama triangle or
Anyways, so what the but whilst they're doing it they're bouncing the ball and they're all mimicking like they're all bouncing their ball Which mimics the heart and which mimic and so and then they have a yarning circle anyway the most amazing things are happening in that the the adults that are involved and it's mostly males but the adults that are involved in this that are in the prisons are talking about how they don't want to pass this on to their kids they don't want to pass this lack of empathy and lack of understanding and
Susan (32:21)
β
Yeah, yeah.
Kristi McVee (32:41)
and lack of all of the things. They wanna change it for their kids because they don't want their kids to go through what they've gone through. And so the thing is, that when we talk from that vulnerable place and we share those vulnerable shares and we give them the language that we didn't have, then it changes the game. It changes the whole landscape around this. we have that opportunity. All of us have that opportunity.
Susan (32:55)
Mm.
I know.
Yeah.
That's what I felt
like. And this is, I remember the founders saying, it's easy to understand. It just takes practice.
So you do have to consciously practice to make the conscious choices to not go one way all the time. You know, so you'll see it like my my family of origins quite you fallen apart like none of us are really connected to well because unless you're all really wanting to come together to practice this type of change.
Kristi McVee (33:30)
Exactly.
Susan (33:32)
It's just you're just going to get dragged. So I don't want to be dragged anymore. Like I've spent a lot of decades in my life feeling that and I don't need that anymore. So if I can do this and I think one of the keys of this that I looked at because I'd served health care in my nursing agency days is that a thousand leaders at least have done this in one hospital. So one hospital organization, the Cleveland Clinic has put a thousand students down emerging leaders through this. So imagine the leaders are going to be
Kristi McVee (33:34)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Susan (33:59)
come if they take this forward. And then the Stanford Children's Hospital is also doing it all through their whole leadership model. Colorado Children's Hospital. So when I saw that all these big hospitals are embracing this work, I thought, yeah, yeah, the type of humans that work in that type of space, I think, if you see it, I would love to bring this to just families and to workplaces in Australia.
Kristi McVee (34:11)
You knew I need to be involved.
Well think about
it, right? Let's put it pretty plainly, as parents we're leaders to our children.
Susan (34:28)
Yeah, yeah.
Kristi McVee (34:28)
We all are
leaders in our own lives, with our children, with our families. If we do the work, they might not identify it straight away, but eventually it's going to leave an impact and it's going to help them, help us, help them, help the next generation. It's not just about us in this moment, it's about the next day, the next month, the next year. how, yeah, I just think you're right. It's like if they're doing it over there for their leadership groups, then us as parents.
We're the best leaders our children have.
Susan (34:57)
Yeah. And if you can practice
it at work or practice it anywhere else, and then it just becomes common language. And I remember when I was first working with the team in Hong Kong.
and they're like, it's called Ted. Okay, so we call it the Empowerment Dynamic Triangle. So that's Ted. You say, gosh, we're Tedding all over each other. And they felt really silly at first. And then they started to get with the groove of it. And it just became there was no calls into the vice principal's office anymore to complain about something. Everyone started seeing what they were interacting like. So it's how you're engaging with other people. And if you can pull yourself up on how
Kristi McVee (35:30)
Wow.
Susan (35:34)
you engage with someone and you can go, hold on, I better stop for a minute. What am I doing here? Am I trying to one up them? Am I trying to show I'm better than them?
Am I trying to do whatever language you put to that and say, well, instead, could we look at it from a place of what are we trying to learn from this? Like you and I just learned about a technical glitch. So we both just got challenged by a technical glitch on this podcast, you know, but we walked through it like it wasn't going to, you didn't shut down the podcast to go, my God, drama drama. We just went, let's move forward. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (35:55)
Yeah, we did.
Yeah, let's give it a go. Let's give it another go. Yeah. So for anyone
listening at home, we had a technical glitch. We're not sure if it's fixed yet, but we're just going ahead anyway. It would be interesting. And I want to move on to the next question. But the last thing I was just thinking is, imagine if police officers did this.
Susan (36:07)
You
yeah.
Kristi McVee (36:19)
Anyway, that's a whole nother conversation because honestly, I didn't, looking back on my 10 years in the police, I was not emotionally empowered enough in my job. Like I'm an emotionally intelligent human. I've used, I use my intuition. I use all of these things, but there's so much I've learned since leaving that I could have used in the police that I should have been taught.
Susan (36:38)
I know.
And I think it's, that's probably one of the dicier careers to talk about with this because I know a family member of mine joined the police force and I don't know what he would do. I don't think he'd be able to embrace this work. But.
Kristi McVee (36:50)
yeah, you get massive criticism by the old crusty sergeants, sorry old crusty sergeants, you know you are ones. But yeah, it would get criticized by the people who didn't like change and there's a lot of them in the police force. But there's also the next generation that could really use this to help them in the job because if I hadn't have burnt out with PTSD, I might still be there. Not that I'm like, I look back and I go, I'm glad that I'm not, but at the same time, like I didn't want to leave.
Susan (36:51)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Mmm.
Kristi McVee (37:17)
I was forced to leave and I through my mental health and through yeah it was a necessary thing that I had to do but at the same time and it wasn't the police who forced me to leave by the way I've spoken about this on the podcast my daughter at 11 and a half nearly 12 years old said mum you're not the same parent I remember like you're not my mum the same mum I want you I don't want you to do this anymore
Susan (37:18)
really? Okay.
Kristi McVee (37:39)
and went and resigned the next day. So because, it was probably, and this is me in a nutshell, I am very much like once the decision's made, but it was already causing so many problems in my family life with, and it does, like all of this stuff does. It affects every relationship you have.
Susan (37:41)
β okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
When you talk about the
ripple effect, know, like that's a negative ripple effect where if you can change, if you actually change the way you were operating to becoming from a different perspective and practising that and your child could see that you were really authentically being this, you're not pretending to try, you're just saying, hey, I'm actually trying to communicate in a different way, which I've had to say to my own daughters because I can easily play silent mum. That was me from Silent Child.
Kristi McVee (38:08)
potentially.
Mm-hmm.
Susan (38:24)
you know, I can drop back into that when my depression kicks in or my PTSD takes me down a little bit of a rabbit hole every so often. So I have to pull myself back up out of that. And I've said to the girls over time, if you don't mind, I might sound a bit weird sometimes, but I'm trying to practice speaking differently and thinking differently. So I'm I'm quite open about what I'm trying to do because I don't get it right. You know, so it's OK not to get it right. But I just used to think if I had this in my own, say, my business,
Kristi McVee (38:40)
Yeah.
and here it for you.
Susan (38:51)
and I was supplying like I think we supplied something like 6,000 nurses to hospitals and nursing homes over the time we own that company. thought imagine if I sent all those people in on all those shifts and they had this model and then they would have impacted the the site's staff in a healthy way and then what's the ripple effect out to the patient and their family? Absolutely incredible you know so.
Kristi McVee (39:03)
Yeah
Yeah, exactly. It's life changing for a
lot of people. And that's what I see in my work in prevention work is like, know, my thought process when I wrote my book or when I started talking and speaking about this outside of the police was like, it's just one child, right? But it's one child, one family, one community. It just keeps flowing out and flowing out and things change. And that's what you're doing in a different way. Same, but different. So you talk about the
Susan (39:33)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (39:41)
the
silent child stuff and the silent voice and like how you pull away and you just stay silent. know, obviously over this, over your journey, you've reclaimed some of that.
Susan (39:51)
Yeah and I think it was also just taking the time to look back, I think you've got to stop and look back and see that that's what you were and there's a book I think his name is I'm gonna forget his name now or have I got it here somewhere?
Kristi McVee (40:02)
Ha
Susan (40:06)
Michael Liu and he talks about finding your voice and when I read that I think my gosh okay so that was real too so I had lost my voice and you know as children we were told to be silent not you know not speak unless we're spoken to and then I stayed silent because I was knocked back in a disclosure as a child told to go and sort it out myself so I felt alone and then you know then I you know moved into
years and you're definitely young.
Don't speak up is more that you're numb. And I definitely numbed with alcohol, um, just to not be seen, not to fit in, not to, you know, be excluded, everything, that mixture of confusion that I hadn't addressed any of this stuff yet. But it was, as I moved through, there was things that was happening in our family that we had to play happy, happy families after I disclosed as an adult. Um, so it was like, don't disturb the peace, don't lose love. So I did that. And then a situation came and I
Kristi McVee (40:41)
get through.
Susan (41:04)
lion in the sand. See ya, I'm gone. So I left and protected my children from any abuse happening but
Kristi McVee (41:05)
Yeah.
Susan (41:11)
Yeah, it was like I had to keep on trusting that there was a voice in me that was me that person from before and it was so lovely to let that blossom. Definitely loads of self-doubt and all that type of stuff as I've gone through. But yeah, I became a leader that I didn't know I had that in me and you know, learnt to be a leader of a team. But doing that without resolving my trauma, mind you, like I hadn't actually dealt with the trauma. I was doing that with this PTSD
Kristi McVee (41:16)
Yeah.
Susan (41:39)
beneath the surface and all of that. And I think it's become as I move through to the end of that phase and became a coach which you coach yourself when you do that, became this 3vq facilitator, did the healing, did a lot of writing, a lot of research on sibling sexual abuse. Yeah that gave me back my voice and I keep reminding myself now I've got a lead and not
Kristi McVee (41:40)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Susan (42:01)
follow people. I've got to actually be the leader, not feel like I have to follow anyone else's path.
Kristi McVee (42:01)
Hmm. Mmm.
Well, and we all get trapped in that.
where
we think we're not good enough or we're not worthy enough or who are we to speak up about this stuff or even I do, you know? But that's the thing, like this is your journey, your experience, you're the expert in your own life. So no one else can tell you whether what you did or how, know, what you, no one can. But I think from my experience investigating sibling sexual abuse, I didn't see a lot of it come through my door unless it was historical.
Susan (42:14)
Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
Kristi McVee (42:35)
Or so historically they'd come back and say, look, this happened to me. I want to do something about it now. Or it was a child who was currently being abused by a sibling or a step sibling would be, would disclose to someone like a mandatory reporter or a friend's friend and they tell their parents and then that was reported to police. And one of the things that I don't think is that's why I want to have these conversations and why I want to open them up is because
a lot of kids out there are being harmed in their own homes by siblings or by family members and it's not their fault that they're being abused but we're not supporting them, we're not keeping them safe.
Susan (43:04)
Yeah.
No,
and I've given you another little, an excerpt from a, there's a really cool report, a review that was done by Dr. Ellie Hansen in...
It's for NSPCC learning. So I've given you the link. You're welcome to share, but yeah, but it talks about it. So it talks about the prevalence, recognition, the age, the power dynamics, parental misunderstanding. And it's a really simple one pager. I thought I'll give you something at least that's about that because we all, I'm running conversation cafes with survivors, with parents.
Kristi McVee (43:24)
I'll put it in the show notes here.
Yeah.
Great. Yeah, no, great.
Susan (43:41)
very inclusive. If someone who's harmed is wanting to come along to that, they're going to be welcome, but it might be tricky for them to feel comfortable with that. We've got social workers coming to it. But what I'm witnessing when I'm sitting there facilitating this screen full of people is if a social worker will just suddenly decide that they're going to share what it's like to talk to the child who harmed, because she's working with the child who harmed and the children who were harmed.
Kristi McVee (43:47)
Yeah.
Susan (44:06)
We all just sit there, the survivors, go, no one's talked to us about this. There's been no conversation ever on this. So we've all got to our 50s and 60s, and we're having our first conversations ever about the impact on our intimacy. Surely it would impact your intimate relationship. The addictions, so much.
Kristi McVee (44:10)
Rock.
Yeah.
100 %
Susan (44:29)
No one's had the conversations, so we're trying to start having the conversations now. And it's all sort of happened out of COVID times, interestingly. Everyone, I think, sat with their big missions and went, it's time I wrote the book, time I spoke up. And there's all these books coming out of the woodwork in the States, for sure. There's tons of memoirs coming and, you know.
Kristi McVee (44:40)
I'd do it differently. Yeah.
I
know Dr Amanda Patten has done some harmful sexualised behaviours interviews with both the child that's been harmed and the child that's harming and that's the language we use in the harmful sexualised behaviour framework.
Look, I'd imagine and correct me if I'm wrong. I'd imagine most young people, most people survivors lived experience would want just wished that they don't like you don't hate. I keep trying to I'm trying to get the right frame of how to say this. Maybe I'll just split it out there and you can correct me. You don't hate your sibling or your whoever's doing it when you're a child, right? You don't hate them. You just want it to stop. You just want it to end.
want them to do it anymore. It's not okay but there's your parent that's meant to keep you safe and is doing nothing because obviously they don't have the framework or the tools or they don't just they're ignoring the problem and so you've you're left high and dry and this person's still doing it.
And it's not until you become an adult and you realise how neglected and abused you were, not just by the perpetrator, the person who was abusing you, but the parent as well, that's where the pain is really hard. It's because that person should have stopped it, should have protected you, you might have been able to move on a little bit simpler, a little bit easier. Maybe, maybe not, maybe it would have, who knows. But I just think there's so much we need to say in this because it's not being spoken
Susan (46:08)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (46:13)
about. Like I said, I don't see those cases, I didn't see those cases until they're historical and the person's like, I fucking hate them, I fucking want them to pay, they ruined my life, you know, that kind of thing.
Susan (46:22)
Yeah
I know,
I think there's a lot to be said from the adult mind when we're looking at it from adults looking backwards. Definitely during the time of it, there's to me and I know there's other people that I've heard speak of it who will be different. They've got different perspective and there's been different.
Kristi McVee (46:38)
Yeah, of course.
Susan (46:40)
you know, actions taken against them by the person who harmed them, you know, so there's all sorts of scope of that. It might be once off, it might have been a feeling of love or it might have been something that made you feel like you were part of something even. So there's all sorts of, we can't really generalise it down into too close. And there's also all the different parents. There's parents who've walked in and opened the door, seen it and closed the door and walked away because possibly it's happened to them before as well.
Kristi McVee (46:47)
Yeah.
No.
Susan (47:05)
So there's that type of thing. I just think I definitely tried to get my mother's attention with it. I know once my father asked, where are your brother and sister? And he said, I remember you saying like, and this is where I knew what age it started. He said, I remember you saying, they're in on the bed.
And he said, I remember looking at you thinking, that's an odd thing to say, but he was just determined to get the family in the car, to get the boat down the boat ramp and just get out for the day. So he didn't think to do something, but that was a moment that he could have done something.
Kristi McVee (47:33)
I also think it's a choice to be naive.
Yeah.
Susan (47:36)
and that was probably I was 29 and they just said, you got no chance. It's historical. You're not going to have any evidence. Don't bother. But that was in the 80s, corruption in the 80s, you know.
Kristi McVee (47:44)
Yeah. Yeah. It's changed. A lot's changed.
I mean, I've done a lot of historical cases, like lots. And yeah, and generally if you can, yeah, there's a lot to it. Like, you know, if someone comes forward, it's a heart. It's an uphill battle for a lot of survivors and people who want to report to police. It's an uphill battle. I'm not going to in no way, shape or form say, yeah, go do it. It's easy.
Susan (47:52)
Yeah.
Yeah, okay.
Kristi McVee (48:10)
But what I will say is that I have prosecuted and I have charged people with offences from 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago. Even historical as five years ago. So it can be any age. I think the longest...
Susan (48:17)
really? Okay. Wow.
Kristi McVee (48:28)
a charge is like they were from the 1950s. So I have charged people from that far back. So, you know, and it is possible to do that. So it's just about, yeah, it can be it can be the police that you speak to. It's with whether you are like what you can like provide to police. Historical cases in general, it's he said, she said, or she said, she said, or whatever. But, you know, like there's always ways to confirm things like with a historical case, it
Susan (48:36)
Yeah.
Kristi McVee (48:54)
would be getting the statement and say for instance someone said, we were living in this house and it was around my 10th birthday and I remember it because this is what happened. Because you know what it's like, well I'm generalizing sorry, is for some people they can remember the first offence and maybe the last offence and maybe some offences in between but they don't remember everything because it all blurs together, it all mushes together.
Susan (49:16)
Yeah, it's quite blurry when
it's over a bunch of years, yeah.
Kristi McVee (49:20)
Yeah,
so if you can pick out one or two or even ten, however many, it has to be able to be identifiable for a reason. So for instance, I had historical offences where they'd say, I remember it was my 10th birthday because I got this dress and I was wearing this dress when it happened.
This is where we were. then I would do my as the investigator. It was my job to go. Okay, who can corroborate that? Who can give evidence that they at this time they were living at this address or is there records from the rates that they paid or so I used to go hunting through paperwork. Basically, it was always paper based hunting through paperwork, hunting through statements and bank statements or and then, you know, hunting through other witnesses or potential witnesses saying, do you remember living at this address?
or do you remember it, you know, and that's how I was able to, you know, confirm that they were there at this time. Yeah, so that's how it works. It is possible. I know, and a lot of people don't realise that and it's one of the worst things about, I think, that police have done is because it's hard work, they don't try.
Susan (50:14)
Okay. I it's possible. Okay. Yeah.
No,
okay. And it probably would have been easier back then to have done it when I was 29. β Yeah.
Kristi McVee (50:33)
Maybe, maybe not. mean,
a lot of things are digitized now. A lot of things are easy to find. You'd be surprised. Like I had one case years ago that, you know, they had said that they they remembered that they were living, because they moved a lot, right? So they remembered they were at this school.
Susan (50:38)
Okay.
Kristi McVee (50:48)
and they were doing this school because we lived across the road from this school and so they remembered that and that it happened around this period so I was able to go back through school records and prove that they were at this school at this time and that it aligned with basically when they said it happened so that's why how yeah so there you go
Susan (51:07)
Okay, yeah, okay.
I imagine you could, like you just got me picturing off little moments, but you think gosh you'd have to then go and see where they are. And also that it wasn't, you know, I wasn't alone in what was happening, so it just mattered whether someone actually wanted to speak up or not, yeah.
Kristi McVee (51:13)
Sorry.
Yeah.
No, Yeah. So
in regards to everything that we've talked about today, what would be one message that you would want to leave with the parents that are listening or the people that are listening? What's one thing that you want to leave them with?
Susan (51:35)
And I think I took it from being at a national conference last year, it's just to be the person that believes them.
know that they can actually come to you and you've said to them you can tell me anything anytime and you know that was corroborated with another advocate I spoke to this morning she said that's what she is to her nieces and nephews now because she's been through this and so she said just know always and so to be saying that and actually honouring that I think is important but I think
Kristi McVee (51:54)
Yep.
Susan (52:02)
Education of yourself is important because in a time of disclosure, my mum didn't go well with disclosure. It was pretty rotten when I was 25 and that shattered hers and my relationship for very long time.
Kristi McVee (52:04)
Yeah.
Susan (52:14)
So whatever you say in the moment is going to be remembered and is going to go to every part of that woman that is disclosing to you. The child, the harmed child, the teenager, the young mum she might be. So just educate. There's really cool sites like RAINN in America, R-A-I-N-N.org.
I think there's some like the there's a kids safe Australia thing or something, raising safe children or something like that in Australia. They've got some really cool one pages. Just educate yourself because if it comes up, you want to be that person. They go, thank God I told her or him.
Kristi McVee (52:37)
Yeah, there is. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah and and listen listen and believe like the some of the disclosures I got over the years where they went to tell someone and they were closed shut down or told not to you know that leaves a little such a large impact on the whole whole life of that person and I've said it over and over again if you it's not for you to decide whether it's happened or not it's for you to support the person who comes to you.
Susan (52:57)
Mm.
for sure, yeah.
Exactly and I think
the the part that I can't think who it was it was a leader one of the commissioners I think spoke about this and she said that be the person who believes and you don't have to be the investigator in that moment is not for you to investigate you just have to be there investigation can come later so don't expect to have to take action in that minute just be quietly present I think you know yeah yeah
Kristi McVee (53:23)
No. No.
Yeah well that's a good thing to finish on I think Susan.
Look I reckon we could talk about this like for hours β but if anyone wants to find out about your the the framework that you work on the 3vq framework or anything about what you've talked about in this episode where can they find you?
Susan (53:43)
Yes.
Well, my email, I can give that to you. So I'm connect at susandunlop.com.au
Kristi McVee (54:00)
Yeah.
That's amazing. So and your other website is susandunlop.com.au. Yep.
Susan (54:05)
Yeah, and that's more interesting. That's my leadership training
because there's also, unfortunately, there's leaders who don't really want to know that you might have had a trauma background. So I've had to have, I've got two,
Kristi McVee (54:15)
yeah.
Yep. And a lot of people don't actually, they might not want to...
you know, recognise that there's trauma involved. I mean, even with the police, honestly, for all the people that they see and we saw, we didn't have enough trauma-informed training. I'm sure it's improved in the last five years, but since that trauma-informed, you know, buzzword has come out, it impacts every part of people's lives, every part. And so we have to have this education around what
how it manifests, how it shows up, how it can affect the people we meet and in our own work lives, in our personal lives, in every part of our life.
Susan (54:54)
restaurants are closing tomorrow as in your business is shutting down tomorrow. I remember calling each of my daughters and said this is unprecedented we've never had this so do you understand this is quite a change in history to be getting told we're going to be locking down. So I think there's been so many micro and macro traumas since that time we just started to get used to a low level of stress anyway in our lives and now we've just got this little bit more a little bit more a little bit more so we've got to take care of ourselves a little bit
Kristi McVee (55:16)
it's hot, ramped up.
Susan (55:21)
because again as I say the kids are watching us so you know we need to be there for them and so that means taking care of ourselves first as well. Yeah.
Kristi McVee (55:26)
Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much, Susan. Thank you so much for
all of the technical stuff and all of the other stuff, but thank you so much for being here. I will make sure everything you've shared with me is in the show notes. So if anyone's looking for any of that, it will be there and all your links will be there. amazing. Always, always.
Susan (55:43)
Fantastic. Thank you, Kristi, for making the time to have a chat. Okay.
Kristi McVee (55:48)
Thank you for listening to this episode. Education empowers children, strengthens parents and most importantly, prevents abuse. That's why I do this work and that's why you're here. So truly thank you. If you'd like more support or resources, follow me on social media under Kristi McVee or cape-au where you'll find all the links in the show notes. You can also grab a copy of my book, Operation KidSafe, a detective's guide to child abuse prevention at www.cape-au.com
where you'll find further resources and self-paced courses to help you in this journey of protecting your kids. If you found this episode valuable, please take a moment to leave a review or share it with someone important. Your support helps more parents and caregivers discover this important information and take action to keep kids safe. Check the show notes for extra links and support. And most importantly, thank you for showing up and taking action to protect your kids. See you next time.
