Pest Control Through a Trauma-Informed Lens

Editor’s note: Suzy Rayner, owner of Valkyrie Pest Solutions, Manitoba, Canada, shared how PCOs can develop a more compassionate, empathetic approach in their pest control businesses by understanding the physical, mental and emotional layers of a person’s behavior. 

How many times have you walked into a multi-unit housing complex, and been greeted with a scared, fearful and uncooperative customer? Have you thought that they might view your pest control services as something to feel ashamed by their living conditions? As a pest control owner/operator, how do you respond to that behavior and properly evaluate the best course of action?

© Valkyrie Pest Solutions

Rayner encounters these scenarios often when working in multi-unit housing. She is passionate about teaching her technicians and other pest management professionals (PMPs) how to perform pest control through a trauma-informed lens; in other words, how to understand human behaviors and the root of them so you can gain greater success in treatments.

In the following article, Rayner shared her personal and professional experiences on using a trauma-informed approach when working with customers in low-income housing.

Let’s start from the beginning. 

Trauma and brain development go hand-in-hand. Brain development starts from the bottom up. The brain stem develops in the womb, and it handles our basic housekeeping functions. Then, the limbic part of your brain starts to develop, this part is for emotional regulation and develops over the first six years. The limbic part of your brain is what decides if something is a threat or not and it decides that based on previous things that have happened to you. That means things happening to you in childhood impact how your brain perceives threats into adulthood. Your brain continues developing until you’re 25 years old; this is when your prefrontal cortex finishes developing. Your prefrontal cortex is the part of our brains that allows us to think about our actions and processing risk.

If someone has experienced a lot of stress or has a post-traumatic stress disorder, the pre-frontal cortex might not get a chance to process the information coming in. It’s very important to understand that your brain might bypass the prefrontal cortex and go straight to the limbic system. This can cause you to physically react to something before you actually even know what it is you are reacting to.

I often view people like children, and not to be paternal with them, but understanding that if someone is being rude to me, there’s likely a reason why. It helps me to hold compassion if I imagine those unreasonable reactions coming from a child rather than an adult. I know most people don’t want to be rude or mean; I don’t believe that is human nature. I choose to believe that something bad has happened to them in the past and I’m triggering it. I don’t have to take it personally, but rather I’ll connect with them and show them that I am here to help them. 

How does this have anything to do with pest control?

An unavoidable part of pest control is the interactions we have with people living in poverty. The childhood poverty rate in the U.S. doubled from 5.2 percent in 2022 to 12.4 percent in 2023, according to the Center of Poverty and Social Poverty. Generational poverty should be viewed as generational trauma. It is very difficult to break the cycle of generational poverty, and it continues to get more difficult. 

When researchers study abusive parenting, they often study lab rodent models. It’s not like they go out and find abusive rodent parents; they create them. To create abusive patterns in rodents, they start by denying the mother the things she needs to make a safe nest, like food, water and shelter. She becomes abusive because of that stress-inducing environment. Read more on studies being done here.

Our industry has a history of struggling to interact respectfully with people in low-income environments. Many PMPs have been instructed not to speak with the people living in rental units because they don’t pay the bill; they are often trained to be critical of their living environments and to assume there’s no point in expecting cooperation. 

Helping your staff to be mindful of their actions and words can really set you up for a lot more cooperation and success from customers. If you understand that some people have already had a history with pest control technicians, and you don’t know how previous PMPs were treating them. Even though this might be your first interaction with this person it might not be their first interaction with a PMP. 

All you can control is how YOU are treating people. When I am training people in the field, I remind them that when someone is a renter, more often than not, pest control is something that is done to them and not with them. They don’t have a choice of who is coming into their home. A notice is slid under their door, and it usually has scary language. People fear eviction when a contractor comes into their unit, because they might be reported for sanitation or other violations. You could already be walking into a combative relationship with your customers from them being afraid. 

Propose a communication shift

Instead of saying tenant, say resident. I found that referring to people as residents makes them feel more like it’s their home. Because it is! I also keep in mind what is said on the landlord’s report; a lot of the time what we say is copy/pasted into a letter and sent to the resident. When writing your report, you don’t need to be cold about it. Instead of poor sanitation, say sanitation could improve. More often than not, we don’t normally come across actual hoarders, but some people who are not staying on top of cleaning. I will recommend to property management that helping this person organize and clean their homes is beneficial. I know when I was a single mom, I had many depressive episodes, and my laundry and dishes would just pile up. It’s important to teach staff to be mindful of that.

Use these non-violent crisis intervention tips when working in multi-housing, low-income units, gathered from the Crisis Prevention Institute.

• Be empathic and non-judgmental. Use active listening to understand that their feelings about the situation are very real. You want to put them at ease, so they know that you are not there to judge them. That’s one of the first things that I say when I walk into these units. I tell them that I’m not going to report them to the landlord for what I see. Let’s deal with the issue at hand and I might ask that they do some housekeeping stuff.

• Respect personal space. I ask for permission before I look through cupboards. Just giving them back some control and respecting their personal space. If I’m going through someone’s kitchen looking for cockroaches, I’ll ask them first if I can open cabinets and cupboards. 

• Use non-threating body language. Don’t use wild gestures and keep your face neutral. You might be one of the most threatening things coming into someone’s unit. People fear being evicted over pests.

• Focus on their feelings. If people are telling you their concerns, even if it sounds ridiculous, listen to them and make them feel like you care.

• Ignore challenge questions. This is when someone is questioning your authority and doesn’t want to listen to you. Redirect them and tell them you want to work together with them. Bring the focus back to how you can work together to solve these problems. 

• Setting limits. If you walk into someone’s apartment and they’re a very messy person, on that first visit, set some reasonable limits on what you are going to ask the person to accomplish. If someone’s unit is really bad, I will ask them to do just one thing before the next visit. If you can’t take out the garbage every day, can you get a garbage can that seals? Or if you just need them to focus on doing the dishes. Overwhelming someone with a long list of “to-do’s” can end up meaning nothing gets done.

• Allow time for decisions. If you give them some instruction on how to handle the initial treatment approach with cleanliness and organization, just hold back and let some time pass before you add on extra tasks for them to do. When I am dealing with lower income units, I am so happy when people are home because I can talk to them directly and show them how we will work together. Speaking to someone directly is always going to be more effective than a form letter from the landlord.