Supervision provides protection against Vicarious Trauma and Burnout

Therapists often begin their career in community mental health, where it may be difficult to tune into your own emotional landscape. Therapists are often expected to see seven to nine clients a day who are experiencing depression, anxiety, PTSD or may have given up hope for feeling better. The environment that therapists practice in is often fraught with disorganization and therapists pushed to a difficult emotional space. This environment puts therapists at risk for developing symptoms of vicarious trauma, burnout or secondary vicarious trauma.

Vicarious Trauma is a response to a trauma exposure that cues the nervous system to fight or flight, fawn or freeze which over time greatly disrupts the emotional and spiritual life of a first responder or therapist. Vicarious trauma impacts the world view of a healer which makes it difficult to tap into self knowing and may put us in a different time line. Listening to hurting stories may cue us to an earlier trauma exposure which may unlock old reals that hold our own unhealed parts. Supervision and consultation is one the most powerful ways to protect yourself from this hurting place which can push our own internal world toward a chaotic and rigid way of experiencing the world

When we hold space for others emotions , we may lose sight of how we feel moment to moment which can have an impact on our personal and work life. Supervision is a helpful space to use expressive arts to nurture the healing energy toward self while caring for the needs of others. The left side of the brain doesn’t know of the body or the story it tells, expressive arts uses visualization, movement, color and story telling to connect to the wisdom of the right side of the brain to the left. This holistic approach allows for a deeper meaning and understanding of how we connect to our world. I teach therapists how to explore trauma using the right and left brain approach which focuses on the arts to express the hope you have for yourself and others. Supervision and consultation can provide a structured path toward helping others while maintaining and nurturing your own emotional and physical peace.