Nurturing Multiple Selves: Embodied Care for Trauma Clinicians and Clients

Abstract
Amid the complex and interwoven layers of personal, relational, communal, and historical trauma, mental health providers face an ongoing challenge: how to offer effective, evidence-based care to clients while also maintaining their own wellbeing in the process. This workshop explores the intersection of clinical effectiveness and provider sustainability, recognizing that clinicians often support trauma survivors while at the same time navigating their own personal histories and the collective stressors of our current world.

We will begin with an overview of best-practice frameworks that continue to shape the field of trauma treatment. These include phased approaches to care (Herman, 1998), frameworks that emphasize dignity (Hicks, 2021), and models that highlight shame sensitivity (Dolezal & Gibson, 2022, Salter & Hall, 2022). In addition, we will review the growing evidence for somatic and body-based modalities such as Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, EMDR, Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR), and Trauma-Informed Yoga. While no single tool is a panacea, these practices when used with skill and awareness of dissociation ca strengthen outcomes for clients; they can also offer clinicians direct access to tools that support their own regulation, presence, and sustainability in the work.

Throughout the workshop, participants will be guided through short experiential practices of yoga, relational mindfulness, and visualization. These practices are designed to foster embodied awareness, enhance resilience, and create opportunities for providers to directly experience skills they can integrate into their clinical work and personal lives.

We will also review emerging research on provider wellbeing across clinical contexts, identifying protective factors such as relational support, self-reflective practices, and body-based regulation, as well as risk factors including secondary traumatic stress, burnout, and systemic pressures. Attention will be given to current gaps in both research and practice, with an eye toward the necessary evolution of the field in order to support both clients and clinicians more effectively.

The workshop will close with a collaborative “Dreamstorm” (Gómez, 2023), an interactive practice that invites participants to imagine best-case scenarios for clinicians working in high-demand, high-trauma contexts. Together, we will generate practical insights and collective inspiration for how providers can better care for themselves and each other while supporting clients’ journeys of healing and recovery.