How can you practice self-care while working with clients who have experienced trauma?
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As a case manager, you may encounter clients who have experienced trauma, such as abuse, violence, loss, or disaster. Working with trauma survivors can be rewarding, but also challenging and stressful. You may feel overwhelmed, exhausted, or emotionally drained by the stories and needs of your clients. You may also experience vicarious trauma, which is the negative impact of being exposed to the trauma of others. This can affect your mental, physical, and emotional health, as well as your professional and personal relationships. That's why self-care is essential for case managers who work with trauma survivors. Self-care is not selfish or indulgent. It is a way of protecting and nurturing yourself, so you can continue to provide effective and compassionate service to your clients. In this article, we will share some tips on how to practice self-care while working with clients who have experienced trauma.
Identifying what triggers your stress and how you cope with it is a key step in practicing self-care. Stressors can be internal or external and vary depending on the individual. For case managers who work with trauma survivors, some common stressors are hearing traumatic stories, feeling helpless or frustrated, having high caseloads or expectations, facing ethical dilemmas, balancing work and personal life, and dealing with their own trauma. To identify your stressors, you can use a journal, a checklist, or a scale to monitor your stress levels and sources. You can also seek feedback from colleagues, supervisors, or mentors. Once you know what causes you stress, you can plan how to reduce or manage it.
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Olga Gibbs
Novelist, educator, mental health expert with experience of working with disturbance in adolescents and young people. BA (Hons) Business & Management; Masters Degree in Creative Writing. Bi-Lingual
The majority of people working in mental health settings are "wounded healers" themselves. If, with the help of a mental health professional, they have identified it, they subsequently already would've had coping mechanisms in place, to guard themselves from triggering exposure. Diaring is helpful in managing one's negative thought pattern, as well as regular sessions with a mentor - like I had supervising sessions with my social worker while I was fostering.
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Dan Perzanoski
Futures Recovery Healthcare, Spirence, Catalyst Recovery, LLC, wellness through renewed purpose and potential
I have always believed that life is based on vantage point, perspective, and perceptions. Therefore, no one is wrong. Allowing a client to express what they understand, need, and feel, from their vantage point, is imperative.
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Self-care involves setting boundaries and limits for yourself and others. Boundaries are rules and expectations that define roles, responsibilities, rights, and needs. Limits are actions and behaviors used to enforce boundaries. Setting these can help clarify your scope of practice, communicate availability and expectations to clients, colleagues, and supervisors, protect time and energy for personal and professional goals, say no to unreasonable requests or demands, and avoid burnout or compassion fatigue. Strategies for setting boundaries and limits include creating a schedule and sticking to it, prioritizing and delegating tasks, asking for help or support when needed, referring clients to other resources or services, taking breaks or vacations, and respecting privacy and confidentiality.
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Annette Tavitian
Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Counselling | Resilience| Trauma| Boundaries
Boundaries can broken especially if you find yourself working 'off the clock' communicating with a client re session times, or asking how they are feeling etc. Boundaries can absolutely be blurred. I think it's important to set limits and communicate to a client expectations around times that you can communicate. I know of counsellors who put their phone away after a certain time and don't touch it till the morning. It's still a very sore subject as clients sometimes expect more than what we can give.
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Olga Gibbs
Novelist, educator, mental health expert with experience of working with disturbance in adolescents and young people. BA (Hons) Business & Management; Masters Degree in Creative Writing. Bi-Lingual
Boundaries can often become blurred when a client shares his/her stories with you, and over time you have developed a rapport and deep connection. So it's incredibly important to set limitations, boundaries, and expectations. As a mental health provider, I would be able to work with the majority of issues and trauma, but I would never work with clients who reported pedophilia tendencies - this was my limit, and a client like that would be referred to other professionals. It would be important to set personal boundaries during supervision sessions, as well as with clients.
Engaging in activities that nourish your mind, body, and soul is a third way to practice self-care. Self-care activities vary from person to person, depending on preferences, interests, and needs. Examples include exercising, meditating, reading, learning new skills, spending time with loved ones, seeking therapy, joining a support group or network, volunteering, and donating. To engage in self-care activities, you can make a list of activities that make you happy or fulfilled, schedule time for yourself and stick to it, find a buddy or mentor to share your activities with, track your progress and celebrate your achievements, and reward yourself for your efforts and accomplishments.
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Olga Gibbs
Novelist, educator, mental health expert with experience of working with disturbance in adolescents and young people. BA (Hons) Business & Management; Masters Degree in Creative Writing. Bi-Lingual
I feel that "on-call" feature should be more limited and used less in mental health settings than it's used currently. Agencies or extra staff should be outsourced to give time to permanent staff to unwind and compress and to reduce burnout.
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Michael D.
Experienced EDT Senior Social Worker / AMHP / Trainee Person Centred and Experiential Counsellor / Psychotherapist
It’s extremely important to be congruent and allow yourself feel your emotions, be it frustration, upset, fear, anger. The key to emotional regulation within us, it to feel our own and process our own emotional responses. Self care activity and extracting yourself from your work and work identity is key.
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Practicing self-care can include seeking professional development and supervision. Professional development is the process of improving your knowledge, skills, and competencies as a case manager, while supervision is the guidance and feedback you receive from a more experienced or qualified professional. This can help to enhance your confidence and competence as a case manager, learn new strategies and techniques to work with trauma survivors, address any gaps or challenges in your practice, receive constructive criticism and recognition for your work, resolve any ethical or legal issues that may arise, and prevent or cope with vicarious trauma or secondary stress. To seek professional development and supervision, you can use resources such as attending trainings, workshops, or webinars; enrolling in courses, certifications, or degrees; reading books, articles, or blogs; watching videos, podcasts, or webcasts; participating in peer reviews, case consultations, or mentorships; and receiving individual or group supervision.
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Olga Gibbs
Novelist, educator, mental health expert with experience of working with disturbance in adolescents and young people. BA (Hons) Business & Management; Masters Degree in Creative Writing. Bi-Lingual
Supervision is a great opportunity to: brainstorm tricky or unusual cases; to seek practical or emotional support; to enrich topical knowledge; to share concerns over a client or oneself; etc. Therefore middle management should seek to provide regular supervision sessions, and they shouldn't be seen as a "waste of time" (like in some organisations).
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Kahlia Pike
Community Connect Worker
The organisation I work for use external supervision to remove the load on management, and also create a personalised space for individual staff to discuss their case or support needs. This reduces the risk of staff feeling like it’s a performance management issue and helps to foster an overall more positive culture.
A fifth way to practice self-care is to cultivate a positive mindset and attitude. Cultivating a positive mindset and attitude can help you recognize your strengths, focus on the positives, embrace challenges, learn from mistakes, manage your emotions, and maintain hope for the future. To do this, you can practice gratitude and affirmations, reframe negative thoughts, challenge cognitive distortions and biases, seek positive feedback and testimonials, surround yourself with positive people and influences, and have fun and humor.
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David Briggs JP
Advocacy and Policy Officer at Council for Intellectual Disability
In this field of work, practising self-compassion is a vital self-care strategy. Tradespeople have tools they need to take care of, and as human service workers, we need to take care of the tools of our trade, our minds and our hearts. Know that feeling pain or other emotions is a natural response to the difficult narratives we bear witness to. We feel the impact of their stories because of our joint humanity. Taking time for a self-compassion break is so important. I personally use the affirmations "It's okay to feel this; I am not alone" and "I am safe and loved". This simple acknowledgment allows me to embrace and care for my emotions rather than deny them, fostering resilience.
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Marcia Manno
Health & Lifestyle Coach
For me I find that keeping a positive mindset and attitude is helpful and important. Keeping my daily practice of writing in my gratitude journal keeps me focused on what is truly important to me and helps me seek the good things that are happening around me.
Reviewing and adjusting your self-care plan is a sixth way to practice self-care. This document outlines your goals, strategies, and actions for taking care of yourself. Doing this can help you monitor and evaluate your progress, identify strengths and weaknesses, celebrate successes, modify goals and actions as needed, and stay motivated. To review and adjust your self-care plan, set SMART goals, choose strategies and actions that suit you, implement the plan and track activities, measure outcomes, adjust based on feedback and experience, and seek support from others.
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Kathleen Connell
Wellbeing Psychologist, Director at Headstrong & Kala Adeona
All aspects of the article are important. Many are also influenced by organisational culture. Agencies talk about being Trauma Informed, yet their frameworks to support this can be lacking. Many practitioners aren’t given reflective practice/ clinical supervision; it’s judged as being covered in line management / case allocation structures appropriate to the agency. It’s something quite different. I’ve worked with many domestic abuse support workers; A&E staff, police personnel, social workers & other practitioners who aren’t afforded a space to reflect, to process; so some article points are less achievable due to team/agency culture. So a key, for me, is addressing trauma informed frameworks of agencies.