Preventing Vicarious Trauma

Service Description

This workshop is designed to develop insight into how to manage stress and be effective when helping highly traumatised people. Supporting this client group can have a serious impact on well-being and capacity to cope; work in this field can lead to vicarious trauma and ‘burn out’. We intersperse a PowerPoint presentation with opportunities for discussion and sharing experience of helping refugees. How can it help? Taking care of yourself: We need to take care of ourselves in order to support others. Traumatic feelings can be experienced vicariously; learn how to manage this so that you can support your own mental health. What is vicarious trauma and ‘burn out’? What neuroscience tells us. Increasing awareness: Become more aware of how you and other people are feeling as a means to help develop a calmer atmosphere. Trauma-informed workplaces: Trauma informed care applies to staff and volunteers as well as to service users. Exploring how to establish and maintain a trauma informed workplace for yourself and others. Exploring our own triggers: Explore how past upsetting experiences can trigger us to feel the same thing is happening in certain similar situations. Find strategies to cope. Building resilience at work and outside: Resilience protects us from vicarious trauma. Exploring how we can expand our resilience. Connection and a calmer nervous system: Antidotes to trauma are connection with others and calming our nervous system – considering how we can do this for ourselves as well as for our clients Avoiding ‘burn out’: Look at ways of ensuring you have boundaries and strategies that allow you keep well over time without becoming ‘burnt out’.

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