Episode #22: Trauma Stewardship with Elizabeth Shain MM, MT-BC, NICU-MT

In this episode we sit down with Elizabeth Shain, MT-BC, NICU-MT to speak about Trauma Stewardship. This is of paramount importance in today’s society. It is an in depth discussion on caring for ourselves as we care for others.

Trauma Stewardship is being fully present with others in their pain, trauma, and suffering without taking it on as our own. It is a long-term approach to tending to our own wholeness so we can be helpful to others in our full integrity.

term founded by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, the founder and director of The Trauma Stewardship Institute.

Primary Trauma: when you yourself survive something that fundamentally changes your worldview. (E.g., losing a parent to cancer, natural disasters, chronic illness

Vicarious Trauma: exposure to someone else’s trauma over time also known as: compassion fatigue, empathic strain, and secondary trauma.

16 warning signs of the Trauma Exposure Response:

Sense of doom/hopelessness
Feeling the weight of systemic oppression (“I can never do enough”)
Remaining in a state of hypervigilance/hyperarousal
Decreased creativity/increased need for structure
Inability to embrace complexity
Minimizing your own suffering
Chronic exhaustion/new onset of physical ailments
Inability to listen/deliberate avoidance
New onset of dissociative moments
Feeling a sense of persecution
Guilt
Fear
Anger and Cynicism
Inability to empathize/numbing/feeling overwhelmed and overstimulated
New onset of addiction/relapse of former addiction
Grandiosity/inflated sense of one’s work (work = identity)

Steps towards Trauma Stewardship

Step 1: Explore our own values and purpose, feelings and emotions, and past experiences and the meaning we continue to make of them.

Regularly check in with yourself.
Notice where you are holding pain and suffering in your body

Step 2: Seek support from others

Seek peer supervision from clinicians who are doing similar work.
If your work environment is unhealthy, you may need to do some serious reflection about whether or not you can continue in that environment long term.

Step 3: Create healthy boundaries and practice self-care.