From trauma-affected to trauma-informed staff wellbeing

Working with clients or students who have experienced trauma presents a unique set of challenges on staff wellbeing. These challenges include trauma exposure (and at times vicarious trauma), compassion fatigue, feeling confronted by dysregulated behaviour and more recently, staffing shortages. All of these challenges result in our workplace and our teams being trauma-affected.

While there are plenty of challenges, there are also benefits to our wellbeing when we are lucky enough to work in a trauma-informed environment. Many of our workplaces adopt a trauma-informed approach to supporting clients and young people, but, if we’re honest, we’re still behind when it comes to trauma-informed staff wellbeing.

Here are some of the staff wellbeing benefits when we extend our trauma-informed lens to include staff and our wider communities:

Sense of meaning and purpose

The good news is, if you work in a space supporting people experiencing disadvantage, recovering from trauma, engaging in education or progression, you are very likely in a meaningful role. Every single day, you have the opportunity to make a difference (even when it may not feel like it).

Meaning and purpose have been widely recognised as having beneficial effects on our wellbeing, allowing us to utilise our strengths and belong to something bigger than ourselves. Furthermore, our sense of meaning may strengthen us when faced with difficult moments. "In professional samples, finding meaning in work has been shown to be an effective buffer when facing workplace adversity" (Tom Brunzell, 2018).

Regulation expertise

Regulation is a huge key to our wellbeing, no matter our age or the work we do. When we understand and respond to our emotional and physical needs we are self-regulating. It’s almost impossible to engage in supporting trauma-affected individuals if we haven’t got a grasp on our self-regulation. 

If you work in a trauma-informed workplace long enough, you will develop your knowledge and skills in regulation. This is great for your own wellbeing and for the wellbeing of those around you. Those close to you will benefit from your regulated nervous system and you’ll be well placed to co-regulate.

Compassion

To choose to do this work, you are compassionate people. To show up each day and care about someone else’s wellbeing speaks volumes to the compassion you hold. Which leads me to bring “compassion fatigue” back to the table, but this time with a little irony. Gabor Mate (2021) explains that there is no such thing as compassion fatigue. We are relational beings who are naturally drawn to being compassionate and we cannot run out of compassion. Burnout does not happen because we have given all of our compassion away, but it happens when we have not been compassionate enough to ourselves. That’s right, we’re in need of compassion, too.

What does this mean if we want to maintain our ability to give compassion and avoid burnout? We need to carve our time and ways to apply self-compassion and receive compassion from others around us. We are naturally compassionate, and in these fields we become hyper focused on the trauma affected individuals in front of us. But, let's stay effective and spread that compassion more broadly.

Wellbeing knowledge

No matter where you are in your level of experience, you are exposed to and developing knowledge around wellbeing. If you are supporting trauma-affected people, you care about wellbeing, you're trying new things to support them, you're working alongside other people who also have knowledge. 

You are working with human beings and doing relational work. There is no quicker crash course in wellbeing, than being in the frontline work.Having knowledge and experience in supporting the wellbeing of others provides you with insights, tools and strategies that you can try on yourself!

Wanting to know more on enhancing staff wellbeing in your workplace? Get in touch with Megan at Wagtail Instiute: www.wagtailinstitute.com