How can social workers address trauma more effectively?

Understand not only the trauma that happens to others, but also the trauma that has happened to you. We tend to invalidate our personal trauma by comparing ourselves to others who had it worse than us, but when we ignore our trauma it’s like walking around with open wounds all over our body. Any time someone brushes up against you, you feel pain and the fight, flight, freeze trauma responses are activated. When we don’t help to heal those wounds in ourselves we end up unintentionally hurting others. Social workers who are aware of their trauma and process their experiences in therapy will find that they are more effective at their job.

By virtue of their training, social workers are uniquely positioned to recognize the occurrence and impact of a broad array of traumas including acute, chronic, complex, & historical traumas across the lifespan. Social workers are also uniquely positioned to transfer this knowledge, infusing it through out their workplaces & supporting their organizations in establishing policies & practices that honor the existence of such traumas, while creating safe spaces to process them & minimize the risk of further trauma exposure.

Take the time to educate yourself on the correlation of adverse childhood experiences (ACES) and downstream health and behavioral issues. Also take the time to education yourself on the science and tools available to reverse the impact of ACES such as Positive Childhood Experiences (PCES, Google Dr. Christina Bethel). Finally, understand the positive impact of development relationships and assets that provide our youth with the resilience and tools to thrive as they grow.

I agree. I am concerned that the culture of social work has not encouraged self care or self exploration. Certainly not at any depth. Over the years I have had many come to me privately for psychotherapy and/or EMDR out of desperation because they had no therapeutic support at work. If supervision is only focused on case management and outcomes it fails the very people it is there to facilitate. The nature of social work demands personal awareness, and access to regular personal support as well as clinical supervision would reduce the numbers off sick due to burn out or symptoms of post traumatic stress.

Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) is key! ACEs Education can help those who have experienced abuse, neglect, household dysfunction, and other adversities. It can change your life!

Part of being trauma informed means realizing that regardless of diagnosis you should be asking about trauma history, screening for symptoms, and considering a client’s window of tolerance for various treatments. A client in a major depressive episode may also be a trauma survivor and applying CBT to the cognitive distortions could be totally contraindicated if they served as protection and are keeping the client safe. Shutting down and going numb may look like depression but it could also be what they had to do to avoid being present during abuse, a truly trauma informed therapist will pick up on this and take a better route. The abuser may have challenged their depression and told them to stop thinking negatively, don’t recreate it.

As a Social Impact Consultant, I emphasize the need for social workers to adopt trauma-informed practices that recognize the prevalence and impact of trauma on individuals' lives. I advocate for continuous training and professional development to equip social workers with the skills to address trauma effectively and compassionately. I recommend implementing support systems and self-care strategies for social workers to manage the emotional toll of working with trauma. Furthermore, I stress the importance of advocating for policies and resources that support trauma-informed care and services.

It’s important to get training beyond CBT and EMDR so you can recognize dissociative disorders and complex trauma that requires skillful adaptation to these blunt tools to make them effective. The single event trauma presentation that built the research base for these interventions is not typical for clients who present with multiple diagnoses and substance use, complexity is the norm. Recognizing when to refer if you’re in over your head is crucial.

Helping a person separate who they are from what happened to them is extremely empowering for the post traumatic growth journey.

I couldn’t agree more…refer, consult, collaborate and choose appropriate resources for our clients! No singular program, person or professional can be all things to all people; so, broaden your resources and cast a wider net people!! We invite our clients to have an open mind and utilize a wider variety of resources through insight and psycho education, we too should have a vast library of connections and relationships so we can not simply be therapists, we can also offer thoughtful and thorough case management.