STAR-T: Secondary Trauma Resiliency Skills Training

Building Resilient Human Service Workers

Training Process

Andrew works with both an experiential and a content-driven training process to build resiliency in professionals at risk of experiencing secondary trauma. The training integrates trauma theory, attachment theory, neurobiology, and embodiment work as it applies to the secondary trauma we are exposed to through work in traumatic work environments. Andrew creates safety in any experiential process and encourages participants to track the impact of these training strategies on their whole system.

Training packages will be available online soon. To inquire in the interim, email: activateresiliency@gmail.com.

What is Secondary Trauma?

Secondary trauma is not merely an emotional disorder, although emotional distress is one aspect of its presentation. Rather, secondary trauma emerges from the way humans use brain and body functions to connect with other humans in effective collaborative relationships. Mirror neurons in the human brain allow the professional to deeply understand the experiences of those they serve. This means that we feel WITH our clients, not FOR our clients.

This feeling WITH the client means that the content of the client’s experience is recorded in all parts of the tri-partite brain of the professional worker. Their thinking patterns are impacted, emotions are hijacked, and their body selves are activated by the traumatic content of the cases they work in. If the worker is not trained in the recognition of secondary trauma process and its antidotes, they begin an unsustainable erosion of their own personal and professional capacity.

Resiliency does not just limit the toxicity of trauma, but it creates the potential to transform toxic distress into strength. The goal of resiliency practice is to create post-traumatic growth, meaning that the life and body of the worker is enhanced and strengthened not merely salvaged from the toxicity of trauma.

Definition of resiliency.

Resiliency is the natural tendency of the human being to protect themselves in the face of traumatic exposure. It includes the use of body, emotion, communication, and relationship-based activities that strengthen the core self of the workers so they can meet trauma with a strengthening response. It is the replacement of toxic trauma with powerful skills and practices.