Weaponized Self-Care and Why I’m Going ALL IN on Vicarious Resilience
Weaponized Self-Care
We all know it, and we don’t talk about it enough
As trauma therapists, we very quickly get used to people saying “wow, I don’t know how you can do that every day!” A common follow-up question to that is “how do you deal with that?!”
These questions come from clients, random people on the street, and other therapists too. Depending on where you are in your career, by which I mean not only how long you’ve been practicing but in what ways you’ve been managing Vicarious Trauma and the Trauma Therapist Trauma Response, these questions will land differently.
When I was early on in my career, it felt kinda cool to have people ask me how I’m able to do this work every day. It reminded me that trauma therapists are a different breed - we choose to do this incredibly meaningful AND heavy work every day that many are (understandably) not interested in doing
After finding myself in a super toxic work environment, however, these questions were met with jaded and sarcastic responses (both internally and externally!). It was also around this time that self-care started to become weaponized against me by the higher ups in this setting.
Self-care as a weapon?!
Yep, self-care is commonly weaponized against us as trauma therapists, especially when we attempt to set boundaries around our time and energy.
For me, it happened when -
I requested a more balanced schedule that did not consist of 8 clients a day
I asked for protected time to write notes and do admin stuff
I tried to carve out time and space to adequately train my supervisees
I get the bottomline - I own two businesses! But for me, the problem wasn’t that the employer needed to make money. It was that in response to these really reasonable (and ethical) requests, the response was to point the finger at me and say I needed to do a better job at taking care of myself.
That if I was “better” at self-care, I could easily see 8 clients a day, write all my notes, AND adequately train my supervisees.
That is what I mean by weaponizing self-care.
I thought this blog was about Vicarious Resilience…?
I did too, and it still is, but as I started writing, I realized I couldn’t tell you why I’m going all in on Vicarious Resilience without telling you about where I’ve been and how I got here.
So what does Vicarious Resilience have to do with self-care and its weaponization?
Well, first and foremost, it’s the absolute antithesis to weaponizing self-care. And once you learn how to identify, install, and enhance Vicarious Resilience, it turns into a renewable source of energy and self-care that doesn’t require adding more to your to do list!
I promise, it’s not too good to be true. 😊
Understanding the Healing Power of Vicarious Resilience
For a quick overview of Vicarious Resilience, head to this blog post.
In a nutshell though, Vicarious Resilience and Vicarious Trauma are two sides of the same coin - just like it’s only natural for us to soak up Vicarious Trauma in our work as trauma therapists, we are also exposed to our clients’ resilience, tenacity, and strength on a daily basis.
A nice way to think of Vicarious Resilience is as the ✨glimmers✨ we get to experience as trauma therapists.
The cool thing about Vicarious Resilience is that, once you know what it feels like to experience it, your clients’ resilience, tenacity, and strength can be even more contagious than their stress and trauma!
Recognizing Vicarious Resilience
Being able to identify and recognize Vicarious Resilience is different for everyone, and it’s not dependent on specific client milestones. Instead, it’s most likely to occur during small, everyday moments we share with our clients, like when they show up for session and share the happiness they felt playing with their dog, or how they were able to pick up the phone and call a friend.
Admittedly, these are probably really significant things for many of our clients, but what I want you to take away from this is that Vicarious Resilience is not only experienced when clients graduate from therapy or achieve a SUD = 0 when reprocessing a trauma memory.
Since Vicarious Resilience isn’t outcome based, AND it is potentially a powerful source of renewable self-care, we have to connect with other ways to pick up on it.
For me and many other trauma therapists, Vicarious Resilience often starts as a physical sensation, like warm fuzzies in my chest, spreading through my body. Sometimes, I even get tears welling up in my eyes, in a healthy and positive way. It's a mix of gratitude, excitement, and empathy for my clients. These physical cues signify the deep emotional connection we have with our clients and the positive impact this work has on us.
Vicarious Resilience as a Renewable Source of Self-Care
In our current world, so many of us are working towards renewable energy sources, whether for our homes, our cars, but why not for our self-care?
Well, first of all, it doesn’t seem like a real thing, right? How can we create renewable sources of self-care - doesn’t self-care require its own time and energy?!
I mean, yes, lots of self-care does require time and energy - right now, I’m figuring out how to find the time and energy to get back to yoga as I’m 5-months postpartum.
But this isn’t either or, it’s Both AND.
Self-care can take time and energy, we can be intentional about how we choose to focus these resources, AND it can be renewable through recognizing, installing, and enhancing Vicarious Resilience.
Installing Vicarious Resilience
This is the EMDR training in me coming out - when I first got trained and learned this concept of “installing resources”, I realized how genius it was to use that language when it comes to things like this.
Once we know of a resource, skill, or source of renewable self-care (like how I did that? 😉), it’s not enough to just identify it. We have to install it and have it programmed into our muscle memory, into our cells.
This starts with regular practices, which is why I teach the Soft Transition as a quick and easy way to start connecting with the small moments of Vicarious Resilience we experience each day.
The Soft Transition exercise, which you can grab here as part of my Vicarious Resilience Workbook and Journal on Amazon, should take no more than 3-5 minutes. The Soft Transition helps us identify and write down 1-3 moments of vicarious resilience, gives us permission to get cognitive and connect with the top 1-3 things we need to do tomorrow, and to close out by writing down 1-3 people for whom we’re grateful (and bonus points for sending an actual thank you text or note!).
This practice is a really nice way to move from our role as a trauma therapist into our role as a parent, friend, and person.
Enhancing Vicarious Resilience
Identifying and installing Vicarious Resilience are powerful practices to integrate into your work as a trauma therapist. But what if the power of Vicarious Resilience could grow like a weed without much effort on your part?
Again, I know this sounds too good to be true, but we can enhance Vicarious Resilience in exponential ways simply by sharing it with other trauma therapists, other people who get what it’s like to do this work and what a big deal it was for your client to -
Finally be seen by a physician who understands the damage trauma has done to her body
Show up for a session and tell you he doesn’t want to be there
Listen to a podcast episode that solidifies everything you’ve been working on as of late
Sharing these experiences with fellow trauma therapists who understand our work helps us to Glue the Glimmers, as a supervisee recently said to me. 🥰
So, the next time you feel warm fuzzies, well up with tears, or have any inclination at all to share the amazing things your clients are doing through their work with you, share it! (in HIPAA compliant ways of course 😉)
My favorite place to share and glue my glimmers is with my members in The BRAVE Trauma Therapist Collective. On an almost daily basis, one of us is sharing a glimmer in our asynchronous consultation group on the Signal App or on one of our weekly live calls.
These moments not only help to glue the glimmer for the therapist sharing their recent experience of Vicarious Resilience but it also instills hope and energizes the rest of the group - it serves as another renewable source of self-care that is just happening in our daily experiences, and doesn’t require additional time or energy.
If you want to know more about how we glue the glimmers in BRAVE, reach out!
