The BRAVE Holiday Survival Guide for Trauma Therapists

The week before Thanksgiving, I walked into my office already tired. The kind of tired that seeps into your bones. By the end of the day, after three sessions that weren’t even particularly intense, I just sat at my desk staring at the wall.

That familiar December heaviness had arrived early this year.

If you’ve been a trauma therapist for a while, you know the shift -

• The air in your office feels thicker

• Sessions take more out of you

• The stories you hear feel more saturated with grief, nostalgia, or loneliness. 

Even if clients never mention the holidays, they’re still in the room, for the both of you.

It’s a strange duality holding other people’s emotional landscapes while quietly managing your own. Maybe your system feels overstimulated by the lights and music, or maybe it’s the empty seat at your own table that catches you off guard. Whatever form it takes, the work feels heavier this time of year because life feels heavier this time of year.

That doesn’t mean we’re doing it wrong, it means we’re deeply human.

So as we’re now in full holiday swing, let me share my BRAVE Holiday Survival Guide with my favorite tips for getting to next year. 

1. Let Your Nervous System Tell the Truth

This season pulls at our nervous systems in ways we often ignore. The rush of end-of-year pressure, the sensory overload of the holidays, the grief we absorb from our clients — it all adds up.

When I notice myself moving too fast, I’ve learned to pause and ask: What’s my body trying to tell me right now? 

Sometimes it’s simple because my shoulders are tight, my jaw is clenched, and my breathing is shallow. The not so simple part has been detaching from self-blame and criticism for not being good enough, strong enough, you fill in the blank enough.

Detaching from this unhelpful self-talk has been necessary because my body is just doing its job, trying to keep me aware of my own needs. 

I’ve had to learn that you don’t have to fix this physical activation. You just have to notice it. Because when you name what’s happening inside of you, you’re interrupting the pattern that leads to exhaustion. Naming creates choice.

Just one small moment of recognition, allowing you to unclench your hands, take one slow breath before you open your client notes, is regulation in action.

2. Loosen Your Grip on Progress

Every December, I watch therapists — myself included — start to panic that therapy isn’t working. Clients cancel, or they seem stuck, or they slide back into old patterns. 

It can start to feel like we’re spinning our wheels.

But slower progress doesn’t mean regression. Often it means stabilization in the face of overwhelm.

When our clients’ capacity dips, our work shifts from movement to maintenance. That’s not wasted time; it’s ethical care. Sometimes the best thing we can offer is safety in the middle of chaos.

And if you’re noticing that your own capacity feels limited right now, take that as information, not judgment. The season itself is dysregulating — the lights, the loss, the pressure to hold everything together. 

Slowness is not failure. It’s adaptation.

3. Build Bandwidth by Planning for Reality

Here’s a truth I wish I had learned earlier: my clients’ December schedules are not my responsibility.

Every year, I’d block off extra time before the holidays for people who wanted to “get one more session in,” and every year half of them canceled. I’d spend those hours frustrated, not just about the lost income, but because I’d carved that time out of my life for sessions that didn’t happen.

Now I plan for it.

If I know cancellations are coming, I build them into my calendar. I assume some no-shows. And instead of resenting the empty time, I use it to rest, wrap gifts, or take a walk outside.

One BRAVE member told me she finally took the entire Thanksgiving week off this year because she was tired of pretending her clients would show up. She said it was the most restorative week she’d had in years.

The takeaway isn’t to take more time off than you can afford. It’s to stop organizing your life around other people’s unpredictable capacity. Protecting your bandwidth is not selfish. It’s what allows you to keep showing up well.

4. Make Rituals Small Enough to Keep

We talk a lot about self-care this time of year, but most of what’s marketed to therapists is unrealistic and frankly weaponized. You don’t need a perfect morning routine or a mindfulness retreat to feel grounded. 

You need one small, repeatable ritual that brings you back to yourself.

Mine is walking in my backyard between sessions. Two minutes, no phone, no agenda. Just air and movement. 

When your nervous system starts to slide into depletion, small rituals are the proof your body needs that you still exist outside of your clients’ trauma stories.

Think about what that might look like for you. 

Maybe it’s lighting a candle at the end of your day or sitting in silence in your car before you head inside. 

The ritual doesn’t need to fix you; it just needs to remind you that you matter too.

5. Let Community Hold You

Even with the best boundaries and rituals, this season can still feel relentless. We are not meant to carry the weight of trauma work alone but isolation has become the norm for too many therapists.

Inside BRAVE, I’ve watched something simple and extraordinary happen: members checking in with each other, sharing what they need, offering gentle accountability. 

Someone posts, “I canceled my day because I’m exhausted,” and instead of guilt, they’re met with, “Good. Proud of you.”

That’s what community care looks like. It’s the reminder that we’re not weak for needing support, we’re simply human.

If you’re craving that kind of space — one that honors both your clinical self and your human self — BRAVE is always open to you. It’s $12 a month. 

There’s no hierarchy, no performance, just real people practicing what we teach: showing up, resting when we need to, and remembering that we’re not in this work alone.

Closing Reflection

As we move through to the end of the year, I hope you’ll let yourself be imperfect. 

Let things slow down. Let the season feel like what it is — messy, emotional, unpredictable, and, in its own way, deeply human.

You do not have to earn your rest.
You do not have to hold everything.
You do not have to go through December alone.

If you need a reminder of that, we’ll be here inside BRAVE — steadying each other, telling the truth about how hard it can be, and remembering that being human is the work.