The Burnout Therapists Don’t Talk About with Carla Shohet
There’s a sneaky shift that happens to us trauma therapists that doesn’t hit all at once.
It likes to build up in the background, session by session, story by story, until one day, you notice you can’t feel what you used to. The part of you that used to track every nuance in your client’s face or tone suddenly feels far away.
You’re still a competent, trained, and skilled trauma therapist but you’re not really there…
And it’s confusing because you used to love this work. Shit, you still love this work.
But you used to leave sessions feeling inspired, grounded, connected and now you walk out wondering what’s changed, or worse, what’s wrong with you?
That’s the moment I want to talk about — the one that sneaks up on so many trauma therapists. The moment when your attunement fades, and it feels like your empathy has gone offline.
It’s also exactly what Carla Shohet, an integrative trauma psychologist in the UK, went through herself. Her story captures what it looks like when our nervous systems hit their limit, even when our hearts are still fully in it.
When Empathy Starts to Fades
Losing attunement doesn’t happen overnight. It creeps in, little by little, until you catch yourself zoning out mid-session, getting irritated by stories you’ve heard a hundred times, or silently judging a client and thinking, What is happening to me?!
Carla said it perfectly:
“I started noticing myself internally rolling my eyes at people’s problems. It horrified me because that’s not who I am, and yet I couldn’t stop it.”
In talking with Carla, that line hit me hard because, honestly, I’ve been there too. Many of us have.
We call it compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, or secondary traumatic stress. But underneath all of that language, what’s really going on is a nervous system at (or beyond) capacity.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s not that you’ve stopped caring but that your body literally can’t keep taking in more. It’s done the best it can to protect you, and now it’s hitting the brakes.
What our Training Never Taught Us
Carla summed it up better than any training manual ever could:
“We’re taught how to regulate clients’ nervous systems, but not our own.”
Yep. That’s it.
We learned how to conceptualize trauma, how to treat it, how to hold space but not how to hold ourselves while we do it. Most of us came into this field already wired for empathy, often with our own trauma histories humming quietly underneath.
And quick side note - having your own history of trauma doesn’t disqualify you from being an amazing trauma therapist. It actually can be a huge benefit when it comes to intersectionality and vicarious resilience.
That said, without nervous system education, we end up carrying that same wiring into our work — over-attuning, over-functioning, over-caring — until it all just short-circuits.
Carla talked about how hard it was to receive gratitude from clients.
“I couldn’t take it in. I didn’t have the self-worth to receive it, and when I couldn’t feel connection, I assumed I was broken.”
That hits the shame nerve for so many therapists. You know, that belief that burnout means you’re not cut out for this work. But what I took away from my interview with Carla is that it’s not about weakness, it’s about wiring.
Rebuilding from the Body Up
For Carla, everything came to a head when she was consulting in a community for survivors of domestic violence. Within weeks, she hit a wall.
“I literally couldn’t move my body. My nervous system had tapped out before my mind would admit it.”
That collapse became her wake-up call. She started studying polyvagal theory, somatic work, and parts-based approaches not to use with clients, but to understand herself.
It reframed everything. Burnout stopped being a sign of failure and became a full-body message: you’ve hit capacity.
I remember realizing the same thing in my own work — noticing how irritability or flatness in sessions wasn’t proof I didn’t care, but data from my nervous system. And for both Carla and me, talking about this out loud, naming that flatness, that disconnection, that moment when empathy goes offline, was so powerful.
It’s something we’ve each carried quietly, thinking it meant we’d failed somehow.
But saying it together shifted everything. We were two trauma therapists being human with each other. Not diagnosing it, not fixing it, just naming it.
And that’s part of the work too. Being affected by this work doesn’t make you unethical. It doesn’t mean you’re not cut out for it.
But it does mean we have to know our limits and honor them.
What it means to be an Ethical, Embodied Therapist
In discussing what it means to be human and an ethical and embodied trauma therapist, Carla said something every therapist needs to hear:
“It would be unethical to keep working when I don’t have the capacity to do the work for myself first.”
We talk so much about ethics in terms of consent, confidentiality, and boundaries but rarely about the ethics of capacity.
And this isn’t a moment of throwing shade on any trauma therapist reading this who is near or at capacity. In BRAVE and on this blog, we know it’s a constant ebb and flow of the nervous system.
At the same time, if your nervous system is maxed out, you simply can’t offer true attunement. And pushing through it isn’t noble; it’s self-abandonment dressed up as professionalism.
And the flip side of that, taking a break, referring out, or adjusting your workload isn’t failure! It’s practicing with integrity. It’s the part of the work that no one applauds, and it keeps clients safe and keeps you human.
The Way Back
Attunement isn’t something you either have or don’t. It’s something you return to, over and over again, by coming back to your body.
And here’s the thing: the “way back” doesn’t start with doing more. It starts with noticing.
If you’re feeling flat, foggy, or disconnected, start with these three steps:
Notice your body before you fix it.
The urge to “get back on track” is real, but it skips over what your body is already saying. Take 30 seconds between sessions to put your feet flat on the floor, slowly exhale, and notice what’s happening inside you. You don’t have to make it better. You just have to notice.Interrupt the autopilot.
If you find yourself scrolling, overworking, or emotionally checking out, pause long enough to name it: I’m at capacity. This isn’t a moral failure, it’s information. Once you name it, you can decide what your next smallest step needs to be.Create a rhythm that lets you be human.
Build in time that’s actually for you instead of “productive recovery.” Ten minutes of silence in your car after a hard session counts. Walking outside without a podcast counts. It’s not self-care; it’s nervous system maintenance.
And when you hit that inevitable point again (because it will happen) remember what Carla said:
“We don’t have to wait for collapse to come back to ourselves.”
There’s no one way back to attunement. But it always starts with remembering that you’re part of the equation.
If you connected with Carla’s story and want to learn more about her work, visit CarlaShohet.com.
