What is trauma recovery coaching?

Trauma recovery coaches work with trauma survivors as peers, mentors, guides and educators with the goal of helping their clients understand the recovery process, and reconnect with themselves and the world while using their strengths to build a life they love living.

What is the difference between a trauma coach and a trauma therapist?

Therapists are the trauma surgeons, emergency room personnel, and paramedics of the mental health and well-being community. Coaches have a fully stocked first aid kit and skills to put it to good use, but they are not physicians.

A coach comes alongside their client to brainstorm, provide information, and examine potential decisions. A therapist can do all of these things, but they often also need to intervene at a deeper level to direct care, prescribe behavior, and make choices on behalf of their client. A coach never takes that much control over a client’s life.

As a trauma survivor myself, I recognize the unique, complex, and specific needs of trauma survivors. Trauma Recovery Coaching is specifically designed to address trauma. The methods, resources, and techniques coaches use are tailored to help clients recover from the aftereffects of trauma.

As a Trauma Recovery Coach, I do not pathologize the trauma responses my clients have. I don’t label what they are experiencing as wrong or bad. Instead, I recognize that they are having normal reactions to trauma – which are abnormal experiences. I oppose to my clients being labeled as disordered or ill because they have experienced trauma and have responded in ways that they believed were necessary for their survival.

There is no power differential in Trauma Recovery Coaching. I work with my clients as peers and equals. Our relationships are mutual, and collaborative.

Trauma Recovery Coaching is always client-led. Just as we have innate responses to trauma that facilitate our survival, we also have innate capabilities to recover from trauma injury – to respond in ways that help us to reconnect with ourselves, our bodies, our emotions, and others. I believe my clients have within them – just as they have the programming to respond and protect themselves from trauma – the tools to heal from trauma, to allow the trauma response to complete and move out of their bodies.

Part of the process of trauma recovery coaching is setting recovery goals with my clients. I believe that deep down they know what they need to do to have the life they want to live. They may need resources to uncover it, but the answers exist within them, My goal is to help my clients uncover those answers.

Can I see a trauma therapist and trauma coach at the same time?

It is not uncommon for a client to start working with a trauma therapist to address the challenges or negative changes that trauma has caused in their life. This could be trauma from their childhood, a single traumatic event as an adult, or situations with constant or continual trauma.

In the early stages of addressing the root of the trauma, the individual may find that healing through therapy is the best option. However, when they begin to heal, they may find that having the more practical aspects of trauma-informed coaching is helpful in organizing and changing their life based on their positive mental and emotional healing.

In these situations, the therapist and the trauma-informed coach may work with the individual. Coaches and therapists can both help the individual with issues around mindfulness, relaxation, goal setting, self-care, and other areas that benefit the unique needs of the individual.

Keep in mind, the trauma-informed coach is a life coach that understands how trauma impacts individuals. The therapist continues to treat the trauma and helps with the process of healing and trauma recovery.