Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide To Caring For Self While Caring For Others (2007) - Plot & Excerpts
A definite must-read for anyone in direct service, healers and caretakers, and people working for social and environmental justice. This normalizes a lot of the negative and self-defeating feelings that we can get, and takes the blame off of us a providers while really interrogating the systems of organizational support that are currently in place. At the same time, it provides a lot of empowering self-reflection exercises to give you a sense of agency, even when things seem hopeless and the problems intractable. This is mostly stuff that we've all heard before but it's great to see it reinforced through stories and testimonials by providers. This is a great book, for anyone who has experienced trauma, is a caregiver (of any kind, personally or professionally), or who is a student of the human story. The author chronicles how secondary trauma exposure is real - and is has profound affects on caregivers. She lists the affects (16!) with lots of New Yorker cartoons for levity. Then she recommends developing a spiritual or other practice - a daily practice - of doing some activity (meditation, walking, cardio for 15-45 minutes) some sort of release mechanism, to restore the body's balance. She's working with concepts that can be hard to describe unless they are experienced, so she uses a lot of great examples about the symptoms of overexposure manifest. I highly recommend this book - I had to read it slowly, because I would have these "WOAH..." moments and need to put it down for a while. Practice self care while reading this book. Also, I went to a workshop she offered in Spokane a few weeks ago - it was amazing! Lots of wonderful discussion, examples, review of what is in the book, and more. Check it out! The website is , the book is worth buying and reading.
What do You think about Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide To Caring For Self While Caring For Others (2007)?
Absolutely essential reading for anyone in a helping profession exposed to trauma.
—jiggles
A must read for anyone who spends time, career or otherwise, caring for others.
—caity
EXCELLENT. Read it more than once and refer to it - a rarity.
—Don
An important read for anyone trying to change the world.
—RandiCurry
Wish I had read it in law school. 'Nuff said.
—Tiggermet
