Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others

Do you take care of people? How do you maintain that care without running on empty? Professions regularly serving community members with trauma histories need support to serve. These workers need the tools to take care of themselves so they can continue to serve us all as life lines and as critical safety nets. Professions like nurses, doctors, social workers, firefighters, police and yes even librarians can radically transform how they see their work and themselves in it by reading Trauma Stewardship. The authors are authorities and have given Ted Talks on trauma. The very readable and relate-able book is split roughly into two sections. The authors explore signs of burnout in depth, and then show the path forward via the five directions of stewardship: creating space for inquiry, choosing our focus, building compassion and community, finding balance, and centering oneself.

Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others

Author Laura Lipsky, a trauma social worker and educator shares with other trauma workers what she has learned from her own experience and that of others, about how the work affects the worker, the signs and symptoms that there is trouble on the way, and approaches both to dealing with acute or imminent problems and to reducing the risk of problems as they go along. She discusses such aspects as the three levels of trauma stewardship and the 16 warning signs of trauma exposure response.