Now more than ever — amid the latest innovations for guiding clients toward lasting change that currently flood the field of psychology — we are being called upon as a profession to lead the culture in resolving our individual and collective trauma. Yet, our own trauma as wounded healers rarely receives enough attention as a valued focal point. It’s not so much that, as clinicians, we don’t recognize the fact that we’ve experienced trauma. It’s more that if we’re not addressing our own unhealed trauma in an ongoing and responsible way, we may not be able to truly help those who seek our guidance. What will happen when we sit with our clients during their darkest moments? How will we shepherd them wisely if we don’t “know” — personally, and in an embodied way — the power and healing potential of the latest and greatest therapeutic modalities?

The fields of psychotherapy and, especially, trauma healing have recently experienced one of their greatest growth periods to date. However, the well-being of the practitioner remains sorely under-addressed. In particular, a gaping hole exists around the issue of how the attention to practitioner well-being directly benefits our work with clients. The therapeutic relationship is continually being recognized as the strongest healing agent for the client. Healing can happen within this framework because it carries a unique ability to provide corrective lived experiences in the here-and-now. Through these improved real-life experiences, clients can be empowered to relate differently to themselves and their world.

Cultivating therapeutic presence as a clinician means showing up in real time, unencumbered by our own unhealed stuff. We need to recognize our personal triggers, our personal reaction to a client, and how we may project our stuff onto a client. Such counter-transference will always happen within the therapeutic setting. But when we get stuck in it or avoid dealing with it, we’re unable to show up fully for our clients and for ourselves. Because counter-transference is a normal part of the therapeutic process, we need dedicated resources specifically for working through our own issues outside of the therapy room. And we need to leverage all aspects of our humanity and our own situations to get counter-transference working in our favor.

But how do we, as practitioners, develop the skills, resources, and mind-set that supports us in becoming an effective therapeutic presence? Very few graduate programs require a defined personal healing component as part of the rigorous curriculum. Why not? Because the valuable experiential context of inner work can be challenging — but not impossible — to address within an academic setting. Regardless, we must work toward this goal. If we don’t — if the theoretical and clinical application pieces do not build upon a foundation that includes a component of experiential inner work for clinicians — how well-equipped are we to address our client’s needs?

I’m suggesting we include personal healing alongside the academic portion of all graduate clinical training programs, but not in a check-the-box sort of approach. We must address these issues at more than a surface level. Otherwise, it’s like the difference between reading about a place you’d like to travel to and actually traveling there. You can capture the flavor of the location by reading about it, but when you experience it firsthand, with all of your senses, the place actually comes to life. If that’s what we desire for our clients in their personal healing journeys, we must learn to do it for ourselves, both within the academic setting and beyond the classroom.

As our profession begins to openly address the necessity of inner work for clinicians and starts to build it into our academic programs, ongoing conversations, and professional/post-graduate training, we begin to shift away from the mentality of putting ourselves last. That also helps us break the stigma of needing to “have it all together” or to somehow be “perfect” in order to do good work with the people who seek our counsel.

Programs and services from Avenues For Inner Work are designed for clinicians who want to begin or continue their journey toward becoming an effective therapeutic presence.