The Curative Effects of Trauma on the Wounded Healer

Abstract

This study explored whether therapists with a personal trauma history view their experiences as positive, growth-promoting, and curative while engaged in treating traumatized clients. It challenged the notion of vicarious traumatization being unilaterally associated with long-term trauma work, as stipulated by existing research. The researcher examined whether formerly traumatized therapists view themselves as Wounded Healers, and if their professional identity is positively impacted by their recovery process. The researcher was curious if these therapists personally experienced a more holistic level of healing, allowing them to provide a more integrative, mentally expansive form of treatment for their traumatized clients. A phenomenological approach was used to describe the lived accounts of three formerly traumatized therapists who experienced chronic, developmental trauma. Data was analyzed from a psychoanalytic framework using interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA), in order to elucidate what factors helped these therapists recover or continue recovering from their trauma. The results suggested that long-term psychoanalysis or psychodynamically-oriented therapy, support from trusted family and friends, and a host of other self-actualizing practices were the most helpful healing factors for these therapists. The study also contends that healing from trauma is an ongoing process, and that the personal hardships overcome by these therapists symbolically becomes a pillar of hope offered to traumatized clients using timely, appropriate, and empathically-attuned interventions.