How Can Teamwork Boost Your Self-Care?
Working in high-demand, trauma-exposed professions is taxing, not just on an individual but on entire teams. Whether you’re a therapist managing the emotionality of clients’ trauma, a first responder grappling with the immediate aftermath of critical incidents or a lawyer listening to trauma stories to write a legal report, the support of a cohesive team can significantly buffer the impact of this work on your mental health.
But why are teams so important, especially in trauma-exposed workplaces? The short answer: Being part of a functional, supportive team with a person-centred leader ensures that the emotional load is shared, diffused, and processed in a way that helps to avoid burnout. Teams create opportunities for shared insight, collective wisdom, and mutual validation, making the job feel more manageable. They can also be great fun.
Three Essential Areas for Self-Care in Trauma Work
Over the past 30 + years in my roles as a clinician and clinical supervisor, I have worked with many professionals—especially those in high-stress, trauma-facing roles like mental health professionals, first responders, and lawyers—struggle with burnout and vicarious trauma. In my experience, effective self-care can be broken down into three core strategies:
- Personal strategies
- Group/Team strategies
- Organisational/structural strategies
In my last blog, we explored personal strategies to help you care for yourself in a stressful work environment. However, group and team strategies are a crucial component of self-care that often gets overlooked but can be highly effective in preventing and managing burnout
What is a Support/Debriefing Group?
A support/debriefing group provides a space for team members to regularly meet to share concerns, experiences, and strategies for navigating the emotional and psychological demands of their roles. Support/debriefing groups can be formal or informal, facilitated by a clinical supervisor or peer-led (for therapists). The group provides a safe and confidential space where professionals can speak openly about their work and its impact on their well-being for the purpose of making the work more manageable. A key part to a support/debriefing group is reflection on the work, your reactions and learnings and ideas for change. It may also be referred to as a reflective practice group or a supervision group.
In the many support/debriefing groups that I have facilitated over the years, the best have been those where group members feel comfortable to share themselves openly and allow vulnerability. Many groups are made up of team members or one profession but multidisciplinary groups can also bring an energy to the discussion, where people can share different perspectives and a range of ideas and strategies.
How does a Support/Debriefing Group Help?
Group support/debriefing helps group members reflect on, and explore their reactions and responses to working with traumatised clients. Talking together in a confidential group space helps in the following ways:
1. Normalisation of Stress Responses
One of the most powerful benefits of talking together in a group is the normalisation of your responses to stressful situations – the thoughts, feelings and physical reactions. When you hear that others are feeling similarly, it helps you realise that your reactions to hearing trauma stories or managing big workloads aren’t unusual or a sign of weakness, but a natural response to the work.
2. Defusing Stress Reactions
Talking about situations in the workplace that create stress generally, and discussing your own personal reactions to stress ensures that you contain and keep the stress in the workplace (or within work hours if you work from home). It decreases the likelihood of you holding on to some of the feelings at the end of a workday.
3. Peer Support
Groups foster a culture where colleagues look out for one another. When stress responses and symptoms of burnout and vicarious trauma become everyday conversations, it’s easier to recognise and address them early—both in yourself and in your peers ( it is sometime noticed more easily in your colleagues).
4. Reflection
Group members can discuss specific client situations and reflect on their interactions with a client. This includes what worked well, what didn’t and how you might do things differently next time. The benefit of a group is that group members can share their experiences of similar work situations and suggest ideas that may have worked for them, or not.
5. Information Sharing
In the group, participants may share information about client agencies that have been helpful for referral such as housing services or client counselling services.
6. Actionable Strategies
Reflective group discussions often lead to the development of actionable strategies that help members gain a sense of personal agency. Whether it’s tips for managing challenging client sessions, methods for navigating workplace pressure or stress, collectively lobbying for change or sharing ideas for maintaining work boundaries and not emotionally ‘taking work home’.
7. Challenging Unhelpful Behaviours
Group settings create an environment where unhelpful habits, like overworking or client boundary crossings can be called out in a supportive and constructive way by peers. In high demand workplaces, these things can sometimes slip and we may not notice.
8. Strengthening Team Bonds
Over time, the support generated within these groups can flow beyond the group meetings, enhancing workplace culture and even personal relationships at work. When colleagues feel supported and heard, it cultivates a more positive, collegial environment.
Debriefing and downloading about work challenges, and there are often many, can sometimes feel like you have opened a pressure release valve. In my longtime experience providing support/debriefing groups it is useful to allow some time to focus on what’s not working and what is causing stress, and to receive validation and support, but also to ensure that group members leave a group feeling like they have learned something useful and/or there is something they can focus on to improve their current situation.
How to Maximise the Effectiveness of Group Support
For a support/debriefing group to be effective, certain elements should be in place:
- Self-Selection: Ideally, group members should be self-selecting, meaning they have chosen to participate. If they are required to attend, they should at least have the option to leave if they don’t feel that the group is the right fit.
- Commitment: Regular attendance is crucial, both for individual well-being and for maintaining group cohesion. Monthly groups are standard practice for consistency.
- Openness: It helps if group members are open to learning about themselves, their colleagues, and their clients. The willingness to be authentic, honest, and vulnerable allows the group to create an atmosphere of trust and even momentum.
- Confidentiality and Ground Rules: A facilitated group must establish clear ground rules, including confidentiality. This ensures that participants feel secure in sharing their experiences and that discussions remain supportive rather than judgmental. Additionally, group rules encourage collegiality, and a collaborative spirit that supports everyone’s mental health.
- A Size That Fits: Facilitated groups typically benefit from smaller, closed settings with an optimal size of 8-12 members, which allows for deeper, more meaningful discussions.
Moving Forward
In high-stress environments, no one can thrive in isolation. Group strategies for addressing burnout offer the collective support necessary to navigate the demands of client-facing roles. By sharing the load, normalising difficult experiences, and cultivating a supportive team culture, professionals can minimise the impact of burnout. In the next blog of this series, I will explore organisational strategies for combating burnout, focusing on how leadership and systemic changes are essential to protect mental health in the workplace.
If you are a team leader that would like to implement group debriefing in your organisation, feel free to contact me at www.person2personconsulting.com to arrange a free 15-minute consultation about your needs.
About Melinda Austen
Melinda Austen is a clinical supervisor and workplace and leadership coach with over three decades of clinical experience working with refugees, asylum seekers, Defence veterans, Police and couples. She now helps the helpers. Melinda supports colleagues, including social workers, clinicians and other professionals such as lawyers and allied health who work with vulnerable clients. In her supervision and workplace coaching practice at person2person Consulting, she is driven by a desire to help people foster healthy, productive teams and thrive in their work. www.person2personconsulting.com