Trauma Recovery Practitioner
I work with women recovering from Trauma incurred through Spiritual Abuse or women recovering from Religious Trauma.
“I would recommend Katherine to anyone looking to finally heal the wounded parts from their childhood, who are continuing the healing process after sexual abuse or trying to understand how to love yourself after trauma. Katherine makes it feel effortless while digging into deep issues. She reads your energy and knows exactly how to guide you into new ways of thinking that are extremely helpful in your healing journey. I look forward to my sessions each week and am very thankful for Katherine.”
Other clients I work with include women:
who are exploring their sexuality post purity culture
who are continuing the healing process after sexual abuse
who are looking to make a career transition out of vocational ministry (consider a career coaching package)
who would like trauma informed career coaching (consider a career coaching package)
who are artists and creatives navigating the space between day job and passion
who have left the Patriarchy Movement and are trying to figure out education and career post oppression
who are navigating a different culture, either from an international move or a return to their country of origin
I have personal experience in each of these areas. Therefore, I have a personal passion for women navigating these spaces. I know how painful and confusing these journeys can be (especially when navigating alone or with very little community) and very much look forward to continuing to be a part of the story of women doing this difficult work.
“Katherine’s attunement skills are amazing. She makes you feel seen, validated, and helps you make connections within yourself that you may not see. She is very knowledgeable in sexual abuse victims and how that can show up. She helped me become more focused in handling everyday stressors as well as my trauma experienced around patriarchy and sexual abuse. She is a nice blend of being personable as well as an expert in what she does. She is absolutely someone you need to walk hand in hand on your healing journey.”
Why I chose to become a Certified Trauma Recovery Coach rather than a therapist
Training. Most therapists receive minimal training on trauma and trauma recovery in grad school. While this is changing in the academic world, therapists continue to look for outside certifications for training in trauma recovery (including from IAOTRC). They spend thousands of dollars on a master’s degree that doesn’t prepare them for the work I feel is most important in a therapy context. Considering I already have one master’s degree (where I took accredited classes in counseling), I decided to focus my time and finances on pursuing training that I believe is the foundation of why most people end up in a therapy room to begin with.
Accountability. While anyone can technically call themselves a coach, IAOTRC is high-quality, master’s-level training that has yearly requirements for coaches to maintain their certification. Just like a therapist, I have mandatory supervision and continuing education credits. I am constantly receiving training and staying up-to-date on current research in trauma and trauma-recovery. I am also required to provide my clients with a reporting system for potential ethical violations—something no therapist I’ve ever worked with has ever provided to me.
Story. Trauma recovery coaches are trained on tactful disclosure. This is the practice of sharing small pieces of your own story with your clients in order to provide a space where the client is empowered by knowing they are not alone. While the time belongs to the client and is about the client’s recovery, tactful disclosure is a powerful resource for trauma recovery that therapists are often discouraged from doing—further revealing how most therapy training is not trauma informed.
Empowerment. Trauma recovery coaches work with clients from a level place. While I might have the training in trauma recovery, the client is the expert on their own life and story. I point my clients toward the resources they already have. I reflect back to them things they might not see. I’m a mirror and a witness. I am also a peer. Survivors of trauma—specifically developmental trauma from abuse, or any form of abuse—have had their power diminished and their voice supressed. The last thing they need is another person in their life claiming to know more than they do. Trauma survivors need to be empowered, need to learn to trust their intuition, and need to learn how to use their voice. A trauma recovery coach empowers their client during each step of the recovery process.
Emotions. While this approach is relatively old school, many therapist have been trained to keep their emotions out of the therapy room. However, the most healing moments I ever experienced in therapy were the moments when my therapist removed their stoic mask and allowed me to see they were angry at something that had happened to me or expressed they were proud of me for a choice I made. Trauma survivors often need to see healthy expressions of emotions modeled for them, as they often have had to keep their emotions bottled up in order to survive. Or they are so disregulated by trauma they don’t know what healthy emotions look or feel like. The emotions of the coach (while never more central than the client’s) allow the survivor to feel free to express their own emotions. It lets the client know their emotions—whatever they may be—are okay. My training from IAOTRC encouraged coaches to be a full human within their sessions. This includes tactful emotional expression.
About Trauma Recovery Coaching and My Certification with IAOTRC
“We are an organization of Trauma Recovery professionals who use the modality of coaching to help our clients. We are mental health professionals first and coaches second. Other programs are coach education businesses who teach coaches how to work with trauma. They build a non-specific coaching box and try to fit trauma into that model. We build a trauma box, customized to fit the science of trauma recovery, and have built a significantly effective coaching model that fits this very specific trauma box.
As the first Trauma Recovery Coaching program in the world we have pioneered the field of Trauma Recovery Coaching. No other organization has written coaching safety protocols and a Code of Ethics for the field. We are the first to put those together into a Trauma Recovery Coaching Certification Program.
To support and organize Trauma Recovery Coaches who obtain certification we also launched the International Association of Trauma Recovery Coaching. This program credentials Trauma Recovery Coaches and upholds the highest quality and ethical standards within the field of Trauma Recovery Coaching.”i
