Self-Care for Facilitators: When Healers Need Healing
Healing group facilitators are not immune to trauma, grief, and loss of our own. Sometimes, as we help others find healing in Jesus, we can forget the importance of caring well for ourselves. Psychologist Philip G. Monroe, THI’s long-time Advisory Council Chair and co-founder of the Global Trauma Recovery Institute, shares encouragement and counsel about self-care for facilitators.
Over the years, I’ve been blessed to train thousands of healing group facilitators all over the world. While our global community of practice is diverse in every possible way, all of us have one thing in common: we all long to help others find healing in Christ. If you are a facilitator, you are called to this work, and sustained in it day after day, by your compassion for the pain of others and by your own experiences of God’s care.
But what about your pain?
Why healers often struggle to care for ourselves
There is a tendency for the most compassionate people to respond to their own distress with anything but compassion. Like other trained helpers (including psychologists like me), healing group facilitators often seem to believe that we can’t help other people find healing unless we are perfectly serene and joyful ourselves. And because we’re human, we are often far from serene and joyful.
Particularly when our life is challenging in other ways, facilitating healing groups can be emotionally stressful. Encouraging participants to share their pain tends to evoke painful feelings in facilitators, too—no matter how much healing we’ve done in the past. We forget that, when our heart wounds heal, they leave scars, and scars sometimes itch and ache.
There are some ways our own heart wounds show up during healing groups.. A participant might look like someone who hurt you long ago; someone’s story might trigger a traumatic flashback. Or, someone seems to have experienced healing that you yourself are still waiting for. And when your scars hurt like that, facilitators can become highly self-critical. I’ve already given my pain to Jesus, you might think, so what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just be strong? If I’m still hurting, how can I tell other people trauma healing works? I’m such a hypocrite.
Rejecting our own pain like that compounds it with shame—and often cuts us off from feeling connected to members of our groups, our wider community, and even God.
That’s a problem for two reasons.
First, if you aren’t taking care of your own hurts, they have a way of showing up when you’re trying to facilitate. Tending to your own well-being is tending to your ministry.
Second, and just as important: as deeply as God cares for the hearts of your participants, he cares no less for yours. When he commands the Church to “comfort my people” (Isaiah 40:1), our Creator means you, too.
How to tell when your emotions need care
Psychologists talk about listening with our “third ear,” advice facilitators can use as well. When you’re facilitating, use one ear to listen to what’s being said in the group. Use another ear to listen to what’s implicit in the words (like self-hatred, anger, or hopelessness). And with your “third ear,” listen to the quiet voice of your own heart inside. Simply noticing what you are feeling—without self-accusation—can help you care for pain you might experience more effectively.
Because helpers tend to focus on other people’s suffering, though, we can sometimes fail to notice at all when we are hurting ourselves. Here are some subtle signs that your heart might need some attention:
Noticeable self-criticism, shame, or anger toward yourself
Persistent self-doubt
Intrusive memories
An urgent need to “save” others from suffering
Regularly overpromising or overextending yourself
Being cold and distant, theologizing, or lecturing
If you notice any of these signs of emotional distress, take heart: You’re human, just like the rest of us.
