Managing Vicarious Trauma and Compassion Fatigue

 Earn 3 CE Contact Hours

This workshop explores the impact of vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue on clinicians, with attention to how sustained exposure to clients’ traumatic experiences can shape the clinician’s emotional world, belief systems, and functioning. Grounded in a resilience-oriented framework, the training highlights key risk and protective factors that influence how clinicians are affected by holding space for trauma content.

Integrating principles of attunement, embodiment, and nervous system regulation, participants will learn to track their internal responses and better understand the interplay between physiological and psychological processes in clinical encounters. Through guided reflective exercises across five domains of wellness, clinicians will deepen self-awareness, strengthen their capacity for regulation, and develop practical, sustainable strategies for reflective practice that will support both well-being and longevity in clinical work.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Define and differentiate compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma and burnout and describe their impact on clinicians’ wellbeing
• Describe risk and protective factors that influence vulnerability to and resilience against the effects of sustained exposure to trauma content
• Describe the five domains of wellness impact of trauma exposure in the clinician’s inner world
• Track their own internal responses, including physiological cues, cognitive schemas, nervous system activation, and meaning making systems
• Apply practical skills and strategies in order to create an individualized, sustainable plan for ongoing reflective practice and self-care

Who Should Attend:

Mental health professionals, therapists, social workers, counselors, and trauma-informed clinicians who work with individuals, families, or communities impacted by trauma. This workshop is especially valuable for clinicians experiencing burnout, compassion fatigue, or cumulative stress, and for those seeking practical, sustainable strategies to support their well-being and longevity in clinical practice.

Meet Katheryn:

Katheryn Lotsos is a psychotherapist with over 25 years of clinical and supervisory experience. Formatively, Katheryn worked in community mental health settings in New Jersey and New York, serving children and families affected by interpersonal and community violence. In recent years, Katheryn has worked in the international humanitarian space, alongside communities in service of the mental health and wellbeing of refugee, asylum-seeking and forcibly displaced populations. Listening to stories of survival and strength and staying curious about cultural and indigenous healing practices have guided her work with co-creating healing spaces for clients and populations existing in the margins.

Katheryn is based in London with her partner and splits her time between her private practice and humanitarian work with Doctors Without Borders—where she supports LGBTQI+ inclusive mental health care in complex humanitarian settings. In her private practice, Katheryn supports adult survivors of childhood trauma and humanitarian workers in the aftermath of critical incidents, stress and the cumulative effects of witnessing trauma.