Trauma-Informed Coaching: Separating Myths from Reality
- Updated: February 28, 2025
Therapy is a powerful tool, but it’s not the only way to heal from trauma or abuse. If you’ve moved past the acute stress of PTSD and are looking for deeper support in your healing journey, trauma-informed coaching can be a valuable next step.
As a healing and leadership coach, I specialize in helping people understand and work through the lingering effects of trauma—so they can grow, lead, and thrive. If you’re curious about how trauma-informed coaching can support your healing and success, this article is for you.
We’ll explore how a skilled coach can help you build a fulfilling life—both personally and professionally—by developing resilience, emotional awareness, and leadership skills.
But before you start your journey, let’s talk about what truly makes a trauma-informed coach excellent.
Qualities of Excellent Trauma-Informed Coach
Healing from trauma isn’t a linear process, nor is it something that can be neatly wrapped up with a few positive affirmations or a “just let it go” mindset. Trauma rewires the brain, embeds itself in the body, and shapes how we see ourselves and the world. Survivors don’t need generic advice or surface-level encouragement; they need someone who truly understands the weight of their experiences.
A trauma-informed coach isn’t just someone with knowledge of psychology or coaching techniques—they have a deep, embodied understanding of how trauma affects thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. They recognize the unspoken pain behind a client’s words, the survival instincts disguised as people-pleasing, and the triggers hidden in everyday interactions. Above all, they create a space where healing isn’t rushed, invalidated, or minimized.
Let’s dive into the six core qualities that define an excellent trauma-informed coach.
1) Understands Childhood Trauma
It is common for abuse survivors to doubt the validity of their trauma story, saying things like:
“They couldn’t have done that!”
“My family member told me that it didn’t happen!”
“I must have been imagining things.”
“This happened to everyone I know.”
As a survivor tells their stories, sometimes I will see them shrink into a self-protective ball. Our bodies remember the trauma, even if our minds try to deny it.
A coach like myself is well-informed about the different types of trauma, such as physical, emotional, or psychological, and how it can manifest in people’s lives.
2) Recognizes Triggers
As a recovering PTSD survivor myself, I am keenly aware of potential triggers that may re-traumatize clients, and I am careful of my word choices during my coaching sessions.
Innocent words that trigger past pain
For example, my client, Andrew (not his real name), was always told by his sexually abusive father, “You’re doing good,” just prior to his father violating him. To most people, the phrase “You’re doing good” seems innocent and positive, but to Andrew, it was anything but uplifting.
It is my job as a coach to understand words or ideas that easily upset clients. Most often, these triggers are linked to past traumatic experiences.
Next, we will continue to discuss how avoiding assumptions is critical component in trauma-informed coaching.
4) Avoids Assumptions
Everyone is a unique person with unique experiences, and past traumatic experiences are no exception. Despite being a coach for over seven years, I am always learning new ways in which people react to past painful situations.
The danger of generalizing abuse
For example, not too long ago, I was interviewed to discuss my past childhood trauma. During the podcast, my interviewer threw out various pop-psychology buzzwords and idioms. As she spoke, I couldn’t help but want to correct her about how the trauma impacted me.
Generalizing traumatic experiences is detrimental to the healing process of survivors.
Each client has a unique perspective on their experiences. Their abuser robbed them enough, so it is vital to allow my clients the right to feel how they feel about their past.
5) Encourages Empowerment
Have you read all of my numerous articles about mindset, positivity, and self-care?
Empowerment is a vital component of the healing process. If you have been victimized, used, or abused, being positive may seem foreign or strange. However, if you want to heal, you must learn to be your best personal-cheerleader and supporter.
6) Avoids the Drama Triangle
Reducing or eliminating turbulent relationships with others is a significant component of recovery and trauma-informed coaching.
If you grew up in a painful and dysfunctional family, it is easy to find yourself in one of three roles:
- prosecutor (constantly judging)
- rescuer (not letting people take responsibility for their actions)
- victim (avoiding their ability to communicate their wants or not wants with others)
The image below displays the Karpman drama triangle, which explains how victims of traumatic and abusive experiences relate to others as adults.
How Trauma Work Can Help You
Trauma work isn’t just about healing past wounds—it’s about equipping you with the skills to navigate life in a healthier, more empowered way. A trauma-informed coach doesn’t just help you process what happened; they teach you how to build emotional resilience, set boundaries, and handle difficult situations with confidence.
✅Learning Safety and Boundaries
One of the biggest challenges trauma survivors face is recognizing their feelings and expressing their needs. In an abusive environment, survival often meant suppressing emotions, staying quiet, and avoiding conflict. Over time, this coping mechanism becomes automatic, making it difficult to even recognize distress, let alone communicate it.
In a safe and supportive coaching space, my clients learn to identify their emotions and voice their needs—without fear of judgment or retaliation. Healing isn’t just about understanding what happened to you; it’s about reclaiming your voice and your right to take up space.
✅Develop Tools for Emotional Coping
If you want to fully engage in life, you have to learn how to manage your emotions. And no, I’m not just talking about self-care bubble baths. Real emotional coping means learning how to:
- Manage work-life balance without burnout
- Prioritize tasks and responsibilities with clarity
- Improve communication skills in personal and professional relationships
- Identify and challenge cognitive distortions (those sneaky thinking errors that sabotage success)
These tools matter because, for many survivors, avoidance and denial became their default response to stress. But let’s be real—avoiding life isn’t the same as living it. Trauma work isn’t just about understanding your past; it’s about building the strength to face the future.
And here’s the part no one likes to hear: healing takes work. It’s not something that just happens—it’s something you have to commit to. No shortcuts, no magic words. The more you invest in your growth, the more you’ll get out of it. So if you’re ready to do the work, let’s talk about what that really means.
Your Effort Determines Your Progress
Like therapy, trauma-informed coaching moves at the pace of your commitment. The more effort you put into understanding and working through your struggles, the more transformation you’ll see. If you’re not actively engaged in your healing, it will show in the results. Recovery isn’t about waiting for things to get better—it’s about actively doing the work to make them better.
But as valuable as trauma-informed coaching is, not all healers are truly invested in your growth. In the next section, I’ll share some red flags to watch for when choosing a coach or therapist.
Not all help may be helpful to you. Discern the heart of your healer before you embark on the challenging, yet worthwhile work of healing.
But Before You Hire Your Next Healer—Know This
Just because someone calls themselves a therapist, coach, or healer doesn’t mean they are truly committed to healing work. I wish someone had told me this twenty years ago—it would have saved me a lot of pain and disappointment.
You might be wondering, How can a healer not want to heal people? It sounds ridiculous, right? But the truth is, not everyone in the healing profession is doing it for the right reasons. Some started with good intentions but lost their way. Others never had the right intentions to begin with. If I had to sum it up, it usually comes down to two things: familiarityand control.
Familiarity: When Healing Becomes Just Another Job
Some healers start out passionate, but over time, they burn out. Trauma work is heavy. It requires emotional energy, patience, and deep empathy. Not everyone can sustain that. Instead of stepping back to recharge, some keep pushing forward—disconnected, numb, and exhausted. They go through the motions like a factory worker on an assembly line, showing up for sessions, nodding at the right moments, and saying the right things—without truly caring. For them, healing becomes just another job, another paycheck. And if you’re not careful, you’ll be paying someone who’s emotionally checked out.
Control: When Healing Becomes a Power Game
Then there’s the darker side. Some so-called healers don’t enter this work because they love people. They do it because they crave power. They thrive on control, using their title to manipulate and dominate. They might tell you what to think, how to feel, or that you need them to get better. It’s subtle at first, but over time, you’ll feel it—a nagging sense that your healing is somehow about them instead of you. This kind of healer isn’t helping you heal; they’re feeding their own ego, masking their own unresolved trauma.
Healing is a vulnerable journey. The last thing you need is someone who sees you as a task to complete or, worse, someone to control. Before you trust someone with your story, take the time to understand their heart.
Next, I’ll share my final thoughts on choosing a coach who is truly committed to your growth and healing.
Final thoughts
Healing isn’t meant to be done alone. A trauma-informed coach creates a safe, supportive space where you can address the emotional wounds that still linger. I know that trauma leaves its mark, shaping how you see yourself and the world—but you don’t have to navigate it alone.
While coaching isn’t a replacement for therapy, it can be a powerful complement to the healing process. My job isn’t to diagnose or “fix” you—it’s to walk alongside you, helping you build resilience, reclaim your confidence, and move forward with clarity and strength.
But let’s be honest—asking for help can feel terrifying. Fear of judgment, rejection, or even acknowledging the pain can keep you stuck. If that sounds like you, I have something that might help.
💛 Struggling to ask for support? Listen to my podcast episode on receiving help without fear of judgment or criticism.
Have you worked with a trauma-informed coach? Whether your experience was great or not-so-great, I’d love to hear from you! Share your thoughts using this link—your insights could help others on their healing journey.
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