How to Be a Trauma-Informed Coach (or Facilitator)

7 Principles for Creating Real Safety and Lasting Change

Trauma-informed coaching (facilitation) isn’t just being kind or appearing nice. A loving compassionate presence is essential, but being trauma-informed involves a lot more.

It’s about understanding how trauma shapes someone’s physiology, behavior, and relational patterns. In turn, you adjust your presence, language, and structure to create a space that supports real agency and transformation.

Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” Peter Levine, Creator of Somatic Experiencing

This isn’t therapy. It’s not about processing the past. It’s about helping people move forward by creating a space that doesn’t re-trigger old survival responses. Trauma-informed means building the conditions for safety, empowerment, and growth.

These principles are my list from client and group coaching, and the over 2,500 hours of training including three years of Somatic Experiencing®, NARM® (NeuroAffective Relational Model), a year-long trauma-informed coaching and consulting certification (Mobius / Thomas Hübl), the Strozzi Institute’s Somatic, Trauma, Resilience course, biofeedback and anatomy trainings, and other trainings from leading trauma experts.

Most importantly, this comes from my lived experience. Through my inner work, I recognize the moments when I felt major shifts and those that felt messy. This is also what I support others to embody in my trauma-informed coaching mentorship work.

1. Embodied Presence: Have you done your work?

Trauma-informed presence means you are attuned not only to your client but to your own body and internal state. You know your own triggers, fears, and patterns—and you’ve developed the capacity to hold your reactivity in service to the client. You know what belongs to you and make sure it doesn’t leak into the client’s space.

The foundation of trauma-informed work is your presence. And I don’t mean how calm you sound. I mean your actual nervous system.

Have you done your own work? Are you grounded and clean in your energy? Are you unconsciously playing out your own attachment wounds or rescuer patterns in the session? Clients can feel your range, depth and capacity to be with–only if you’ve done it yourself.

When you’ve done your own inner work, your field offers regulation. There’s less static. That’s what allows a deeper level of conversation and vulnerability to unfold. It’s what makes clients say, “You feel safe. I don’t feel judged. You offer a warm presence. You easily put people at ease.”

After a powerful week of trauma training, I recall hearing more conversations that people normally don’t share with me. My presence opened up more safety, my listening expanded and friends, colleagues and others shared more–after of a full week of embodied co-regulation with 200 people

This presence—this regulated field—creates the conditions where someone else’s system can start to settle. That’s what opens the door to actual transformation. It’s one of the essential ingredients of nervous system-informed coaching.

2. Agency and Empowerment: Return Their Power

Trauma-informed coaching also requires awareness of the social, cultural, and systemic context each client carries. Understanding how power dynamics, cultural identity, race, gender, neurodiversity, and past experiences influence someone’s ability to reclaim agency is essential. Safety looks and feels different depending on their lived experience, and we must hold that with care.

Trauma often involves a loss of agency. Something was done to someone, or over them. That’s why empowerment has to be woven into everything we do.

This means:

Letting them lead.
Giving choices.
Making space for their no.
Not rushing in to fix.

For example, one of my burnout clients recently canceled a standing meeting. Then they moved another one. That may not seem like much, but for someone who’s been stuck in over-responsibility or people-pleasing, that’s huge.

Some coaches might see that as a bad sign. I don’t. I see it as a nervous system starting to make new choices. I see power returning to agency. They are saying no, setting boundaries and testing new muscles for meeting their needs.

Also, watch for mirroring. Many trauma-impacted clients will unconsciously shape themselves to you—they’ll smile when you smile, agree quickly, try to read your cues. Your job is to stay neutral, centered, and curious. That’s how you help them reconnect to their own truth—and how trauma-informed leadership coaching becomes a space of growth.

3. Co-Regulation and Attunement: Me Feeling You Feeling Me

Thomas Hübl said it best: “Me feeling you feeling me.”

That’s the essence of co-regulation. It’s not about reading emotions. It’s not cognitive. It’s felt. It’s nervous system attunement.

It’s staying with your own experience while staying present with theirs.
It’s letting your nervous system listen.
It’s noticing breath shifts, energy changes, subtle pauses.
It’s offering contact without pressure.

You don’t have to name everything. But when you are attuned, people know. The session becomes a living loop of presence and connection. That’s what helps reorganize survival strategies into new patterns. You are attuned and meet their emotional content with care. These are the moments that make somatic trauma coaching effective—not just helpful. Attunement is an art in itself.

4. Structure Creates Safety

People with unresolved trauma have nervous systems that can be stuck in survival mode. They’re scanning and reading the room—asking: is this safe?

Part of being trauma-informed is teaching people how to build safety—not by promising they’ll never feel discomfort, but by helping them understand boundaries, agreements, and what to expect. This helps their nervous system adjust in a safe container.

I used to avoid too much structure. Now I know it’s essential. Early in the coaching process, I lay out the rhythm, the expectations, and how we’ll handle things like overwhelm or integration. I support with education so they understand the work we are doing or did. I always ask what they need.

One of the most powerful skills is knowing when to stay with the process—what’s happening in the moment—rather than defaulting to addressing the content. Pause. Be silent. Go slow. That’s where the shift lives. Allowing the body to naturally process– this is the foundation, particularly in somatic experiencing. And it’s foundational to trauma-informed coaching frameworks that truly hold the nervous system.

5. Trauma Informed Feels Different

Helping clients understand from the beginning that this is not talk therapy, but we are addressing symptoms of trauma, is important. In my work, I use somatic tools – somatic coaching, somatic experiencing – I’ve used for nearly a decade.

People often don’t have the language of the body or what happens in it. You start there. After awareness, you’re building resources and safety, and then wisely supporting new patterns. Clients may feel discomfort because it is new—and that’s why the trauma pattern exists. In that moment of overwhelm, they couldn’t manage the activation in their body. It made their body feel unsafe. You go there slowly, so they are not reactivated, and instead process what their body needs.

For example, one client came in completely shut down—in the middle of a layoff and divorce. She offered a metaphor of her legs being immobile in our first session. Every session, she was either aware of her numb legs or impulse or sensations in them. Through our somatic work, she built more embodied awareness of her sensations. Then one day, she had what she called electrical sensations in her legs. Movement. She started to feel herself fully and feel alive again.

That’s what happens when the nervous system shifts to natural states of resilience—there is more flexibility, not rigidity. I educate people at every step and support them to manage new sensations or awareness.

6. Integration Is Part of the Process

In my coach training years ago, I remember my need to deliver impact and value as was high. Then someone said that most of the work is in between sessions. Or as a coach, we should never do more work than the client.

Practices, tools, and resources support integration between sessions. Being open to their questions builds their agency. The Strozzi Institute drives home the notion of practicing. What are you practicing? What would you like to try or be accountable with for next time?

We’re educating how to build capacity to handle more activation, excitement, or felt sense—and the tools to process things with the body. By processing things the body may have held for decades, there may be new things surfacing in the days after a session. Building safety and resourcing is now important skills.

In team events, having a place where people discharge anything that comes up for them is important so they don’t bring that energy into the group room. This is a topic for a different blog—and it’s something every trauma-informed facilitator should consider when designing safe containers. The workshop design itself is another broader topic.

7. Work Through the Wisdom of the Body

Understanding neuroscience, anatomy, the nervous system, and how the body naturally works is fundamental. You’re working with the natural body processes where energy may not be flowing.

I bring in many somatic modalities. At the simplest: interoception, breath, movement, grounding, felt-sense awareness.

Sometimes the shift comes when a client notices their state. We start by noticing. Then naming. Then choosing. Often you are not changing what is—you’re allowing what is. You bring awareness and observation to it.

We don’t see dysfunction. We see survival intelligence that was wise at the time—and now needs new options. We are not fixing. We are respecting the body’s wisdom in creating the patterns that once protected it.

This is where trauma-informed somatic coaching becomes both art and skill.

8. Ethical Boundaries and Knowing When to Refer

Being trauma-informed also means knowing the scope of your role. Coaching is not therapy, and some clients benefit most from working with both. My clients often have multiple life events coming at once that is leading to the acute need for support. I often collaborate with psychologists who support clients cognitively while I work somatically. In some cases, I’ve recommended that clients first stabilize with a therapist before beginning this work.

Part of being trauma-informed is knowing your scope—and being able to discern when a client may need clinical trauma care beyond what coaching can safely provide.

Final Thoughts

There are many topics I did not go deep into – attunement, compassionate presence, body-based measures (heart rate variability, coherence training) that may be future blogs.

The more I apply a trauma-informed lens to my work, it’s true I see more trauma around me. It’s a natural symptom of expanding your own awareness and learning. Some trauma experts may say everyone has some form of trauma – but not everyone will want to call it that.

Clients can only go as far as you can. My drive that had supported me throughout my career, was no longer a support in this work. What got me here, was not going to get me further–I had some unlearning to do.

Circling, authentic relating, shadow work, coaching, conscious groups–have become the spaces where I continue to practice, be held, attuned to, and cared for. Conscious friendships have been more important for me. Refilling your own energy tank is vital. The majority of my coaching sessions now fuel me; those that don’t–were simply my system feeling the trauma in the other and together we remained stuck in dysregulation rather than co-regulating for more ease.

Ask me if you’re interested in trauma-informed training or coaching for facilitators, learning and development professionals or to expand your coaching capacity.

Disclaimer: The information in this article is for educational purposes only. It is based on coaching practices and nervous system-informed approaches and is not intended as a substitute for mental health treatment or therapy. Trauma-informed coaching supports present-moment awareness, agency, and capacity building. It does not diagnose or treat trauma or mental health conditions. Please refer to a licensed therapist or medical provider for clinical needs.