Secondary Trauma and Compassion Fatigue
Tools to help the clinician love their work again!
August 27th, 2026 | 1pm Central Time to 5pm Central Time | Online Training | 4 CE’s available
Registration will be available on July 1st
Date Friday April 24 to Monday April 27 at Hilton Tampa Airport Westshore
Inspired Memory Care, provider #1756, is approved to offer social work continuing education by the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) Approved Continuing Education (ACE) program. Organizations, not individual courses, are approved as ACE providers. State and provincial regulatory boards have the final authority to determine whether an individual course may be accepted for continuing education credit. Inspired Memory Care maintains responsibility for this course. ACE provider approval period:11/19/24-11/19/27. Social workers participating in this course receive 4 continuing education credits.
Summary
Mental health clinicians routinely absorb the emotional pain, traumatic narratives, grief, fear, and hopelessness experienced by their clients. Over time, this repeated empathetic process can contribute to chronic stress, and ultimately compassion fatigue. Over time many clinicians begin to experience increasing emotional numbness, irritability, cynicism, sleep disturbance, hopelessness, detachment, or loss of therapeutic presence without recognizing what is happening to them until it becomes an issue outside their work.
This training explores the experience of empathy, and how the clinician’s emotional needs can put them at risk for secondary trauma, and the emotional exhaustion that leads to compassion fatigue. Participants will examine their individual emotional needs, the strategies they use to get these needs met, as well as how they cope when they can’t meet them. Participants will develop an understanding of how their emotional needs dictate the nature of their empathetic connection to others, as well as the level of traumatic stress, and compassion fatigue they experience.
Participants will learn basic tools to manage their emotional needs, and move toward a more useful empathetic connection to their clients. With a focus on awareness of core emotional needs, and emotional leveling, participants will develop skills that allow them to empathetically connect to others without the experience of secondary traumatic stress and emotional exhaustion. Participants will be able to identify their emotional responses that put them at risk, and respond with more mature, and useful strategies of empathetic connection
Learning Objectives
- Understand the concept of emotional leveling, and the coping strategies of Virginia Satir, as well as the concept of core emotional needs. Participants will be able to display competence with these concepts regarding themselves and others.
- Participants will understand their own emotional needs, the strategies they use to meet their needs, and their emotional response when they cannot get their needs met. Participants will be able to identify, and describe the impact this process has on their empathetic connection to others, as well as their individual emotional wellbeing.
- Participants will be able to identify their emotional needs, and recognize when their connection to others is focused on meeting their needs. They will be able to identify strategies to interrupt this pattern, and connect with their clients in a way that decreases their risk for secondary trauma, and compassion fatigue.
Training Outline
Hour 1. Understanding Secondary Trauma and Compassion Fatigue
- Definitions and core concepts
- Emotional and physiological structure
- The structure of empathy and emotional connection to others
- Self vs Others focus and the concept of emotional maturity
Hour 2. The Emotional Experience of the Clinician
- The Satir model, and emotional leveling
- Leveling and coping when it’s hard
- Core emotional needs: A Heuristic
- The origin and function of emotional needs
Hour 3. Doing Empathy Differently
- Your empathy is structured around your emotional needs
- Empathy as a strategy of function
- What do you emotionally need, and what are you doing to get it?
- Is it time to do this differently?
- Acceptance, forgiveness, and the reframe
Hour 4. Integration and Learning
- Reframing emotional need as a practice
- Interrupting emotional triggers that change empathy
- Your plan for self-care… putting it all together
References
1. Chaves-Montero, A., Blanco-Miguel, P., & Ríos-Vizcaíno, B. (2025). Analysis of the predictors and consequential factors of emotional exhaustion among social workers: A systematic review. Healthcare, 13(5), 552. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare13050552
2. Demerouti, E. (2024). Burnout: A comprehensive review. Zeitschrift für Arbeitswissenschaft, 78(4), 492–504. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41449-024-00452-3
3. Kumar, K., et al. (2024). Compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, and coping among mental healthcare professionals. Industrial Psychiatry Journal, 33(1), 58–66.
4. Henderson, A., et al. (2024). Personal trauma history and secondary traumatic stress in mental health professionals. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy.
5. Kounenou, K., et al. (2025). Vicarious trauma and burnout among mental health professionals: The protective role of self-compassion and supervision. Psychology International, 6(3), 100.
6. Noor, A. M., et al. (2025). Compassion fatigue in helping professions: A scoping review. BMC Psychology, 13, 118.
Cost:
$150 per person and space is limited. If you wish to attend this training, call Sioux Falls Hypnosis at 605-702-6691 to begin your registration process.
Refunds/Cancelations:
If a student cancels prior to the first day of training, they will receive a complete refund, minus applicable credit card, or other transfer fees. If a student does not feel that the training course fits their needs at the end of the first day, they will receive a complete refund minus any applicable transfer fees. If a student completes the training, and does not feel satisfied with training, they will be refunded half of the cost of the training. Any other complaint or dispute can be addressed directly with Dr. Burow.
Trainer
Daniel is a psychologist, entrepreneur, trainer, and past C-suite executive for healthcare and mental health operations across the United States. He started his career as a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of South Dakota School of Medicine. He left this position to be a founding partner and the Vice President of Operations at Curaquick, one of the nation’s first retail health care chains. The Curaquick team opened clinics in seven states working with both Walmart and HyVee stores. Daniel sold his interests in Curaquick and went on to become the Chief Clinical Officer at Deer Oaks Mental Health.
He was part of the management team that took Deer Oaks from 180 clinicians in 9 states to 360 clinicians in 19 states. During his time at Deer Oaks, the company went from 13 million to almost 30 million a year in revenue. Daniel left Deer Oaks to take the position of Vice President of Operations with Medoptions the nation’s largest provider of behavioral health services in rehabilitation and long-term care. At Medoptions he worked with a staff of more than 800 Social Workers, Psychologists and Psychiatrists providing care in 21 states, including psychotherapy and psychiatry services. While at Medoptions, Daniel managed the integration of one of the largest mental health acquisitions ever completed, and when he left Medoptions the company generated over 90 million a year in revenue.
Daniel currently works as a consultant for corporations, and private equity groups across the United States who have an interest in the behavioral health space. He specializes in working with private equity groups, executive teams, operations managers, and clinical staff to improve business operations and clinical service. Daniel did his doctoral dissertation on Ericksonian Hypnosis, and spent the last 25 years applying hypnosis to clinical issues, as well as clinical supervision, training, sales, team building and customer service. He is an expert in non-verbal communication, behavioral analysis, and influence communication. He has trained government, military, law enforcement, mental health providers, and business/sales teams across the United States. He also owns Sioux Falls Hypnosis where he offers hypnosis services as well as training, and continuing education programming for psychologists, counselors, social workers, hypnotists, business managers, sales staff, and lay people working in the helping fields.
Daniel is the president of the Master Hypnotist Society. MHS provides training, certification, supervision, and support for both clinical, and lay hypnotists across the U.S. and Canada. Daniel is the author of Rebels Poets and Mystics, published in 2008, The Bigger Picture, published in 2021 and available on Amazon, and his latest book, Change and Maturity published in 2025, available at masterhypnotistsociety.com.
What other say about training with Daniel…
Your system for identifying how individuals are motivated by their needs and the examples that followed were so beneficial. The way your broke down the types of needs that motivate us, explained coping stances, and the blueprint for change made your talk actionable and provided our members with skills that can be applied to every transaction.
Jackie Walts, Director of Education Real Estate Association of the Sioux Empire.
