Doing Trauma Resolution Work with Clients… While Pregnant! Observations from the Field

In 2023, I was teaching some clinical nursing courses through a local nursing program. I was no longer working as a nurse in a clinical capacity at the time, but I would accompany and coach my students during 12-hour shifts as they rotated through the obstetric units at local hospitals. I was also seeing Somatic Experiencing clients part time in my private practice, as I’ve done for many years. 2023 was also the year I decided to begin receiving medical support from a fertility clinic to try for a pregnancy. I knew, almost as soon as I made the decision to receive support from the fertility clinic, that I would have to pause my work as a nursing instructor, mainly because my nervous system was so jarred by being both in hospitals and academia. I worried that the stress from my work would inhibit my capacity to become pregnant.

But my private practice work with clients has continued and has since grown into a nearly full-time practice. Now in 2026, I am (finally) pregnant! I have often asked myself if it is appropriate to do trauma resolution work with clients while at the same time being focused on keeping my own nervous system as healthy as possibly to nurture a tiny human being. And now that I am visibly pregnant, several clients have expressed concern about sharing parts of their trauma with me, out of a worry that it might affect my baby. As a result, I have thought a lot about this, and I’ve been in an active process of listening in to myself throughout my day and during my client sessions.

One of my primary self-observations in my work is that I feel quite regulated and relaxed throughout my sessions. (Yes, sometimes I have uncomfortable pregnancy symptoms- acid reflux, burping, being ridiculously hungry and needing to eat snacks between every single session- but all this is apparently normal pregnancy stuff and I’d be feeling it at home or while doing any other job!) By “regulated”, I mean that I feel present: I feel able to be in my body, in the room, while staying connected to my clients and tracking their process.  This seems to be true with a wide range of clients, both male and female, and with a wide range of nervous system presentations.

(This capacity for regulation with my clients hasn't always been true for me, by the way. I recall past work with clients where I would have trouble falling asleep at night, going through mental loops about difficult cases, feeling distressed for hours and even days after certain sessions.)

A client I had been working with for many months recently brought up some revelations related to early childhood abuse, and then expressed fear about hurting my baby by sharing those painful parts of their trauma history with me. I thought to myself that if I were in this client’s shoes, I would probably have the same concerns working with a pregnant practitioner.

During our session, I stayed present with my client, but at the same time I inquired into my own experience, gently checking into what my own nervous system was up to as we worked together. What I observed seems to be consistent with what I am noticing during many of my sessions: I am not feeling overwhelmed, scared, thrown off my center, etc. when my clients share scary, painful stuff with me. I also energetically checked in with my baby- and I felt, so completely, that my baby was safe and happily tucked inside my womb, floating within many protective layers inside me.

I am reminded of how we define and understand “trauma” in our work as somatic experiencing practitioners. Painful things, sometimes unthinkably inhumane things, have happened, or are currently happening, for many people, ecosystems, and even entire communities & cultures. Yet our bodies store and process these experiences in distinctly different ways. Trauma could be understood as the way our bodies and nervous systems respond, in the here and now, to painful or scary stuff. An important goal of somatic therapy is to feel a healthy sense of connection to self and other in present time, despite, or even in relation to, past or current traumatic events. (I need to express a big caveat here: this is not to place the blame in any way on trauma survivors. Absolutely the contrary: people and systems that oppress or inflict harm should be held accountable for the harm they cause. Accountability and justice are necessary, sadly missing for many survivors, and are vital parts of the trauma healing process.)

This leads me to the question: If I am exposing myself to the pain of my clients, am I traumatizing my baby? With the above definition of trauma in mind, it seems to me that if I were leaving client sessions feeling overwhelmed, triggered, or exhausted, this could potentially have a negative impact on my baby, especially if I didn’t find ways to allow traumatic stress to move through and out of my body. But despite some of the distressing content I hear in my sessions, I find that I am not storing traumatic stress from my sessions in my own body, and apparently not “taking on” the pain and trauma of my clients. I feel a very clear sense that my baby is safe and protected inside of me, even while I am present, showing empathy, supporting, and listening to my clients express painful stuff.

Let me contrast this with another area of my life where I find myself feeling less regulated. Example: I sometimes catch myself in a news-intake loop, reading too many upsetting news articles, and coming away feeling distressed by the state of the world. This is certainly an example where I need to allow the built-up traumatic stress to move through and out my body, being extra mindful about how much I “take in”, and finding some ways to “change the channel” so that I’m pendulating my awareness to less triggering experiences. I suspect that if I spent all my time stressing about the state of the world, this would in fact negatively affect my baby. In these moments, I need a lot of mindfulness to protect myself and my baby from what I take in, and to do the work with myself to release built-up stress from my body.

I am grateful to find healthy ways to combat trauma, and in turn to teach this to my clients. And rather than feeling bad coming out of sessions, I mostly feel pretty good! Sensing into this a little more, I observe the presence of healthy social engagement in sessions, arguably the most important mitigating factor for managing traumatic stress. It feels important to name that even while I feel myself staying regulated during sessions, I do feel a full range of human emotion. I believe emotional range is an important aspect of coherence. There are times when I feel anger or sadness on behalf of my clients for something they are going through, and it seems to me that these emotions are an appropriate mirroring of the client’s experience.

And maybe, probably, this is the fruit of my own personal growth work: I find myself able to feel a wide range of emotions and yet simultaneously stay within my window of tolerance. It occurs to me this is also the work of a good parent! I do very much hope I can translate this capacity for regulation to parenthood, along with a very large dose of giving myself grace for all the ways I’m sure I will stumble along the way.