The Space Between Us: Shared Responsibility in Trauma-Informed Care
Trauma-informed care as a shared, ongoing commitment to presence, boundaries, and mutual respect
This is part 4 of our 6-part Trauma-Informed Care Series.
Signs of Trauma-Informed Care (What It Looks and Feels Like)
The Space Between Us: Shared Responsibility in Trauma-Informed Care (you are here)
Trauma-informed care isn’t about being perfectly healed or saying all the right things. It’s a practice of showing up, with awareness, boundaries, and humility, on both sides of the care relationship. This post reflects on how trauma can shape providers, not just patients, and why mutual responsibility is key to building safer spaces for healing.
Trauma-Informed Care Is Not a Sanctuary
“Trauma-informed care” gets a lot of airtime these days. It’s printed on clinic websites, dropped into training modules, tacked onto job titles. And while that’s not inherently a bad thing, it can blur the line between a care setting that feels trauma-informed, and one that simply claims to be.
Let’s be clear: trauma-informed care isn’t a sanctuary where all triggers dissolve and everyone agrees.
It’s not a magic spell that makes healthcare providers perfect.
It’s not a free pass for patients to unload onto others without limits.
And most of all, it’s not one-sided.
Trauma Lives in All of Us
Whether we’re patients or practitioners, we carry life experiences in our tissues, beliefs, and nervous systems. Healthcare providers aren’t exempt from trauma. In fact, working in healthcare often adds trauma: from everyday microaggressions to vicarious trauma, from impossible workloads to witnessing human suffering without space to process it.
Wearing the professional hat often means tucking personal pain into the corner. That pain doesn’t disappear just because someone learns to say, “I’m holding space.”
Sometimes that unacknowledged pain leaks into the clinical encounter.
It might look like a provider dissociating, going rigid, or reacting defensively.
It might silently shape the room without a word being said.
And when that happens, the person seeking care might not know what just happened, but they’ll feel it.
That doesn’t mean someone is “bad” at what they do. It means they’re human. The more important question is:
Are they doing the work?
Do they take responsibility for their reactions, and engage with their own inner landscape?
When we recognize the humanity on both sides, trauma-informed care becomes something alive, something we build together.
Shared Space Means Shared Responsibility
Trauma-informed care is bidirectional.
It’s not a credential or checklist.
It’s a shared practice, a living agreement.
It’s not about who’s more healed, more articulate, or more regulated.
It’s about what we co-create in the space between us.
And that space is sacred, but not in a delicate or untouchable way.
It’s sacred in a human way. Messy, relational, and full of possibility.
That means:
Patients are not entitled to mistreat providers just because they’re triggered. Boundaries and mutual respect still matter.
Providers are not entitled to override a patient’s “no” just because they’re the expert. No one should use a clinical interaction to meet their own need for validation, power, or praise.
Both parties share responsibility for how the space feels, even when it’s hard.
This isn’t limited to trauma therapy. These dynamics show up everywhere: in clinics, classrooms, workplaces, and homes. Every care space is shaped by more than just training.
It’s shaped by how we show up.
Not a Buzzword: A Way of Being
Too often, “trauma-informed” gets reduced to scripts, catchphrases, or intake forms. But it’s far more relational than that.
It’s the practitioner who notices their nervous system tightening, and chooses to soften instead.
It’s the client who feels the urge to lash out, and chooses to pause or name it, rather than project it.
It’s the shared recognition:
I’m not the only one who’s lived through something.
Trauma-informed care isn’t a place to unravel at someone else’s expense.
It’s not a bubble where everything gets validated without discernment.
It’s a commitment to mutual awareness.
And that changes everything, not just in the clinic, but in the wider culture.
Every Voice Shapes the Room
When we show up with curiosity instead of certainty…
When we repair instead of defend…
When we honour boundaries on both sides…
That’s when safety becomes something real. Something felt.
In the end, trauma-informed care isn’t about titles or trauma scores.
It’s about relationship.
It’s about co-regulation. Co-creation. Co-responsibility.
It’s about staying human with one another, even in the hard moments.
And in that shared space: the space between us.
Healing doesn’t just happen.
It gets held.
A Closing Thought
Trauma-informed care isn’t something you arrive at. It’s something we practice—imperfectly, intentionally, and together.
It lives in the way we listen, the way we notice, the way we choose to stay present even when it’s hard.
And while it can’t promise comfort at every turn, it can offer something more durable: a space where honesty, accountability, and care are welcome on all sides.
Because healing doesn’t happen in isolation.
It happens in relationship.
In the space between us.