Therapists are often taught how to care for others, but far less often how to ethically care for themselves while doing the work.
Whether working with adults processing trauma, adolescents navigating complex developmental challenges, or children expressing their inner world through play therapy, therapists are regularly exposed to intense emotional material and at times may encounter perspectives or values that differ from their own.
Over time, this exposure can affect energy, focus, and emotional capacity, sometimes influencing boundaries, judgment, and ethical
decision-making.
Professional ethical codes remind therapists that they are responsible for monitoring their own functioning and seeking consultation when needed. Yet burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma often develop gradually, making them difficult to recognize until they begin affecting clinical work.
This training explores how therapist well-being intersects with ethical practice through discussion, reflection, and brief creative reflection exercises.
Many of the principles that make play therapy powerful with children, such as symbolic expression and creative exploration, can also unlock meaningful work with adults.
During the training, participants will engage in guided painting reflections designed to help therapists notice patterns in their professional lives, including areas of energy, strain, and support.
These reflections are not art therapy. They are simply a way to engage the same symbolic and creative capacities that play therapists often see emerge naturally in the playroom. Those capacities do not disappear in adulthood.
This training helps therapists better understand how burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma can influence ethical clinical practice.
Participants will also consider how strong personal reactions, including moments when a therapist’s values or views differ from those of a client, can influence emotional regulation, boundaries, and ethical clinical decision-making.
Participants will:
☀️ Recognize the early warning signs of burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma before they begin affecting your clinical judgment, focus, or emotional availability with clients.
☀️ Understand how therapist stress and emotional fatigue can quietly influence boundaries, patience, decision-making, and ethical responsibility in the therapy room.
☀️ Identify when consultation, supervision, or adjustments to workload may be ethically necessary in order to protect both the therapist and the clients they serve.
☀️ Give in the moment self care opportunities through hands on reflective work
Throughout this 3 hour ethics training, participants will engage in brief guided painting reflections woven between teaching segments. These moments offer therapists a chance to pause, reflect, and notice the internal demands of their work as we explore burnout, vicarious trauma, and ethical practice.
These exercises are inspired by principles often seen in play therapy, where symbolic expression and creativity help people process experiences that can be difficult to put into words. While these approaches are commonly used with children and adolescents, the same human capacities for symbolism, imagination, and creative reflection remain present throughout adulthood.
For this reason, therapists who work with children, adolescents, or adults are all able to engage meaningfully in these reflections.
No artistic skill is required. All levels of creativity are welcome, and most participants will not consider themselves artists. The goal is reflection, not artistic technique.
For those participating in person, supplies will be included. Those participating virtually will have the option to use any medium of choice.
If traditional ethics trainings have ever felt dry or intimidating, this workshop offers a different experience. Come participate in an ethics training that fills your professional bucket rather than draining it.
This event will be Live-Streamed and In Person:
Ridgetop Coffee & Tea
21631 Ridgetop Cir,
Sterling, VA 20166
We will be live streaming this event. ZOOM participation is available
Friday, May 29, 2026
9:00–12:15 p.m. Eastern Time
Cost: $129 total
3 APT/NBCC CEs
Painting supplies will be waiting for in person participants
After completing this training, participants will be able to:
🍎 Identify ethical responsibilities related to therapist impairment, competence, and self-monitoring, including how burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma may influence ethical decision-making in play therapy practice and in therapy with adolescents and adults.
🍎 Recognize early warning signs of burnout, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma in clinicians and play therapists and understand how these experiences can influence therapeutic presence, boundaries, and clinical judgment.
🍎 Describe how therapist stress and emotional fatigue may affect the therapist’s use of self, including attunement, patience, and ethical responsiveness in play therapy as well as in traditional talk therapy settings.
🍎 Apply ethical decision-making principles when therapist well-being begins to affect clinical work, including situations that arise in play therapy with children and in talk therapy with adolescents and adults.
🍎 Utilize reflective and creative exercises inspired by play therapy principles to increase therapist self-awareness and support ethical and sustainable clinical practice across populations from work with children through work with adults.
This training is designed for therapists who work with trauma across the lifespan and want to strengthen ethical awareness while sustaining their own well-being in the work.
☀️ Clinicians providing trauma-informed therapy for adults
☀️ Play therapists supporting children whose trauma emerges through play, behavior, and emotional expression
☀️ Therapists working with adolescents navigating complex developmental and relational trauma
☀️ Therapists interested in integrating creative, right-brain approaches into ethical and sustainable clinical practice
☀️ Supervisors supporting clinicians who work with trauma across different populations
This training welcomes therapists who primarily work with children, adolescents, or adults. The reflective tools explored in this workshop are inspired by principles often seen in play therapy and art therapy while remaining meaningful for clinicians working across the lifespan.
Agenda (Eastern Time)
9:00am – 12:15 pm
Opening Discussion: The Ethical Responsibility of Therapist Well-Being
We begin by exploring professional ethical codes related to therapist impairment, competence, and the responsibility
to monitor our own functioning.
Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Vicarious Trauma
Participants will examine how trauma work affects therapists over time and how these pressures can influence
clinical judgment, boundaries, and ethical decision-making.
Guided Reflection and Painting Exercise: Mapping the Therapist Landscape
Participants will engage in a brief creative reflection exercise to explore their own professional energy, areas of strain,
and sources of support.
Ethical Decision-Making in the Midst of Burnout
Discussion of real-world ethical scenarios, consultation practices, and recognizing when adjustments in workload
or supervision may be ethically necessary.
Guided Reflection and Painting Exercise: Supporting Sustainable Practice
Participants return to their reflections to explore what ethical and sustainable trauma work can look like over time.
Closing Discussion: Practical Tools for Sustainable and Ethical Practice
15-minute break included