Consultation and Training

TREM Questions and Answers

Q: How much should leaders disclose about their own personal lives and their own trauma histories?

A: In some ways, leaders are more active participants in TREM groups than in other group intervention models — leaders participate in the exercises and they often respond to the questions to prompt conversation. Within this participation, leaders may disclose some personal information, such as marital status or whether they have children. This disclosure should be as leaders are comfortable and as it fits to promote discussion. Leaders should not discuss their own trauma histories in the group, even if they feel comfortable with the idea of sharing their story. Rarely will members directly ask a leader about her experience with personal trauma. If this does occur, leaders can indicate that they will do their own work on trauma recovery as needed outside of the group, or respond with a more general comment about how most women in society have experienced some type of oppression/victimization.