The Nervous System Healing Workbook
Coming fall 2026, the Workbook serves communities and coalitions that are dedicated to transforming historical social issues.
In this easy-to-use companion to Nonprofit Work Is Killin’ Me (2023), the Workbook provides Indigenous Knowledges and ancient practices for balancing our nervous systems by mitigating the chronic stress and vicarious trauma (CSVT) that comes from community-based work.
Nonprofit Work is Killin' Me
Celebrating and critically engaging truth-telling as a framework, the book focuses on the U.S. phenomenon of nonprofit staff teams experiencing unmitigated chronic stress and vicarious trauma (CSVT). These teams deliver programs and resources to communities facing the greatest symptoms of inequality in this country. We are fortunate that front-line professionals triage high-risk situations and cultivate opportunities for generational healing. Yet their work has not been comprehensively explored.
Indigenous author presence is vital here for considering the racist and colonizing forces still within the nonprofit sector that drive the unmitigated aspect of CSVT. Vélez Young contributes by outlining healing methods for mitigating the negative impact of CSVT with their Indigenous origins and how to access these methods as individuals and groups.
Ultimately, this book amplifies the contributions of nonprofit social services professionals while calling for the activation of their capacities to heal and transform oppressive norms and structures within the nonprofit sector. Published by Toplight/ McFarland Press.
