Presenter: Lita Abella
Session Description:
Burnout at campuses across higher education is often framed as an individual self-care problem, when in reality it is a predictable outcome of chronic, unaddressed stress in complex institutions. This interactive workshop introduces The ABELLA Model, a trauma-informed framework that helps high-stress professionals and their organizations name, assess, and transform patterns of burnout, vicarious trauma, and compassion fatigue. Drawing on lived experience in law enforcement, legal regulation, and coaching, Lita Abella reframes well-being as a shared, systemic responsibility rather than one more task for exhausted staff.
Participants will explore how invisible exposure to trauma, perfectionism, and high-stakes decision-making quietly erode well-being, belonging, and performance, especially for mission-driven staff in public higher education. Using the ABELLA Model, attendees will map where they and their units are getting stuck and identify practical shifts.
This session directly incorporates the theme “Explore Your Potential, Empower Our Future” by helping participants recognize how unaddressed trauma and burnout limit their capacity to grow, lead, and collaborate, and by offering concrete tools to reclaim that capacity in community. As staff clarify their own needs and strengths, they explore their individual potential; as they apply trauma-informed practices to teams and workflows, they help empower a more sustainable, humane future for higher education.
Through brief case examples, guided reflection, and small group discussion, attendees will leave with language and next steps to advocate for trauma-informed practices, support colleagues in distress, and begin redesigning everyday work so that well-being becomes part of how higher education moves into its future.
Learning Outcomes:
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Distinguish between individual burnout and systemic, cumulative trauma in high-stress work environments using concepts from The ABELLA Model.
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Identify at least three workplace norms or practices that unintentionally normalize chronic stress and outline trauma-informed alternatives they can influence in their role.
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Apply steps to draft a concrete next action (for themselves or their team) that supports sustainable well-being, resilience, and belonging.
Materials: