ABSTRACT Background Research shows that indirect trauma can negatively affect professionals in helping professions, with students and young professionals at greater risk, particularly if they have a personal history of trauma. Research suggests that engaging in the creative arts may help professionals process vicarious trauma and promote resilience. Context This paper explores the use of creative arts practice for self-care by an art therapy trainee with lived experience of somatic disorder symptoms and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), working in a secure setting. Approach Using a trauma lens, the paper discusses how the creative arts can ameliorate the effects of indirect trauma when working as a trainee art therapist in a challenging context. The trainee’s early life experiences elucidate the challenges of countertransference and trauma. The creative arts process supports the reflexive skills an art therapist uses for effective practice. Outcomes The creative arts as a self-care practice supported the trainee art therapist to negotiate her dissociative defence style. It was an effective tool for managing the ill-effects of exposure to trauma, including somatic symptoms, and benefited the trainee’s development. Conclusions The creative arts helped the trainee to reconnect with her body and emotions, and subsequently benefited her clinical thinking. Implications for research Art therapy training programmes could include explicitly teaching about the risks and benefits of working in the profession, as this may promote longevity and improve therapeutic outcomes for service users. Further research on dissociative responses to trauma and creative arts as self-care for therapists would be valuable. Plain-language summary Research in the past 30 years has found that people working in helping professions are at risk of experiencing trauma symptoms through their work with service users. This can have a negative effect on their health and wellbeing, as well as their relationships with others. If unaddressed it can also negatively affect their ability to provide effective therapy. Students and people with a history of trauma are at greater risk. This paper explores the personal experience of a trainee art therapist working in a secure hospital setting. It describes how creative arts practice helped the trainee to cope with the challenging content of therapy sessions and promote their own wellbeing. It uses the trainee’s experience as a young carer to elucidate the emotional and physical toll of caring and the long-lasting impact it can have. The trainee’s experiences suggest that the creative arts can help with high levels of stress and hypervigilance, negative physical symptoms and personal trauma triggers, and promote greater wellbeing. The article calls for research into the value of including teaching around trauma, including physical symptoms, in training programmes for art therapists, and how the creative arts can be used as a self-care tool.