It happens to all of us sometimes…
Vicarious trauma (VT) is the impact of listening empathetically and actively to other people’s experiences, and the stress helping professionals may experience when supporting vulnerable folks through their healing.
Many years ago, I was covering a swing shift alone at the domestic violence shelter that I was the program coordinator for. I don’t quite remember why I was the one there that evening, but I will always remember the story I heard from a new resident whose intake I did. I won’t go into detail about her story, but I will share that as I drove home that night, I cried a long, ugly cry.
By the time I arrived home, I realized that I hadn’t been impacted by a participant’s story for a very long time. At that point, I had been doing survivor advocacy for about eight years, and I felt a sense of resolve about being exposed to traumatic stories nearly every day. I was used to it, I had accepted that it was part of the job, and it really didn’t bother me very much… until it did. That ugly cry on the way home is just one example of a time that a person’s story gutted me - it didn’t happen often, but when it did, the experience felt deep and overwhelming.
Vicarious trauma (VT) is the impact of listening empathetically and actively to other people’s experiences, and the stress helping professionals may experience when supporting vulnerable folks through their healing. What’s unique about VT is that it often results in a change in world view - over time, we can become so certain about things that we believe to be true, that we’re shocked when a friend with no exposure to trauma thinks we’re overreacting.
One of the best things that supervisors can do to mitigate the impacts of VT is to normalize that it will happen. It doesn’t mean that something is wrong with you or that you’re not cut out for the helping professions - it actually means that you’re a human being who is having a normal reaction to hearing about someone else’s struggle and pain. It’s not a matter of if VT will impact a helper; it’s a matter of when VT will impact that person.
Normalizing that VT will be part of the work can even happen during a job interview - in fact, I highly recommend that you bring it up as soon as possible! When crafting interview questions that try to get to an applicant’s understanding, you do need to be careful that you’re not asking something that may feel too personal to answer during a job interview. Here are just a few questions that you might consider using:
How do you define vicarious trauma? We’re not looking for a specific definition; instead we want to hear how you understand it.
What are some examples of how someone might experience vicarious trauma?
What are some examples of how a supervisor or co-worker can help reduce the impacts of vicarious trauma?
In our kind of work, it’s not unusual to be emotionally impacted by a participant’s situation. What workplace coping strategies might help when this occurs?
Another way that supervisors can normalize VT to be vulnerable and share when we’re being negatively impacted by our work. Again, we want to be careful that we’re not being too personal within our work relationships, but demonstrating that it can even happen to the boss is incredibly powerful. I try to be honest when I’m having a particularly hard time with trauma exposure by sharing some of my emotional experience, as well as how I’m trying to take care of myself. I’ll be honest that it’s felt messy sometimes, but there’s no denying that trauma, and our exposure to it, is messy.
“It’s not a matter of if vicarious trauma will impact a helper; it’s a matter of when vicarious trauma will impact that person.”
Whenever I bring up VT, I also try to bring up the concept of Vicarious Resilience. Vicarious resilience is the experience of being filled with hope and gratitude because you have the privilege of witnessing someone’s healing and self actualization. Witnessing someone gain strength and get through something hard helps us find strength and fortitude for our own challenges. I call this a “non monetary” benefit of the helping professions. Not everyone has a job where they’ll experience vicarious resilience, and it is definitely what kept me in survivor advocacy for a couple of decades.
Helping people who have experienced trauma is certainly not for everyone. But, all of us can benefit from an exploration of both vicarious resilience and VT and having an understanding of how to help reduce the negative impacts of our critical work. I will always believe that helping others is a privilege, and I also want to do what I can to sustain myself.
