When have you experienced vicarious trauma or when have you experienced your nervous system activating in response to the activation of another nervous system’s activation? What were the symptoms? How did you know it was happening? What support did you seek out?
How to make vicarious trauma less contagious and break the rippling habits fear creates?
Years ago my supervisor at a mental health organization reprimanded me for not spending time with the other therapists in the break areas. I remember bluntly telling her that I wanted to spend time connecting with the other therapists, but there was too much vicarious trauma. She quickly retorted, saying the organization does regular vicarious trauma trainings.
The organization did have mandatory vicarious trauma trainings, but they were not enough. All of the therapists worked with families with children under 18, who were struggling with overlapping interpersonal trauma, community trauma and immigration trauma. It was too much trauma for one therapist and their supervisor to hold without becoming vicariously traumatized. Vicarious trauma is tricky it spreads through every crack in systems, relationships and individuals. We all needed many more layers of support.
I asked if we could build the layers of support that worked in other organizations I’d been part of to dissipate the effects of vicarious trauma, but they declined. This mental health organization had an old school hierarchical model and because I was new - they did not want any suggestions on shifting the way they managed vicarious trauma. Unfortunately, if ignored - vicarious trauma spreads more easily and devastatingly, spinning the whole organization into survival mode.
What my supervisor didn’t know is that I had spent many years creating programs and trainings that supported anyone and everyone to navigate the vicarious trauma inherent with working with children and adults who had experienced abuse and violence, with crisis hotlines, with substance abuse as well as often connected with work with houseless youth and adults, and with foster youth. There was a rape crisis hotline I stayed with for 10 years as a volunteer, becasue we managed vicarious trauma so well. In my experience volunteers were getting better support and training than professional therapists because of the willingness to acknowledge the impacts of vicarious trauma.
The unwillingness to acknowledge the ripple effects of vicarious trauma and build systems that truly mitigated against it in mental health organizations caused me to break away to start an organization that could. I was determined to build an organization that could be a model for organizations on how to dissipate the impacts of trauma and vicarious trauma by the way it was designed like I had seen done successfully through some volunteer programs.
Building a model that disrupts the spreading of vicarious trauma…
Since vicarious Trauma is contagious, and spreads just like the flu. It means someone gets exposed to a traumatic story. The story lives in them. Makes their body feel that the world is more unsafe. Every time the story is retold the vicarious trauma spreads. One nervous system tells another nervous system to be on high alert. To activate. And, then that body brings that fear everywhere it goes - at home exposing partners, children and loved ones without even having to share the story. When the story has seeped into the cracks of us enough, we know because it has changed our mood, made us irritable, or anxious or numb, or depressed or ashamed or hopeless and our family soaks this up through us. Just like when we are exposed to the flu - we need various layers of protection and ways of navigating infection on an individual and collective level in order to truly contain it. Unfortunately, few organizations or businesses prioritize this multi-layered type of buffer for their practitioners or participants, they simply make it an issue an individual needs to address themself.
In the current landscape of rampant fear and uncertainty for providers working with individuals experiencing trauma - new type of organizational structure is more important than ever. We need to draw from more success stories on how to build an organization with a structure that inherently dismantles vicarious trauma. This isn’t a pipe dream. We did it with the organization Hatch Community, serving individuals and families with significant trauma and using structures to effectively weave “trauma informed” into the fabric of an organization. This model is nothing like you have experienced in other trainings with vicarious trauma. It creates structures of sustainability for the work by buffering the employees, instead of making it their issue to navigate alone. The structure tends to the business nervous system in order to subsequently care for every individual, their family/chosen family and anyone they could expose. The reason this works is our nervous systems can alert one another to safety as much as to danger, we just have to create environments that break the habits of fear and vicarious trauma from spreading to make this a possibility.
Where to start?
For you…
Identify symptoms of an activated nervous system…(The symptoms for trauma and vicarious trauma overlap) - Don’t pretend you are okay or can handle it.
Emotional: anxiety, depression, anger, and numbness
Physical symptoms: sleep disturbances, panic attacks, and chronic pain
Behavioral changes: social withdrawal, irritability, hypervigilance, and substance abuse
Cognitive symptoms: difficulty concentrating, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities, and a distorted sense of meaning
Track your nervous system activity and prioritize its health and agility: Take breaks. Make Space in your schedule. Not everyone has the luxury of not living in survival mode. If you do, choose to. It will support everyone around you.
Consistent Self-care, daily rituals not a one-off event.
Reach out for support - I can help you learn how to do the work you care deeply about without taking on all the trauma.
For your family and chosen family…
Get really honest with yourself and identify how others are being impacted by your vicarious trauma.
Separate your work and your home life. Completely. This is the equivalent of don’t expose them to the flu.
Pause between work and family interactions: Take a shower. Take a walk. Pause at the door of your house or home office room - every time you walk through it and leave everything on the other side of the door, protecting your partner, your kids, your loved ones or your roommates from exposure.
Reach out for support - I can help you to learn how to not take trauma home to your family. It’s not worth the cost to any of you.
For your work…
Have the hard conversations with supervisors or develop a team to build in new structures and systems that better support you and by design dissipate vicarious trauma.
Identify small steps that can be taken immediately to acknowledge that vicarious trauma is an issue. Then, begin to identify steps for change.
Reach out - I can help create an innovative and individualized approach for your business, organization or program to both identify where vicarious trauma is showing up and how to address it.
The current political climate has demanded that we amplify the support for ALL organizations, especially those on the frontline. The heightened degree of vicarious trauma demands NEW levels of systemic, relational and individual support structured within organizations, even more so for organizations who are advocating for populations directly targeted by the current administration. We can’t do this alone.