Can You "Catch" Trauma?
A recently-released study on post-911 counselors/social workers demonstrated what many mental health professionals (including me) already know. Indeed, trauma is contagious. Listening empathically to the stories of survivors can produce secondary trauma symptoms in the listener. My favorite term for this phenomenon is "compassion fatigue."
Would-be helpers of all kinds - friends, family members, certainly therapists, pastors, teachers - need to be aware that you don't emerge unscathed from hours and hours of listening to traumatic stories. If you give a darn, you "feel with" the traumatized individual. (Empathy can be both a blessing and a curse!) As a result of experiencing their pain, you can actually develop symptoms of PTSD or other anxiety disorders. As the impact of the vicarious experiencing of horrific events grows, you may feel you have to protect yourself emotionally. Quite understandably. Yet, if you're not careful, you can harden yourself, become cynical, or avoid those you really care about. You begin to lose yourself and the emotional talents which make you a wonderful helper.
The message here is, helpers must not give, give, give until they are depleted and injured themselves. Helpers can minimize compassion fatigue by:
1. learning to set boundaries, so that you have time and opportunity to rest and recuperate;
2. varying your activities, not spending the lion's share of your time in intense conversations with traumatized people;
3. taking care of yourself spiritually, physically, and emotionally;
4. consulting with colleagues to get a perspective and to guard against the tendency to assume too much responsibility for the pain of others.
Helpers, taking care of yourself while taking care of others is one of the most unselfish things you can do. After all, if you are to continue to be a compassionate giver, you have to be reasonably well yourself!
Dr. Bev Smallwood, Psychologist, Author, This Wasn't Supposed to Happen to Me!
