The power of community (III) — vicarious trauma: a big ripple in a small pond
Getting older really sucks, but several aspects of my job have become easier the longer I have been at it. While I miss the computing power of earlier days, the accumulation of experiences, when combined with ongoing self-reflection, can result in better judgment, perhaps even some wisdom! People also seem more forgiving of one’s many flaws and mistakes (e.g. chronic inability to answer emails, a touch of self-righteousness, missing the odd appointment, etc.). There is also a plus of resilience that comes from knowing that even extremely challenging times eventually pass, and a sense of enjoyment of the mastery required to achieve certain complex tasks.
On the other hand, sometimes even very minor negative interactions with clients or peers seem to have an enormous cumulative effect.
Last week this was brought about by a small group of young people attending our after-school programs. I have known them for over 5 years, and despite the fact that they are all extremely bright, they are also completely disengaged from their secondary school. They were causing a moderate amount of trouble, with little to no intention of engaging positively in any of the activities happening at the centre. What got to me is that they were all as desperate for a positive connection as they were for food, any food! Despite some efforts on our part, they are starting to get into contact with the justice system and their family circumstances offer little hope about their prospects of improving much in the short term. After an hour working hard at maintaining a tenuous but positive connection with them, my brain was melted!
Generally speaking, any situations when I witness intense suffering or its signs seem to summon a vague but nasty collective entity comprising all the bad things that have happened to me over the last twelve years. For many years I paid very little attention to this, lack of energy did not seem to be much of an issue at the time.
At some point our organisation started growing and we became more concerned with staff health and wellbeing, at which point vicarious trauma became a thing for us. Lately I have been lucky to be able to revisit this concept reading Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery. In her words, “trauma is contagious. In the role of witness to disaster or atrocity, the therapist at times is emotionally overwhelmed.”
Many of us at BGCS regularly experience vicarious trauma: a series of behaviours and emotions that result from knowledge about a traumatizing event experienced by another and the stress resulting from trying to help a traumatized or suffering person.
In this piece, I am hoping to extrapolate insights from Judith Herman’s book into our daily practice, not as counsellors providing therapy, but as educators and community workers working in communities who experience intense suffering and hardship.
As a naturally optimistic person, I often wondered why some of our staff conversations could at times become so negative following critical incidents or particularly tough days, giving rise to what could be described as ‘despondent thinking’. Once again Judith came to the rescue:
“Repeated exposure to stories of human rapacity and cruelty inevitably challenges the therapist’s basic faith […] she may find herself becoming increasingly cynical about the motives of others and pessimistic about the human condition”
“The therapist also empathically shares the patient’s experience of helplessness. This may lead [them] to underestimate the value of her own knowledge and skill, or to lose sight of the patient’s strength and resources.”
Understanding that this is part of a natural cycle led me also to realise that it is crucial to resist my urgency to drown this ‘negativity’ with optimism (which must have been so annoying!), and to ensure that in these discussions participants feel that their voices are being heard, their feelings properly acknowledged and their suggestions responded to.
This also leads to an important point about the need to sometimes differentiate between spaces for sharing and acknowledgment of emotions and spaces to share suggestions, or to plan and design. We “respond to incoming information by activating emotional and arousal systems that stimulate action tendencies that can be modified by thought — John Hughlings Jackson”. This is the result of the property of the human neocortex to attach meaning to both the incoming input and the physical urges (tendencies) that these evoke, and to apply logical thought to calculate the long term effect of our actions. The heat of the moment and ‘despondent thinking’ can be great sources of inspiration for suggestions or changes, provided that they are moderated by rational thought and discussion, when people are ready for it.
In my experience, another common form of ‘despondent thinking’ comes in the form of loss of faith in our work: what difference do we even make? Are we just a ‘child-minding’ centre? Are we re-traumatising our kids? Shouldn’t there be more / harder consequences for some of the things they do? According to Judith Herman:
“It is not uncommon for experienced therapists to feel suddenly incompetent and hopeless in the face of a traumatised patient”
This highlights the importance of robust documentation, and appropriate monitoring and evaluation systems to ensure that even in the most challenging of times, we can cling on to clear indicators of the impact of our work. Of course, this does not mean becoming self-complacent…
Finally, I wanted to dedicate a few words to rage in the face of injustice: a unique and under-utilised manifestation of vicarious trauma, a force of nature that needs to be harnessed like we do with the sun or the wind:
“In addition to identifying with the victim’s helplessness, the therapist identifies with the victim’s rage. The therapist may experience the extremes of anger, from inarticulate fury through the intermediate ranges of frustration ad irritability to abstract, righteous indignation. This anger may be directed not only at the perpetrator but also at bystanders who failed to intercede, at colleagues who fail to understand, and generally at the larger society.”
Once again action is the key concept. If we can embrace and use this indignation to prompt effective action at different levels (assessment of gaps, identification of potential solutions, civic participation, political activism), not only will we ameliorate the symptoms of our vicarious trauma, but we will also bring about change. The point is not to supress our emotions, but to use them to bring about effective action:
