Vicarious Trauma And The Energy Social Workers Create
A good friend of mine called Nay introduced me to the term “Vicarious Trauma”, a concept she as an Australian Social Worker was well versed in before leaving college. It can affect all professionals but those in the Caring Professions can experience it on a day to day basis when dealing with other peoples trauma, “we can not help but experience second hand pain”. 22 years of being a social worker means a lot of second hand witnessing for me! I am very grateful to Nay for her lovely explanation about it, she also gave us a talk at one of our Stress Management training events recently which was much appreciated.
Concepts like these help me to understand that the very things that makes us care for others also makes us neglect our own wellbeing. We are expert practitioners in our fields and highly skilled professionals in other peoples wellbeing but mostly we stop far short in having insight to our own needs and also are not good in undertaking the actions to keep ourselves well.
Vicarious Trauma is negative energy sustained by and transmitted by our thoughts…..Have you seen the secret?….there has been a lot of research into post traumatic stress and vicarious trauma on social workers.
Even by ensuring I look for good feeling thougths in my day I am not usually left feeling that I have experinced enough positive energy to counteract my whole week of possible exposure to Vicarious Trauma! So I seek support and need reminding about taking care of myself constantly and I do this by building powerful nurturing support circles around me. Sometimes your team mates can not support you in this way or like me you may be an isolated Practitioner with Management responsibilities and hardly any work place peers to off load to.
Nays explanation of Vicarious Trauma and how to deal effecively with it is in my book which you can download at http://wwww.ReduceSocialWorkerStress.com
Have a great week
2 Responses to “Vicarious Trauma And The Energy Social Workers Create”
Comment from admin
Time March 30, 2009 at 11:33 am
Thanks for your comment cb
Yes I feel very strongly about this as an awareness issue and I think this must start early. My thoughts are that we as practitioners have a role in helping the social work training courses understand the impact and the ways we have been supporting ourselves and looking after our wellbeing. We have direct understanding of this and there should be some feedback loop into training to prepare social workers. However this needs to be done in an empowering way to get people to join the profession and look at creating good support, I would hate to see it taught as just a stand alone topic!
Gradle
“Transforming Work Place Wellbeing”
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Comment from cb
Time March 28, 2009 at 9:41 am
I can think of lots of situations both reported by colleagues, friends and having experiences myself where the element of ‘vicarious trauma’ is very real. I think the key is around support networks and being able to talk and reflect although I have to say, it’s taken a fair few years to get to that point. It is one of the reasons I feel very strongly that newly qualified social workers need more support rather than being pushed into highly stressful situations.
I’ll definitely check out the book!