Secondary traumatization is a term that refers to the stressful consequence to working with traumatic material. When you are empathetic, you open yourself up and become vulnerable to internalize the traumatized individual’s experience. This is especially the case when workplaces do not offer enough recovery time between emotional cases.
Symptoms you may feel
Arousal symptoms from secondary traumatic stress such as irritability, avoidance, and intrusion can be difficult to manage. You may have a difficult time balancing your role. Having difficulty leaving your job in the workplace, you stay late at work, take work home with them and feel isolated. You may shut down and not talk about what you are going through with family, friends, or coworkers. You experience an inability to empathize and are no longer emotionally connected to those you serve. Your health suffers, especially if you have your own interpersonal trauma history. Aches and pains become a common problem. Furthermore, you can become cynical to manage your intense feelings.
Secondary traumatization
Although another person experienced the primary stress, your body reacts like you were the one who experienced the primary trauma. Secondary traumatization occurs when you are triggered by someone’s trauma material. You experience a physical reaction called the stress response.
Secondary traumatic stress is associated with perceived stress and the amount of time a professional spends with the trauma material. The stress response starts as the brain is triggered and warns the muscles in the body. At that point, adrenal glands release stress hormones, adrenalin, and cortisol, that prepare the body to keep safe, known as the fight or flight response.
Stress response
The stress response helps your mind and body to quickly react to a life-threatening situation by fighting or fleeing. The fight or flight response is a survival mechanism. The heart pounds as blood pressure rises. As blood is sent to muscles and the brain, breath quickens so more oxygen can get into the blood.
You need energy to manage the stressor. Therefore, sugars and fats are released into the blood. Stress hormones produce physiological changes in the body, and you begin to sweat. There is no harm to your body if this only occurs occasionally. However, if you continually navigate trauma material day after day in the workplace, it can become chronic stress.
Reflective Question
If you have ever experienced the stress response, what happened?
Chronic stress is not healthy and can bring about high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, anxiety, worry, frustration, anxiety, exhaustion. Any emotional distress felt from someone else’s traumatic material (e.g., hearing a traumatic story, seeing the traumatic aftermath, seeing images related to the trauma, talking about the trauma), can impact your overall health, which can cause you to feel detached from others.
Where Do You Go from Here?
When you are emotionally overwhelmed because of the firsthand trauma of another or several difficult cases, seek out support, especially if the condition persists for more than a month. A traumatizing event experienced by one individual can become a traumatizing event for another individual. Therefore, reduce secondary traumatic stress symptoms and general distress by getting educated about protective factors, identifying your strengths, and putting them into practice to meet the demands of your job.
On an organizational level, secondary traumatic stress training should focus on improving a supportive work environment. Leaders, management, and supervisors must recognize the effects of traumatic exposure by training professionals in evidence-based methods of coping with traumatic stress..
Barbara Rubel is a nationally recognized keynote speaker, author, and trainer who helps organizations address the human impact of high-stress and trauma-exposed work. Through Griefwork Center, Inc., she provides speaking and training on compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, moral injury, suicide postvention, grief, resilience, and workplace well-being.
Creator of the FABULOUS TRANSFORMATION® framework, Barbara brings more than three decades of experience translating complex topics into practical strategies that strengthen resilience, support employee well-being, and help organizations create healthier, more sustainable workplaces.
Barbara is a Board-Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress and a Diplomate with the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress. She holds a Master of Arts in community health with a concentration in thanatology and a Bachelor of Science in psychology from Brooklyn College.
