It has been a busy month for my program, Cumberland River Victims Services, with it being Child Abuse Awareness Month and Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.
I would like to do a special shout out to all of the businesses that allowed for their windows to be painted for the month. I would also like to do a special shoutout to the law enforcement agencies that allowed for magnets to be placed on their vehicles to recognize both of these months. Finally, thanks to all who visited with us at Colonel Fest on Saturday. We are always happy to see the public, tell them what we do, and get referrals both for therapy clients and education programs.
While I am thanking people for doing what is right to raise awareness for child abuse and sexual assault, I would like to thank the Whitley County Circuit Clerk’s office for looking out for their jurors this month. There was a particularly horrific child abuse case that was tried at the beginning of the month in which jurors were expected to view photographs and a video as evidence of child abuse.
The clerk’s office contacted our office to have therapists come to the justice center to provide crisis intervention to the jurors who had to be active observers of the evidence. This can cause what is known as secondary trauma, which is trauma that occurs when we are exposed to disturbing images and stories secondhand.
Vicarious trauma is another term that is used to describe the same sort of trauma, but the difference is that it is the cumulative total of exposure to traumatic stories and experiences of others through work.
Professionals such as first responders, judges, medical personnel, therapists, journalists, court workers, and attorneys can have vicarious trauma. We may think of these people as being used to their jobs and having built up an immunity to the things that they see. This is a misconception.
Symptoms of vicarious and secondary trauma are similar and include: changes in how you view the world and the people in it (safety level, optimism and trust level), increased stress, cynicism, and pessimism, feeling numb or on edge frequently without reason, hyperawareness of danger, excessive worry, changes in sleep, increase in physical symptoms, easily distracted, relationship changes, increase in use of potentially harmful coping behaviors (binge eating, under eating , alcohol or drug consumption, taking unnecessary risks), and re-experiencing the traumatic events and/or thinking about the events when not wanting or trying to.
People who experience these types of trauma can take action to lessen the effects. Some ideas of what a person can do include: talk to a trusted person someone about what you are experiencing, limit consumption of traumatic events that you don’t have to be exposed to, take breaks throughout the workday even if only for a few moments, learn the warning signs of feeling overwhelmed and then do something to reduce it (exercise, read, watch a movie, talk to someone).
Vicarious and secondary trauma are a necessary part of life, but they can have detrimental effects when not managed.
