Vicarious Trauma: Causes, Effects, and Management Strategies

Running head; VICARIOUS TRAUMA 1
VICARIOUS TRAUMA
Name
Affiliate institution
Tutor
Date

VICARIOUS TRAUMA
2
Introduction
Vicarious trauma is fatigue that usually affects counselors who advise and treat traumatic
patients. Dealing with people who have a history of overcoming trauma or those who are
currently dealing with trauma can affect the counselors in one way or another depending on their
personalities, their past experience with traumatic patients or things that happened to them.
Vicarious trauma is caused by the compassion of counselors to parties. The sympathy for painful
experiences told by patients may make the counselor feel their pain. Overthinking about patients’
terror stories can greatly contribute to vicarious trauma. (Lipsky, & Burk, 2009).
Factors that lead to the development of vicarious trauma to therapists
Work details
The probability of suffering from vicarious trauma when dealing with various aspects of
trauma stories is very high. In most cases, people who have traumatic experiences have the
problem of gaining other peoples trust no matter how sweetly they are talked to. This is a big
challenge that the therapists face at health facilities. A situation where the counselor feels the
pain being expressed by the patient and is willing to do anything to help the client but they can’t
trust the therapist because of what they have been through. The combination of terrifying stories
of abuse, lack of trust and the feeling of doing something to help but the client has mistrusted of
giving information. (Jordan 2010)

VICARIOUS TRAUMA
3
Therapists’ experiences and characteristics
The method with which therapists handle traumatic stories in most cases depends on their
personal encounters in the past, levels of anger, personalities and also their skills of dealing with
such kind of patients. ( Cohen & Collens, 2013). To manage the duties as a therapist, one should
first understand theory work very well and know how to handle different cases so as to make the
real thing less emotional. When a client tells a situation which is similar to something that
happened to the therapist in the past, it can easily lead to trauma. (Jordan 2010)
Social aspects
The society always stigmatizes people who are traumatic by looking down up because of their
endless complex needs. People having trauma should be supported mentally and physically to
help their minds to relax but when the people around them are neglecting them, it worsens the
situation. In most health care centers, all patients are treated at the same place regardless of their
needs. This may lead to lack of privacy traumatic patients exposing their situations to the public
(Rothschild, Babette & Majorie 2006) .This can frustrate the counselor giving him/her the
feeling that there should be quality services for patients with special needs. The many
requirements where there the resources are not enough can make the therapist angry and hopeless
leading to vicarious trauma. (Jenkins & Baird, 2012)
I am going to talk about these factors in details as I think these factors apply to me.
The social aspects
I was working as a therapist at a certain health care facility which was underdeveloped
and without enough facilities as compared to the needs. I was talking to a woman who had severe