I have worked in child welfare for more than 31 years and experienced vicarious trauma on numerous occasions.
Today’s dose of vicarious trauma hit heavy with much more impact than usual.
This morning I received a call from an individual who was a child on a very serious case I had years ago. In fact, it was probably the most difficult case I’ve ever dealt with. It involved mind bending amounts of sexual and physical abuse with removal of 5 children from the family home.
The oldest girl (now in her 40s) called to tell me her younger brother shot their father and then shot himself a few weeks ago.
I talked with her for a long time and she has handled the situation responsibly. She was asking for details about past abuse that I could not answer.
After the call I noticed I was not feeling well. Headache, sudden fatigue, stress eating, etc.
All kinds of memories from this case started flooding my mind and I had a hard time dealing with anything this afternoon at work. I had this case for more than 10 years with impacts on both my professional and personal life.
At one point the mother in the family threatened to kill me or send someone to kill me. I had to change my phone number and request that it not be listed (back in the mid 1990s when we still used phone books .)
I was able to process a bit with a couple of colleagues who were aware of this case from years ago.
That helped somewhat and I’m fine. Just dealing wth a bit of mental heaviness and diminished concentration.
I’m getting ready to retire in the next six months.
Cases from my earlier days seem to be filtering back in with varying amounts of upheaval and heartbreak.
I anticipated some mixed feelings about leaving but never predicted this kind of send off.
I’m sorry for all the upheaval. I work for a domestic violence and sexual assault services agency and we have a whole support group for vicarious trauma. There are some stories that will haunt me forever, but I’m not in the trenches seeing this stuff day to day like you are. It takes a very special kind of person to do what you do and ironically the kind of person you have to be to do that job will be more sensitive to the negative impact of said job.
Do all the self-care things, and for this major transition do all the self-care things extensively. Whatever self-care means to you.
And thank you. Thank you for doing that really hard job.
I don’t have a lot of wisdom or relevant experience to know completely what you’re going through, but I empathize.
I worked as an EMT for around 8 years. I saw my share of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse incidents. As much as I loved the job, those were rough days.
I can’t imagine dealing with it for 20+. Much respect.
That’s amazing to have a support group for employees in that kind of work. I’ve tried on several occasions to get our administration to set up something like that. Unfortunately it never worked out.
I’ve learned over the years to compartmentalize the work stress but the boundaries are not always easy to maintain.
I’m getting tired and starting to look forward to retirement. I’ll miss a lot of the people I work with but not the stress of the daily chaos. I may have to resume therapy at some point just to navigate the transition.
This I can relate to. I did attend our Trauma Stewardship meetings at one point, and read some of the book. I figured I was dealing with primary trauma more than secondary trauma, so I bowed out. Doing this work can be really triggering if you have PTSD. I had some moments where I nearly walked away from my job. I had a really hard time especially with the media and how all the rape apologists would come out of the woodwork and I started thinking, well this is the same shit from twenty years ago so obviously nothing I’m doing matters.
One of the things I had to do was recognize that everything at my agency and in the news, these were not my stories. They were someone else’s stories. This thing that happened is not about me. I had to learn to make that distinction in order to keep my sanity, and I think it made me a better advocate.
Just commiserating. You probably have far more expertise in how to avoid burnout than I do!
This is such a great bit of perspective to keep in mind. I’m not sure I’ve had it phrased in this exact format so thank you!
At first my own stories and the chaos I dealt with seemed to blend together. Even though I learned to separate them in theory it sometimes failed in practice.
From my experiences in the ER, you can be blindsided by your emotional response to an unexpected trigger, but it’s unlikely to be an isolated cause. You say this was an old case, but you might still benefit from some counseling, I did.
A lot of people find EMDR helpful. I’ve done it and found it very helpful. It has a robust evidence base, but nobody knows why it works and its proponents are not very interested in answering that question. Just an FYI because the whole thing might seem kind of woo. But there are a large number of randomized controlled trials showing its efficacy, so I am confident in recommending it.
Where it can help, I think, is gaining insight into past memories with the wisdom of the present. We all have things we know logically aren’t true but a part of us still feels like they are true and it’s hard to shake that feeling. EMDR made me actually fully and totally believe the more rational part of my brain, so that the constant back and forth internal struggle was no longer an issue. YMMV.
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