Shared Trauma: When the Professional is Personal

Abstract

Concepts describing secondary trauma phenomena do not adequately capture the profound impact that collective catastrophic events can have on mental health professionals living and working in traumatogenic environments. Shared trauma, by contrast, contains aspects of primary and secondary trauma, and more accurately describes the extraordinary experiences of clinicians exposed to the same community trauma as their clients. Case vignettes from clinicians in Manhattan and Sderot, Israel are provided to illustrate the transformative changes that clinicians may undergo as a result of dual exposure to trauma. Discussion involves the importance of articulating one's own trauma narrative and attending to self-care prior to resuming clinical work, as well as opportunities for enhanced therapeutic intimacy and caution regarding boundary alterations that may result from clinician self-disclosure. Agency settings can provide the necessary education, supervision, and support to mitigate the negative effects of shared trauma.

‘I Am in a Constant State of Insecurity Trying to Make Ends Meet, like Our Service Users’: Shared Austerity Reality between Social Workers and Service Users—Towards a Preliminary Conceptualisation

“…In recent years, a small but growing body of scholarly work has been addressing the concept of "shared reality" (Kretsch, et al, 1997), "shared traumatic reality" (Dekel and Baum, 2010;Nuttman-Shwartz et al, 2009) and "shared trauma" (Tosone et al, 2012). The features common to these three interrelated concepts are situations of shared reality in which welfare professionals and service users were exposed to the same collective disaster.…”

Clinical supervision, burnout and intent to leave: an Australian mixed methods study of community-based allied health professionals

“…Some wondered where they could seek out an appropriate avenue for debriefing, where they could make sense of their own experiences, and those that were impacting on their supervisees. A supervisor expressed it this way, It is widely recognised that being exposed to recurring indirect trauma experiences can be detrimental to worker well-being (Tosone, Nuttman-Shwartz, & Stephens, 2012).…”

“…Supervision is one mechanism considered to be appropriate for lessening this impact (Ling et al, 2014;Tosone et al, 2012), however it was not generally available to the supervisors in the study location. All supervisors expressed a strong need to have access to their own supervisor for support with their supervisory responsibilities.…”

Do Qualitative Researchers Experience Vicarious Trauma? And, does it Matter?

“…Vicarious trauma denotes damaging changes that can occur in practitioners as a result of engaging in an empathetic relationship with traumatized clients (Aparicio, Michalopoulos, & Unick, 2013;Branson et al, 2014;Kadambi & Truscott, 2004). These changes are negative and can affect the practitioner psychologically, physically, emotionally, socially, and/or spiritually (Tosone, Nuttman-Shwartz, & Stephens, 2012). Additionally, changes that occur as a result of vicarious trauma can be permanent due to the practitioner's schemas and worldview being altered (Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995).…”

“…Countertransference refers to a clinical situation in which a practitioner's unresolved internal issues are aroused by a client's disclosures, potentially creating poor therapeutic boundaries (Tosone et al, 2012). Pearlman and Saakvitne (1995) initially pursued this phenomenon to explain negative effects that occurred with practitioners working with sexually traumatized clients.…”