Anything that your body feels like you cannot handle: too much or too little of something for too short or too long. 

Often times when we think of trauma, we think of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD for short. Before our modern understanding of how prevalent trauma and traumatic experiences can be, this was known as "shell shock," and only a label given to soldiers who came back from the brutality of war and struggled to feel safe or "normal."

Now, we know that not just veterans or survivors of violence can feel these effects of trauma. Think of a time you were unable to sleep because you were worrying money or food. Or even an event you weren't involved in - maybe you drove by a car crash and couldn't shake the imagery or thoughts of what happened out of your heard.

Though these weren't acts of violence directed towards you, the stress and anxiety from any sort fear like this can be traumatizing. And your inability to sleep may be an example of your body having a trauma response - where your body shuts down or freaks out over stress and anxiety. 

Triggers are how we refer to what causes us to have a trauma response. They are threats or events within yourself, family, or environment which cause the adverse reactions which may come with trauma.

Trauma can be triggered by any number of things, and a trauma response can feel like many things, a few we've listed below in our section on symptoms. This variance makes it difficult to pin down when we're feeling traumatized, but regardless of that, we all deserve to feel safe and heal from our traumas. 

Vicarious trauma is the result of being exposed and empathically listening to stories of trauma, suffering and violence, caused by humans to other humans (Pearlman and Saakvitne 1995).  The trauma response may worsen with repeated exposure to traumatic material. Repeated exposure to traumatic interview material is an unavoidable part of the research process, and vicarious trauma is thought to be a normal process resulting from exposure to such traumatic materials (Campbell 2002; Morrison 2007). 

In other words: vicarious trauma is a build up of the burden you carry when helping so many others work through their own trauma and suffering. No one expects you to be impervious to this; instead, we want you to take care of yourself in the same way you do for the people in your life and work. We've outlined simple self-care plan below. If you have self-care techniques you find useful and wish to share, we'd love to hear about them.

• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms (nightmares, intrusive images and thoughts, emotional numbing) and / or depression (hopelessness, depressed mood, despair);

• Alterations in views of themselves, their identity, their society, and the larger world; 

• Loss of a sense of personal safety and control; 

• Feelings of fear, anger, and being overwhelmed; 

• Feelings of guilt and/or diminished confidence in capacities and frustration with the limits of what one can do to improve a situation; 

• Increased sensitivity to violence; 

• Altered sensory experiences, such as symptoms of dissociation; 

• Loss of ability to trust other individuals and institutions; 

• Inability to empathize with others; 

• Social withdrawal; 

• Disconnection from loved ones; 

• Inability to be emotionally and / or sexually intimate with others; 

• Lack of time or energy for oneself; 

• Changes in spirituality and belief systems; 

• Cynicism; 

• Loss of self-esteem and sense of independence; 

• Minimizing the experience of vicarious trauma as trivial compared to the problems of respondents

If you start to feel any of these symptoms, please reach out to XX.  Consider referring to your self-care plan, which you will create below!