Title: General - Secondary PTSD - An Overview | My PTSD Forum
Headings: General
Secondary PTSD - An Overview

General Secondary PTSD - An Overview
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Content: We may not be able to prevent the changes in our world view, but we can help each other keep it in perspective. The Emotional Impact of Trauma Work
A third way in which professional helpers can be affected is emotionally. This is the dimension most people think of when they hear terms like "compassion fatigue." But being affected emotionally is not restricted to extremes like depression. Working with traumatized people can be emotionally draining, especially if the client's trauma reverberates with our own experience. Most professional helpers recognize a need to limit the numbers of traumatized clients they see because they can become emotionally exhausted by the work. Ironically, working with trauma clients can cause us to feel emotionally drained even as we experience a heightened level of physiological arousal. Then, just as with trauma survivors themselves, we helpers can reach a state in which we're exhausted yet can't slow down our physiology. At such times, we're more vulnerable to the distressing thoughts and perceptions that can come from working with people whose sense of living in a safe and predictable world has been shattered. Thus, secondary exposure can lead to an extreme reaction, such as the development of the full PTSD syndrome, or it can lead to a less clearly symptomatic--yet perhaps chronic--condition in which our work seems to take over our life.