Title: Coping with Secondary Traumatic Stress, Compassion Fatigue
Headings: Coping with Secondary Traumatic Stress, Compassion Fatigue
Coping with Secondary Traumatic Stress, Compassion Fatigue
What is Secondary Traumatic Stress?
What are the Symptoms of Secondary Traumatic Stress?
How is Compassion Fatigue Different?
12 Therapeutic Strategies for Coping with Secondary Traumatic Stress
Self-Care is an Essential

Content: Symptoms can also be triggered from exposure to violence in entertainment. For example, exposure to successive images of violence and victimization from incidents happening in the news media, and from experiencing traumatic scenes in TV shows, movies and videos. You do not have to be working in a particular industry to experience symptoms. However, the following people can potentially be at higher risk for developing them: Nurses, emergency hotline workers, child welfare workers, abuse counselors, animal welfare activists, journalists, photographers, Highly Sensitive Persons (HSP’s), energy healers, mediums and animal communicators and especially empaths. In fact, if you actively engage in activities promoting compassionate or heart-based living, or that encourages interaction with the sick, dying, the less fortunate, and victims of trauma (people and animals) even by way of healing and prayer, you are probably just as likely to develop symptoms of Secondary Traumatic Stress over time from repeated indirect exposure to violence and trauma as a healthcare worker is. What are the Symptoms of Secondary Traumatic Stress? Some symptoms include but are not limited to persistent feelings of the following, resulting from one or more of the triggers listed above: victimization/violation, heartbreak, restlessness, hopelessness, despair, anxiety, grief, shame, emptiness, survival guilt, hyper-vigilance, physical pain, heart palpitations, self-medicating with food/alcohol/other, emotional swings, emotional breakdowns, intrusive thoughts, irrational fear, ruminating or repeatedly re-living the story of the traumatic experience (s). It is common for people who are anguishing with Secondary Traumatic Stress to invalidate or hide their feelings because a traumatic incident affecting them didn’t happen directly to them.