Vicarious Trauma: How Much More Can We Take?

Another week, another tragedy. It’s hard to take it all in, let alone make any sense of it. How does bad news affect us? We can all be affected by vicarious trauma. That is the “one step removed” trauma that didn’t actually happen to us directly, but which still impacts us nonetheless. Obviously, for the victims’ friends and relatives the effects are acute, but for onlookers (also from the news, social media and the press) these events have a profound cumulative effect. When experiencing physical or emotional trauma first- or secondhand, our brains are affected by a perceived threat to well-being. We are affected not only by the shock and outrage, but also by the emotional tidal wave that accompanies a significant traumatic event. This is registered in the emotional, or limbic, part of our brain, and we then try to give it a narrative story with which to file it away. The problem is that our mental filing cabinets are already overflowing with traumatic stories. For those of us able to feel empathy and compassion for our fellow man, we then feel compelled to act, to alleviate suffering, and to get things back to normal. However, when we understandably feel impotent in the face of such huge national and global threats and traumatic events — whether natural or man-made, one-off or repeated — our distress is compounded, and we can lapse into a ‘freeze’ state of emotional overwhelm, inertia and collapse. One way we try to m...
Source: World of Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Disorders General Grief and Loss Psychology PTSD Trauma Violence and Aggression brain Emotion Feeling fight or flight Mass murder mass shooting Psychological Trauma ripple effect social media Terrorism Tragedy Worry Source Type: blogs