Vicarious trauma when working with difficult content

Murphy Peoples

Content note: in this article I will mention (but not go into details about) children in institutions

Exposure to difficult content

There are many aspects of the work we do in interpretation that may bring you into contact with traumatic content. Whether it be stories, objects, taonga, places or people you may find yourself feeling confronted, drained, or even emotional because of your work.

In recent years I have worked with curators on exhibition concepts that we knew would expose both kaimahi (staff) and eventually manuhiri (visitors) to confronting subject matter and it is important to prepare and protect ourselves when doing this work. One area which I have found most useful to understand is that of vicarious trauma.

Vicarious trauma

Vicarious trauma is when you have a negative reaction to trauma exposure when you are not the person who experienced it directly.

There are many examples in the archives sector of organisations taking a trauma informed approach to work. An example of vicarious trauma is described bt Melanie Delver, a Canadian working in archives with records relating to Indigenous children in residential schools: ‘I couldn’t sleep at night, and when I did I dreamt of the faces of the children in the records.’ Source: Addressing Separation Loss & Trauma (Australian Society of Archivists 2017) - YouTube

It is worth noting that identifying and acknowledging vicarious trauma does not take away from the trauma experienced by others.

‘Vicarious trauma’ is also closely related to concepts such as ‘secondary traumatic stress’ used in WorkSafe Mahi Haumaru Aotearoa material. For example: a 2021 report about poor physical and psychosocial health outcomes for health care and social assistance workers discusses exposure to traumatic events that may lead to stress or secondary traumatic stress: Health care and social assistance report | WorkSafe

Symptoms can include:

emotional numbing
social withdrawal
work-related nightmares
reduced empathy or respect for people experiencing difficult circumstances
having little time or energy for yourself
disconnection from loved ones
increased illness or fatigue
difficulty making decisions
reduced motivation for work.

Symptoms and effects can be amplified if they aren’t managed.

Prepare kaimahi via transparency

This may be bringing up memories for you of times when you have experienced vicarious trauma in your work. Would your experience have been different if you had been better prepared? Would you have undertaken the work if you’d known what was ahead of you?

Should we be considering kaimahi experiences and needs before allocating them to a project for which the content may be more likely to impact them? How would we know? There’s a tricky balance here between privacy and protection, but having open conversations and being transparent about content before kaimahi come across it may enable people to make that decision for themselves, assuming you have a workplace that would respect and support such a decision.

One way I’ve changed my practice in this area is by including a content note in meeting requests to make clear what topics will be discussed, or speaking to managers responsible for allocating kaimahi to ensure they are aware of the content ahead of time.

Care for manuhiri (visitors)

In interpretation, it should also be part of our normal practice to pre-emptively consider that vicarious trauma may affect those who participate in or access our work, and that we may need to consider this during the development of a project.

The Australian Society of Archivists (ASA) encourage a trauma-informed approach to working with, or conducting work about, people who have experienced trauma. The ASA acknowledge that working directly with trauma survivors, recorded testimony, or third-party documentation of trauma can lead to an experience of vicarious trauma. I found this ASA video particularly useful: A Trauma-informed Approach to Managing Archives

Name it to tame it

The biggest takeaway for me about vicarious trauma is the power of knowing it exists and that it may help to name some difficult emotions. When my children were toddlers, I learnt the parenting phrase ‘name it to tame it’ as a way to help tantrum-prone toddlers understand their big feelings, and I feel like this an approach that can also help can help a team working on challenging projects – using the name of vicarious trauma to allow us to bring it up as a feeling or response we are having, and thus allow us to discuss it and/or seek support.

Additional resources I found informative from a workplace perspective

Vicarious Trauma - what it is and why we should be concerned.pdf (Vitae, EAP provider, New Zealand)
WorkSafe Mahi Haumaru Aotearoa also provide guidance on managing this risk in a 2019 report: Psychosocial hazards in work environments and effective approaches for managing them | WorkSafe
WorkSafe also discusses the related concept of ‘secondary traumatic stress’ in a 2021 report about poor physical and psychosocial health outcomes for health care and social assistance workers: Health care and social assistance report | WorkSafe

Murphy Peoples [insert bio]