Overview
How do we stay well when bearing witness to suffering? What is the impact of hearing, seeing, and reading about trauma daily? Chronic exposure to difficult stories can lead to experiences of secondary traumatic stress and empathic strain.
Secondary traumatic stress (STS) is the experience of being significantly impacted by the suffering of others and can develop after hearing about a traumatic event, witnessing its aftermath, or viewing photos or testimony related to it. Empathic strain (also referred to as compassion fatigue) is the profound emotional and physical exhaustion that can develop over the course of your career.
These occupational hazards are normal and common, particularly when working with people in crisis. This training explores the impact of empathic strain and secondary trauma exposure on the physical and emotional well-being of helping professionals and offers strategies to stay well.
This topic is also available as an on-demand course on the TEND Toolkit.
