If you’ve spent any amount of time working with clients, survivors, or on heavy cases, whether as a social worker, advocate, law enforcement officer, medical professional, military personnel, or part of a multidisciplinary team, you already know this truth:
The work changes you.
Sometimes in beautiful ways. And sometimes in ways we don’t recognize until the weight becomes too much.
This is where vicarious trauma begins to take root.
It’s the subtle accumulation of the stories we hear, the pain we witness, the crises we respond to, and the bravery we hold space for. It’s the cost of caring deeply in careers where the need never slows down.
Having spent fifteen years in social work and nearly a decade specifically in human trafficking response, I’ve seen how quietly vicarious trauma can grow…not because we’re weak, but because we’re human. We care about safety, justice, and the wellbeing of the people we serve. Of course, their pain affects us. Seeing the worst of the world impacts us, no matter how skilled or committed we are. We are humans before we are professionals.
I was never taught about these impacts in school. No one warned us about the toll the work could take. It wasn’t until I stepped fully into the trafficking field that I saw how deeply the work was affecting me and my colleagues, the ones who started avoiding going home, drinking more, battling anxiety, becoming quieter, or slowly disengaging from clients and cases they once poured themselves into.
What Vicarious Trauma Is (and Isn’t)
People often lump everything under “burnout,” but these experiences are different. We can experience both of them (and all of the terms below), but the causes and impacts are not the same.
Vicarious Trauma
A cumulative shift in how we view the world, ourselves, and others, caused by ongoing exposure to trauma.
Think:
- “Why am I suddenly more on edge?”
- “Why do I distrust people more?”
- “Why does the world feel less safe than it used to?”
Vicarious trauma is about worldview shifts, not just fatigue.
Secondary Traumatic Stress
Sometimes used interchangeably with vicarious trauma, but slightly different. Secondary trauma is an acute reaction to hearing traumatic material, mirroring PTSD symptoms.
Think:
- intrusive thoughts
- difficulty sleeping
- hypervigilance
- emotional numbing
Secondary trauma can come from a single and intense case, but overtime we are traumatized secondarily from all of the work we do.
For me, sometimes changing my child’s diaper becomes a big, emotional task due to the invasive thoughts I may have during a seemingly normal parenting moment. Witnessing and hearing about child trafficking/online exploitation and seeing those images and videos provides space for intrusive thoughts, which can start to impact daily functioning.
Burnout
Rooted in systems and workload, not trauma exposure. Most of us experience burn out on top of the other impacts that come directly from other people’s pain.
Think:
- exhaustion
- cynicism
- feeling ineffective
- being overworked and underpaid
- loss of motivation
Burnout can happen in any job. It does not need to come from the high-stress, high-pressure and trauma-exposed work we do. And in fact, most of us probably have been burnt out of a job that had nothing to do with this type of work.
Compassion Fatigue
What happens when empathy meets chronic overload. It’s the emotional residue of caring for others without replenishing ourselves.
Over time, constant self-sacrifice can exhaust our capacity for compassion. We start to predetermine outcomes, disconnect from the “why,” and lose sight of the purpose that once drove us. The definition is literally in the term “compassion fatigue” which is also known as empathic strain.
Moral Suffering
Moral suffering happens when we are forced to navigate situations that violate our values, ethics, or sense of what is right. There are more specifics to this when we look into moral injury (a term that came from the military) and moral distress (a term from the medical field).
It happens when:
- a trafficking survivor returns to their trafficker
- the system fails again
- charges are dropped
- services are limited
- a child is sent back into an unsafe environment
- your team or agency restricts what you know is needed
- a supervisor requests that you act in a way that conflicts with your belief system
- you carry responsibility without having any power
- moral and ethical conflict during deployments, including witnessing harm, being unable to intervene, or carrying responsibility for life-or-death decisions that have no “right” answer
Moral suffering shows up as:
- anger
- helplessness
- guilt
- grief
- frustration toward systems
- shame for not being able to “fix” it
And deeply, quietly, it can make us question ourselves:
Am I doing enough?
Why am I part of a system that keeps failing people?
How do I keep showing up when this feels so wrong?
Unlike compassion fatigue, which drains emotional energy, moral suffering strikes at the core of who we are: our values, integrity, justice, and hope.
For many of us, this is the deepest wound of all.
Why Frontline Responders Are So Vulnerable
The trafficking field is uniquely intense as are many other areas of frontline work. Our cases and clients aren’t navigating just trauma, they’re navigating:
- complex victim–offender relationships
- chronic exploitation and long histories of harm
- systemic failures
- stigma and misunderstanding
- retraumatizing legal processes
- cycles of running, returning, and surviving
- experiences tied to military service, such as identity shifts after discharge, or difficulty reintegrating into civilian systems
We see the gaps. We feel responsible. We witness the darkest parts of humanity, and our nervous systems absorb far more than we realize.
Many of us also entered this work with our own why: our own histories and passions, wounds, and lived experiences that make us both powerful and vulnerable.
Our brains don’t fully clock out, not at home, not in bed, not even when we insist we’re “fine.”
Boundaries are hard in this work, and so is shutting off what we can’t un-know about the world. The problem is, many of us stop enjoying life outside of work and the people we care about feel that shift, too. Without boundaries, we burn out faster. And at some point, we have to ask ourselves: Would I want to work with me right now? Would I want to be my own partner, my own child? What would it feel like to depend on me as a victim of a crime?
When we fail to set boundaries, we don’t just harm ourselves, we unintentionally impact everyone around us.
Signs You Might Be Carrying More Than You Realize
If any of these resonate, you’re not alone:
- Feeling emotionally heavy after certain cases
- Becoming more protective of your own children
- Feeling numb or detached
- Difficulty trusting people
- Intrusive thoughts and/or nightmares
- Guilt taking time off
- Constantly feeling “on alert”
- Less capacity for relationships or hobbies
- Feeling responsible for things outside your control
- Self-medicating with drugs or alcohol (oftentimes starting subtly and increasing over time)
- Overworking to avoid thinking about the work
These are not personal failures. They are warning lights; your body asking you to pay attention.
The Work Changes Us, So We Must Change How We Care for Ourselves
You cannot sustain this work if you refuse to care for yourself. I know how hard self-care feels in this field because the work never sleeps, and boundaries feel impossible. But if we don’t learn to care for ourselves, we move through life as traumatized little worker bees. And that is no way to live. We have to believe this stuff works.
Self-care is not indulgent. It is not fluffy, and it is certainly not something to feel guilty for. It is professional responsibility.
Here are some non-negotiables:
1. Build a routine.
Use habit stacking to pair an automatic habit like brushing your teeth or driving to work with something new.
Take five minutes after your first cup of coffee to meditate or check in with your family for a few minutes before the day gets hectic. Take time on the drive to work for silence, thinking about three things you are grateful for today. Do a body scan when you crawl into bed each night to check in with your physical self and ensure you are relaxed.
2. Stay connected to your “why”.
Purpose should motivate (not drain) you. Ask yourself: What is my purpose? What is my role today?
Spirituality often supports this. We lose ourselves in the work, and sometimes we forget to look for the higher powers we believe in to help ground us. Reconnect with your spiritual side and tap into your purpose through the things that give you hope.
3. Create boundaries that are actually boundaries.
Real boundaries say, “No, I can’t take another case today.”
Turn off notifications. Leave the work phone at home when you take vacation.
But also ask yourself: Why is this boundary hard? What fear does it bring up?
For me, it was fear that someone would be harmed if I didn’t respond, or that people wouldn’t depend on me anymore. So if you feel similarly to this, how can we move through some of this and start prioritizing ourselves? If we are not well, how can we help those who turn to us when they need it most? As we are reminded on every single flight, we must place the mask on ourselves before assisting others.
4. Lean into peer support.
The number one thing I hear across the nation is that people isolate when the work becomes too much or too heavy.
That is the moment connection matters most. Figure out how to tap into your circle of support, social hobbies, and colleagues who can be your sounding board.
Isolation fuels burnout but connection buffers it.
5. Normalize talking about the impact of the work.
We lose more colleagues to emotional injury more than physical danger.
Create spaces, at work and at home, where talking openly is safe and expected. The quickest way to make change is the normalize the experience and support one another as we move through it. We are all impacted differently from the work due to our own traumas, triggers, life experiences, current stressors and more. We cannot compare each other but we can be part of the change we need to ensure we are not losing another person to the hardships of the work.
The world is safer with us in it. Staying well is how we ensure it stays that way.
6. Stop glorifying self-neglect.
Exhaustion is not a badge of honor and we need to stop wearing it like one. How can we make adjustments? How do we remember that life is worth living? We are here to enjoy it, not suffer each day in silence.
7. Do something every week that you look forward to.
Movement.
Creativity.
Hobbies.
Friends.
Rest.
Joy.
These are survival strategies.
The Bottom Line
Vicarious trauma isn’t a sign that you’re “not cut out for this work.”
It’s a sign that you are deeply, beautifully human in a field that asks more of us than most people will ever understand.
The goal isn’t to avoid being impacted. The goal is to be impacted in a sustainable way; to allow the work to shape us without shattering us.
Those of us in the trenches deserve to stay whole.
We deserve to stay grounded.
We deserve to stay well.
And we deserve to have a full life outside the work.
Because the work is too important to lose the people doing it.
-keep shining
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