Most of the time you love the work you do… But there are days when what you see, hear, or experience can be crushing.
The most painful, brutal, or frightening parts of being human are laid out before you. You are surrounded by it every day at work and after a while it becomes your normal. But sometimes it hits you. That moment you share a small piece of your experience with a friend or someone outside your specific environment and you watch them recoil, or you read the intense reaction on their face. You realize just how awful some of what you deal with on a daily basis actually is. You feel like you can’t share with other people, out of fear of traumatizing them. Or even when they tell you it’s okay, you still worry about the impact on them. It can feel lonely and isolating, carrying all these stories and pain on your own.
What is vicarious trauma?
Vicarious trauma is the internal shift that occurs when we deeply and repeatedly engage with the trauma, suffering, or distress of others. The term was coined by researchers McCann and Pearlman in 1990 to capture a phenomenon they observed in therapists: that repeated exposure to others’ trauma has the potential to reshape core beliefs about yourself and the world.¹
In the decades since, research has expanded well beyond the therapist’s office. Studies now document vicarious trauma in healthcare, law enforcement, fire services, social work, victim advocacy, or in any profession where exposure to others’ suffering is not the exception, but the daily reality.²
It is also different from a bad day or a hard week. Vicarious trauma builds over time, shaped by the cumulative weight of what you witness, hold, and absorb.
How is vicarious trauma different from burnout or compassion fatigue?
These three terms are often used interchangeably. And while each describes something real and distinct, they frequently overlap, and more than one might be present at the same time. Understanding each one can help you name what you are carrying.
Burnout is rooted in the conditions of the work itself. It develops when the demands of the job chronically outpace the resources available: too many cases, too little support, not enough time to recover between. The experience tends to be one of depletion and disillusionment. It can feel like exhaustion that accumulates, a growing sense that the effort is not sustainable, or perhaps a creeping resentment toward work that once felt meaningful. Burnout is primarily about the relationship between a person and their workload.
Compassion fatigue is more specifically about the emotional cost of caring. It develops through repeated empathic engagement with people who are suffering and can look like: absorbing their pain, holding their distress, showing up for their hardest moments over and over. It can feel like the well of empathy has run dry. You may still care deeply, but find yourself feeling numb, detached, or unable to access the warmth that used to come naturally.
Vicarious trauma is defined by a shift in how you see the world. It is not primarily about depletion or emotional exhaustion (though those may be present), but about the ways that repeated exposure to others’ trauma begins to change your internal framework. Your sense of safety, your trust in people, your beliefs about fairness or meaning: these can quietly reorganize around what you have witnessed. Researchers describe it as a transformation in worldview, one that can affect how you see yourself, others, and the future.
Signs you might be experiencing vicarious trauma
Vicarious trauma does not always announce itself clearly. It tends to slip in quietly, disguised as tiredness, or a shorter fuse, or just a general flatness that is hard to name. Symptoms often mirror those of PTSD, emerging through emotional, cognitive, and physiological channels, though they stem from indirect rather than direct trauma exposure.⁵
Here are some signs worth paying attention to:
Emotional exhaustion or numbness.
You used to feel moved by the work. Now some days you feel like you are going through the motions. Or you feel everything all at once and cannot seem to find a neutral place to rest.
Feeling constantly “on.”
Your nervous system does not fully settle, even when you are technically off the clock. You are alert, scanning, bracing, not sure for what.
Irritability, withdrawal, or reduced capacity.
You snap more easily. You have less to give in your personal relationships. The people closest to you may be getting a version of you that feels diminished, and you may not know how to explain it.
Other people’s stories stay in your body.
Images, words, or details from someone else’s experience linger. They show up in your sleep, your quiet moments, the in-between spaces of your day.
Disrupted sleep or intrusive thoughts.
You lie awake replaying situations, worrying, or experiencing dreams that feel heavy and hard to shake.
Cynicism or a shrinking sense of what is possible.
The hopeful, motivated version of you feels far away. You catch yourself thinking thoughts that would have surprised an earlier version of you.
Difficulty being restored by the things that used to restore you.
Rest does not feel like rest. Time off does not fully recharge you. The well that used to refill is taking longer to fill back up.
How vicarious trauma quietly shows up in your life
One of the most disorienting things about vicarious trauma is how subtle and gradual it can be. There is rarely a moment where you can point and say: that is when it happened.
Instead, it accumulates.
In your body. Chronic tension in your shoulders, jaw, or chest. Fatigue. Headaches. Digestive issues. A physical heaviness that does not have a clear medical explanation.
In your relationships. You come home depleted and find you have little left to offer. You may withdraw or feel emotionally distant from people you love. Patience runs thin. Connection feels harder to access. The people in your life may sense a change, even if it feels hard to name.
In your work. You notice dread before certain appointments or shifts. You catch yourself avoiding particular kinds of cases, conversations, or clients. The meaning that once sustained you feels harder to access. You are still showing up, but sometimes just barely.
In your worldview. This is perhaps the quietest and most profound impact. Vicarious trauma can gradually reshape the lens through which you see the world: your sense of safety, your trust in people or systems, your belief in the possibility of healing.
Naming this matters. Because what has been shaped by trauma can also be reshaped by healing.
How therapy can help vicarious trauma and burnout
One of the most significant things therapy offers someone experiencing vicarious trauma is a space where YOU are the one being held. Not the one holding it together. Not the one tracking someone else’s nervous system, managing someone else’s pain, or working to fix or right something that is wrong. Just you, in the room, allowed to be exactly where you are.
That alone can be profound for people whose default mode is caring for others.
But beyond that relational shift, therapy offers real, practical support:
A place to process what you have absorbed. The stories, images, and experiences that have stayed with you deserve to be worked through, not performed around, not professionally contained, or buried deep inside, but actually processed. Therapy creates the conditions for that.
Body-based approaches to release stored tension. Approaches like somatic therapy, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), and Internal Family Systems (IFS) are particularly well-suited to vicarious trauma because they work with the body and the nervous system, not just the mind.
Rebuilding your sense of safety and meaning. A skilled therapist can help you examine the ways your worldview has shifted and gently support you in finding your footing again, not by returning to naivety, but by developing a more grounded and sustainable way of holding both the difficulty and the possibility in the world.
Developing boundaries that protect your capacity. Not the kind of boundaries that require you to care less, but the kind that make it possible for you to keep caring. Therapy can help you understand what you need, articulate it, and actually protect it.
Seeking support is not a departure from your excellence or expertise. For many people who care for others professionally, it becomes the thing that makes the work possible at all.
You deserve care too
There is something deeply cultural in the way helpers, healers, and advocates are expected to give without limit. To be resources for others without needing to replenish. To model strength in ways that leave no room for their own tenderness.
But you are not a machine. You are a person who chose this work because something in you said: this matters. That person, the one who made that choice, needs care too.
Tending to yourself is not selfish. It is not a luxury you get to access once everything else is handled. It is part of what makes it possible to keep showing up in a way that is genuine, present, and sustainable.
If any part of this has felt familiar, consider letting it be a beginning. You do not have to have it all figured out. You do not have to be in crisis to deserve support. You just have to be willing to take one step toward it.
You have held so much for others. You are allowed to let someone hold something for you.
At Embodied Living Therapy, we help high-achieving professionals in Pasadena, downtown Los Angeles, and Echo Park navigate trauma, burnout, and anxiety.
References
(1) McCann, I. L., & Pearlman, L. A. (1990). Vicarious traumatization: A framework for understanding the psychological effects of working with victims. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 3(1), 131–149. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1990-17844-001
(2) Molnar, B. E., Sprang, G., Killian, K. D., Gottfried, R., Emery, V., & Bride, B. E. (2017). Advancing science and practice for vicarious traumatization/secondary traumatic stress: A research agenda. Traumatology, 23(2), 129–142. https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000122
(3) Pearlman, L. A., & Saakvitne, K. W. (1995). Trauma and the therapist: Countertransference and vicarious traumatization in psychotherapy with incest survivors. W. W. Norton & Company.
(4) Baird, K., & Kracen, A. C. (2006). Vicarious traumatization and secondary traumatic stress: A research synthesis. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 19(2), 181–188. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515070600811899
(5) Pearlman, L. A., & Mac Ian, P. S. (1995). Vicarious traumatization: An empirical study of the effects of trauma work on trauma therapists. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 26(6), 558–565.
(6) Kim, J., Chesworth, B., Franchino-Olsen, H., & Macy, R. J. (2022). A scoping review of vicarious trauma interventions for service providers working with people who have experienced traumatic events. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 23(5), 1437–1460. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838021991310
