man so I've been reading Trauma Stewardship on the advice of my therapist, which is basically about how to recognize and mitigate (both on a personal level, and on an institutional level) the effects of secondary/vicarious trauma on people who are workers in various trauma-adjacent fields (which is anything from medical personnel, therapists, etc to people who work in conservation and law)
but honestly i feel like. who couldn't use these concepts these days, because basically everyone has been going through it? like, with the Plague (tm) and also how fucking stressful it's been for literally most people in at least my country for the last near-decade at minimum, because. wow! it is really a lot to deal with while also caring for each other, and damned if i don't see the signs of people losing their entire shit over relatively minor things. because, as it turns out, things that are symptoms of secondary trauma are:
- irritability!
- being super exhausted all the time!
- need to minimize anything that isn't (in your view) the Worst!
- loss of emotional response!
- loss of compassion!
- being kind of an asshole!
- inability to look at something beautiful without seeing the worst of what we've been exposed to
and like, man, doesn't that sound like uh. a lot of the internet right now
the difficult part is that a lot of the changes needed are broadโlike, when you're part of an organization, theoretically they can give you more support, give you time off, make sure your workload is appropriate. when we're doing trauma stewardship on our own time, what do we do that doesn't feel like a gross abdication of our responsibility toward the world and each other? i guess the answer is firm boundaries and regularly checking in with yourself, but. man.

