secondary trauma

There’s a term for it, apparently. It’s called secondary trauma.
The trauma experienced by working around and hearing about trauma to those you are emotionally invested in.

I’ve had some hard weeks.

Made harder by the fact that the superiors in my organization have a distinctive tendency to respond in unhelpful ways. There’s another term for that too. It’s called condescension. Implying that I don’t know what I’m talking about, not listening to what I’m saying anyway, verbally patting me on the head to say “I know this must be hard for you sweetie, you look like a super emotional type. You must not understand your limits or know how or when to refer to others”. I’d say they can shove it, but it actually really gets to me, particularly when all I ever do is ask for help.

If I quit. It is because the second makes it impossible to feel supported when dealing with the first.

I experienced a lot of secondary trauma, particularly in a packed into a single week a few weeks back. The stress made it so I couldn’t really eat but now I can mostly keep food down which is awesome because it’s a preferred hobby of mine. I mean, it’s just that it’s all so sad-making. And very overwhelming. And very much like a flood. And, seriously, what on earth makes people think I am qualified to come to and tell all their saddest and serious-est and wisdom seeking things? I don’t just still like dinosaurs and dragons, I sort of wish I was a dragon. I bite shoulders to show my affection. As a child I thought that humming bird cake might actually contain humming bird… and I still ate it. Shouldn’t this tip you off to the fact that I am not the type of person who is all with it?

I was going to write about it, but then I looked through my recent posts and they are all SO SERIOUS and besides what if that’s exposing you to, I don’t know, tertiary trauma or something. Why keep spreading the sad? It’s not fair to you. It’s not really helpful for me, at least not in this forum. And there’s something weird and voyeuristic about it, no? Because there is nothing redemptive about that week. So it would never come around, there would never be a point. I feel like writing about it in detail would just be feeding into cynicism and, like I’ve said before, I feel like cynicism is a cop out. It takes no energy, no imagination. It also leaves no hope, and without hope we have nothing.

So in lieu of that, I am going to write the ideas for dealing with “trauma”

Unfortunately, after 3 weeks of working on this trying to make it funny all I came up with was this pathetic attempt at a post, which is not funny at all and more a list of what I actually do:

1) put the word “trauma” in quotes, mostly because I still think it’s weird and unfair that I get to claim trauma by being surrounded by other people experiencing legitimate trauma and I have yet to come to terms with the fact that I can’t necessarily handle everything with which I am faced.
I like this method because it delegitimizes the whole situation and amuses me into making it easier to deal with. I have decided to start using air quotes in more situations where they may not necessarily belong to add excitement and amusement to otherwise dull situations.

why yes officer this is my “valid” drivers license
That dress looks “great” on you
I think you two make a “great” couple, “of course” you should ask her to marry you.

2) Totally deflect : I’ve said it before, but my fight or flight mechanism is heavily weighted towards flight, and as such I tend to distract myself. This means that my days are filled with finding ways to avoid thinking about what is actually happening in my life. I have started looking at jobs in Australia because I figure as soon as the rest of my friends/siblings get married there will be nothing left for me here. I’ve also started learning to play soccer because there are some awesome people let me hang out with them sometimes. What up. Because if I can’t be sane, at least I can be awesome.

3) I think I’m going to start lying about my work. When I leave, I just don’t want to think about work anymore, In fact, I’m fairly certain it would be more healthy for me if I could somehow rest from work a little better by not having to think and talk about it for more than the 50 hours a week I do already. However, that’s often what people want to talk about. Why is that? I don’t know. I’m going to pick something insufferably dull so that they will not ask follow up questions.



` Ideas of insufferably boring jobs that do not lend themselves to follow up questions:
Private Middle School Librarian
Nighttime file alphabetizer
Spell Check Quality Assurance Specialist
Safety Card Artist

4) Cling to the good things. Say them out loud, as if they are real, as if I am real, more real than this feeling of falling. And hope to God there’s a point.



tl;dr verson: "Les temps sont durs pour les rêveurs." (times are hard for dreamers)
-amelie