The Vicarious Trauma and Resilience Podcast

Dr. Jenny Hughes
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

A podcast for trauma therapists navigating the realities of doing this work. Dr. Jenny Hughes explores vicarious trauma, burnout, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious resilience, and what it takes to stay supported, resourced, and in love with the work.

Episodes

  1. 5d ago

    Vicarious Resilience: What It Is and Why It Matters

    Trauma therapists learn early what this work costs. Less is said about what it gives back. Vicarious resilience is what happens when a client’s movement toward healing affects you, too. It can show up in small moments, a softened jaw, an unexpected smile, a sense of gratitude; often before you have words for what you’re experiencing. In this episode, Dr. Jenny Hughes explores how to recognize those moments, let them land in your body, and share them with other trauma therapists so they become something you can draw on, rather than something that simply passes by. Because the same empathic connection that makes us vulnerable to the weight of trauma work can also let us experience our clients’ resilience, hope, and healing. Resources Want to start noticing these moments in your own work? Try the free Soft Transitions exercise, join the BRAVE Trauma Therapist Collective, or watch the episode on YouTube: Soft Transitions: https://www.braveproviders.com/soft-transitionsJoin the BRAVE Trauma Therapist Collective: https://www.braveproviders.com/braveWatch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@braveproviders Timestamps 00:00 Introduction: What Is Vicarious Resilience?00:42 What vicarious resilience actually is01:21 How vicarious resilience was discovered02:28 Vicarious trauma & vicarious resilience: two sides of the same experience03:54 How to recognize vicarious resilience in your work05:32 How to notice and install it in your body06:10 How to enhance vicarious resilience through connection07:24 Try this: identify a moment of vicarious resilience08:27 Soft Transitions + the vicarious resilience AI tool09:16 You don’t have to go looking for resilience

    Vicarious Resilience: What It Is and Why It Matters

  2. Aug 18

    The Trauma Therapist Trauma Response Model

    Vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, and burnout get used interchangeably in the media and even in the literature. They describe four different processes, and confusing them costs trauma therapists real time and real support. In this first episode, Dr. Jenny Hughes walks through the Trauma Therapist Trauma Response Model, the framework she built after years of teaching trauma therapists about vicarious trauma and after coming apart at the seams from it herself. Some trauma therapists carry this work for decades and stay in love with it. Others leave the field within a few years. The difference has almost nothing to do with how strong you are, and almost everything to do with how supported and resourced you've been. What this episode covers: Vicarious trauma, coined in 1990 to name what empathic engagement does to your worldview over time. It comes with the work, because empathic engagement is the foundation of the job.Compassion fatigue, coined in 1992 and first described in nurses. The empty cup, the numbness, the warm body in the chair, and the question underneath about whether you're good enough for this work.Secondary traumatic stress, the one that is an actual DSM-5 diagnosis, and how it differs from the two before it. Jenny shares her own experience of it as the trauma psychologist at a level one trauma center in New Orleans, and what actually brought her back.Burnout, depersonalization, and why isolation is the single biggest risk factor the literature points to.Vicarious resilience, discovered almost by accident in the early 2000s by researchers studying therapists working with survivors of torture. The same mechanism as vicarious trauma, running the opposite direction.Chapters 00:00 Understanding vicarious trauma in therapy 05:16 Recognizing and managing burnout signs 09:05 Understanding Secondary Traumatic Stress 12:54 Discussing burnout and depersonalization 14:28 Importance of seeking support 17:15 Understanding vicarious resilience in therapyWant to see where you currently fall on the model? The free Trauma Therapist Trauma Response Quiz takes a few minutes: https://www.braveproviders.com/quiz FOR ORGANIZATIONS AND LEADERS Bringing this work to your team, practice, or agency: https://www.braveproviders.com/speaking Dr. Jenny Hughes is a trauma psychologist and the founder of The BRAVE Trauma Therapist Collective. More at braveproviders.com Vicarious trauma comes with being human in this work, and so does vicarious resilience. Being human is how we stay in the work we love.

    The Trauma Therapist Trauma Response Model
  • 2 Episodes

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About

A podcast for trauma therapists navigating the realities of doing this work. Dr. Jenny Hughes explores vicarious trauma, burnout, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious resilience, and what it takes to stay supported, resourced, and in love with the work.

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