There’s a quiet heaviness that many helping professionals carry: the kind that builds over time and lives in the body long after the shift ends. It’s not always your trauma, but it’s still in your system, and it still takes a toll.
What starts as empathy becomes exposure. What starts as care becomes cost. What starts as holding space becomes carrying weight that was never meant to be yours.
This is what we call secondary trauma, and for many therapists, first responders, nurses, social workers, and caretakers, it’s a lived reality.
It’s Not “Just Stress.” It’s a Nervous System on Alert.
You might notice:
– You’re more irritable, but can’t trace why.
– Sleep feels light or fractured.
– You play clients’ stories in your head hours after they’re gone.
– You’ve become desensitized to some things and hypersensitive to others.
– You dread the work you used to love.
– Your body feels like it’s bracing for something all the time.
This isn’t weakness or compassion fatigue because you’re “too soft.” It’s the impact of consistent exposure to other people’s pain, without the space or support to process it. Your nervous system is absorbing stories, facial expressions, survival energy. And over time, that creates real shifts in your physiology and sense of self.
From Impact to Identity (and How to Reclaim Yourself)
Just like primary trauma, secondary trauma can slowly shape how you move through the world. You stop trusting your instincts, you feel foggy, our threshold for joy lowers, and/or you show up for others, but not for yourself.
But here’s what I want you to know:
– This doesn’t have to be your identity.
– You are not broken.
– You don’t have to leave the field to feel better.
Healing from trauma exposure is possible when we start with small, somatic moments that re-teach your body what safety feels like.
The Practice of Coming Back to You
Healing doesn’t mean you forget the stories or stop caring. It means your system learns how to hold space without absorbing everything.
It looks like:
– Tracking your own body signals before the session starts
– Having post-session rituals to clear emotional residue
– Bringing your own parts into awareness, especially the ones that want to “fix”
– Re-learning boundaries that don’t feel cold, but contain you
– Processing not just the content of what you hear—but what it brings up in you
Over time, these practices move from effortful to easeful. From something you try to something you are.
My Work Is for You
If you’re someone who holds others’ pain for a living and it’s starting to bleed into your body, your relationships, your sleep, your sense of self—there is support available that honors the depth of what you carry.
I currently have a handful of openings for:
Therapy (FL & CT): Weekly or intensive EMDR and somatic sessions designed to help you release trauma (yours and others’) from the body.
Schedule a free 15-minute consult here.
You offer the world so much light. Let’s make sure your flame stays bright, too.
You Were Never Meant to Carry It All; you don’t have to “tough it out.” You don’t have to numb yourself to stay in the field, and you definitely don’t have to lose your own story while helping others reclaim theirs. There is a way to feel steady, present, and alive again.
You don’t have to carry it alone anymore. I’ve got you.
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