You don't have to live through a crisis to feel it in your body. If your work puts you in the path of other people's trauma—client stories, case files, crisis calls, or hard conversations—you already know what secondhand trauma is, even if you've never heard the term. Vicarious or “secondary” trauma refers to the emotional and physical impact from being exposed to others' suffering. It shows up as shifts in your mood or worldview, a hum of hyper-vigilance, a numbness that creeps in, or the sense that you're carrying someone's story home with you long after the workday ends. carrying someone's story home with you long after the workday ends.
Secondary Trauma Is a Bodily Response
Here's the part most people miss: it's not a personal failure to experience vicarious trauma. It's a natural response to caring deeply while engaged in trauma-exposed work, and it can affect anyone regardless of experience or skill. The research backs this up, as more than 60% of legal workers show symptoms of secondary trauma, and about 1 in 10 meet the criteria for PTSD, with legal professionals reporting PTSD symptoms at rates higher than many first responders and therapists.
The stress is wired straight through your nervous system: your brain either fires an alarm as a fight response or a flight response, and/or your brain goes offline. As trauma-informed practitioners remind us, you can't simply think your way out of it.
Recognizing the Early Warning Signs
So how do you know you are experiencing secondary trauma, ideally at the beginning stages before it can take a significant toll on you? Start by learning your personal warning signs and ask yourself the question the experts love: “How do I know I'm starting to reach my limit?” Get specific and look across four key areas:
Emotional signs might include snapping at people, feeling numb, or dreading the day.
Physical signs can be headaches, stomach trouble, or fatigue.
Cognitive signs include brain fog, cynicism, or trouble concentrating.
Behavioral signs show up as procrastination, overworking, hypervigilance, or pulling away from the people you love.
Write your list down. When you can name the early flickers, you can respond before they become a fire.
Listen to the Stories You Tell Yourself
When I work on cases involving trauma, I often feel that I should not and cannot unplug—my client needs me. I should be vigilant and check email on nights and weekends and be reachable whenever my client may want to talk. Recognizing the story patterns we tell ourselves, and how they may be signs of vicarious trauma, can be incredibly helpful.
A sign that I am at risk of experiencing secondary trauma is when I start telling myself, “If I don't do it, no one else will.” At a firm like mine with an incredibly competent and empathic team, this is flat wrong. Of course someone else can and will step in. Also, if I am always the person at the front of the line, what kind of leader am I? How am I paving the way for my colleagues to shine bright and develop their own expertise?
Other stories people tell themselves that can be signs of vicarious trauma include:
“I can't let anyone down.”
“Rest is earned, not given.”
“My worth is tied to how much I help.”
“If I slow down, everything will fall apart.”
Notice that none of these are facts; they are fabrications. To loosen their grip, get curious about the values that brought you to this work in the first place—justice, compassion, service, hope, dignity, love—and ask which ones you still feel connected to, which feel out of reach, and how you might recenter them. When your fundamental values lead, your competing commitments lose much of their power.
How Can You Cope?
Developing strong coping mechanisms will ensure you can immediately respond to the signs you see when you check in with yourself. And that quick response can help you come back to center. Build your supports in layers.
Start with core supports: a few people, practices, or beings that help you—a trusted coworker, friend, therapist, community group, pet, or spiritual practice that helps ground you and make you feel more in tune with the person you truly feel you are and want to be.
Add external supports you reach for less often but that still matter: team meetings, a park near your house, a book club.
Then get aspirational: what other practices or people do you want to add to enhance your life? Is it journaling? Weekly brunch with an old friend? Dance class? Exercise? Yoga?
Secondary trauma is real, but it's important to remember that it can be managed through increased self-awareness and personalized coping strategies. You don't have to earn your rest.
And you are far from alone in this. Caring for yourself while you care for others isn't weakness—it's the work that lets you keep doing the work.
