This episode focuses on vicarious trauma and identifies some risk factors and strategies we should employ to safeguard our mental health. This is a critical lesson for law students and lawyers who intend to work with society's most vulnerable and marginalized.
This episode discusses the psychological harm lawyers may experience as a result of doing what they love to do: advocacy. This episode references working with abuse survivors, suicide, mental health, vicarious trauma and vicarious resilience.
Episode 8: “Vulnerability and Vicarious Trauma: a Personal Story” Published: August 8, 2020
Episode Description: This episode focuses on vicarious trauma and identifies some risk factors and strategies we should employ to safeguard our mental health. This is a critical lesson for law students and lawyers who intend to work with society's most vulnerable and marginalized.
Myrna McCallum: I’m Myrna McCallum, Métis-Cree lawyer and passionate promoter of trauma-informed lawyering. Welcome to my new podcast, The Trauma-Informed Lawyer, brought to you in partnership with the Canadian Bar Association.
I believe that law schools and bar courses are missing a critical competency requirement in their curriculum: trauma-informed lawyering. Becoming a trauma-informed lawyer will, among other things, challenge you to critically reflect on your personal behaviors, beliefs, and biases; call on you to positively transform the way you approach advocacy; guide your practice to avoid doing further harm to others; and ask that you commit remaining open to learn new and old knowledge you didn't know you needed before beginning your career. Your education starts right here, right now. This podcast comes to you from the traditional, unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh [Squamish], səl̓ilwətaɁɬ [Tsleil-Waututh], and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm [Musqueam] people.
Welcome back everyone to another episode of the trauma-informed lawyer. This episode is going to focus solely on the subject of vicarious trauma. In all of the trainings that I do with lawyers, this is the subject that tends to get a lot of conversation going, a lot of curiosity, lot of questions. For that reason, I am likely going to do a two-part, maybe even a three-part to this very subject.
So before we get started, I just want to let you all know that on October 8th and 9th I am delivering a course called Trauma-Informed Lawyering: A Critical Competency via webinar. This course is being split up on a Thursday and a Friday, so 9:00 AM to 12:30 PM on both days. It's for everyone. It's for lawyers, non-lawyers, people who work within the justice system, people who don't, people who work with folks who experience a lot of trauma, folks who work within Indigenous communities, people who are on the front line dealing with real social justice issues and everyday suffering and harm—this course is for you. I believe that you will find all of it quite interesting, informative, and helpful to the work that you do, and so I hope that you register. Registration is now open and it's available to everyone whether you're in Canada, the United States, or somewhere abroad, you can register by visiting CLE.BC.CA and just click on the “Store” button, Trauma-Informed Lawyering: A Critical Competency, and you can register there. It's going to be an awesome 2 days.
Bessel van der Kolk, MD. who says, “To people who are reliving a trauma, nothing makes sense; they are trapped in a life-or-death situation, a state of paralyzing fear or blind rage. Mind and body are constantly aroused, as if they are in imminent danger. They startle in response to the slightest noises and are frustrated by small irritations. Their sleep is chronically disturbed and food often loses its sensual pleasures. This in turn can trigger desperate attempts to shut out those feelings or shut them down by freezing and dissociating”.
I thought it was really important to go over what trauma looks like because it will bring to mind for you, people you deal with on a regular basis who are in those states. Those symptoms that I just recalled, about “irritated at small frustrations, going into a blind rage”, shutting down, having your guard up, being afraid that your life is in danger, all of these different things—those very same symptoms are symptoms that we can adopt as people who are regularly exposed to folks who function that way on a regular basis.
That essentially is what vicarious trauma is. It's a preoccupation with the story, or the history, or the lived experience of someone that we've helped—so we're preoccupied with those lived experiences. Maybe we've heard a story, maybe we saw some images, graphic evidence, or we read a police report in the narrative of something very graphic and brutal in that police report. Whatever it may be, we start to become very preoccupied with those stories and those lived experiences in a really negative way, and as a result, we start to develop all kinds of psychological symptoms like some of what Bessel van der Kolk, MD. has identified.
But there are other symptoms that are maybe less considered symptoms of vicarious trauma but ought to be at least investigated a little bit further. The other thing I want to note about vicarious trauma is that the effects of it can be largely cumulative. What I mean by that is when we're constantly exposed to a barrage of dramatic circumstances, graphic evidence, traumatizing information, and we just keep going and keep going and keep going, and we just don't skip a beat because we've got so many hours to bill, or we've got another trial to run, or we gotta go to bail hearing, or we have another meeting, or the week is long, or the day is long, or the month is long, or the life is long, or whatever it is, and just don't allow yourself a moment to even process what you saw, what you heard, how you felt about what you saw, what you heard—all that stuff that you're not addressing—it just stockpiles somewhere inside of you and it waits for a really terrible time to come up and essentially kick you in the ass.
That is what happened to me, so I'm going to share a personal story and everything I'm about to say, I just want to say all that I experienced, all the harm, all the pain and suffering, all the darkness, that's all me. I blame no one. I blame no one I worked with. I don't blame my former boss in the IAP (the “Independent Assessment Process”), I blame myself because I didn't know to make a plan to protect myself, to take care of myself. I was really shut down. I wasn't open with anyone or wanted to talk about my lived experiences and, I mean, I'm still kind of like that. I'm quite private. I grew up in a really dysfunctional household; my mom was 16 when she had me, and, you know, she had her own dysfunctions as a result of a bunch of trauma that she had went through, and as a result, she often ended up with men—I shouldn’t say often—she always ended up with men who were abusers. They were either pedophiles, or they were wife beaters, or they were cheaters, or something, they were terrible people. Obviously, she didn't really have any self-worth, so that was the type of person she attracted. As a result of her choices, I grew up in a household where there was a ton of physical brutal violence, alcoholism, I went into foster care for a while, and then I went into residential school for a year, and I was on my own at 13. Those first 13 years were really, really brutal. A lot had happened to me, and I was messed up, I was angry.
I went to law school, I was still really angry. I had been raised in in a geographic location where there was a ton of racism against Indigenous people, so when I went into law school, I didn't trust white people, I didn't trust anyone, I didn't trust men, I didn't trust anybody, and so I was quite angry, and I always had my back against the wall. I was very, very anxious, I had panic attacks throughout law school, I was not doing well. Mind you, I was also working part-time, and I had three children as a single parent. A lot of legitimate reasons for all the psychological issues I was experiencing, but I wasn't talking to anyone. Maybe had I talked to people, I would've had a different experience, but anyway… I get through law school sort of by the skin of my teeth, then I get through PLTC (the “Professional Legal Training Course”) also the same way (the bar course that is), and I decide I want to not practice Indigenous rights, which is what I started out doing. I wanted to go home to my community and practice criminal law because I wanted to work with Indigenous people, and I wanted to get over my fears of public speaking, and what better way to do that but to become a litigator.
So criminal law, as I've said previously, the range of human suffering will meet you in a criminal courtroom. I did not know how to deal with the violence because that was the world I grew up in, and so I think what was tough for me was for every story I was hearing of brutal violence, it was a trigger—something from my past. Then I started to prosecute sex crimes against women and children, and that was a trigger, and you know, the triggers, it seems like every week I was in court I was being triggered by something.
I started to make really bad decisions at this time. Not only was I revisiting my own trauma, I was also becoming vicariously traumatized by the lived experiences of the people whose files I was handling; like the witnesses, and the victims, and the perpetrators in these files, all of those stories were impacting me and kicking up my own stuff, and then as a result, I started to make bad decisions. I was no longer living in a way where my choices aligned with my values. I was making poor decisions. I was increasingly becoming self-destructive and somewhat self-harming. I was spiraling into depression, and I was not in a good place, and at the time I didn't realize what was happening to me.
So, I leave prosecutions, and then I go into the adjudication world, and I'm adjudicating Indian Residential School claims. It’s part of a settlement agreement that was really a mechanism for the church and the government to compensate former students of residential schools who experienced abuse—whether it's sexual physical, or psychological—and the adjudicators were hired to hear those stories of abuse and decide whether those stories were credible, and to compensate them, determine what that compensation amount was going to be. So I became an adjudicator and I was in that role for way too long. See, I was already spiraling into a bad place when I got into this job, so when I was in it probably two years in, maybe three, I had to confront my own residential school experience—something I never talked about—and really thought about how residential school affected me and my brother and really destroyed lives of people that I loved. That was really tough and hearing stories of brutal assaults, sexual assaults against children—sometimes very, very small children—on a weekly basis started to break my spirit, let’s say. That dark place I was already kinda in when I got into this work, well that dark place turned into a black hole, and I ended up in that black hole for, I'm going to say, maybe four years, and I almost didn't make it out of that black hole.
When I left the Adjudication Secretariat, it felt like I was crawling out by my fingernails, and I knew if I didn't stop the exposure to these stories, I was going to die. So I got out of that work, and I went immediately into very intensive therapy. About that time, maybe six months previous, my mom had died suddenly, and that big life event coupled with the black hole I was in was like the perfect storm. I know for a fact that had I not gone into intensive therapy immediately, I would not be here today, and so that's what I did. I essentially was off work for a year. I went into therapy, I worked on making amends with my children for all the emotional harm that I had caused them by just not being me and being someone completely different, and someone I didn't even like or respect. Since that time, I would say I've been in a state of emotional and spiritual recovery.
So I share this story with you because I know had somebody said to me when I was in law school, “Hey do you have any personal experiences with being sexually abused as a child, or being physically abused as a child, or being homeless as a child, or you know, being abandoned?”, or whatever, you know, all these things that I had experienced, if someone had said, “Hey, if you have these things and you’re going to go into this line of work, this is what you need to take care of yourself, because you're going to need to take care of yourself, because what can happen to you if you don't is going to lead you to a really dark place”. I wish someone would have said it to me.
I'm covering this subject and sharing this very personal piece of my life with you now because I don't ever want to see another lawyer go through what I went through. I found it just such unnecessary suffering, and I don't think that we should suffer like we do because we’re good at our jobs, or we enjoy helping people who have been brutally sexually and physically assaulted. I don't think we should have to pay for that with our hearts, and our minds, and our spirits, so that is why I'm covering vicarious trauma with you today.
What are some symptoms? I mean, they can vary for different people. For some, you're not sleeping, you're having nightmares, you're having panic attacks, you're having, like, low-grade or mid-grade depression, you're drinking a lot and you know it, you're using drugs, or you've formed a gambling addiction—you find yourself in the casino at three in the morning on a regular basis— or you're blowing thousands of dollars a week at the casino, or cheating on your spouse, so many different things. You are not pleasant to be around, it takes you a long time to produce on files that you have where it used to just take you no time at all. You have trouble concentrating, you're having headaches, you feel sick to your stomach a lot, the symptoms vary, and so think about how you've been feeling and whether what you feel is normal for you. Even if it is not necessarily positive feelings, how long has this been normal for you, and is your behavior aligning with your values, and if it isn't, why isn't it? So, I mean, I think when we talk about vicarious trauma, we really have to be honest with ourselves about who we are, who we want to be, and why we're making the choices we’re making, and when we don't know or when we feel out of control, we need to know enough to call someone. Because vicarious trauma doesn't just affect you, it affects everyone around you. It affects your relationships; the relationships with your spouse, with your children, with your friends, with your colleagues, your coworkers, it affects everything, and everyone who cares for you and loves you.
So, it's important to identify when you may be experiencing vicarious trauma. There's a wide range of steps that you could take to safeguard your mental health. In an earlier episode with my friend Helgi, we talked about bringing a debriefing practice into the workplace—that could be one way. Another could be to take a walk alone and really process what you just heard, what you just saw, how did that affect you, and then let it go, or to just create a mantra and say, “This trauma is not mine. I'm not taking this trauma home”, which I think is partly where I messed up because in some ways, I felt like I had a responsibility to hold the traumas of all the survivors who told me their stories, and somehow it's like, I put them on my back and decided I was going to carry their pain and their suffering. Like, how wack is that, you know? I could barely carry my own pain and suffering.
But sometimes we find ourselves becoming martyrs, or whatever it may be, and we have to watch for that so . . . if we don't get a handle on vicarious trauma, it can create and give way to lateral violence in the workplace, a lot of workplace issues; people feeling afraid, walking on egg shells in the workplace, people having anxiety in the workplace, just not feeling safe or protected. We need to think about all the people that we work with who may also be experiencing vicarious trauma so, it's not just us as lawyers, and it's not just judges, it’s everybody, and we have a responsibility to, not just ourselves, but to each other, to protect each other and to take care of each other, because if you don't, as I said, you know, the boundaries become really blurry and your healthy workplace becomes somewhat toxic, and people just are not doing well. They're making bad decisions, they're not producing and they’re feeling maybe a loss of purpose.
Back to some strategies to take care of yourself. So I'm no self-care expert, but debriefing, going back to debriefing, I think that is key for people who like to talk. I'm not a conversationalist, so what I used to do that I found helped after, like, as I was going through therapy, I had a dog and I would always take my dog for a walk and I would talk to her about what was going on, and she was the best sounding board. I say it's really important to create a routine, like, every time you've been exposed to something traumatic; you've had a heavy day, someone was crying in your office, or you looked at some images were that were quite disturbing, or you heard a terrible story, and you felt something within you just kind of like, ugh, just this something in you vibrated in a bad way. I would say it's important to have a ritual. You need to take some time to be intentional, and to release what was just presented to you, what just affected you. Because if you don't, that thing is going to follow you home, I guarantee it. And you will wake up in the middle the night in a full-blown panic attack with this thing sitting on your chest. It will want to take up residence with you, and it will want to come between you and everyone who loves you. So find ways to take care of yourself.
It would be really great if those of you who are in environments where a lot of trauma comes knocking at your door, if you were to create some kind of policy or practice within your office that invites these conversations in and allows you all to help each other to find ways forward, helping each other, taking care of each other.
I wanted to share one quick story. When I was in law school (the first time—I failed first year, I had to go back) I was too busy actually getting an education from an Elder in Musqueam, I don't regret it. He was an Elder and a Healer, and he knew I was going to work with people who had a lot of trauma. He said, “Every time you've heard a traumatic story, imagine that thing is like trying to stick to you like gum, or glue, or something sticky, is attaching itself to you. Where possible, go run your hands under cold running water and imagine that whatever that thing that sticking to you is running down the drain, or running down the stream, but it's being pulled off of you and being carried away”. He said, “You need to think about trauma that way. It will stick to you if you let, it it'll go home with you if you let it, and it will grow if you let it”. And so, I really wish I had taken his advice, but I didn't until—I do now, I take it now, better late than never—but I wish I had employed some of those practices back then. I adopt his practice now and I use it every day, and I share it with a lot of people when I am delivering training. So, think about it. If the cold-water suggestion doesn't work for you, then find something else, something where you're visually releasing that thing so it doesn't go home with you.
So before I end, I also want to say vicarious trauma is one side-effect, I guess, of working with traumatized people, or being chronically exposed to traumatic and graphic and disturbing information, but on the flip side of that is something called vicarious resilience. I love the word “resilience” because I think we need more of it in this profession, we need more of it in our lives, in our relationships. I came across it as I was doing a little bit of research, and it was developed by psychotherapists to address the transformation that occurs in clinicians who are regularly exposed to the traumas of others. I thought, man, this totally applies to lawyers because—I mean, depending on what kind of law you practice of course—and a lot of social-justice workers, and people in helping professions. So vicarious resilience recognizes that the ability to learn how to overcome adversity can be transferred to the helping professional simply by witnessing it. Vicarious resilience builds on the concept of resiliency in the face of severe trauma and other adversities such that survivors of trauma are able to survive through strategies of coping, and by relying on successful adaptive processes. I love this because if you don't know how to do it, you don't know how to overcome, you don't know how to find strength, you don't know that you can overcome some massive pain in your life, look to those that you help, or look to others who have overcome similar things, or more painful things, or more devastating things. Survivors of sexual violence, Indigenous survivors, have been my teachers. They taught me about trauma, but they also taught me about resilience, and I share this with you because if you are affected by the traumas of others and you think you're experiencing vicarious trauma, just know that if you look a little deeper and you give it a little time and you do the work, the resilience well is there too, and that well has no end.
Thanks for listening everyone, that is today's episode. I hope it resonated, got you thinking about the way you practice and what you're subjected to on a regular basis that you might not even think about. There’s so much more to say which is why I'm going to come back with two-part, maybe three-part to the subject. If you have any feedback, or ideas, or comments, or questions, you can always find me on Twitter @LegalTrauma, or on Instagram @TheTraumaInformedLawyer, of course you can always find me on LinkedIn. Until next time, take care of yourselves.