What is Vicarious Trauma? And How Can Parents Overcome Compassion Fatigue?

If your daughter has experienced a serious trauma, you, as her parent, risk suffering from a form of vicarious trauma known as Compassion Fatigue. Discover how vicarious trauma affects your whole family and learn how self-compassion can help you overcome compassion fatigue. — Shara F. Preston, LPC, LCMHC, has spent years working with teenage girls and their families, helping both parents and teen overcome the effects of trauma and heal their family. She currently serves as clinical director at New Haven, a Residential Treatment Center for teenage girls. To learn more about New Haven, please visit www.newhavenrtc.com or call us at 888-317-3958. Video transcript: So I'm going to teach you how to use self-compassion to help deal with or manage vicarious trauma that you might experience and vicarious trauma is a trauma that a caregiver a parent experiences when they're helping somebody else that has experienced a trauma. Let's say your daughter's in a car accident you're not in that car accident with her but as you're helping her process what happened. As you're going through her emotions and your emotions you may experience some trauma yourself. A great way to help manage that vicarious trauma that a caregiver a parent can experience is really focusing on self-compassion. A lot of people get confused about what self-compassion is. Self-compassion while it is about being kind yourself it's much more than just being nice to yourself. Self-compassion is about being kind to yourself. It's also about being mindful and it's also the other element is realizing that there's a common humanity that you're not alone in this experience and that other people have experienced things that are similar. So those three elements being kind to self-mindfulness and common humanity those are all three elements of self-compassion. Make sure that you're familiar with what those are and what they can mean for you. Then when you're in a situation you can recognize oh I'm in this situation I'm feeling you know those feelings of vicarious trauma right now and you can choose am I going to use the part of self-compassion where I'm going to be mindful and in the present moment and non-judgmental. Am I going to recognize the different aspects of common humanity that I have with other people that might have experienced similar things that I am recognizing I'm not alone. You get to choose what might be most beneficial for you. Another great thing to do is to practice this just in your daily life. Practice this when you're not having those vicarious feeling of vicarious trauma. Do this when things are going great you know notice the connection that you have with Humanity in the happy moments. Be mindful and present in the happiness as well. Be kind yourself The biggest mistake people make when they begin a self-compassion practice is they think they have to do it perfect. They think that if their mind wanders that they've done it wrong. They think that if I end up feeling this one time I'm, you know, alone in the world I've done it wrong. That's wrong. The correct thing is is that each time you try you are getting more information you're getting more skills. When you when you practice self-compassion and you are not judging you're judging that's when you know you're on the right Road. Check out our different channels:   / newhavenrtc     / newhavenrtc      / @newhavenrtc