It's Not Just Stress: Talking About Vicarious Trauma

Back in law school, I did some spring break legal aid work in post-Katrina New Orleans. Our group stayed in a former school, St. Mary of the Angels, in the hard-hit Upper Ninth Ward, which was hastily converted to volunteer housing, mostly for students coming to gut storm-damaged houses. Our “bedroom” was a classroom, shared with not just the 20 of us (men and women) but maybe 10 strangers, some of whom I am sure were sheltering rather than volunteering (but I must add—contrary to stereotype, those sheltering were polite when they were not keeping to themselves). The showers were cold, the rooms were cold, and most of the toilets didn’t work.

We spent our days on the streets and in City Council meetings, trying to connect folks with resources and listening in on housing hearings. We heard stories of trying to survive Katrina while incarcerated and forgotten (I interviewed a man who said he subsisted on condiment packets while in prison); of sheltering in place believing there was a “shoot on sight” order for violating curfew; of folks leaving cars behind to rust and neighbors behind to drown, because they didn’t want to turn over the keys to their other car; of looting TVs not to be greedy but to trade for a ride out. These were hard stories to hear. Lots of fear and tears and desperation and there was only so much I could do.

Some of my classmates went to bars in the Garden District and Bourbon Street at night; I did that a couple of times but quickly realized I had a harder and harder time returning to the volunteer housing and the work we had signed up to do. So I stayed immersed.

I spent a long week down in New Orleans, but it took me awhile to actually come back. I couldn’t sleep for a couple of days after I returned, and then for weeks, I slept like it was my second job. I went to school and did my homework and came home and crashed and that was it. My classmates had similar experiences, I’m told.

I’d always prided myself on my ability to handle everything with an even keel, and this was disconcerting, to say the least. I learned later that I was probably suffering from vicarious (or secondary) trauma, which is the subject of a recent ABA Journal article (and other good ones in the past). To summarize briefly, lawyers can be surrounded by their clients’ traumas and sometimes internalize them, to the point where they exhibit symptoms similar to those of PTSD.

It’s something we don’t talk about, or seek help for, but we should. Mental health issues, if not addressed and, if warranted, appropriately treated, can impair our ability to practice—if we’re not sleeping well, if we’re withdrawn, if we’re unable to concentrate, our work suffers, things get missed. I think the stigma surrounding mental health among lawyers is an ethical issue in itself, and something I intend to address here as I can.