[THREAD] I want to talk a little bit about second hand trauma. It is not something we talk about a lot, but a lot of people are going through it right now. Secondary trauma is defined as an indirect exposure to a traumatic situation.

It can be because someone told us a story that is traumatic, we saw it on TV or social media, or simply through many accounts of people mentioning the same traumatic situations. Secondary trauma is something that was identified in many mental healthcare professionals.

By dealing with a lot of traumatic experiences, we start to display symptoms similar to PTSD. However, with a pandemic happening, this is now a generalized phenomenon. Secondary trauma is more likely to happen when a story is close to something we experienced.

For example, if we lost someone we loved to the virus, any story of other people lost or any mention of the virus will trigger a traumatic response even when it is not directly related to the person we lost. This can happen with all sources of trauma.

For example, some people may not be able to handle stories of manipulation because of the trauma they went through. This is especially important because social media doesn’t have a lot of protections for certain topics. We may open our feed and directly see the triggering event.

What can we do? In a moment like this one, we need to be careful with our social media exposure. There are multiple stories of tragedies. We may feel guilty from trying to shield ourselves from them, but it is important to limit it as much as possible.

Rather than checking social media every hour or multiple times a day, we can try to do it once a day for 20/30 minutes. We can block certain terms from our feeds in certain social media platforms but these can easily be bypassed.

We can also mention to our loved ones and friends not to share certain stories because our mental health may not be able to handle it well. It is almost impossible to completely protect ourselves from secondary trauma right now but we can set up some boundaries to reduce it.

We also need to have or practice certain coping mechanisms and exercises we can do such as journaling to reduce the impact when it happens. Having a safety plan in place can reduce that confusion and loss of not knowing what to do when those triggers happen.

If you are a caregiver or at the front lines right now and you start to experience symptoms of PTSD from the secondary trauma, it is important to take breaks. Our minds don’t have infinite amount of energy. The more tired we are, the more vulnerable our mental health becomes.

I hope that this thread helps clarify a little bit what secondary trauma is and what we can do to protect ourselves. Stay safe everyone, love you all