How is vicarious trauma treated by EMDR therapy?

Traumas are psychological alterations that intensely affect both the personal life and the physical and emotional life of the person who suffers it.

These can arise and be triggered by various disruptive or violent situations; they are, in short, a type of emotional aftermath caused by these events. Now, there are some variants of this phenomenon, and some professions are more susceptible to some of these types of traumatic experiences. Here we will focus on explaining vicarious trauma and its treatment with EMDR therapy.

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What is vicarious trauma?

Vicarious trauma is the affectation and psychological exhaustion experienced by some people who must be exposed to, care for, or treat, because of their work, people experiencing intense personal tragedies, situations of suffering or that they are simply having a very bad time at certain times.

This type of trauma mainly affects professions prone to seeing how others experience traumatic situations, as is the case with health personnel, psychologists, police, civil protection personnel, firefighters or armed forces, social workers, etc.

In any of these professions, people are often testimonies of authentic dramas, situations of intense suffering and stories linked to sadness, despair, anguish and other forms of intense discomfort.

In addition to that, the fact of caring for someone who is having a bad time, as happens especially in the case of psychologists and health personnel, often causes a strong emotional bond to be generated with the person in care, which can generate an even greater vicarious trauma, due to the closeness with these individuals and their life stories.

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Main characteristics of vicarious trauma

The nature of vicarious trauma can vary in its symptoms depending on each person who experiences it; however, in most cases, it has the following characteristics.

1. Emotional stress

One of the main characteristics of people who develop a vicarious trauma is the tremendous emotional exhaustion and psychological suffering when treating situations of illness of others, misfortunes or all kinds of situations of suffering that affect others.

This psychological wear can be greater or less depending on the person and their degree of empathy. and in the long run it can become a real problem for your mental health, if it is not treated in time.

In addition to that, vicarious trauma is associated with the appearance of a series of emotional alterations such as anxiety, depression, stress situations, problems in cognitive skills (lack of attention or concentration) and also reduced performance labor.

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2. Physical wear

Physical exhaustion is also a characteristic of vicarious trauma, since the person who suffers from it experiences a series of physical symptoms that decisively affect your daily physical health.

Some of these physical symptoms experienced in a vicarious trauma case are: sleep disturbances or sleeping difficulties, sweating, tachycardia, skin conditions, pain and decreased appetite.

3. Loss of healthy habits

As vicarious trauma progresses in a person's life, it may also happen that the person goes progressively abandoning a series of healthy habits that he did maintain before said alteration psychological.

As has been indicated, the person with vicarious trauma usually experiences alterations in their sleep rhythms, which makes it impossible for them to sleep properly, as well as a decreased appetite and a change in your eating habits.

In addition to that, they may also experience changes in their social habits and even a drastic decrease in social contacts of the person, as well as an interruption in their sports and leisure habits and in their hygiene habits staff.

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4. feeling of isolation

Many people with vicarious traumas due to their profession tend to feel more and more isolated from the world, because their trauma occupies an increasingly important space in their lives.

This involuntary or self-imposed isolation must be combated and it can be solved by going to a psychologist who will help us overcome the situation of discomfort that we are experiencing.

Your treatment with EMDR therapy

EMDR therapy is a type of psychotherapeutic intervention widely used in patients who are victims of trauma. It is based on the modification of the neuronal connections responsible for the conservation and evocation of memories, especially in relation to the emotional charge of these components of memory.

The objective is to carry out a series of non-invasive and totally painless exercises so that, little by little, the person integrates the memories traumatic events in your memory system without the activation of those parts of the brain destabilizing the functioning of the entire nervous system central. In other words, it is not about eliminating or blocking those memories; On the contrary, the aim is to ensure that they are well integrated into the memory so that they do not even enter into the dynamic of trying not to think about That, nor do you suffer from anxiety crises or flashbacks every time those memories are evoked (whether voluntarily or involuntary).

In the case of vicarious trauma, EMDR therapy offers the possibility of reexamining the history of these people through a constructive and humanistic perspective, emphasizing the need to accept that in life there is room for discomfort and for pain, without this being a reason to suffer constantly by keeping the attention fixed on the most harmful aspects of those experiences.

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