Vicarious Trauma in Healthcare Workers
There are stories that live in the body long after the shift is over.
The young person you couldn’t save. The patient whose pain you couldn’t ease. The family member’s eyes, full of silent pleading, as the monitor flatlined. Maybe you walked out of the room, scrubbed your hands, and moved on to the next task—because that’s what the job asked of you.
But the story stayed.
This is the quiet, cumulative ache of vicarious trauma—an often invisible cost of being a helper in a system that rarely pauses long enough for grief, let alone healing. And if you’re a nurse, physician, therapist, or caregiver, you may know this ache intimately. It can look like compassion fatigue, irritability, insomnia, chronic tension, or an inability to feel anything at all.
And when it builds up over time, it doesn’t just change how you work. It can change how you love, how you trust, and how you feel in your own skin.
A Thousand Tiny Soul Wounds
Vicarious trauma is sometimes called “secondary trauma,” but I don’t think that captures it fully. There’s nothing secondary about what it does to the nervous system, to the spirit. It’s a slow accumulation of soul wounds, absorbed through proximity to suffering. And most of the time, no one sees them. Not your coworkers, not your patients, not even your closest friends. Because you’re the strong one. The one who knows how to hold it together.
But you weren’t meant to hold it all.
Depth Psychotherapy for Healthcare Professionals
In my work with healthcare professionals struggling with trauma, I often hear some version of: “I should be able to let this go, but I can’t.” This is not a sign of weakness. It a sign of your humanity breaking through the numbness.
Depth psychotherapy offers a different kind of space—a place where the focus isn’t on fixing you, but on listening to the parts that have been silenced. Where we slow down enough to feel what couldn’t be felt in the moment. To name what was never spoken aloud. To grieve what no one told you it was okay to grieve.
Together, we explore the unconscious patterns that may have drawn you to this work—the rescuer, the overachiever, the one who doesn’t need anything. And we gently begin to untangle those identities from your deeper self: the one who is worthy of care, not just the one who gives it.
This work isn’t about quitting your job or abandoning your purpose. It’s about reclaiming your inner life, your body, your breath. It’s about learning to stay connected to yourself in the midst of other people’s pain. It’s about healing your own trauma, so it doesn’t keep repeating itself under the surface.
A Note to the One Who’s Tired
If you’re reading this and feeling raw, depleted, or like you’re on the edge of burnout—you’re not alone. The system wasn’t built to support healers. But healing is still possible.
You deserve a space to fall apart, to be witnessed, to tend your own wounds—not just the ones you care for in others.
If you work in healthcare and are struggling with trauma, burnout, or emotional exhaustion, I’d be honored to walk alongside you. I offer psychotherapy for complex trauma and PTSD for doctors, nurses, and therapists in California—both online and in person in Oakland.
Let this be your space. You don’t have to carry the weight of every story alone.