Some Cases Follow You Home
Some cases end when the report is completed. Others do not.
For professionals who work around trauma, there are cases that stay in your mind long after the workday is over. It might be something a child said during an interview, the details of a difficult case, or simply wondering what will happen to that person after your role in the case has ended. You can leave the office, but sometimes your mind does not leave the case as easily.
Before studying trauma more deeply, I think it was easy to assume that trauma mainly affects the person who directly experienced the event. Throughout this course, however, I began thinking more about the people who repeatedly listen to traumatic experiences as part of their profession. Police officers, child protection professionals, social workers, emergency responders, and others may spend their careers helping people through some of the most difficult moments of their lives. They are trained to remain professional, make decisions, and continue to the next case. But being professional does not mean being unaffected.
One concept that stood out to me in this course was secondary traumatic stress. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN, 2022) explains that professionals can experience emotional distress from indirect exposure to the traumatic experiences of others. This is particularly relevant in professions where listening to detailed accounts of abuse, violence, loss, and fear is not unusual but part of everyday work.
I think what makes this type of stress difficult is that the effect may not always be obvious. A professional does not necessarily finish a difficult interview and immediately recognize, “This case affected me.” Instead, the impact can be quieter. A person may continue thinking about the case at home, become emotionally exhausted, have difficulty separating work from personal life, or gradually become more guarded about the world around them. Bride (2007) found substantial levels of secondary traumatic stress symptoms among social workers, demonstrating that professionals who work with traumatized populations can themselves experience trauma-related symptoms.
What interests me most is not only what professionals experience at work, but what they may carry away from it. Someone who repeatedly encounters child abuse, for example, may begin noticing possible risks in situations that other people would consider ordinary. A police officer repeatedly exposed to violence may find that remaining alert does not automatically end when the shift does. In some ways, professional experience teaches us to notice things that other people may overlook. That awareness can be valuable in our work, but constantly viewing the world through the possibility of harm can also have a cost.
This changed one assumption for me. Being affected by a case does not necessarily mean that someone is unable to do the job. Sometimes it may simply mean that the person has been doing emotionally demanding work for a long time without enough opportunity to process what they have been carrying. Van der Kolk (2014) explains throughout The Body Keeps the Score how traumatic stress can affect the way people experience safety, emotions, and their surroundings. Although his work primarily focuses on people who have directly experienced trauma, it also made me think more deeply about how repeated exposure to the trauma of others can influence professionals over time.
There is an understandable expectation in criminal justice that professionals remain calm and objective. We need that. Decisions involving victims, children, families, and offenders cannot be based only on emotion. But I do not think professionalism should require becoming emotionally detached from everything we see. Empathy is part of what allows professionals to listen carefully, understand what someone is experiencing, and recognize when that person needs help. The challenge is learning how to care without carrying every case personally.
This is also why I no longer see self-care as something extra that professionals should think about only when they have time. Sometimes recovery can be as simple as taking a real day away from work, disconnecting when possible, spending time with family, resting, or recognizing when you need support. At the same time, the responsibility cannot fall entirely on the individual. Organizations that ask employees to work around trauma also have a responsibility to support them. Peer support, confidential mental health resources, supportive supervision, and education about secondary traumatic stress can help professionals recognize the impact of their work before they reach a crisis. The NCTSN (2022) similarly emphasizes both individual and organizational approaches to addressing secondary traumatic stress.
People working in trauma-exposed professions are often told to “leave work at work.” It sounds simple, but I have come to realize that it is not always realistic. Maybe the goal is not to forget every difficult case at the end of the day. Some cases stay with us because we are human enough to care about what happens to the people we serve. The more important skill may be learning to recognize when remembering becomes carrying, and when carrying becomes too heavy.
This course has changed the way I think about trauma because I no longer see its impact as limited only to the person at the center of an incident. Trauma can affect families, communities, and sometimes the professionals who repeatedly step into other people’s worst moments to help them.
Some cases will follow us home. The important question is whether we recognize what we are carrying—and whether the systems designed to help others are also willing to support the people doing the helping.
References
Bride, B. E. (2007). Prevalence of secondary traumatic stress among social workers. Social Work, 52(1), 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/52.1.63
National Child Traumatic Stress Network. (2022). Secondary traumatic stress: Understanding the impact on professionals in trauma-exposed workplaces.
Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.