The Link Between Vicarious Trauma and Learned Helplessness
Vicarious trauma is the costly experience of witnessing other people’s traumatic events with empathy, thus causing emotional labor and posttrauma symptoms (Moran & Asquith, 2020). Vicarious trauma can lead to depression and anxiety (Patel et al., 2026). Some other symptoms include intrusive thoughts, burnout, numbing, feeling overwhelmed, sleep difficulties, fearful feelings, losing trust in others, hypervigilance, and exhaustion (Rousseau, 2026).
Learned helplessness is a psychological condition when an individual who experienced precarious, uncomfortable, or traumatic events did not have the ability to flee the situations or put a stop to them. The individual may then develop the schema that he is helpless in face of adversity. This condition can cause a lack of motivation, emotional and cognitive harm, unhealthy external attribution, a depressogenic attribution style, extreme passivity, depression, and low self-esteem (Maier & Seligman, 2016).
Developing vicarious trauma by witnessing others’ suffering can cause neurological triggers including inflammation of prefrontal cortex, hyperactivity of HPA axis, and a breakdown of glutamate signaling. These factors can cause behavioral and physiological decline and passive dispositions that can lead to symptoms resembling depression (Patel et al., 2026).
While dealing with vicarious trauma, self-care becomes of vital importance in order to prevent more psychological duress. Self-care can induce meaningful life experiences and feelings of personal control. In order to lessen the affects of vicarious trauma, some steps that help are avoiding isolation, joining or forming a support group, practice mindfulness, journal, and seek retrospection, and increase self -awareness (Rousseau, 2026).
References
Abramson, L. Y., Seligman, M. E. P., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned helplessness in humans: Critique and reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87(1), 49–74. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.87.1.49
Howard S. (2021). A Causal Model of Children’s Vicarious Traumatization. Journal of child & adolescent trauma, 14(4), 443–454. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-020-00331-z
Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. (2016). Learned helplessness at fifty: Insights from neuroscience. Psychological review, 123(4), 349–367. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000033
Moran, R. J., & Asquith, N. L. (2020). Understanding the vicarious trauma and emotional labour of criminological research. Methodological Innovations, 13(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2059799120926085.
Patel S, Kushwaha R, Sinha D, Soren K, Kumar A and Chakravarty S (2026) Vicarious learned helplessness: a translationally relevant novel model of stress contagion elucidating sex-dependent prefrontal cortex pathology. Front. Behav. Neurosci. 20:1788847. doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2026.1788847
Rousseau, D. 2026. Module 1.3. Vicarious Trauma. Learning Module. Boston University.