An Autoethnography of Vicarious Trauma and Vicarious Growth in the Context of Rehabilitation Counseling

Background: Mental health professionals including rehabilitation counselors are often exposed to vicarious trauma, while they work with traumatized clients. Objectives: The current study aimed at explaining the experiences of exposure to vicarious trauma and its consequences for rehabilitation counselors as well as the experience of vicarious growth. Methods: The current study employed a collaborative autoetnographic approach to describe the experiences of working with traumatized clients. Collaborative autoethnography is a type of qualitative research method that allows two or more researchers to utilize ethnography and autobiography collaboratively to explain similar experiences. In this method, researchers collect data from their own life stories and analyze the data using various types of qualitative analyses. To analyze the current study data, a thematic analysis approach was employed. Results: It was found that lack of experience in working with difficult cases, lack of access to supervision, and a lack of vicarious trauma-related knowledge were major contributors to the experience of vicarious trauma. On the other hand, journal writing, visiting a counselor, peer support, and gaining knowledge were useful to overcome this stress. The next findings showed that although visiting traumatized clients may lead to experiencing vicarious trauma, it can also lead to experiencing vicarious growth. Vicarious trauma helped to be more mindful about life and death, cherish the family and friends, and experience growth. Conclusions: Rehabilitation counselors might experience both vicarious trauma and vicarious posttraumatic growth. The experience of vicarious trauma has a negative effect on counselors and they should employ self-care strategy to mitigate the negative results of exposure to traumatic experiences of others and if they wish to experience vicarious growth.