Self-Care for Victim Service Providers – NYS Coalition Against Sexual Assault Prevention and Intervention Conference – May 9-10, 2012, Albany NY
New York State Coalition Against Sexual Assault
Sexual Assault Prevention and Intervention Conference
Holiday Inn, 205 Wolf Road, Albany, NY | May 9-10, 2012
Healing Trauma Through Self-Parenting—Self-Care for Victim Service Providers Patricia O’Gorman, Ph.D.
For workers serving crime victims, dealing with trauma is a daily occurrence, one that can be emotionally costly for the worker. This is particularly true when it comes to dealing with the Secondary Traumas resulting from the witnessing of the traumatic responses of another. Secondary Trauma has the potential to trigger a helper’s own trauma history, resulting in their reliving traumas from their past as they attempt to intervene in the current trauma of the person before them.
When Secondary Trauma becomes sustained we begin to think of this as Compassion Fatigue, which potentially affects the effectiveness of the worker, as motivation suffers when workers, triggered by their own trauma, find it difficult to perform the duties required of their position. As such, Trauma can impact all levels of the service delivery to crime survivors.
An answer to this is to assist workers in developing SelfParenting skills, to begin to heal themselves by helping them to identify and begin to deal with their own traumas, while drawing upon their inner wisdom and resiliency. This workshop will focus on introducing participants to these concepts.