📲 Feeling overwhelmed by the news? 👩‍💻 You’re not alone.

Vicarious trauma is a real thing. You are not a bad person if you put boundaries up about how much information you hear or learn from others about traumas that they're going through. Vicarious trauma is trauma that occurs as a result of hearing about something really difficult or painful or traumatic. Trauma can affect the person directly going through that experience, but it could also affect people who are hearing about it or being told about it. This is something that we see commonly in healthcare professionals. It can happen every single day. Maybe you resonate with this. Maybe you've gone through that before. I know that I have. In fact, it's something that I'm dealing with right now, with a situation that's going on in my personal life is I'm getting a lot of details that are being shared with me that are creating a lot of stress and angst. And so I'm making the decision right now to put up a protective shield where I can still hold space, space for the people that are going through the trauma, and I can still be supportive of them. But creating limits in what I want to be told and how much detail I want to be told. You have the permission to do that, too. There's a time and place for specific amounts of information. And maybe you're not the person to be receiving that information. Maybe they need to see a counselor or a therapist or another professional. You're okay for putting up boundaries and protecting yourself.