Healing Secondary Trauma: Proven Strategies for Caregivers and Professionals to Manage Stress, Anxiety, and Compassion Fatigue

by Trudy Gilbert-Eliot

A traumatic experience can have profound impacts on the people directly involved, but that's not always where it ends. Trauma's shadow can affect the caregiving professionals such as first responders, crisis counselors, ER workers, and even the friends and family of trauma survivors.

Healing Secondary Trauma is the gentle guide to help you identify symptoms, understand overwhelming feelings like anger, sadness, and burnout, and begin the healing process of your own secondary trauma. With interactive exercises and cutting-edge strategies for caregivers and professionals, your journey to recovering from the daily realities of compassion fatigue, stress, and anxiety starts here.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Mental Health

167 pages, Paperback

Published May 5, 2020

About the author

PhD LMFT LCADC

Reviews

[Cassandra]

I received a complimentary copy.

A book that is perfect for most people who feel down in anyway and also to help build up enough healing positive strength to keep helping others without hurting your own inner light.

[Christine Gustin (christinebookstagram)]

Geared primarily towards first responders and others in intense roles, but this book is still incredibly helpful and accessible for everyone. I got a lot out of this!

[Megan MacKay]

It felt nice to be the one getting therapized, for a change. And no, Goodreads, I would not like to share my notes and highlights from this particular reading endeavour.

[Julie]

Like Complex PTSD, Secondary Trauma is a term only now coming into prominence in the general public. Those who have witnessed traumatic events, or those who live or work with those who experienced trauma, develop their own PTSD to manage and work with. As the child of a veteran and as someone who witnessed a violent suicide, I can relate to this. So can the author.

I LOVE this guide. It's not too "self-help-ish", if that makes sense. It's pragmatic, written directly and compassionately. Dr. Gilbert-Eliot begins with a background of secondary trauma, and then tackles emotions, thoughts, body, relationships, and strategy to move forward. Her resource list and references are well-done, and her final tribute explains why she is so able to help others. Her book does read as someone who has been through secondary trauma herself, and who knows how to work through it step-by-step. She gets it. AND she can help you to work through it. I love the charts and strategies like "red light, yellow light, green light" to check one's coping strategies. I've learned that I need to check in with myself regularly, and this book will help me do so.

Thank you to Callisto for the review copy, with no requirements of response.

[Kathy]

Healing Secondary Trauma is a much needed book. Well-written, comprehensive and informative, it talks about secondary trauma: what it is, who is susceptible to it, symptoms of it, and provides the reader with exercises and practical strategies to lessen the impacts of the secondary trauma and help you move forward.

The book is very interesting and highly readable - I got so caught up in it I read it through in two briefly separated sessions. I related to this book on several levels and found it thought-provoking and very helpful.

My sincere thanks to the author for writing a book we've needed for so long. Also to Callisto Media and RockRidgePress for giving me a copy of the book in hopes of a review (though no review was necessary). This is an unbiased review, and the opinions stated here are my own.

[Robert Bogue]

What you see and do changes what you see and do. It’s a simple statement with profound effects. It’s a recognition that you can’t see others’ trauma without being changed by it. You can’t be in the presence of others’ suffering without suffering yourself. Healing Secondary Trauma: Proven Strategies for Caregivers and Professionals to Manage Stress, Anxiety, and Compassion Fatigue is designed to provide tools that allow us to stay in contact with the trauma longer, to suffer less ourselves, and to help more.

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[Nyki Whealton]

I am doing research on secondary trauma and this book was so insightful. Not only did it cover secondary trauma but it gave solutions to manage stress in general. I have taken some good information from the book to help make some healthier choices in my life for a healthy mind and body. It all seemed very obvious but if we aren’t intentional about our behaviors then knowing the information does no good. It offered a lot of strategies and exercises to help deal with secondary trauma and stress in general. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in being intentional about making positive, healthy choices in their life.

[Brittney Dunphy]

I used this book to build a lesson plan to help Healthcare workers address their secondary trauma. If the concept of secondary trauma is new to you and you're looking to simply learn about it, this book might not be for you. If you're familiar with secondary trauma and want to address your own experiences, this book gives you the tools to address them head on.

One thing I appreciated most about this book is that it can be used again and again. This book is filled with exercises and activities, but it's up to the reader to decide which exercises are relevant. And if needed, the reader can pick up this book again and have an entirely different experience.

[Janine Darragh]

This book is definitely geared more for first responders of medical emergencies than for teachers, but there are a lot of great practical suggestions for those who are struggling with secondary trauma; I was impressed.

[Holly Bollinger]

Love the hands-on, practical approaches with the journaling, action steps, worksheets and Q&As. Super helpful to read through but also helpful as a tool to go back to in tough situations and seasons.

[Amy Blackett]

Simple, practical, gives prompts and tools to help reader evaluate and work through secondary trauma after defining/explaining it.

[Lolo]

Whilst it is aimed at those who are handling Secondary Trauma, this book is full of useful strategies and activities that would work for anyone experiencing anxiety and/or depression (or potentially any other disruptive mood disorders).
It's a great little tool box to help people manage their mental health during tough times.

It's also balances being very simplistic (gives you a brief breakdown of something, an example of the strategy, and then the template for you to use), without being full of too much top line stuff that those who have experience in the mental health arena don't really need.