Uptick in Compassion Fatigue & Vicarious Trauma cases due to Trump's immigration policy

The first time I realized something might be wrong, I was crying in the produce section of Costco.

I’d just seen a lawyer who works at the court where I practice and turned away before he could spot me. Like me, he was spending his weekend catching up on errands. The sight of someone whose job is to try to get people deported out buying a 30-pack of paper towels sent me over the edge. I couldn’t stop the tears as I beelined toward the checkout.

During law school and the many continuing legal trainings I attended each year, I was warned about “vicarious trauma” and “compassion fatigue,” the complex mental strains that can quickly lead to complete burnout. Vicarious trauma was first conceptualized to explain changes in therapists’ beliefs and expectations of the world after hearing graphic and painful stories from their clients. It now is now recognized to affect many different types of people who work in caretaking professions. Merriam-Webster defines compassion fatigue as “the physical and mental exhaustion and emotional withdrawal experienced by those who care for sick or traumatized people over an extended period of time.”

Despite this, the stubborn part of me believed that I had some sort of immunity to compassion fatigue. I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression since I was a preteen, but jumping into the fight had always buoyed me, not weighed me down.

But then I started crying in Costco, during date night with my wife and in bed in the middle of the night.

Overcome by emotion, I tried to excise every single bad thing from my life. First, I banned any TV with stressful plots, watching only the Food Network and HGTV. Then I started to feel bad about the animals they cooked on the Food Network, and that was out too. HGTV was OK for a while until they started showing episodes of “House Hunters International” in which wealthy white Americans searched for dream beachfront properties in Central American countries my clients fled after being tortured.

When several friends took winter vacations to Cuba, I stopped looking at Instagram, because I could not reconcile their sunny snapshots with the stories I heard from Cuban clients. My entire media consumption eventually revolved around “Gilmore Girls” and “The Great British Baking Show” episodes I’d seen before.

I skipped episodes of “Gilmore Girls” when the main characters fought too much, not sure if I could handle even the most benign conflict.

Losses started to seem inevitable. I got so anxious about work that I started taking carrying around a small pharmacy of pain relievers, oxycodone, and anti-nausea medication to offset the stomachaches and migraines that plagued me.



To read more of this Trump traumatized woman and the Vicarious Trauma she is suffering through due to Compassion Fatigue Syndrome as defined in Merriam-Webster's Dictionary click here.

The TDS in this story is soooooo bad it is worth an actual read on the HuffPost.