Secondary Traumatization

I finished my master's degree in counseling in 2006, five years ago. In that education, trauma was not addressed adequately and so, it's not surprising that secondary or vicarious trauma was not addressed well either. Secondary traumatization occurs when one works closely with trauma survivors. It's the stress and stress reactions that we pick up from dealing with traumatic experiences secondhand. A list of the signs and symptoms can be found on pages 3 and 4 here.

As the above linked article suggests, balance in one's own life, physical health and relaxation, and supportive social relationships are very valuable in dealing with secondary stress. But I'd also had the feeling for a long time that there must be some specific concentration/meditation technique that directly addressed the individual experience of this particular type of stress. Well, it's taken five years to find a fitting approach, process, or technique, but I believe I've found it (or, at least, one--since others might find that there are different techniques that work better for them).

In Shinzen Young's work, found on the web at Shinzen.org and basicmindfulness.org, there is a particular technique in his "Focus In" way of knowing yourself as a spiritual being. (This post gets a little technical, but it does not really get into anything too archaic. A familiarity with practicing meditation will help in grasping the value of the techniques listed--and the system overall--but part of what I like about this system is that it is accessible to beginning meditators.)

As one begins to develop the ability to pay attention to different streams of input into perceptions (Shinzen suggests working towards being able to "focus in" on mental talk, mental image, and emotional body-type sensations as three somewhat separate streams or foci), one becomes increasingly able to focus primarily on emotional body-type sensations. In my experience, this is the best place to work with secondary traumatization because of how our bodies carry the stress from traumatization that our thinking minds often want to ignore or turn away from.

As one focuses on emotional body-type sensations, it is possible to differentiate sensations that feel primarily physical (the weight of various body parts as one sits, the temperature in the room, maybe a slight breeze blowing across arm hair or one's face, etc.) and sensations that are both physical and emotional such as a tightness in one's stomach or shoulder muscles that is related to remembering working with trauma. At this point, it's good to realize that the physical body is not necessarily identified with, defined by, tied up in or tied down by, one's psyche. As we distinguish the difference between primarily physical sensations and emotion-laden physical sensations, it's easy enough to see that "I have a body but I am not my body". In other words, physical sensation alone does not define or describe us. ONce this is pretty clear, it is easy to feel a sense of not worrying about the physical body and being able to focus strongly on the emotional-physical sensations that sort of symbolize our experience of psyche, the sensations and feelings that let us know we are human.

If one sits in meditation for 30-60 minutes, simply noting feeling-sensations without trying to do anything other than notice them, one is likely to have moments when one is NOT noticing emotion-laden feeling sensations. We can look at those moments as "rest". (So, another way of approaching what I'm speaking about here is to begin with Shinzen's "way" of focusing on rest. In that case, the distinctions I've listed are still important.) This state of a restful psyche or emotion-body, which we primarily will tend to experience in relatively brief moments initially, alleviates a great deal of acute stress if we become aware of it. Shinzen described this focusing on rest in the emotion-body as "letting your humanity fall away". Speaking from experience, being able to take even a brief rest from one's tortured humanity (when it is so) does not change that one's job may be just as demanding and emotionally challenging the very next day, but it is so important to be able to find any rest. It can be the difference between feeling emotionally challenged and emotionally crippled by an intense profession.

One of the things I like about Shinzen's approach is that he focuses on mindfulness as improving one's ability to concentrate, clarity of senses, and equanimity. As one works on distinguishing different types of sensory phenomena, the exercise itself strengthens the power of one's concentration. Working with concentration in this manner--in distinguishing different input streams or foci--improves the sensory clarity. This is opposed to feeling muddled by incoming stimuli or under a "barrage" of stimuli. And by increasing concentration and clarity, if we include a reasonable understanding of ourselves and mindfulness itself, we improve equanimity along the way.

To the same extent that we improve the likelihood of making a jumpshot the more we practice our intention and ability to make jumpshots, we apply our increased concentration, clarity, and equanimity to familiarizing ourselves with a restful state when we practice resting awareness through intention and mindfulness techniques. THis increases the likelihood of feeling restful and extends the moments of being restful. I believe it was in one of Chogyam Trungpa's books where I read that the Tibetan for "meditation" is familiarization. Rather than having some ridiculously lofty or vague description of why to meditate or how to, we can simply say that it is worth familiarizing oneself with an emotionally restful state. For me, whether that can or needs to tie into anything more idealistic is secondary to the immediate beneficial effects. If couched within a larger framework, this technique can connect to broader meaning or applications but doesn't need to in order to be worthwhile. Thanks, Shinzen.