Today we invested half a day in something I'd been wanting to prioritise for ages: vicarious trauma care training for the Ruby Assembly team. As a business that works predominantly with lawyers (including those in the family and domestic violence space), we're regularly exposed to content that has the potential to challenge our faith in human goodness. And frankly, that's been weighing on me—not just personally, but as an employer who cares deeply about my team's psychological wellbeing.
Bec Johnston-Ryan pointed me toward BlueKnot Australia, and we attended their half-day workshop "Navigating Trauma Care: Maintaining Wellbeing While Practicing Compassion and Empathy," facilitated by Naomi Sirio. That we chose to invest in this training as writers (when most other attendees were in allied health or legal spaces) speaks to something important: our level of engagement in the legal category runs deep. It reflects our respect for our clients' stories and the bravery they bring to their newlaw practices.
What I Learned About Empathy vs Compassion
One of the most valuable distinctions we explored was between empathy and compassion. Empathy is sharing resonance with another person's experience—feeling their pain because you've experienced something similar. But here's where it gets interesting: there are actually five types of empathy, according to Dr Dan Siegel's research.
Empathic Resonance: Feeling what another person feels
Perspective Taking: Seeing the world through their eyes
Cognitive Empathy: Understanding what their experience means to them
Empathic Concern (aka Compassion): Feeling their pain AND wanting to take action to relieve it
Empathic Joy: Sharing in someone's happiness and success
Compassion is the action-oriented response—it's understanding another's pain plus the desire to actually do something about it. And here's what's crucial for those of us working in trauma-adjacent spaces: compassion protects us better than pure empathy because it maintains healthy boundaries while still allowing us to help effectively.
The Attachment Foundation of How We Care
Our capacity for compassion is deeply linked to our own attachment experiences. As humans, we have the longest period of dependency on attachment figures (unlike reptiles, but similar to birds—an analogy that delighted me).
Dr John Bowlby's attachment theory suggests we develop an "internal working model" based on early experiences:
· How much can I trust other people?
· How valued and effective do I feel in relationships?
When people live with complex trauma, they often carry shame—not guilt, but deep core-level shame that pulls them away from connection. Brené Brown distinguishes this beautifully: guilt is "I did something bad," while shame becomes "I am bad."
For those of us supporting clients through difficult circumstances, understanding this distinction helps us recognise when we might be absorbing more than we need to.
The Reality of Vicarious Trauma
Let's talk about what we're actually dealing with when we work with trauma material regularly:
Vicarious Trauma is what happens when we marinate in others' trauma until it seeps into our own worldview. It's "when we open our hearts to hear someone's story of devastation or betrayal, our cherished beliefs are challenged and we are changed."
This is different from:
· Burnout: Emotional exhaustion from work overload
· Compassion Fatigue: Reduced capacity to be empathetic—the cost of caring for others in emotional pain
The research shows that 1 in 4 lawyers suffer from vicarious trauma, and it tends to peak between 6-10 years of experience. Criminal lawyers, family lawyers, and those working in human rights show consistently higher levels of distress, depression, and anxiety.
Practical Strategies That Actually Work
The Self-Compassion Framework
Kristin Neff's research on self-compassion offers three core components that I'm now building into our workplace culture:
1. Self-Kindness: Extending understanding to yourself rather than harsh self-criticism
2. Common Humanity: Recognising that struggle is part of the human experience, not a personal failing
3. Mindfulness: Avoiding extremes of suppressing feelings or drowning in them
Workplace Strategies We're Implementing
The ProQOL Assessment: We're using the Professional Quality of Life Scale as a team check-in tool. It measures compassion satisfaction, burnout, and compassion fatigue. Having concrete data helps normalise these conversations.
Boundaries as Care: Reading Dr Rebecca Ray's "Setting Boundaries" reinforced something important: boundaries aren't selfish—they're the most helpful form of communication we can offer. They let people know our needs and limits rather than expecting them to be mind-readers.
The Third Space Concept: Dr Adam Fraser's research on transitions fascinated me. The "Third Space" is that transitional moment between work (first space) and home (second space). What we do in that transition determines our success in the next space. For those working from home, this is especially crucial—we need deliberate practices to leave work behind.
Regulation and Recovery Tools
Top-Down Regulation: Using thought and cognition to test the reality of your current situation
Bottom-Up Regulation: Using the body—breathing, grounding techniques, even sighing (which actually regulates the nervous system!)
The ABC Framework:
· Awareness: How am I feeling right now?
· Balance: What activities outside work support me?
· Connection: Maintaining nurturing relationships and community involvement
What This Means for Legal Professionals and Writers
If you're working with traumatic material regularly, here are the non-negotiables:
1. Monitor Your Exposure: Be intentional about news consumption, violent content, and challenging material outside of work
2. Create Vicarious Resilience: Look for your clients' successes and strengths—their resilience will help build your own
3. Implement Low-Impact Discussions: When debriefing difficult cases, use content alerts, ask for consent, and decide consciously how much detail to share
4. Build Your Support Network: Maintain connections with colleagues, access supervision or debriefing, and don't underestimate peer support
The Bigger Picture
Reading Bessel van der Kolk's "The Body Keeps the Score" alongside understanding Dr Gabor Maté's work on childhood trauma gives context for why this work matters so much. Trauma literally reshapes both brain and body, affecting people's capacity to feel safe, form relationships, and trust their own bodies.
When we understand this, our work supporting clients becomes not just professional service delivery, but part of the progressive machinery of change. Too many people view the law as 'not for them'—either because of cost or because they recognise the system's inherent biases. By creating more accessible, trauma-informed legal practices, we're democratising a category that desperately needs more diversity.
Moving Forward
This training confirmed something I feel in my bones: investing in our team's psychological wellbeing isn't just good employer practice—it's essential for sustainable, effective client service. The legal practices and allied health champions we work with at Ruby Assembly are doing incredibly difficult, meaningful work. They need creatives who can engage with their stories without absorbing their trauma.
We're not therapists, and we don't need to be. But we can be trauma-aware, boundaried, and intentional about how we approach this work. That makes us better writers, better colleagues, and better humans. The resources are there. The research is solid. The only question is whether we're brave enough to prioritise our own wellbeing as much as we prioritise our clients' success - and that goes for lawyers and creatives alike.
Key Resources:
· BlueKnot Foundation - Professional development training
· ProQOL Assessment - Free self-assessment tool
· Kristin Neff's "Self-Compassion" - Essential reading
· Rebecca Ray's "Setting Boundaries" - Practical boundary-setting
· Adam Fraser's "The Third Space" - Transition strategies
· Bessel van der Kolk's "The Body Keeps the Score" - Understanding trauma
