Charles Figley

First of all, we have secondary traumatic stress, and this is the most acute of the three.

Trauma researcher Charles Figley, who's done a lot of work in this area, describes it as the natural and consequential stress reaction that comes from knowing about someone else's traumatic experience, and from the stress of helping or wanting to help them.

It comes on fast, often just from a single exposure, and it can genuinely mirror symptoms of PTSD itself.

Secondly, we have vicarious traumatization.

And I'll talk about that more.

Charles Figley, who we talked about on the last episode with Dr. Gentry, was really the first to define compassion fatigue back in the mid-1990s.

He described it as the combined effects of secondary traumatic stress and burnout.

So it's a combination of psychological symptoms, physiological symptoms, and even moral and emotional weight of caring for others in your work.