Be Well

• Publication year: 2024
• Citation: Vol. 47 No. 5 Pg. 48
• Pages: 48

Be WellVol. 47 No. 5 Pg. 48Wyoming Bar JournalOctober 1, 2024

Maryt L. Fredrickson, J.

What Came First:

The Burnout or the Vicarious Trauma?

Maryt Fredrickson is staff attorney for the Hon. Lynne J. Boomgaarden in Cheyenne, Wyoming; serves on the Ad Hoc Committee on Attorney Well-Being; and co-chairs the Access to Justice 2.0 working group of the Access to Justice Commission.

The answer is neither, or maybe one or the other, but it is not really a chicken-and-egg conundrum. This month's column is about two topics: vicarious trauma and burnout. Every lawyer confronts each at different points, in their career. Each has symptoms and each has tools for managing and recovering. Both arise in the unique context of family law, on which this issue of the Wyoming Lawyer focuses, but they are also common across other practice areas.

Vicarious Trauma, Even Though the Thing Didn't Happen to You

Vicarious trauma occurs when a person is exposed to trauma experienced directly by others.^[1] It is vicarious because it is indirect, perhaps occurring by reading horrific facts or testimony, talking and listening to victims, or watching videos or other evidence. This also applies to court reporters, who take down every word of testimony about violent or horrific acts and then write it again when preparing transcripts. In the medical and emergency services fields, it can arise when responding to traumatic events or treating people with severe or violent injuries.

In the medical and emergency services fields, training and reminders about the symptoms and recovery tools for vicarious trauma is common and now a ubiquitous part of those professions. It is needed to help those professionals stay on their game, operating at one hundred percent, so they can keep performing and save the next life. It also helps for retention—people with unchecked trauma are more likely to leave the profession to find work in some field with less negative exposure. With the growing normalization of well-being efforts in the legal profession, the same training is warranted and for the same reasons—to help us and our peers stay on their game, operating at one hundred percent to solve the problem of the clients being served, and to reduce attrition in the profession.

Sometimes Trauma, Sometimes Not, and Sometimes Transformation. Sometimes vicarious symptoms don't arise the first time a legal professional is exposed to such horrible facts and...