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Secondary Trauma among Chaplains
Chaplains are a special type of caregiver because they join people in their pain and listen to their narratives of strife, suffering, and torment and because they help people cope with spiritual trauma and existential crises. Chaplains generally work in interfaith multicultural institutional settings (military, hospital, prison, academic, etc.) while still bound doctrinally, liturgically, theologically, ethically, and socially by the faith groups endorsing them as qualified to work. Like therapists, medical professionals, and psychiatric caregivers, by definition, chaplains listen empathetically, provide care and counseling, and help people process trauma. Chaplains also act as a source of spiritual guidance, religious information, faith inspiration, and spiritual healing, which greatly differentiates them from other types of caregivers. This added spiritual dimension, along with the fact that faith journeys are rarely smooth even without added existential crises intrinsic to trauma situations, makes chaplains particularly susceptible to secondary traumatic stress. Self-care is rare, self-loathing is prevalent, and burnout is rampant among chaplain caregivers, especially those consistently exposed to trauma and secondary trauma narratives. This entry explores secondary trauma among chaplains—causality as caregivers and causality as clergy.
Chaplains as Caregivers
Chaplains are subject to the same stressors and compassion fatigue–inducing psychosocial influences as other caregivers are. Learning to care for the traumatized, the sick, the saddened, and the anxious requires well-formed professional coping mechanisms and a fully stocked caregiving toolbox. Generally, like other helping and caregiving professions, chaplaincy requires candidates to undertake years of training, academic work, and professional and spiritual formation to achieve professional readiness. Like other caregivers, chaplains are called on to minister to those in need regardless of circumstance, location, adverse conditions, or time of day or day of week. The ability to care for anyone in any place who suffers from any stressors is imperative to chaplains' effectiveness and, subsequently, to their senses of self-worth.
A Question of Identity
Chaplains indeed have to possess a fully formed pastoral identity, complete with an overarching desire to repeatedly sacrifice for the emergent/near-term/long-term care and treatment of those in need. Simply stated, chaplains are “wired” to be altruistic, self-sacrificing caregivers. For this reason, chaplains suffer from the same secondary posttraumatic stress symptoms and compassion fatigue outcomes as mental health professionals and other caregivers. The confluence of secondary trauma exposure and the inability (or unwillingness) to share emotional impacts, stress narratives, or any need for basic empathetic listening with family, friends, colleagues, or other members of the chaplain's support system leads frequently to exhaustion, compassion fatigue, disruptions in sleeping and eating patterns, and burnout. The prevailing attitude is give-give-give, without asking for anything in return, because a chaplain's caregiving vocation is also a calling. Pressure is high, expectations are superhuman, and self-care is scarce.
Susceptibility to Secondary Trauma
Chaplains' hyper-altruistic tendencies and propensity to not acknowledge the same stress-induced symptoms they recognize in others leave them particularly susceptible to physical, emotional, behavioral, professional, and interpersonal burnout symptoms. By definition, they empathetically listen to accounts of traumatic events, join sufferers in their pain, and help find hope amid uncertainty and stress. Constant intense exposure to others' suffering can lead chaplains to reexperience secondhand accounts of traumatic events themselves. The accumulation of passive stressors experienced by the chaplain, or single or multiple sensory triggers (smells, sights, sounds, other stimuli), can result in avoidance behaviors, numbing, workaholic tendencies, hyper-vigilance, difficulty concentrating, sleeping/eating/exercise problems, and social withdrawal. Chaplains often fail to “practice what they preach”—giving themselves even a modicum of self-care—which can exacerbate stress symptoms to a point where countertransference, emotional exhaustion, and overidentification with counselees becomes a “new normal.” Healthy idealism is replaced with an ugly realism fraught with the secondary traumatic stress symptoms until the chaplain burns out.
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