Many people have woken up to the devastating news of a mass shooting in the British Columbia community of Tumbler Ridge. Our thoughts are with the individuals, families, and wider community who are navigating the shock and grief of this tragedy.
Watching the story can activate feelings of anxiety and distress for people, especially parents who send their children to school trusting these spaces to be safe environments for learning. Even without direct exposure, events like this can feel overwhelming and destabilising.
This is often described as vicarious trauma.
What Is Vicarious Traumatization?
Vicarious Traumatization is a reflection of your capacity to care deeply.
Human brains are wired for empathy, enabling us to feel others’ emotions even from afar. This natural ability to connect with others is part of what makes us human, but when the suffering we witness, like the suffering of other parents, becomes overwhelming, it can start to affect us in profound ways.
Recognizing the Symptoms
It is common for many people to dismiss their feelings because it didn’t happen to them. You might be tempted to think that because you are “lucky” so therefore don’t have a “right” to feel badly.
However, ignoring how you feel may only make things worse.
Understanding the signs of vicarious traumatization is the first step toward addressing it.
Symptoms can vary but often mirror those of direct trauma exposure. These may include but are not limited to:
- Emotional Distress: Persistent feelings of sadness, anger, helplessness, or guilt after seeing or hearing about tragedies.
- Intrusive Thoughts: Repeated, uninvited images or thoughts about the disaster that can be hard to shake especially involving own children
- Physical Symptoms: Unexplained fatigue, headaches, or stomachaches.
- Avoidance Behaviors: Feeling reluctant to watch the news, engage with social media or talk about distressing events.
- Hyperarousal: A sense of being constantly on edge, trouble sleeping or heightened anxiety.
- Changes in Worldview: Increased fear about safety, distrust of previously safe spaces such as schools or playgrounds, or a more pessimistic view of the future
Steps to Manage Vicarious Trauma
If you recognize signs of vicarious traumatization in yourself, there are steps you can take to heal and strengthen your resilience.
Limit Media Exposure
It is important to set boundaries around how much news or social media you consume.
While getting the news informs you, being overexposed to it can actually increase your stress. This includes going down rabbit holes of previous information of mass school shootings. The automatic response to this may be a sense of guilt because “you’re turning a blind eye.”
Choosing to take care of yourself to be more present and effective in helping others is important.
- Set specific times to check updates rather than scrolling continuously
- Take intentional breaks from news and social media
- Redirect your attention to restorative activities, including spending time with your children
Stepping back is not avoidance or indifference.
As the familiar analogy reminds us, we must put on our own oxygen mask first to be able to support others effectively.
Honor Your Feelings
Give yourself permission to feel what you’re feeling without judgment.
Remember: it is common to have a range of emotions after a traumatic incident. You may experience intense stress similar to the effects of a physical injury. For example, you may feel exhausted, sore or off balance.
To help you process and release stress, try activities like:
- Journaling
- Mindfulness meditation
- Or simply acknowledging your emotions
- Read work by Dr. Kristin Neff who has written extensively on self- compassion to support with showing up whole heartedly
Connect with Community
Human beings are designed to live in community.
To support connection:
- Share your feelings with trusted friends, family or other parents.
- Where appropriate, check in with children in an age-appropriate way and let them know they can ask questions or share worries.
Talking about what’s on your mind and naming your feelings can be incredibly healing and reminds you that you’re not alone in carrying this burden.
Help Others
When tragedy feels overwhelming, it helps to channel your energy into constructive action.
Whether it’s donating to relief efforts, volunteering, or advocating for policy change, these acts of kindness can provide a sense of purpose and empowerment. Things to try:
- Locate resources in your community for ways that you can help people who have been affected by this incident, or have other needs.
Helping someone else often has the benefit of making you feel better, too.
Cultivate Compassionate Detachment
If you are supporting and giving back, practice compassionate detachment, which means to empathize with others’ suffering without letting it consume you.
Mindfulness practices can teach you to observe your emotions and reactions without being overtaken by them. Check out Jon Kabat Zinn who has a range of guided meditations online.
Take Care of Yourself
This one might feel counter intuitive and this is the time to engage in healthy behaviors to enhance your ability to cope with excessive stress.
Ways you can take care of yourself:
- Eat well-balanced meals
- Get plenty of rest
- Build physical activity into your day
- Avoid alcohol and drugs
- Because they can suppress your feelings rather than help you to manage and lessen your distress.
- Alcohol and drugs may also intensify your emotional or physical pain.
- Establish or re-establish routines such as eating meals at regular times, returning to hobbies, and following an exercise program.
Try relaxation techniques if you are having trouble sleeping such as deep breathing, meditation or yoga.
Grief is Personal
Remember that grief is a long process. Give yourself time to experience your feelings and to recover.
For some, this might involve staying at home; for others it may mean getting back to your daily routine. Dealing with the shock and trauma of such an event takes time. It is typical to expect many ups and downs, including “survivor guilt,” or that feeling bad that you escaped the tragedy while others did not.
Healing takes time, and each person’s path will look different.
If You Need More Support
For many people, using the tips and strategies mentioned above may be sufficient to get through the current crisis. At times, however, an individual can get stuck or have difficulty managing intense reactions.
A licensed mental health professional can assist you in developing an appropriate strategy for moving forward. It is important to seek professional help if you feel like you are unable to function or perform basic activities of daily living.
At Toronto Psychology Clinic, Registered Social Worker Mahira Zakiuddin is offering free 30min online support sessions for individuals looking for support linked to this or any other vicarious trauma.
Please reach out if you are interested. You can contact us either by booking online or reaching out today to book a free consultation.
About the Author:
Mahira Zakiuddin is a Registered Social Worker and Psychotherapist whose therapeutic style is warm, client-centered, and culturally responsive.
She integrates multiple evidence-based modalities including EFT, Gottman Method, CBT, and DBT to help individuals, couples, and families with a range of mental health concerns.
Mahira provides virtual and in-person therapy in English, Urdu, and Hindi. Originally from Pakistan and now based in Ontario, Mahira has lived and worked across multiple continents, enriching her perspective on identity, cultural nuance, and resilience.
📘 Looking for more tools? Check out our other blog posts on how to encourage family members to get help, AI and therapy, and finding the right therapist
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