Trauma and Vicarious Resilience

Trauma and Vicarious Resilience
by Pam Crow
Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Multnomah County Mental Health Consultant to CARES Northwest

"The world breaks everyone and afterward some are stronger at the broken places." -Ernest Hemingway

For the last year or so I've been working with a boy. I will call him Calvin. Calvin and his brothers were removed from their parents and placed into foster care almost three years ago. At the time, Calvin was four years old. Calvin and his siblings all showed signs of extreme emotional neglect and abuse. Calvin was (and is) very small for his age, with big brown eyes and a squeaky voice. He charms everyone with whom he comes in contact, but being with him in the playroom early on, I sensed a palpable sadness. When I tried to talk to him about his feelings, Calvin would tell me, I don't have any feelings. He would ask me, When am I going to get a family?
There has been a lot written about the negative effects of working with traumatized individuals. "Vicarious trauma" refers to the cumulative effect of hearing and empathically engaging with a client's traumatic stories. It would break my heart to see Calvin's sad little face and to see how hard he was working to keep his spirits up as he was moved from one foster home to another. However, there was also something else happening when I met with Calvin. I was in awe of his artistic ability, his intuitiveness, and the way he connected emotionally with me, in spite of all he had been through. Calvin was teaching me about courage and survival in the face of adversity.
In 2007, a study done at San Diego State University explored the formulation of a new concept: vicarious resilience. The researchers studied a group of clinicians who worked with survivors of kidnapping and torture. What they found was that, in addition to vicarious trauma, these clinicians were also experiencing a change in their attitudes and emotions based upon witnessing their clients' immense capacity to heal. The clinicians realized that they were also being affected in positive ways by their relationships with these survivors. One subject responded: With my resources and their resources, they teach me, because if I learn to suffer with them, I also have to learn to overcome the pain with them...if they are resilient, I must be so too.
A few weeks ago, Calvin learned that his biological parents had voluntarily relinquished their rights so that his current foster parents could adopt him and one of his brothers. He says, I have a mom and a dad now. I even have a dog. I have a family. In his therapy session, Calvin asked if he could paint. As he swept the paintbrush across the paper, he began to sing along to the paint strokes. The words were nonsense words, sung to the rhythm of colors sweeping across the page. He looked at me and laughed. This is my made-up language , he said. I think it was a language I recognized.
It was the language of happiness.