Back home with the software, I processed the personal impact of some uncompleted sessions at work. Our profession is at high risk and working with traumatized patients probably increases our risk of getting mentally damaged and becoming re-traumatized. The shattering atrocities we face with our patients impress us. We are the profession with the greatest likelihood to become secondary victims by reexperiencing the trauma events of our patients, developing avoidance behavior and persistent arousal. There is a cost to caring.
Surgeons wash their hands.
Hand washing symbolises cleansing oneself from the daily input of cruelties we gather via our patients. The next incident supported this idea. I was faced with having to preside over a school administration council with about 50 members. Using self-administration, the small performance anxiety which I sometimes develop vanished. I decided to use the software in the morning to start the day and again back at home after work to prepare myself for the clinical challenges of the day and back home to get more distance from psychiatric issues, which kept on bouncing around in my head after work.