Combatting compassion fatigue with self-care

For people in jobs that require them to be in the front lines of a crisis, vicarious trauma is normal. Surviving it requires conscious care

- Tanisha Saxena

From ancient gladiator arenas to modern news feeds, humanity has long been drawn to the spectacle of suffering. In the digital world we live in, visual storytelling from photojournalism to graphic videos, forces us to confront suffering on a daily basis. Haunting images of war zones can stir a sense of empathy, pushing us to question systems or support survivors. Yet an undeniable, darker impulse—a voyeuristic curiosity, or even "schadenfreude"—often accompanies this.

"Some argue that witnessing others' suffering provides a kind of comparative solace. Seeing someone's home destroyed may subconsciously provoke relief that it wasn't our own, but with repeated exposure, empathy may be gradually replaced by numbness," says Dr. T.R. John, senior psychiatry consultant at Aster Medcity in Kochi. This emotional numbness that John alludes to is symptomatic of vicarious trauma, where witnessing tragedy from afar burdens our psyches in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Nishtha Khurana, a counseling psychologist at Lissun, a mental health care platform in Gurugram, sheds light on the phenomenon. "Known as secondary or public trauma, these events can evoke emotional reactions: fear, anxiety, numbness and even depression. Beyond the emotional impact, they can lead to behavioral shifts like irritability, social withdrawal, or strained relationships. At its most intense, these symptoms resemble PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder)," Khurana explains.