Borrowed Trauma

Borrowed Trauma
Why we relive our patient’s pain & how to avoid it
By Judith Acosta, LISW, CHT
May 2009 JEMS Vol. 34 No. 5
2009 May 1
A patient I had been treating for trauma for about six months sat before me, his hands moving restlessly as he talked, his legs spasmodically bouncing up and down. It had been more than 15 years since J.J. had been a young firefighter, and he was recalling one of his first calls as if it happened yesterday. His anxiety and discomfort were palpable.

He had been barely 20, inexperienced, anxious to do everything right on one of his first major calls. It was a two-story clapboard house with old wiring and pre-code construction. The crew knew an older woman was inside but didn’t know where. The neighbors had seen her before the engines pulled up: She was leaning out of her upstairs bedroom in a blue robe, waving her arms frantically, screaming, but then she disappeared suddenly.

J.J. was one of the first inside. Moving through the still-rising smoke with a limited range of vision through his mask, he walked through the hallway slowly, his eyes focused on the ceiling overhead, a part of which had already fallen. There were piles of smoldering beams, ash and the remains of a table. He stepped to his left around the banister and ... crunch .

He looked down and nearly vomited.

"Don’t move!" his chief, who had been keeping an eye on the rookie, yelled from down the hall. J.J. froze until he got the sign that he should lift his foot back up—slowly—and then step to the right. The chief lifted a charred two-by-four to reveal a small piece of blue robe. It was the only color left in the room besides the yellow stripe along their coats. She had tried to get downstairs herself when the ceiling collapsed on top of her.

As J.J. spoke, I found my posture mirroring his own, my heart rate slightly elevated, and my hands and feet fidgeting more than usual. By the end of the story, I felt as if I had stepped on the woman myself.

I sat still, facing him, and took a deep breath. He had stopped fidgeting. Once again, I saw the pain in his eyes and considered the importance of what had happened. It was the same process that storytellers and listeners have experienced for centuries. The words we use—even in the most ordinary conversations—move us. Not just metaphorically. Literally . The stories we hear don’t just make us frown; they don’t just elicit a good laugh from time to time. They impact us physically. They touch us where we feel it most deeply, sometimes without our permission. It was his trauma, but for a few moments I had all the symptoms of having undergone it myself.
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Borrowed Trauma