Reducing Secondary Traumatic Stress

by Brian C Miller

Reducing Secondary Traumatic Stress presents a model for supporting emotional well-being in workers who are exposed to the effects of secondary trauma. The book provides helping professionals with a portfolio of skills that supports emotion regulation and recovery from secondary trauma exposure and also that enhances the experience of the helping encounter. Each chapter presents evidence-informed skills that allow readers to regulate distressing emotions and to foster increased empathy for those suffering from trauma. Reducing Secondary Traumatic Stress goes beyond the usual discussion of burnout to talk in specific terms about what we do about the very real stress that is produced by this work.

190 pages, Paperback

Published July 27, 2021

Reviews

[Tara]

I wish I had read this book at the beginning of my career. A research based perspective of preventing and treating burnout. There is a parallel between CE-CERT and use of DBT skills, and it all makes sense! As a clinical social worker for 15 years, working in homes, these are skills I utilized during times of stress without realizing they were skills. Looking forward to implementing this in my work as a supervisor. I also feel incredibly validated by telling my intern that if she learned nothing else from me, she learned to take time for lunch every day. 😂

[Jillian Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

“It is superstition to believe that your suffering, your sacrifice of your enjoyment of the evening in some way helps your client. It does not. Not only does your intentional suffering not help your clients, contraiwise, but it will render you less caring in the long run.”

Perfect for the practicing trauma worker and grad students alike!

[Ryan Greer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so unexpectedly fantastic! Yes, it's very academic, yes it's a challenge to really pay attention through the whole thing as each page can be pretty dense. But Miller seems to be pretty aware of this and does his very best to make the content more approachable, in particular to non-practitioners.

Nevertheless, so many of the ideas he presents in this book made so much sense to me. He challenges so many of the terms and assumptions I'd grown accustomed to using when it comes to dealing with stress and responding to trauma, and offers some really interesting ways to change the way we think about stress, about work, and really about doing hard things.

The main crux of his book involves helping us reframe the way we talk about our work, away from the notion of protecting ourselves with thicker skin, towards opening our hearts even more and being willing to go through the process of having our hearts broken by the work that we do. He acknowledges that the physical and emotional effort we go through to avoid the discomfort associated with hard things ends up contributing to the very thing we hope to avoid (burnout, secondary traumatic stress, "compassion fatigue", etc). He fills each chapter with quotes and references to authors and poets that I, too, have been deeply impacted by, and I consider this book an excellent technical summation of many of the things I've only ever intuited in my heart.

It's probably not going to land the same way for everyone but, for me, this was a homerun.

[Robert Bogue]

When you think about it, there are dozens of professions that are focused on improving society. We think of first responders in terms of firefighters, law enforcement, emergency medical personnel, and 911 dispatchers. However, we forget about our mental health professionals, teachers, child protective services, and dozens of other professions that are exposed to the traumas others are coping with. Reducing Secondary Traumatic Stress: Skills for Sustaining a Career in the Helping Professions is designed to serve those who serve others by helping them learn to address the hardest parts of their jobs.

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[Jonathan Weinkle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant new way of reframing - or really debunking - the concepts of work-life balance, compassion fatigue, and burnout. We don't burn out by doing too much but rather by avoidance of deep involvement while simultaneously working in situations that demand deep involvement. I gave four stars because while the new frame and concrete exercises are very helpful, Miller does not do enough to address the external sources of secondary trauma: the unreasonable demands, under-resourcing, commodification of patients, and bottom line focus of modern American health care. How does one avoid the secondary trauma when the system seems bent on traumatizing the helpers in order to save money?

[Anna Budnick · Rating 5 out of 5]

This came at exactly the time it needed to. I hope every individual who desires to help others as a career takes time to read and digest what this book has to offer. There is no greater privilege than to help those in need. This book took me out of a deep hopelessness in my ability to sustain my career and current profession. It will be read and shared many times, and I hope those that are eager to sustain themselves in the work they chose to do can find the same benefit.

[April Lark · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as part of my counseling internship class and it was very helpful. I found there to be a lot of practical tips to help manage burnout. The information was presented clearly and there are a lot of assessments and tools included. I recommend this for anyone in a helping profession

[Kayley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every therapist should read this book!

[Lauren Geier · Rating 5 out of 5]

EVERY therapist needs to read this ASAP! It is a game changer!

[Wesley Cunningham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very theoretical and also very practical- 2 things that do not often go together with books!

[Sydney Matic · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really appreciated how Reducing Secondary Traumatic Stress offers clear, practical skills I can actually use in both my personal and professional life. As someone who works in a helping role, I found the tools grounding, accessible, and easy to integrate. It’s one of the few books on this topic that left me feeling empowered instead of overwhelmed.