Vicarious Trauma Case Study

A few months ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Amy Shirley, who is a close personal acquaintance as well as a certified interpreter. She has been qualified in this field for two years and interprets in the religion, medical, and educational settings. I will be focusing on the educational setting of her career, and more specifically the topic of vicarious trauma that interpreters may experience in their chosen settings.
In my interview with Ms. Shirley, I quickly discovered the raw emotions that can form within an interpreter when perusing this particular field. Ms. Shirley described to me what she personally does every day at the school system that she works in. She works with five Deaf students, as well as ten other special needs children,
Shirley about vicarious trauma, which has been my main focus during this semester of the ITP program. I wanted to understand what vicarious trauma means in the interpreting profession and also how to deal with this type of trauma. Ms. Shirley first defined what vicarious means in her own words and then she gave me an example of this type of trauma that she experienced personally. About a year ago, Ms. Shirley discovered that one of the Deaf students she was teaching was being sexually assaulted at home. Upon her discovery, she informed the principle of the situation and spent the remainder of the day taking the necessary steps to remove the child from the abusive situation. After a long hard day, Ms. Shirley went home, but she told me she cried the rest of the night because one of the students she taught everyday had been in this pain for so long and because she herself had been totally unaware of what was going on. She felt tremendous sorrow along with guilt. She said she felt that she was somehow responsible for this tragedy because she was supposed to be the child’s voice at school. Ms. Shirley indicated that she has not fully recovered from this trauma and that she doubts she ever will. After sharing her own experience, Ms. Shirley gave me tips on how to deal with vicarious trauma. Ms. Shirley told me that when she experiences vicarious trauma that she needs to share with someone else; however, due to confidentiality,