Are you a true crime enthusiast? The immensely popular tv genre is drawing attention for possible negative effects on viewers and crime show participants. My guest today is a mental health specialist, Megan Schrantz from the Cincinnati Lindner Center of Hope. She'll describe vicarious trauma and explain why observing crime, whether in person or on tv, can be problematic.
Lindner Center of Hope
4075 Old Western Row Rd.
Mason, OH 45040
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Episode Transcript
Welcome back to iHeart Cincy. I'm Sandy Collins, kind of
a news nut, kind of an ambulance chaser, kind of
a person interested in what's going on in the world,
and that can be overwhelming now with social media, the
phones in our pocket, the push notifications. And when I
saw that there's a thing called vicarious trauma that has
(00:24):
to do with observing other people's traumatic experiences and true
crime stories came to mind. It made me want to
talk with our next guest. My next guest is Megan Schrance.
She is a therapist at the Lindener Center of Hope
and we're going to talk to her about vicarious trauma today.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
How are you.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
I'm wonderful, Thanks for being so flexible. I wanted to
talk about It stems from a personal desire and that
is my eighth grade teacher told me that I was
an ambulance chaser, and how funny that, you know I
would be come an ambulance chaser for a job. But
(01:03):
you know, I, you know, some people are very drawn
to crime stories, news or they're surrounded by very violent
situations in their lives. And so I came across this
fact sheet that came across from Policy Research Associates. The
other day, I was talking about vicarious trauma, thought, you
(01:24):
know what is that and started to read a little
bit about how observing trauma can traumatize you, whether or
not it's your family, your friends, whether you actually experience
it yourself, where if you're watching it And there's a
lot in here about watching it as you know, as
(01:44):
a as a enjoying the crime drama stuff. So I
wanted to talk about that. Is that something that you
feel you can chime in on.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Absolutely, we're all exposed to all of this, you know,
new social media, there's so much exposure with those things.
Certain jobs have more vicarious trauma just kind of built in,
kind of like yours.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So experiencing trauma and even watching someone else go through
trauma can give you what they call vicarious trauma. Can
you tell us what vicarious trauma is and how that's
different from PTSD?
Speaker 2 (02:23):
So vicarious trauma has a lot of the same symptoms
as PTSD. True PTSD can come from witnessing something that
you have seen that you are not necessarily in, but
like witnessing something that is horrific.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So when we think.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
About symptoms of postraumatic stress, or vicarious trauma. You see
the world in a different way afterwards. It's kind of
like you can't go back and undo it. You're seeing
the world in a different way, and it can result
in things like thinking about yourself and the world differently,
(03:01):
having depression or anxiety that's increased, having physical symptoms like hypervigilance,
you know, kind of feeling on edge, stressed, being on
the lookout for something else that could happen. And so
your body is kind of set up to try to
protect itself and you start to notice things.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
Like that more like other things that could happen.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, I've heard about that with victims of child abuse
and such, where once the abuse is over, you still
are traumatized. You're still always on guard.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, And it can impact your emotional regulation, like sometimes
you can feel numb, sometimes you can feel stimulated or
like too emotional, and you can have a hard time
regulating that. And it can also be reminders of.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
The thing that happened.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
And I do think that with the media right now,
we're constantly being bombarded with information.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
And a lot of that it builds up.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
It's like trauma reminders, and it really changes a person's brain.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
It rewires things. We'll talk about maybe what you can
do about all of this. Towards the end, I want
to kind of get to all of the different traumatic
images and messages that we get on a daily basis,
and also talk about the idea of voluntarily exposing yourself
to those traumatic experiences through this huge wave of true
(04:34):
crime dramas that everyone wants to consume now. And the
reason I'm bringing that up is because there's been a
study here recently about people who are watching these true
crime dramas and what that constant viewing can actually do
to the brain. In this vicarious trauma thought process, we're
(04:57):
looking at stuff they call it what what is the
cost of caring? It's like, you get compassion fatigue? What
does that mean?
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Passion fatigue? Is like, it's good for everyone to have empathy.
Empathy is wonderful.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Empathy helps us connect with others to it's our ability
to relate to other people's emotions. It's usually a part
of the human experience for most people. And there's strength
in that. There's strengthen being a sensitive an empathic person.
There's also a boundary that is good to be there,
because when we're caring someone else's distress dismay, either a
(05:37):
person we know or things that we see in the media.
It can have very real consequences for ourselves, and oftentimes
there's nothing we can do about the terrible things that
we're witnessing or listening to or feeling. And so it's
kind of like as if somebody falls into quicksand you know,
(05:58):
people used to be really worried about quicksand you know,
maybe forty years ago. But so it's like, what do
you do if somebody falls in quicksand do you jump
in after them? No, because that doesn't help anyone. So
vicarious trauma it kind of sucks us in. It's sort
of like we kind of end up falling into the
(06:20):
quicksand ourselves.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
And the answer is what do you do when someone
is jumping into the quicksand or jumping into the pit
instead of jumping in. The answer is.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Stand dry land, be grounded yourself, be there with them
without jumping in yourself.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Another way to.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Think of it is kind of like being a conduit
for someone else's pain rather than a sponge, being able
to connect with someone having their emotions or whatever you're
seeing kind of can flow through you. But you're not
soaking all of them up.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
How do you know if you are suffering from any
sort of trauma or you know, vicarious trauma or any
sort of PTSD type of feelings. And I know those
are three areas that are separate, but what are people
looking for.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
We're looking at things like changes in mood that would
be related somehow to the vicarious.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Trauma or the actual trauma that happened to you.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Things like feeling really guilty or shamed, feeling like I
should have done something or I should be doing something,
feeling afraid, angry, hopeless, numb, so changes in your mood,
having difficulty managing.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
Your emotions as you might normally.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Your body also plays into this, so you're kind of
like at this state of a bit on edge or anxious.
You know, something really small could happen and it could
set a person off, but maybe it wouldn't necessarily do
that if they are not in a situation where they're
in that heightened state, worrying a lot, not really doing
things that you normally would like to do, isolation, maybe
(08:13):
even having like nightmares or trouble sleeping, or intrusive thoughts
about the distressing things like they keep popping back into your.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Mind, and you might want to avoid.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Those, and so you might do things to try to
avoid those, either numb out or sometimes people even engage
in behaviors that aren't good for them, but it just
helps them forget or not focus on that. Being on
our phones a lot, and if you have a news
feed that comes in and your algorithm, will you know
if you read a sort at one time, it's going
(08:46):
to show you more stories, And so it really sets
up your body to be kind of on this high
alert mode, right, which really impacts how you deal with
other people and how you feel about yourself.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
What kind of advice do you have for us in
the newsroom where we are bombarded by choice every day
as our profession, we feel the same way. We just
kind of get to the point where everything is bad,
everything is wrong. One of my favorite phrases that I
hear in the newsroom is oh, well, we're doomed, and
we laugh about it, but don't really want to feel
(09:23):
that way. Do you have any tricks up your sleeve
that can help when you buy choice your vacation puts
you in a traumatic experience. What kind of things can
you offer to people who are working in a traumatic
environment and want to be there and also want to
manage what they're feeling.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
So the first thing that comes to mind is really
building resilience in yourself through things like self care and
having other things that you enjoy doing pursuing those things.
So building yourself outside of your work, which may sound
kind of difficult sometimes and maybe even selfish, but you
(10:11):
have to be the person who is more grounded if
you're going to report on things, if you're going to
maintain like some kind of objectivity about the news. So
actually following through with things like getting enough sleep, spending
time with other people, even if you feel like isolating,
usually feels better to spend time with people you enjoy,
(10:31):
people you love, to engage in hobbies, to go outside
to take a breath in fresh hair, to get some exercise,
whatever you enjoy that can build you up. It's really
important because the kinds of things that you're dealing with
in your work and a lot of other people in
their work, can erode you over time. So you will
(10:54):
be helpful for others if you maintain it's much of
a healthy sense of yourself as you can and as
much as you can putting yourself first, which most of
us don't do well.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Megan, thank you so much for your time. How can
people get a hold of you if they'd like to?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I work at the Lender Center of Hope. I'm a
therapist there and feel free to contact me at the
Lender Center of Hope.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Again, thanks to my guest Megan Schrance from the Lindener
Center of Hope here in Cincinnati. You can find them
online along with companions on a Journey Shila Munifokenosa. Thanks
so much. If you'd like to hear this show again,
you can listen on the iHeartRadio app. It'll be under podcasts.
Just search for my name, Sandy Collins now changing gears
here real quick. If you've got a vocation, if you
(11:41):
do something that you really want to encourage other people
to get into, or maybe you don't think people should
be doing your job and you want to ward them off,
I'd like to hear from you. Send me an email
to Iheartsinsey at iHeartMedia dot com. Put vocation in the
subject line. Let me know how I can get ahold
and let's talk about your job, your vocation, your career,
(12:03):
how much you make well, not exactly to pay the wages,
the environment, the culture, all of it. It's for our
new feature called Vocations coming soon. You can also use
the new handy dandy talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app.
There's a little red microphone you can send a little
voice message to me. I think it's thirty seconds long,
(12:25):
so check that out. If you don't have the iHeartRadio app,
just go to the app store and download it. Till
next week, We'll see you then take care.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
iHeart Cinsei is a production of iHeartMedia, Cincinnati,
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