The Narrative on the Experience of Vicarious Trauma Experienced by Crime Victim Counselors

This study is the Qualitative Research on the experience of vicarious trauma of crime victim counselors. This study was conducted on three crime victim counselors who have been active for more than 10 years according to the narrative inquiry method. According to the participants’ experiences and episodes, the study results were reconstructed in the aspects of: “accidentally begin,” “passionately immersed,” “get confused and dazed,” “standing at a deadlock,” “conflict just got experienced,” “pain now shared,” and “stepping into growth.” The discussion according to the research results is given as follows. First, the vicarious trauma experience of the crime-victim counselor was exhaustion in terms of physical, cognitive, emotional, and relational aspects. Second, the proxy trauma process of crime-victim counselors was shown to be similar to the adaptation and exhaustion process of counselors adapting to new areas of expertise. Third, overcoming vicarious trauma of crime-victim counselors has turned out to be an experience of enhancing their expertise and also of establishing identity as a crime-victim counselor by accepting the limitations of their intervention and strengthening the capabilities as a therapist. As this study is the one of the narrative inquiries that aims to inquire the fundamental meaning and nature of the vicarious trauma experience that most crime-victim counselors suffer from, so, the aim of this study is to comprehend the vicarious trauma experience of the crime-victim counselors who have experienced during their counseling.