Photo credit BigStockPhoto DragosCondrea
by Kamryn Kletzke, LSW, PEL
Helping professionals are often taught how to care for others long before they are taught how to carry the weight of what they witness. Secondary trauma and compassion fatigue rarely arrive all at once. Instead, they accumulate quietly until we no longer recognize ourselves. And then one day, we realize the work that once made us feel purposeful has begun draining the very parts of ourselves we were trying to offer others.
This is a reflection on burnout, emotional exhaustion, and the difficult process of reconnecting to the reasons we entered this work in the first place—and, hopefully, learning how to bring the color back to our eyes.
The Weight We Quietly Carry
I have been a social worker for the last three years, working in a therapeutic day school serving K–8 students in a Title I community. During that time, I have listened to children describing losses, fears, and home lives that would have stopped me in my tracks had I experienced them at their age.
I have made DCFS and SASS calls that lingered with me long after the paperwork was complete. I have had students pass away, become involved in gangs, struggle with substance use, or enter the juvenile justice system before reaching high school.
I am not alone in these experiences. This is the reality many helping professionals quietly carry.
Most of us enter this field with bright eyes and an unwavering desire to help others. But over time, repeated exposure to trauma can slowly chip away at the very reasons we started.
So, how do we return to ourselves? How do we stay connected to hope, when the work feels saturated in pain?
We return to our “why.” We learn how to bring the color back to our eyes.
This is not an easy feat, and I am not sure I have fully achieved it myself. I share this not from a place of completion, but one of connection, because I know others are struggling in the same silence I once did.
When Trauma Follows You Home
Hearing traumatic stories day after day is, unfortunately, an occupational hazard of working in a helping profession. In many ways, secondary traumatic stress resembles secondhand smoke—prolonged exposure changes you, even when the trauma is not your own.
The effects often arrive quietly. They seep into both personal and professional life, altering the way we think, react, sleep, and connect with others long before we recognize what is happening.
There is often an unspoken belief that, because we chose this work, we should be able to carry it without consequence—that we should have known what we were signing up for. Speaking for myself, I did not fully understand how deeply secondary traumatic stress could affect me until I was already living inside of it.
I found myself going home constantly thinking about the safety and well-being of my students. I second-guessed every decision I made in supporting them. Am I helping them break cycles? Am I sending them back into environments that continue to harm them? Am I advocating for the right thing?
The pressure I placed on myself became overwhelming. And the hardest part was that I did not recognize the changes in myself at first. The people who loved me noticed before I did.
“You seem irritable lately.”
“You panic so quickly now.”
“You weren’t always like this.”
Secondary trauma had quietly followed me home. And with that realization came another—that I had begun to fail myself in the same way I feared failing my students.
Compassion Fatigue and Cognitive Dissonance
This is where compassion fatigue entered the picture. The social worker who once felt capable of meeting people where they were slowly disappeared. In her place was someone with such a low frustration tolerance that the very struggles I had been trained to support began to feel overwhelming.
I became emotionally exhausted and increasingly withdrawn. Small problems felt enormous. Other people’s needs began to feel less like opportunities for connection and more like additional weight I no longer knew how to carry.
I started isolating myself, because I noticed how difficult it had become to access empathy. I could no longer show up as the calm, grounded person others depended on, because internally, I felt like I was drowning in my own stress.
The effects spilled into every part of my life. I began calling off work more often, falling behind on paperwork, and carrying a level of negativity that impacted the people around me.
And that was the hardest part of all.
It contradicted the very reason I became a social worker in the first place: to help uplift others.
That is what compassion fatigue often does. It creates a kind of cognitive dissonance between who we believe we are supposed to be and who we become when we are emotionally exhausted. Existing in that space can feel nearly impossible to navigate alone.
The Myth of “Enough” Self-Care
The unfortunate reality is that throughout our schooling, we are often taught about secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue as though they are distant possibilities—things that can be avoided as long as we practice enough self-care. The truth is that they are very real, and they can affect us whether we expect them to or not.
I was practicing self-care. I read for 20 minutes every day. I took baths regularly, went to the spa, got my hair and nails done, and tried to create moments of rest for myself whenever I could. Yet despite all of that, I still found myself struggling in the exact ways my professors had warned me about.
That realization left me not only emotionally exhausted, but deeply confused. If I was doing everything “right,” then why did I still feel like I was unraveling?
It was not until one evening in supervision that I began to understand what was happening. My supervisor pointed out that while I had been practicing self-care, I had stopped relying on my support systems. I was not checking in with myself after difficult days or allowing space to process what I was carrying. Instead, I was steamrolling through my emotions and pretending the hard moments had not affected me.
I slowly began cutting out parts of my life that felt emotionally demanding, including personal relationships, because even connection started to feel exhausting. What I failed to recognize was that grief had been quietly accumulating inside of me the entire time, building pressure like a ticking time bomb.
I had mistaken distraction for healing and relied on compartmentalization for far too long.
The First Step Was Admitting It
I was living life in black and white when what I truly needed was my color back.
In a somewhat ironic turn of events, the first step in my recovery was admitting that I needed help. I had become completely disconnected from my body and from my emotions, carrying everything internally while convincing myself I was managing it.
So, I started small. I began implementing mindfulness practices and somatic grounding techniques into my daily life. The easiest way to do this was while supporting students through moments of crisis and dysregulation. As I guided them through grounding exercises, I practiced alongside them.
I realized that my profession already contained many of the tools I needed to heal—I had simply stopped using them for myself.
I also began relying on other people again. I created my own version of a safety plan by identifying trusted people I could turn to depending on what I was struggling with—some for emotional support, others for practical help.
For the first time in a long time, I stopped trying to carry everything alone.
I had to remind myself that the people I set out to help are not fundamentally different from me. If I encourage others to accept support without shame, then I need to extend that same permission to myself.
Most importantly, I began taking my mental health seriously. I saw a doctor, spoke openly about what I was experiencing, and did not minimize the weight of my work. I was prescribed Lexapro, something I once believed I should never need because I worked in the mental health field.
But helping professionals are not immune to trauma simply because we understand it. Repeated exposure affects us too, emotionally, cognitively, and physically. It deserves to be treated as real.
Returning to Our Why
This process helped me find myself again. I began noticing significant changes in my ability to focus, take on new challenges, and fully show up for my students. For the first time in a long time, it felt good to be back in my own skin.
Healing was not easy, nor did it happen overnight. Just as secondary trauma accumulates slowly, healing unfolds in the same way, gradually, in layers.
Eventually, I was able to recognize myself again. The work was still difficult. I was still making SASS and DCFS calls, still supporting young people through traumatic experiences, and still carrying the emotional weight of this profession. The difference was that I was no longer trying to carry it all alone.
My eyes had their color back.
This is not to say I suddenly saw the world through rose-colored glasses. The realities of the work had not changed. What changed was my willingness to acknowledge that I could not sustain myself in isolation.
Just as we teach our clients the importance of support, regulation, and self-awareness, I had to learn to practice those same things myself. I needed to stop pretending my cup was full while quietly allowing it to empty.
Helping professionals are often praised for their ability to work tirelessly in service of others, yet we rarely acknowledge how heavy that responsibility can become. Burnout and self-sacrifice are often romanticized through long hours, emotional overextension, and the expectation that we should simply accept the thanklessness that can accompany this work.
Perhaps we should spend more time acknowledging ourselves, not only for our ability to care for others, but for our effort to continue caring for ourselves while doing so.
Our support systems, relationships, physical health, and sense of self are not optional luxuries. They are essential to sustaining us in this work. Without them, we risk losing the very parts of ourselves that allow us to help others effectively in the first place.
Many of our “whys”—the reasons we entered helping professions—are rooted in personal experience. Often, we are trying to become the kind of support we once needed ourselves. It is important that we extend that same compassion inward.
We deserve what we so freely give to others.
At the same time, healing is not linear. I still have difficult weeks, and there are days when certain stories are harder to carry than others. But I no longer ignore their impact on me.
We cannot sustain our greatest strengths—empathy, compassion, and advocacy—without intentionally reconnecting to our meaning, our identity, and the parts of ourselves we are most at risk of sacrificing in the process.
That is what it means to bring the color back to our eyes.
Kamryn Kletzke, LSW, PEL, is a school social worker at a therapeutic day school specializing in supporting students with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges. She holds a Professional Educator License (PEL) and Licensed Social Worker (LSW) credential and earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and master’s degree in social work.