When the Healer Feels the Heat: Rising Through Vicarious Trauma
There’s a certain kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from doing too much, but from feeling too deeply. As a trauma therapist, energy worker, and psychedelic facilitator, I’ve spent years sitting in the fire with others, holding stories of grief, abuse, addiction, and awakening. Bearing witness to another’s pain is sacred work. But sacred doesn’t mean weightless. Sometimes, it burns.
I’ve known this burn intimately. It doesn’t arrive all at once, it seeps in slowly, over time, like smoke. It curls into the edges of your aura, settles behind your eyes, and makes your body heavy in subtle, invisible ways. You keep showing up, holding space, nodding gently. But something within starts to dull.
This is vicarious trauma, the quiet transformation that happens in the inner landscape of those who help. It’s what occurs when empathy becomes entanglement, when compassion turns porous. It’s not the same as burnout, though the two often dance together. Burnout is depletion from doing; vicarious trauma is distortion from absorbing.
We absorb more than we realize. Every story, every nervous system we co-regulate with, every energy field we enter leaves a trace. As helpers, we are taught to be present, open, receptive. But if we’re not consciously releasing what moves through us, we begin to carry what isn’t ours, the residue of suffering.
The Subtle Signs of Energetic Saturation
Vicarious trauma is sneaky. It doesn’t always show up as breakdown, it often disguises itself as numbness or hyper-functioning. You might notice you’re more impatient, less inspired, or strangely disconnected from your own joy. You might crave solitude yet feel restless when you finally get it.
The body speaks through tightness, fatigue, tension, headaches, or sudden aversion to work you once loved. Spiritually, it can feel like disconnection from the source that once guided you, that quiet knowing, that effortless flow. The channel that once felt clear becomes static.
I’ve had seasons where I found myself sitting in sessions, present and professional, yet somewhere deep inside… empty. After holding space for trauma after trauma, my own nervous system would echo the tremors of my clients. I’d leave the office disoriented and unable to ground. And even when I turned to the tools I teach, breathwork, meditation, somatic release, the relief was temporary. What I didn’t realize was that I wasn’t just tired; I was energetically saturated.
The Shakti Lens: When Energy Turns Inward
Through the lens of Shakti, the divine feminine life force, this saturation takes on deeper meaning. Shakti is the current of creation and destruction that pulses through all of life. She is the energy that animates healing, but she’s also the energy that burns away illusion.
When we hold trauma without release, that sacred current turns inward. It begins to build heat, not as punishment, but as a call. Shakti rises through discomfort to awaken us. The heaviness, irritability, or fatigue we feel is her whisper saying, You’ve taken on too much. Return to your center. Reclaim your body. Let the fire purify.
In this way, vicarious trauma becomes a teacher. It shows us where we’ve overextended, where our empathy has crossed into fusion, and where we’ve confused service with sacrifice. It demands that we embody what we teach, not as performance, but as devotion.
The healer’s journey is not about staying untouched by pain; it’s about learning to metabolize it. To alchemize what we absorb into deeper wisdom. This is the essence of Shakti rising: the transmutation of dense, unprocessed energy into light, purpose, and clarity.
How I Learned to Tend the Fire
There came a point where I could no longer ignore the signs. My body ached, my dreams were filled with my clients’ stories, and my meditation practice felt hollow. I had to step back, not because I didn’t care, but because I cared too much.
I began to re-learn the art of energetic hygiene. Not just self-care, but sacred clearing. After each session, I started simple: shaking out my hands, taking three conscious breaths, whispering, “This is not mine.” I began using smoke and water intentionally, burning sage or palo santo, bathing with sea salt, spending time barefoot on the earth.
I also sought supervision and peer support, not just for clinical consultation but for soul nourishment. To sit with fellow healers and name the unseen, the energetic toll of empathy, is profoundly regulating. We remember we’re not alone in this work.
Movement became my medicine. Yoga, dance, breathwork, all ways to move energy through rather than let it stagnate. And creativity, writing, chanting, playing music, restored a part of me I had neglected: the part that simply is, without holding anyone else.
Energy Hygiene Practices for the Healer’s Path
If you’re in a helping profession, therapist, nurse, coach, energy worker, facilitator, or teacher, these are the practices I now live by:
Ground after every session. Take a breath, stretch, and consciously separate your energy from your client’s.
Water as cleanser. Wash your hands with presence. Shower after heavy days. Water holds memory; it also clears it.
Protect your inputs. Balance trauma exposure with beauty. Read poetry. Listen to uplifting music.
Boundaries are love. You can care deeply and still say no. Energy leaks through unclear boundaries.
Create joy rituals. Cook, move and play. These are not indulgences, they are recalibrations.
Seek your own healer. Therapy, bodywork, energy sessions…all ways of remembering your own humanity.
Rest. True rest. Silence, stillness, and surrender.
These practices are not luxuries; they are maintenance for those who walk between worlds.
Rising Through the Fire
There’s an old belief that healers must suffer to serve; that our worth is measured by how much we can endure. But the new paradigm asks something different: to serve through wholeness, not depletion.
Every time I tend to my own energy, I honor the sacred reciprocity of healing. I remember that I, too, am part of the ecosystem of care. When my light dims, the collective light weakens. When I rise, others rise with me.
The truth is, vicarious trauma will touch all of us who do this work long enough. But it doesn’t have to define or derail us. It can be an invitation to deepen our embodiment, to refine our boundaries, to remember that Shakti’s fire is not meant to destroy us, but to transform us.
Healing is not a straight line; it’s a spiral. We circle back to the same lessons with greater awareness. Each time we burn out and return, we carry new wisdom. We learn that tending ourselves is not separate from tending others, it’s the same sacred act seen from a different side.
So if you find yourself weary, heavy, or questioning your path, know this: you are not broken. You are being recalibrated. The heat you feel is not failure, it is your power asking to be reclaimed.
An Invitation to Fellow Healers
If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself, the exhaustion, the energetic weight, the longing to feel clear again, you’re not alone. This is the moment to pause, to breathe, to tend your inner flame.
I offer mentorship for therapists, facilitators, and helpers who are navigating vicarious trauma and seeking to return to their center. Together, we explore not just techniques, but embodiment, the alchemy of turning what we absorb into wisdom and light.
Because when the healer rises, the world rises with her.
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Written by Michelle Srih, trauma therapist, energy worker, yoga teacher and psychedelic integration facilitator.
Learn more or inquire about mentorship at Shakti Rising Energy
