Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth

Every day, trauma workers walk alongside people facing life’s darkest moments. We often focus on the risks of this work — burnout, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress. But there is also a quieter, more hopeful truth: helping others through trauma can lead to growth for the helpers themselves.

This is Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth (VPTG)

When you tell me something that strikes something within me, I now have an opportunity to grow in a way that wasn't available to me just a moment ago.

Peer Support Specialist

What Is Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth?

Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth (VPTG) describes the personal transformation that can occur not from directly experiencing trauma, but from bearing witness to another’s struggle, healing, and growth. It’s a hopeful counterpart to the more familiar concept of secondary or vicarious trauma. While vicarious trauma captures the emotional toll of absorbing others’ suffering, VPTG tells the other side of the story — how helping others through trauma can lead to one’s own introspection, transformation, and growth.

When a therapist listens to a client’s story of loss, or a peer-support worker sits beside a veteran describing combat memories, something powerful can unfold.

Understanding Indirect Trauma Exposure

Indirect Trauma Exposure occurs when we learn about traumatic experiences that others have endured. It’s not inherently negative — its impact depends on how deeply those stories challenge our core beliefs about the world, safety, and meaning.

When helpers face these challenges with reflection, support, and self-awareness, the same process that can lead to distress can also lead to growth.

Vicarious Trauma and VPTG: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Focusing only on the risks or only on the rewards of trauma work leaves part of the story untold. As with Posttraumatic Growth, it’s often the struggle itself that sparks transformation. For helpers, that struggle may take the form of exhaustion, cynicism, or feeling burdened by others’ pain. Yet these challenges can also become the very soil from which growth takes root.

Vicarious trauma and vicarious posttraumatic growth are not opposites, but interconnected experiences — reminding us that meaning and growth can emerge even from the hardest moments.

The Evolution of VPTG Research

See the full collection of VPTG-focused Peer Reviewed Articles.

Seminal Study by Dr. Richard Tedeschi and Colleagues (2005)

Early explorations of Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth revealed something remarkable: many clinicians reported that their lives had been profoundly enriched through their work with trauma survivors. This seminal study provided unusually detailed descriptions of how bearing witness to healing and growth led to positive personal change, suggesting that the benefits of trauma work may be more powerful and far-reaching than previously recognized.

Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth in Psychotherapy, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2005

Systematic Literature Review On VPTG (2024)

Over time, researchers have conducted research and systematic reviews to better understand the impact of repeated exposure to traumatic material and how this manifests as Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth. This 2024 systematic review by Tsirimokou et al. synthesizes both qualitative and quantitative studies to highlight how professionals working with trauma not only face risks like vicarious traumatisation but also experience growth through shifts in self-perception, enhanced relational depth, and greater life appreciation.

Sage Journals, September 2024

VPTG Study Pre-Print Manuscript (2025)

The study of Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth continues. The Boulder Crest Institute of Posttraumatic GrowthSM recently conducted a qualitative study, led by Dr. Taryn Greene, exploring the lived experiences of peer-support specialists who help others navigate traumatic events. Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, this study revealed that peer-support specialists experience a process of vicarious growth that mirrors the five domains of Posttraumatic Growth. In talking to these peer-support professionals, we uncovered a rich and powerful picture of how VPTG emerges. A preprint of this manuscript, currently under review with Behavioral Sciences, is available.

When I see this change in these students it gives me a greater appreciation for life. I see how bad life can be. I see how evil humans can be. How hurtful humans can be. And then watching them change and grow it gives me a newfound appreciation for life, for the large and small things in life.

Peer Support Specialist

Definitions

Indirect Trauma Exposure (ITE)

Indirect Trauma Exposure (ITE) occurs when we learn details of traumatic events that have happened to other people without directly experiencing or witnessing the events ourselves. This is not an inherently negative experience.

 

The impact of indirect trauma exposure depends largely on how deeply it challenges our core beliefs. Just as with direct trauma, these disruptions to our worldview can create distress — but they can also serve as powerful catalysts for posttraumatic growth.

Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth (VPTG)

Vicarious Posttraumatic Growth (VPTG) refers to the positive psychological and existential changes experienced by individuals — such as clinicians, peer-support specialists, and other helping professionals or close others — through their empathetic engagement with trauma survivors. It is studied as both a process and an outcome. VPTG highlights how bearing witness to the struggles and transformations of others can foster personal growth in PTG domains such as deeper relationships, new possibilities, greater appreciation of life, enhanced personal strength, and spiritual or existential shifts.

Secondary Trauma (ST)

Secondary Trauma (ST) refers to the range of challenges — often called the “hazards” of working with trauma — that can arise from indirect exposure to others’ suffering. It serves as an umbrella term encompassing related concepts such as Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS), Vicarious Trauma (VT), Compassion Fatigue (CF), and Burnout. These topics have become a major focus of mental health research, reflecting growing awareness of the emotional toll of trauma work. Yet this focus on hazards tells only part of the story; working with people in the aftermath of trauma can also bring deep meaning, growth, and fulfillment.

Working with these students has been the catalyst that has increased the amount of hopefulness that I have, the amount of joy that I have, the amount of peace that I have.

Peer Support Specialist