How vicarious trauma affects communications professionals

I saw 17 Manchester bees yesterday. On buses, on bumpers, on skin. A colony of bees buzzing round my head. Each sighting came with a sting - seventeen reminders of one of the hardest days of my professional life. When the bomb went off at Manchester Arena on 22 May 2017, I was thrust into a role I never imagined: one of a small group of communications professionals involved in the immediate response. It changed the course of my career.

Even eight years later, the Manchester bee - which was adopted as a symbol of resistance and solidarity after the attack - still has the power to make me catch my breath, the power to remind me of the awful things human beings can do to each other. But it also acts as a reminder of resilience in the face of such awful brutality.

It mirrors a dichotomy I’ve felt in my own life, and eight years on, this is the first time I’ve written about it. I felt a deep connection to those I was helping, and it broke my heart. The events ignited a fire in me, a desire to do right by those who had been hurt by the attack. This fire drove me forward, but it also burned me.

Like many of my colleagues who were working on the response, I found myself affected by vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma is exposure to someone else’s trauma. It can have a significant mental health impact and, if not mitigated against or treated effectively, can be a pathway to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Thankfully, my experience was mild and short-lived. My bosses at Manchester City Council were quick to act, and I recovered quickly. But recent conversations with other public sector comms colleagues tell me that I am far from alone. Blue light services, local councils and anyone dealing with major incidents often offer support to front-line workers when something traumatic happens, but too often comms colleagues are excluded from this, left behind in their hour of greatest need.

And there is a need. The latest CIPR statistics show that mental health is a business-critical issue for the public relations industry. One-third of public relations practitioners are currently diagnosed with a mental health condition. The audit also found that 91% of PR professionals experienced poor mental health at some point in the past year. Much of that is through workload related stress, but the surveys don’t ask about vicarious trauma.

Blue light services are better at identifying and talking about this than most. There is great guidance from the National Police Wellbeing Service and the College of Policing. Mind have some great resources for journalists and newsrooms. There is some interesting work going on in the States on this. But there is still a void in public sector communications, and we need to fill it with better awareness, accessible training and targeted resources.

So that’s why I’ve decided to share my story this year. And even though it was one of the worst experiences of my professional life, I’m grateful that I was part of it. Working on the Manchester Arena response became a formative experience that helped me grow, helped me learn, helped me realise who I was and what I was capable of. 

Looking back, I recognise that this experience, though difficult, has made me a stronger and more effective communications leader. We all face challenging environments in our careers, but having confronted vicarious trauma directly, I can now recognise its early signs and I also know the tools to address it - both for myself and for teams I might lead. That investment in understanding and managing the psychological dimensions of crisis communications has proven invaluable in other high-pressure situations that I’ve faced since. It's not about avoiding emotional impact; it's about acknowledging it, addressing it appropriately, and continuing to deliver when communities need us most.

The immediate response

At 10.31pm on Monday 22 May 2017, a terrorist detonated a home-made bomb in the foyer of the Manchester Arena, killing 22 people and injuring hundreds more. The victims and survivors had been at an Ariana Grande concert. They were children. They were mothers and they were fathers. They were daughters and sons. They were all innocent.

Unusually, I’d gone to bed early that night. I’d had a busy weekend, and was having work done on my house, so I’d sloped off to bed with a book at around 10pm. I was also trying hard to throw off a phone addiction, and so I had left my phone to charge in another room. The first I heard about the attack was at 6am the next morning when my husband woke me up and said, ‘you need to see this’. I was working in an interim role for Manchester City Council at the time, supporting some strategic comms projects. I immediately texted my boss, the incredible Jen Green, to offer support and say that I was on my way in.

The tram into the city centre was packed, but there was none of the hubbub of the normal morning rush. Instead, there was stunned silence. All I could see were the napes of necks, a carriage of commuters hunched forward, staring at their phones, hungry for information. I arrived at the office to a hive of industry. Although we now know what had unfolded at the Arena, at that time, on that Tuesday morning, there was still a huge amount that we didn’t know. There was still an active police investigation and fears that the terrorist was part of a larger cell. Threat was still in the air. We didn’t know how many people had been hurt, and there were still relatives frantically searching for their loved ones. Being in the office that day was such a privilege, as I watched dozens of dedicated communications professionals do whatever they could to help untangle the various threads.

Finding purpose

It was an odd time to be a freelancer. I knew that this was the time to step up, but I didn’t really have a role. I didn’t want to get in anyone’s way. Busy people didn’t have a lot of time to brief me, but nor did I want to act unilaterally, as this was a complex operation and going rogue would not be helpful. So I just made myself as useful as I could be. Any task, big or small, I took. The experience I brought was broad and well-rounded, and that made it easier for me to support my colleagues. I drafted internal communications to the council’s 11,000-strong workforce. I covered the phones for the press office. I supported colleagues who were monitoring social media, helping them work out what to amplify and what to block. I got my hands dirty - literally - helping move floral tributes from Albert Square, where an impromptu memorial was emerging, to St Ann’s Square, a more appropriate location.

The first time I had a wobble was when I was asked to come down to the chief executive’s office to help plan the civic vigil. I was walking down the stairs to the meeting, and the weight of what we were trying to do hit me. I turned to my colleague and said: “I don’t think I can do this. I don’t know what I’m doing.” She talked me round, and it was then that I realised that I didn’t have time for self-doubt. People were counting on me. It was time to let that doubt go.

The content of the vigil was developed by the chief executive, Joanne Roney, and the leader Sir Richard Leese. But as is always the case, there was a core group of people whose counsel was critical for making it happen and for making it good. It was my job to communicate the details of the vigil on social media, and to staff, as well as supporting media colleagues in their interactions with journalists from across the world. We knew it would be a good turnout, but I don’t think any of us expected the crowds that thronged through Albert Square and spilled out onto the streets beyond. And no-one was expecting the visceral reaction to the incredible poem by Tony Walsh, This Is The Place, which came to act as a beacon for the city’s resilience and recovery. As I stood there in the crowd, the warm sun beaming down on me, I felt the collective heartbeat of thousands around me. Grounded, connected, hopeful, for the first time that day. I felt part of something larger than myself.

After the vigil, as I made my way back up to the comms office in the town hall extension, Jen asked me to take on the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund. Born from the city's response to the 2011 riots, the We Love Manchester charity had already established itself as a symbol of civic pride and resilience. When news of the Arena attack broke, the public instinctively turned to it and so we needed to a) harness the power of that narrative and b) work out the practicalities of it. We were on the phone to the Charity Commission, working with the British Red Cross, to work out a charitable structure which would be compliant and legal, because these things matter. Eventually, the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund was born, and I took over the comms effort for it.

What a privilege that was, though it wasn’t easy. My very first challenge was a tense negotiation with the fundraisers at the British Red Cross, whose experience in disaster comms far eclipsed my own. They had arranged a fundraising advert to air at the end of that night’s Coronation Street and wanted the branding to be muted and sombre. But that wasn’t the strategic narrative that was emerging. The city’s leadership had deftly and brilliantly crafted something that signalled the severity of what had happened, but balanced that with the hopefulness, the resilience, the solidarity about our city that we wanted to convey. I pushed hard for a compromise, and after a full and frank exchange of views, we got something we were all happy with. I probably didn’t show it at the time, but I was grateful to the Red Cross for pushing us so hard on that. It meant the approach was well-tested. And it worked.

Money began streaming in. Some of it was from large corporate donors. The two Mancunian football clubs stepped up. Local businesses too. The Red Cross were masterful, applying their considerable expertise to secure donations from A-list celebrities. It was humbling to witness their skill and learn from their approach.

But soon we needed to make decisions about how that money was going to be spent.

A board of trustees was formed, with some of the most notable names in the city serving on it. It was chaired by the late, great Councillor Sue Murphy, who was one of the most impressive civic leaders I have ever worked with.

I sat in on those board meetings and watched as the members had critical discussions about the distribution of the funding. I managed the comms strategy supporting it - balancing the need for transparency about where public donations were going with the need to sensitively and clearly communicate with families of the bereaved and injured. The first release of money was to help the bereaved with funeral costs, and we wanted to tell them first before we told the media, even though there was a clamour for information.

It felt like I was doing important, necessary work.

When the adrenaline fades

While those early weeks were defined by purpose and action, what followed revealed the hidden toll of crisis response work. As the adrenaline began to wane, I began to find it harder to stay emotionally distant from what I was hearing and seeing. I had access to the general enquiries inbox for the fund and I began to see how financial awards became a shorthand for emotional recognition. To get money from the fund was to have your experience validated. But sometimes the lack of perspective grated on me. For example, at the same time as I was communicating with bereaved families who had lost loved ones in the most horrific circumstances, I was also reading emails from people who had been at the Arena that night and who were forced to leave suddenly, though they were not in the immediate vicinity of the bomb.

One person sent an itemised bill which included spilled popcorn and the cost of cleaning her shoes from wading through ponds of fizzy drinks. It was a misinterpretation of what the Fund was there to do, and it was not her fault. But I found myself getting more and more affected by these small details.

Observing board meetings was tough too. To help inform decision-making, senior clinicians from Greater Manchester’s hospitals were invited to share their expertise on the categories of injury and illness that some people suffered as a result of the attack. Listening to stories of people whose lives had been forever transformed became overwhelming; the details seared into my memory. The desire to do my very best to support them, to honour them, to make them proud, became a deep and unrelenting motivator. I stopped looking after myself. I worked longer and longer hours.

I was also heavily involved in the plans to mark the first anniversary of the attack, as well as the plans for a permanent memorial. By this stage, I was no longer a freelancer and had moved into a salaried position at the council, and so I was even closer to the discussions. Getting this right became an obsession. I threw everything I had into it, and found even mild challenges or critiques would send me down a rabbit hole of despair, like I was failing the victims and survivors.

The punch to my stomach came from an unexpected source: an independent review commissioned to help future crisis responders. While it praised much of my work, particularly the PR response and media management, it also highlighted legitimate challenges in our early communications with bereaved families. The critique was fair - we'd avoided hiring administrators to manage incoming emails to preserve donation funds, but couldn't keep up with the volume ourselves. Though I knew these findings would help others in the future, in that moment, it felt like proof I'd failed when it mattered most.

Then later that week, I misjudged an interaction with a comms team from the private sector; I had used a jokey, convivial tone to make a connection with them, to ask them to speed up a critical process that we needed for media management. It landed poorly, and I felt that this was further evidence of my failure.

Recognition and recovery

My bosses could see what was happening to me, and to their credit, quickly sprang into action. Occupational health sent me for an assessment and I was seen by a counsellor almost instantly. I was given helpful tools and tricks to manage the situation, and I didn’t need to take any time off.

A group session on vicarious trauma was also arranged, and I had three protected hours with my colleagues to explore what that meant. It was both reassuring and terrifying to hear that others were going through something similar. For example, one of my colleagues shared that she would never wear high-heeled shoes again, because heels make it harder to run.

The sessions helped, though, and I was able to get back to doing a good job in the run-up to the anniversary. We produced an annual report, a media plan, and a deftly produced and well-executed programme of events to mark one year since the attack, including a concert and a sombre reflective event. Still, when the clock struck 10.31pm and the bells in St Ann’s Square started to chime, I sobbed on the shoulder of one of my colleagues. It was over. We’d done a good job.

The uncomfortable truth

The anniversary marked an ending of sorts, but it also forced me to confront an uncomfortable paradox that I've wrestled with ever since.

Because while all of that was happening, my career got a shot in the arm. It is deeply uncomfortable to write about this, but it’s true. My skills and knowledge underwent a rapid acceleration. I’d experienced crisis comms, stakeholder management and influencing, fired in a crucible of media attention and high levels of public interest. I navigated complex situations, when I didn’t know what I was doing but had to learn quickly. I built my confidence, I learned how not to second guess myself. I learned about managing risk. I learned how to lead.

And I got… interesting. People wanted to know about my experience. At job interviews, I was able to nail competency questions. Tell me a time when… became easier because there were more examples to pick from, and they used a vocabulary that was easy for others to understand.

And that’s hard. To know that someone else’s suffering has led to good things for you. It’s distasteful, it’s wrong. And so I struggled with that for many years. Even writing this blog gave me the ick, because I would never want anyone to think that I am profiting from what happened, either in financial terms or in comms stock.

But I’m still incredibly proud of the role I played. When the Fund closed, I got a letter from the Lord Mayor of Manchester, thanking me for what I had done. To this day, it is one of my most treasured possessions. What struck me most was the recognition of how much communications work happens invisibly, behind the scenes. There are thousands of public sector comms colleagues whose hard work and dedication will never be formally recognised by the communities they serve. They too are making a massive difference to people at the hardest time. They deserve to be supported too.

So what’s next?

Like a good comms person, I've been thinking about my call to action. What do I want to happen from sharing this story? To be honest, I'm not sure. But I wonder if a good next step is having the language to describe what it feels like when you are working on a traumatic incident.

Too many of us think vicarious trauma is something that happens to other people, the "softer" ones. But it happens to all of us, even the ones with the reputation for being tough. I want to tell you that the way you are feeling is not weakness or being soft, but a real, tangible thing that has a name. And other people are experiencing it too. 

So if I could ask one thing: share this with someone who needs it. Not just the words, but the permission - permission to acknowledge that even the toughest among us can be affected by the stories we help tell and the tragedies we help navigate. Because having the language to name our experience might be the first step toward ensuring no communications professional faces vicarious trauma alone.

For now, I’ll treat each bee sighting as a reminder of the impact I had eight years ago, however much it stings.

Pamela Welsh is a communications consultant and founder of Untangled Comms, a consultancy supporting public and third sector organisations. This blog was first published on her Substack newsletter called the Untangle.

Further reading

Five of the best leadership Substack newsletters to follow
Martyn’s Law in King’s Speech: a tribute to Martyn Hett and his mum’s campaign
Why ignoring employees in a crisis can create a double crisis