När man använder sig själv som redskap - En kvalitativ studie om sekundär traumatisk stress och kuratorers upplevelser av emotionellt arbete inom vuxenpsykiatrin

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study was to examine counselors' emotional management in their work with patients who have been exposed to trauma during their life. The chosen method to implement this study was through qualitative semi-structured interviews with six counselors who are currently working or have experience of working in adult psychiatry. Three different theories were used to analyze the results that were found in this study: Hochschild’s theory of emotional labour, Korczynski’s theory of communities of coping and Reddy’s concept of emotional regimes. This study found that the counselors experience emotional distress in their work with trauma patients due to regularly worrying about their patients’ mental state. To cope with the emotional distress, we found that the counselors use different ways to manage negative emotions. The different coping strategies were finding support in their colleagues, using different emotions such as humor and sorrow, documentation and being able to establish distance to their workplace. We found that the role of the organization was a significant factor to prevent secondary traumatic stress in employees such as the importance of talking about and acknowledging the risks of emotional labour and to provide supervision. In conclusion we found that being exposed to negative emotional labour could potentially lead to secondary traumatic stress. The emotions that the counselors were experiencing and how they chose to manage them could either help them cope with negative emotions or worsen their emotional distress.