Trauma and social justice work often require individuals to engage deeply with pain, both personal and communal. For frontline workers and advocates, this engagement can foster a genuine drive to honour the lived realities of marginalised communities. However, navigating this space requires balancing two major traps: spiritual bypassing and self-martyrdom. Over-identification with the trauma of others can lead to either extreme, undermining both personal well-being and collective liberation.

The Trap of Spiritual Bypassing

Spiritual bypassing occurs when individuals use transcendental ideals or positivity to avoid confronting the pain and trauma of those they serve. This can manifest as:

• Overgeneralised Positivity: Reframing systemic oppression or generational trauma as mere opportunities for “resilience” without addressing the underlying injustice and harm they cause.
• Premature Forgiveness: Pressuring communities to “move on” or “heal” without tackling root causes or advocating for reparative justice.
• Detachment Masquerading as Objectivity: Avoiding emotional engagement under the guise of professionalism or neutrality.

Though spiritual bypassing may seem like a coping mechanism, it risks silencing marginalised voices and erasing the rawness of their lived experiences. By shifting focus from the necessary systemic changes to superficial solutions, it perpetuates structural inequities and stifles true healing.

The Allure of Self-Martyrdom

Conversely, self-martyrdom arises when individuals over-identify with the suffering of others, attempting to bear the weight of their pain. While often driven by a genuine desire to serve, this approach has detrimental effects:

• Emotional Burnout: Advocates may become overwhelmed, leading to exhaustion, bitterness, and diminished effectiveness.
• Blurred Boundaries: Internalising trauma as their own may blur the line between support and self-sacrifice, leaving workers without the emotional energy to continue their work.
• Reinforcing Harm: Overemphasising personal suffering can shift the focus from empowering communities to addressing the advocate’s own experience, perpetuating power imbalances.

Navigating the Balance: Collective Healing and Nuance

Avoiding these traps requires a nuanced approach that allows for deep empathy while maintaining intentional boundaries. This is particularly vital for those whose personal or generational trauma intersects with that of the communities they serve. Here are some suggestions for how frontline workers can maintain the balance:

1. Honour the Pain Without Becoming It
   Acknowledge collective trauma without internalising aspects of it that don’t form parts of one’s own lived experience. Workers can actively listen, amplify marginalised voices, and centre the community’s experiences without confusing them with their own.
2. Practice Boundary-Aware Empathy
   Empathy without boundaries leads to self-martyrdom, while boundaries without empathy can result in detachment. Practising self-care through journaling, therapy, or supervision helps workers engage with compassion without absorbing trauma.
3. Foster Community Agency Over Saviorism
   Avoid positioning oneself as the sole bearer of solutions. Instead, co-create with communities and centre their strengths and leadership. This decentralises the worker’s role, reducing over-identification and promoting community-driven efforts.
4. Center Systemic Action Over Individual Heroism
   Self-martyrdom can arise from the pressure to “fix” everything alone. Effective advocacy focuses on systemic solutions—policy changes, collective organising, or dismantling structural barriers, rather than focusing on individual stories or short-term relief.
5. Engage in Collective Healing Practices
   Healing must be a shared, iterative process. Community-led healing circles, storytelling, and intergenerational dialogues allow trauma to be honoured while also envisioning a future where collective well-being thrives.

Over-Identification and Collective Generational Trauma

Over-identification is particularly relevant when considering collective generational trauma. For many frontline workers, their personal histories are deeply intertwined with the collective trauma of the communities they serve. This emotional resonance can blur the lines between the advocate’s pain and the pain of those they serve, amplifying the risk of becoming overwhelmed by the shared suffering.

When over-identification is unchecked, it can manifest in several harmful ways:

• Panic and Hyperfocus on Individual Pain: Workers may prioritise the immediate emotional pain of individuals over systemic interventions, reducing their capacity to engage with the larger context and root causes.
• Collapse of Nuance: The emotional toll of collective trauma can diminish a worker’s ability to address the complexities of systems of oppression, leading to a narrow focus on individual stories rather than the broader systemic dynamics.

The Risks of Perpetuating Systemic Power Structures

Although trauma-informed advocacy can disrupt cycles of harm, unchecked over-identification risks perpetuating the very systems it seeks to dismantle:

• Reinforcing Hierarchies of Power: Over-identifying with the pain of others may unconsciously centre the advocate’s emotional responses, replicating hierarchical dynamics where the worker is positioned as the saviour, thus disempowering the community.
• Deepening Systemic Barriers: Emotional overwhelm often leads to focusing on short-term relief, rather than addressing the structural causes of inequality. This prevents long-term, sustainable change.
• Replicating Trauma in Decision-Making: Decision-making influenced by unresolved trauma often mirrors the hierarchical methods of oppressive systems, perpetuating cycles of control and exclusion rather than promoting collective agency.

A Path Forward: Integrating Trauma-Informed and Power-Aware Approaches

To avoid both spiritual bypassing and self-martyrdom, a power-aware, trauma-informed framework must be adopted. This framework centres collective care and sustainability while acknowledging power dynamics:

• Acknowledge Power Dynamics: Recognising the ways over-identification might reinforce disparities and centre privilege is essential in spaces of advocacy.
• Cultivate Joy as Resistance: Embracing joy, connection, and community in the midst of struggle serves as a vital antidote to burnout and despair.
• Commit to Lifelong Learning: The ongoing process of navigating trauma-informed work requires continuous reflection, feedback, and adaptation.

A Delicate Balance

Over-identification, especially in the context of generational trauma, poses both emotional and structural challenges in trauma and social justice work. Striking the right balance between empathy and objectivity enables frontline workers to engage deeply with the pain of marginalised communities without becoming overwhelmed or perpetuating harmful power dynamics. The goal is not to absorb or replicate trauma, but to create conditions in which those most affected by injustice can lead the charge for systemic transformation.

This requires humility, self-awareness, and a collective commitment to healing over individual heroism. By honouring the complexities of trauma and justice without becoming immobilised by their weight, we can contribute to dismantling oppressive systems while fostering environments where shared resilience and liberation thrive.