RESOURCES FOR OVERCOMING SECONDARY TRAUMATIZATION AMONG ARAB TRAUMA THERAPISTS IN ISRAEL

Abstract

Social workers and trauma therapists in Arab society in Israel carry out their work under conditions of sociopolitical marginalization, community-level trauma, and systemic underservice that place them at heightened risk of secondary traumatization. This article examines the resources through which these therapists withstand and recover from that burden, focusing on the interplay between Figley and Ludick’s (2016) Compassion Fatigue Resilience (CFR) Model and Bandura’s (1997) Self-Efficacy Theory. Drawing on qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 25 licensed social workers and trauma therapists from Arab communities in Israel, the study identifies religious and spiritual resources, extended family and community structures, collegial coping strategies, and culturally specific pathways to professional self-efficacy as protective factors not fully captured in standard secondary traumatic stress (STS) literature. 
Religious resources, extended family and community structures, and collegial coping strategies—including shared humor and peer ventilation—serve as culturally specific protective factors that extend and enrich the CFR model’s self-care and social support variables. Professional self-efficacy emerges as a dynamic construct shaped by accumulated mastery experience, communal professional belonging, the navigation of persistent ethical dissonance between religious, cultural, and state-mandated professional codes, and the drive to prove one’s worth against a backdrop of collective marginalization. The article calls for the development of culturally adapted supervision models, Arab-led professional communities, and institutional reforms that formally recognize and support these resources.