TerpHealth: Prevention and Management of Interpreting Related Injury

03/08/2026

Mimicking the facial expression and body language of the person(s) being observed can strengthen emotions that may be being triggered for the observer. Of course, using body language and facial expression is a core part of effective interpreting. That's one of the reasons why interpreters are at a high risk for being emotionally affected by their work.

One easy thing you can do to interrupt and decompress is to make sure you do not continue to mirror their body language and facial expression once your interpretation is complete. Many interpreters don't realize that they continue to do so when the interpretation is done - even if subtly. If, for example, you were interpreting for someone who was experiencing profound grief, you may continue to express the emotion of grief in your body language and facial expression even after you are finished the interpretation. Your body chemistry will continue to respond with stressful hormones and chemicals - perpetuating the stressful response - UNLESS you interrupt it! How? Quickly and definitively changing your body language and facial expression can be extremely helpful - as can physically discharging the emotion by shaking it off.

Literally shaking your entire body (when appropriate - maybe when you are back in your car....) can help to begin to 'reset' your emotional state. After you shake it off, deliberately upgrade your facial expression and body language to ones that reflect a happier, more relaxed attitude. For example, if you have interpreted for a consumer who looks or sounds stressed-out or angry, when the assignment is complete you can deliberately choose a more pleasant facial expression and relax your body. Special attention should be given to softening the lines between your eyebrows. Breathe softly into your abdomen. This helps stimulate the vagus nerve, which can help to calm the nervous system. Relax your shoulders and buttocks. These body and expression changes can begin to help interrupt and/or reduce the stress response.

03/07/2026

Self-care is not selfish. It is actually the most loving, compassionate, and even professional, thing we can do for ourselves AND others. We can’t give from that which we don’t have. We must nurture the resources that enable us to feel healthy, strong and able to be present for ourselves and others as needed. Self-care helps us to be far more effective interpreters - for the long haul.

Think about what the airlines tell passengers to do when the oxygen masks drop in the case of an emergency. They advise people to put their own masks on first - not because they are promoting an ‘every person for themselves’ agenda, but because they know that if you run out of oxygen you will be rendered helpless to assist anyone else. Putting the oxygen mask on yourself first isn’t selfish, it is exercising wisdom and foresight.

Making time for self-care is a pro-active choice. Many people wait to take time until they are physically, emotionally and/or emotionally spent. Responsible self-care needs to be an ongoing, regular and active part of life. Imagine running a full marathon at the pace of a sprint. You wouldn't be able to finish, and would likely hurt yourself. Interpreting is like running a marathon. If you keep an unreasonable schedule, interpret assignments alone that should be teamed, accept assignments you know you should turn down because your body is screaming for rest - but nobody else is available and you feel guilty saying "no" - then you run the risk of exhausting yourself. This can actually limit the time and quality of the services you are able to provide. In the long-run it serves nobody for you to overextend yourself.

Putting self-care first is an act of healthy self-regard, but it also is a sound professional choice. It also demands that we do the powerful work of letting-go of any residual co-dependent or "savior" attitudes and behaviors. It pushes us toward a healthier relationship with ourselves and with those for which we provide services.

03/06/2026

Self-care is your first professional and personal responsibility. You can't continue to give from an empty vessel.

03/05/2026

The psychological aspect, along with the ergonomic, bio-mechanical and physiological risk factors, is one of the possible predispositions to injury for an interpreter. Years ago I assumed that ergonomic and bio-mechanical factors were the most significant for sign language interpreters. However, after almost 20 years of teaching workshops and performing diagnostics, I now see that the psychological actually is the most impactful.

The psychological factor determines how you take care of yourself physically, how the interpreting task is approached, how you manage your predisposing factors, whether you advocate for yourself or accept unhealthy work terms and conditions, and how you respond if you experience discomfort from interpreting. All of these can impact risk of injury. Some examples of high risk psychological predispositions to injury include:

- External locus of control: An external locus of control means to approach life as if it happens to you. An internal locus of control acknowledges that your personal choices determine how you experience life. An external locus of control increases risk of injury because an interpreter is unlikely to take needed action to take care of themselves and to address issues of concern if they view themselves as powerless.

- “Savior” mentality: Sometimes interpreters find themselves constructing their lives and schedules around what they believe their consumers need – to their own detriment. It is not healthy or helpful to work from a martyr stance, Doing so may result in personal injury.

- Stressful thinking: When you engage in chronic stressful thinking it affects every bodily system. In addition to inhibiting blood circulation, upsetting your body’s hormonal balance, and causing physical muscle tension, chronic stress can also affect the ability of your cells to receive nutrition from the food you eat! The cell receptors can actually get “hijacked” by the stress hormones. Obviously this impacts the ability of your body to repair and nourish itself.

- Perfectionism: I think an “Achilles heel” of many sign language interpreters is demanding perfectionism in their work. This is not to imply that your goal should be anything less than producing work of the highest quality. However, perfectionism is an unfair and unrealistic demand. Approaching the task of interpreting with a need for perfection increases stressful feelings and increases risk of injury.

03/04/2026

Some high-risk biomechanics and ergonomics can influence, and be influenced by, your emotions. Current research in the fields of neurobiology and biochemistry demonstrates that there really is a mind-body connection. Your thoughts and emotions impact your body, and your body position and movements influences your emotional state.

- Forceful, or ballistic movements while interpreting (or performing other tasks) is often associated with feelings of stress, anger and aggression. Angry, stressful emotions can lead to forceful movements, but forceful and ballistic movements can also produce feelings of stress and anger! Harsh movements actually cause a cascade of stress hormones to enter your bloodstream, including adrenaline.

- Producing signs with a lot of physical muscle tension can also increase stress hormones in the body - spiking stressful, tense emotional feelings. Studies have also shown that people with slouching postures tend to experience more depressed feelings and less self-esteem. Just improving and "uplifting" the posture can positively impact emotions almost immediately - especially if the facial expression is also changed to an uplifted expression as well.

- Healthy bio-mechanics and ergonomics can do more than improve your physical health - it can also improve the quality of your life. I have had many interpreters report increased feelings of well-being as they improve their body mechanics and ergonomics.

03/03/2026

I don’t often ask for favors on this page, however, I just finished meeting with the Publisher who is considering publishing my book, Aging Bravely. They seem interested, but want to be sure I will be a good marketing partner with them to promote the book. They asked me to work on building my social media presence for the next month before they decide whether to offer me a contract or not.

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Thank you!

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03/02/2026

Interpreters often find themselves holding their breath or breathing in a shallow manner. This is frequently a learned response to stress. The risk of interpreting related injury increases when there is insufficient intake of oxygen since oxygen in necessary for healthy muscle function and for healing. Optimal breathing supplies your body with oxygen, and helps eliminate toxins and metabolic waste products, including accumulated carbon dioxide.

Specific benefits to reduce risk of injury include:

- It enhances your body’s ability to recover and heal from injury.

- It helps your body eliminate toxins and metabolic waste.

- It assists in the digestion of food and assimilation of nutrients from the foods you eat.

- It oxygenates the nervous system, which interfaces with every system of your body.

- It provides oxygen to the glandular and hormonal systems.

- It affects the parasympathetic nervous system, resulting in more physical muscle relaxation. This translates into fewer muscle spasms.

- It oxygenates the red blood cells which carry oxygen to every part of the body.

- It reduces anxiety and allows the mind to relax.

- It is essential for healthy brain function, and therefore processing information for interpreting.

03/01/2026

There are a number of ways in which to build resiliency and deal with the aftermath of an emotionally triggering interpreting assignment. Here are just a few:

- Make sure that when you talk about the trigger that you do so in a way that truly helps with decompression - rather than just ‘reliving’ or ‘rehearsing’ what happened. Many times people traumatize themselves repeatedly by just going over and over the events, without really processing what happened. So essentially, to borrow a phrase from one of my workshop participants - ‘Vent with intent’. Make sure your conversation is geared toward recognizing how what happened is impacting you, understanding your own response, processing, integrating, and healing.

- Meditation is a wonderful strategy. It helps us to become aware of our own internal dialogue and state of being. Research has shown that meditation can help heal our brain and significantly reduce stress when practiced regularly. You can read some of the research on the National Institute of Health website, as well as PubMed.

- Doing your own emotional work on a regular basis goes a long way toward reducing emotional vulnerability. As we begin to address our own unresolved pain, there is less to become ‘triggered’.

- Make sure your dietary choices support your emotional health. For example, studies of survivors of post catastrophic natural events (tornados, earthquakes, etc.) have shown that only 18% of those who are given significant and high levels of nutritional support following an event experience PTSD, compared to the 65% who do not receive enhanced nutritional support. Good nutrition increases emotional resiliency.

- Make sure you get enough sleep. People who are sleep deprived lay down twice as many negative memories as those who get enough sleep. Chronic lack of sleep negatively impacts our ability to see the world with a positive outlook.

- Journaling can help us get in touch with our residual feelings. It also helps us organize our thoughts and feelings, thereby gaining clarity.

- Alternate nasal breathing has been shown to significantly reduce stress because it helps to balance the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. Instructions on how to do this technique can be easily found online.

- Focus on your breath while you think about the situation from which you are decompressing. Make sure you are breathing in the abdominal area, rather than the chest. This helps to lower the stress response. Also focus on and accentuate the OUT breath rather than the in-breath. This helps to calm the flight, fight and freeze response because it stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms.

- There are a number of acupressure points that can be utilized to help calm the body and mind. You can find these online by googling ‘acupressure points for emotions’.


- Gentle yoga and other types of movement ‘therapies’ can help prevent and help get stuck emotions out of your body. Some of these can include TRE (Trauma Release Exercises) which can be found online, somatic exercises, etc. Emotional pain, including vicarious trauma, is not just mental. It involves physiological responses that need physiological release.

- Tapping, including EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) has been found to help quickly release emotional pain from the body. It works quickly and I have found that it is one of the fastest way to process an emotionally triggering interpreting assignment. You can read some of the research on the National Institute of Health website on its effectiveness. You can find an example and free tutorial online at emofree.com.

- There are therapists who specialize in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). There is significant research that supports this method for quickly and effectively processing painful and stuck emotions.

02/26/2026

"What could I do next time to take care of myself better?" can be an important question for an interpreter. There may be times when you find yourself in a situation that results in post-interpreting pain. This is due, in part, to the fact that interpreters can be presented with so many different kinds of situations. Learning to navigate those situations in a healthy manner can be a learning process.

While you may never encounter the exact same situation in the future, gleaning principles from your experience to apply to other situations with similar aspects can be helpful. Deciding what your approach will be before you go into an interpreting assignment is an important key to working healthily. Learning from your experiences and making decisions ahead of time regarding future occurrences is an important way to continually move toward working more safely.

Some helpful considerations might be:

- Next time could you ask for help?

- Next time could you ask for adjustments in the physical environment (temperature, where you were asked to stand/sit, etc.?

- Might you arrive earlier next time so that you can set-up better?

- Could you advocate for your own needs more assertively next time?

- Might it be beneficial to prepare for the assignment better in the future?

- Is it possible you need to use more professional discretion in accepting assignments in the future?

- Next time might you choose to "yes" instead of "no", or "no" instead of "yes"?

- What lesson could you learn from the situation that you could take forward with you and into future situations?

02/24/2026

Did you know that your brain detoxifies while you are sleeping? Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Center for Translational Neuromedicine recently published a report in the journal "Science", revealing that your brain removes toxic waste while you are asleep through what’s been dubbed the ‘glymphatic’ system. The brain, due to the blood-brain barrier, is not cleansed by the lymphatic system like the rest of the body. The glymphatic system is the mechanism through which your brain is detoxified.

The glymphatic system is 10 times more active during sleep, allowing your brain to clear out toxins. Your brain cells also shrink about 60 percent when you are asleep. This allows your glymphatic system to clear out excessive waste in the brain. Reduction in these brain toxins can significantly reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s and other neurological and brain disorders. It also is vital for mental clarity.

Why is this important for an interpreter specifically? Just one night of impaired sleep negatively affects memory function, reduces your ability to process information and reduces clarity of thinking. This can result in increased feelings of stress and increased risk of injury.
If you aren't sleeping enough, your brain becomes more and more toxic. This can affect mood, hormonal balance and the entire central nervous system.

Bottom line? Sleep matters. You can't continually function in a deficit without consequences. Regular, healing sleep is part of a comprehensive approach to taking care of yourself as an interpreter and as a person. If you struggle with sleep I suggest googling and practicing 'sleep hygiene'.

02/20/2026

The psychological aspect, along with ergonomic, biomechanical and physiological risk factors, is one of the possible predispositions to injury for an interpreter. Years ago I assumed that ergonomic and biomechanical factors were the most significant for sign language interpreters. However, after almost 30 years of teaching workshops and performing diagnostics, I now see that the psychological actually is the most impactful.

The psychological factor determines how you take care of yourself physically, how the interpreting task is approached, how you manage your predisposing factors, whether you advocate for yourself or accept unhealthy work terms and conditions, and how you respond if you experience discomfort from interpreting. All of these can impact risk of injury. Some examples of high risk psychological predispositions to injury include:


- External locus of control: An external locus of control means to approach life as if it happens to you. An internal locus of control acknowledges that your personal choices determine how you experience life. An external locus of control increases risk of injury because an interpreter is unlikely to take needed action to take care of themselves and to address issues of concern if they view themselves as powerless.


- “Savior” mentality: Sometimes interpreters find themselves constructing their lives and schedules around what they believe their consumers need – to their own detriment. It is not healthy or helpful to work from a martyr stance, Doing so may result in personal injury.


- Stressful thinking: When you engage in chronic stressful thinking it affects every bodily system. In addition to inhibiting blood circulation, upsetting your body’s hormonal balance, and causing physical muscle tension, chronic stress can also affect the ability of your cells to receive nutrition from the food you eat! The cell receptors can actually get “hijacked” by the stress hormones. Obviously this impacts the ability of your body to repair and nourish itself.


- Perfectionism: I think an “Achilles heel” of many sign language interpreters is demanding perfectionism in their work. This is not to imply that your goal should be anything less than producing work of the highest quality. However, perfectionism is an unfair and unrealistic demand. Approaching the task of interpreting with a need for perfection increases stressful feelings and increases risk of injury.

02/19/2026

Learning to deal with criticism is part of an Interpreter’s life. When it is valid, it can help us grow as professionals and as people. When it isn’t valid, it can cause us to become discouraged and frustrated - *if* we accept it as true.

Below is a part of a substack I wrote for a general audience, however, I believe these excerpts are relevant for Interpreters.

EXCERPT: “It’s been said that we shouldn’t take someone’s criticism too seriously who we would never go to for advice. There is great wisdom in that counsel. Though truth can come to us from the strangest places, we needn’t just accept the opinions of others without the benefit of objective scrutiny.”

NOTE: That paragraph is important for Interpreters because there are times when we are unfairly blamed for an assignment that went wrong - or when we were a convenient outlet for a consumer who was angry and frustrated. These are different scenarios than when a consumer gives mindful and respectful criticism. That *doesn’t* mean that angry criticism is always without merit, it just means we need to assess it a little closer to determine if it contains truth.

EXCERPT: “Yet, criticism can really sting - even if it is unfair. Why? Sometimes it is because we may fear they are right. Because it’s not as much about what they say, but more about what *we* believe … If someone tells us something about ourselves that we know for a fact isn’t true, it doesn’t tend to cause us distress. It’s when we fear they might be right that we feel discomfort; when our own insecurities are triggered.”

NOTE: The fear that we are not ‘good enough’ is one that most of us have in some area of our life. It often shows up in the interpreting arena.

EXCERPT: “But not everyone - nor every thought we have - has earned the right to a place in our brain.”

NOTE: That’s why we have to honestly and courageously assess criticism to determine it’s validity.

EXCERPT: “Some of the thoughts and insecurities we have are simply a replay of negative voices and messages we heard growing up. That doesn’t mean they are true or worthy of being believed.”

NOTE: If a criticism is valid, we can humbly accept it with humility, take the lesson with us and move forward. If it isn’t, it’s an opportunity to practice validating that which is true about ourselves.

EXCERPT: “Unfounded, unexamined criticism has the capacity to create shame and hinder our growth. However, valid criticism can help us grow and become more mature and capable humans.”

NOTE: And become more balanced interpreters…

EXCERPT: “It’s up to us to assess the validity of a criticism before accepting it as accurate.”

NOTE: We might also benefit from reaching out to an esteemed colleague for perspective during these times as well. An objective perspective can be helpful.

(Note: You can subscribe (free or paid - your choice) to my substack. I don’t share all of my substack articles here…

https://personalalchemy.substack.com/p/evaluating-criticism?r=7ggs7e&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&fbclid=IwZnRzaAQD5TFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEei8kw5E2Ofs5HMLDT7hW_XeQFY4WKp4fCh08c6HmVKEwjh1xOT5U2WutLJrY_aem_sLl-NjDjgjFVBavTvbcFxQ&triedRedirect=true