The Harms Spontaneous Volunteers Carry when Support is Missing

Spontaneous volunteers and grassroots leaders Christmas day 2015.

I learned this on Lesvos. People arrived wet and shaking, and we did what we could with what we had. Then we went home and tried to live as if none of it had happened. Many could not. There was no system in place or plan for them. They fell through the cracks, and for some the cracks were deep.

Shock, then silence

Most spontaneous volunteers I interviewed in my book described the same pattern. Intense exposure in the field, then alienation at home. Friends listened for a few minutes, changed the subject, and the gulf widened. Siri stopped seeing people who met her experience with media-informed slogans. Charles avoided speaking about his experience in the fear of disagreements because it brought out anger that came too fast and too hot. Greta left Greece to go to a wedding, but ended up leaving half way through the wedding to sit alone in a hotel room and message colleagues in Greece. The common thread was alienation. It was the simple fact that those who had not been there could not carry the stories, and those who had were still living inside them.

That gap has consequences. When meaning cannot be shared, isolation follows. Identity shifts. Some cut ties. Others mute themselves. Many report a long stretch where ordinary life feels thin and wrong. These are predictable harms of unsupported fieldwork, not rare outliers.

Stigma, shame, and the cult of toughness

Aid culture still rewards stoicism. Several professionals I spoke with named the quiet rule: a true humanitarian does not get affected by the work that they are doing. Volunteers also absorbed that message, in fear of being seen as fragile or attention seeking. Sophia described avoiding help because gossip travelled, and the “hardcore” volunteers judged weakness. Stigma delays help-seeking and turns manageable stress into lasting injury.

Shame stacks on top. Shame for leaving when others could not. Shame for not staying longer. Shame for living well at home while people sleep rough in camps. Shame shuts mouths and keeps people alone. Left unspoken, it corrodes.

Secondary trauma and delayed fallout

Volunteers report flashbacks, sleep loss, anger spikes, anxiety, and depressive stretches. Some recognise classic trauma patterns; many do not until months later. One volunteer described leaving the field early after peers reflected back how overwhelmed he was. When he sought therapy from local psychological services he felt as if he was not heard or recognised, and that the psychologist did not understand humanitarian exposure. He travelled across the country to find a trauma specialist who did. Delayed recognition is common when no one screens, normalises, or signposts support.

I saw versions of this in myself. After Lesvos, ordinary sounds could collapse time. I learned the hard way that unprocessed material does not fade. It surfaces. Without an obvious door into care, people white-knuckle through and call it resilience. It is not.

Peer contact is protective, but not enough on its own

When support exists, it often comes from each other. Volunteers debrief informally on shift and keep talking after they leave. That peer recognition matters. Group settings help restore coherence and dignity when trauma has fractured both. This is well described in the literature on recognition and group-based recovery, and it matched what I heard in interviews. But peers cannot hold everything. Some cases need stepped care and clinical follow-up. In an unsupported environment, people either over-rely on peers or never move beyond them, and problems harden.

Structural neglect multiplies harm

These harms are not only personal. They are products of structure. Organisations and states know volunteers will arrive and know what exposure looks like, yet treat their needs as if they were an unpredictable exception. Responsibility diffuses. Everyone benefits from the labour. No one owns the aftermath.

On the ground, priorities drift. I sat through a “wellbeing” meeting for small NGO that turned into a fundraising pitch, with volunteers pressed to keep giving after they had already given more than enough. Even well-intentioned teams push mental health to the bottom of the stack when capacity is thin. The result is predictable: no brief on risks, no screening, no warm handovers, few check-ins.

States are inconsistent. After the Gjerdrum landslide, local crisis teams supported affected residents and those who helped. After the 22 July attacks, many spontaneous rescuers were excluded from formal follow-up despite higher stress reports than professional responders. Norway even built a phone line for lay rescuers after cardiac arrests, recognising that ordinary people who do extraordinary things need to talk. The same logic applies to humanitarian volunteers, yet access depends on luck and postcode.

What unmanaged harm does to the work

Unchecked strain narrows attention, shortens tempers, and raises risk. In the field it leads to errors, boundary slips, and moral injury. At home it drives people out of civic life or into brittle activism that burns them out. In both places it harms the very communities volunteers want to serve. This is avoidable damage created by the absence of basic support.

Bottom line

Spontaneous volunteers are part of every major response. Their exposure is foreseeable. So are the harms when support is absent. Alienation, stigma, secondary trauma, and avoidable burnout are not badges of honour. They are signs of a system that takes the labour and leaves the bill on the kitchen table. Recognise the pattern, or keep paying for it in people.