a story heard before

It was a story I'd heard many times before.

This person I met with grew up in a home with a father who was an alcoholic, a man who was physically, emotionally, and sexually abusive to all the children in the home. And the mother who had to have known something, but who has consistently denied ever seeing anything inappropriate happen in the home.

Awful, brutal stuff. But like I said, I'd heard it many times before.

So what struck me today was not so much the story, but the fact that I had heard the story so many times. Different variations of it, of course. Different perpetrators, different outcomes, different victims. Different ways of coping with the trauma. But always the common denominator of pain, of anger. Of a sense of having been damaged or flawed by what they went through.

I've heard the story so many times.

I also see some commonalities in how it affects people now. Their difficulties with being vulnerable, for instance. How they will withdraw or lash out rather than having to feel powerless, rejected, or defective. And often their experiences cause them to choose people who now treat them poorly. But sometimes they have otherwise loving people in their lives who are puzzled at how a relatively benign protest caused such a reaction.

I've heard it so many times that I sometimes wonder if I sometimes become a little deaf to the pain I'm hearing, if I want to jump forward and discuss things like improving their insight into what's happening inside of themselves, distinguishing reactions based on past experiences from what's going on in their lives now, diminishing the power of the self-criticism inside of themselves.

All good things to discuss, I'm know. But sometimes I wonder if my rush to discuss them has to do with where I want to go more (wheren I'm comfortable staying, emotionally) than what they're wanting at that moment.

As human beings, we are designed to experience empathy. When we hear others in pain, our "mirror neurons" (yes, they're actually called that) start firing and we experience something similar. It is, perhaps, the basis of compassion. But for those of us in the healing professions (therapists, pastors, etc.), this means a certain emotional bombardment -- story after story of pain, abuse, anger, betrayal, loss. I think we develop a kind of emotional distance that we need to be able to do our job, a kind of buffer zone perhaps.

I also think it may be why it is so important for us to actively nurture peace within ourselves, through meditation, prayer, and exercise. It has to be a priority or our jobs will overwhelm us.