The paths are different; the way we take them is the same - a single step moving us forward.

[dancingwaves]

Clinicians are witnesses. Clinicians may work with patients who are repeatedly flooded with memories and emotions of prior abuse and trauma. The repeated reliving of traumatic experiences is a tragic remnant of the traumatic event. Clinicians may be the first person to hear of these events. Implicit to the notion of bearing witness is the burden of tolerating what one hears and sees. Bearing witness means making empathic contact with another human being who has experienced horror. It means lessening the burden, a little, by being there and listening. Bearing witness means hearing and seeing the depths of what one human being can do to another. It brings us a little closer to horror. The humanity in each of us cannot help but be touched and affected. The way that bearing witness affects the clinician is different for different people. Although we all have expert clinical training we are mostly just human beings who will respond to the horror in another in human ways. The deleterious consequences of working with those who have experienced violence are simply a natural outgrowth of our own humanity. If this clinical work does not have a profound personal effect on a clinician, that is something that clinician should pay attention to. (Saxe, Liebshutz, Edwardson, & Frankel, 2003, p. 157)

This entry was originally posted at http://dancingwaves.dreamwidth.org/831214.html. Please comment there using OpenID.