Years ago when I was working at a community mental health center I had a disturbing dream. Someone was shouting, “Who’s borderline is this?” (read “challenging client”). With heavy reluctance, I replied “She’s mine.” In the dream I moved to a building from which I was to remove my client. I dragged myself up the stairs and found her in a room. She was an anonymous person, no one in particular, but a symbol of overwhelming challenge and effort. I felt exhausted as I picked her up, positioning her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and headed down the stairs. “Heavy” is the operataive word for this dream. I awoke before I discovered what I was going to do, but the dream was a strong indication to me that I needed to do something!
We called it “burnout” at that point in my career. I remember considering the dream’s message about my current professoinal circumstances. I knew I needed to look after myself as well as my clients. I began experimenting in professional self-care. Interestingly, I didn’t seek out professional support. I’m sure that I shared the dream with some colleagues, laughing about it. But there was no discussion about what to do.
A recent NASW (National Associaiton of Social Workers) newspaper article about vicarious traumatization described it as being similar to secondary smoke. Doesn’t that give you a visceral feel? Like the “heaviness” in my dream, the smoke analogy lingers, reaching down into the primitive neural connections of my brain where trauma impact resides, twanging those synapses in a jarring fashion.
I have this lighter thought: the potential benefit of this connection to victimized clients is that, with awareness, I can truly, deeply empathize. More importantly, I am capable of traveling back up the brain hierarchy to my cognitive resources and figuring out how to assist my clients toward healing. But first, I just need to breathe…
