I have been practicing psychotherapy for about 15 years now. I’ve worked with abandoned children, abandoning mothers, schizophrenics, a few sociopaths, folks who want to kill themselves more often than not, and deep, chronic depression and anxiety (which is the center of my private practice). In these years, I’m asked by patients, with some regularity, and bafflement, “How can you stand to listen to all this all the time?” Good question: how is it that we psychotherapists can engage day in and day out our patients’ suffering-which is to say, the stream of human suffering-and not become burnt out husks?
in Therapy