Helping others and then living with their trauma?

Post Reply New Topic

I consider myself a fairly good person. I like to help my friends, make them feel better, no matter what. The way that I understand people's pain is listening to them and imagining it inside of my head, feeling their feelings and trying to really relate. Unfortunately, I can't do it when they talk about more traumatic things. They completely destroy me inside, almost vicariously.

My ex-wife was a rape victim. I wanted to help her more than anything, so I let her talk to me and supported her through the entire healing process. I didn't tell her at the time, but I could imagine everything she was saying in photographic details and it was destroying me inside. I became numb, constantly angry, and I couldn't tell her. It had been my choice to help her, but the way that the pictures played out in my mind was a constant source of torment that stays with me even now.

I've been living in a sort of hell for years now. I want to help everyone, heal them almost, but it's been having a weight on me. Has anyone dealt with something like this before? How do you cope? I don't want to just accept that I can't listen to anything "real" or "heavy" if the person needs me.

Welcome to Wrong Planet. I don't experience that, although I have felt at times too anxious to fix other people's problems when they complain about their lives. I don't because I can't but I still feel the pressure. Do you ever feel used in that respect? I seem to attract people who want me to listen to them complain but don't want to make an effort to change their perspective.

You were doing a good thing, helping your friend process. I don't know why you didn't let her know that you were angry that she had to feel her pain. That would have helped you empathize with her pain and help you both release it. Taking other's pain away by keeping it yourself defeats the whole point of the healing process. You have to let out your feelings, too in order to pass it by, and let it go.

I deal with people daily, and I get everthing from 'that's why we have this product, is service like you" to "YOU SUCKKKKKKKK" and a smashed down receiver.

I have to consciously let it go. I still am very helpful and effecient and get things done for people, but I can't bring it home. (Someone once called it 'letting them live, rent free, in your head") Just like a heart rests between each beat you have to let go by getting it out of your system before helping others again.

for your own sanity.

Merle

This was very helpful for me, I am having a hard time with that exact problem lately. Thank you!

I had something similar, a few years ago, but it involved less personal stuff, like charities. I haven't earned any money in years, but my husband was earning a decent income at the time.

I had been thinking about what I can do to make the world a better place, and since I don't really have the freedom or ability to do much of anything, I decided to donate a bit of money to causes/charities I believed in. The problem was that if you donate money to a charity, they keep sending you URGENT requests for more money. So, every day, my mailbox would contain envelops full of pictures of baby polar bears, child soldiers, starving children, and polluted rivers. The message I began to get was that even though I was giving as much money as I could manage, it was never enough. "Thank you for becoming a supporting member of this important charity, but there is a terrible emergency, and we need extra money right now, or all these children will lose their access to clean water." That kind of thing.

I'm talking about reputable charities, and I'm not saying that I was taken advantage of. What I am saying is that after a while, the constant images of dying rainforests and abused children was too much, emotionally. I had to make a conscious decision to stop donating, and to stop reading all that mail. It was making me slip into a depression, because the problem was (is) just too big, and I was feeling helpless.

Now it's a moot point because we have no money. I still feel helpless, but I'm not making it worse on myself by reading the pleas for help.

I hope someday to be in a financial position in which I can eat and donate to charity, but when I do, it'll be anonymously, so they can't send me more mail. It's just too much of an emotional burden.

I've had that problem too, but b/c I never experienced the stuff my friends deal w/ I just quietly listen, take it in & avoid doing anything that could "trigger" the memories.

I used to not be able to relate at all and I did my absolute best to try to imagine it. I think in doing that, I've created this kind of artificial empathy which makes it so close to home that it actually hurts me on a level where it was as if I was there and unable to do anything about it.

The funny thing, "letting it go" might be the best solution, but it makes me feel worse. It makes me feel like I'm back to not being able to care and letting people down.

Letting go is healthy, once a person is ready even if it was a very bad thing then they are able to do that even if it is only be small degrees at a time.

It does not mean you do not care, it means you are not responsible for feeling the whole world's sadness. That is not any one person's job.

'Letting go'
I am really encouraged by these posts, as this has been the major message that has been bombarding me from all sides in my own life circumstances.

I can relate somewhat with venounem with wanting to help everyone around me and with elderwanda in the area of being inundated with a plethora of the worlds (or just my communities) needs. But this just leads to burnout.

I have been reading about Mindfulness and letting go is a big part of purposeful thinking.
This was a hard concept for me to grasp but essentially this is the way I see it....

We humans have come a long way and it is our critical reasoning (thinking) that really separates us from all other known life forms - it took us from building pyramids to skyscrapers which takes an immense amount of problem solving (critical thinking) - our trap now is that we attempt to use our critical thinking to address our emotions and our relationships and its always to do with past and future (only if I would have done a + b then I would have achieved c, or why cant I do a + b!! !!) --- this thinking does not work for relationships, emotions and helping others, it is a bandaid for a gaping wound at best.

Now purposeful thinking is appreciating the Now, the past gives us definition, but we can not live in it, the future gives us purpose but we can't live there either, only Now can we be.. the problem isn't that I get sad, or overwhelmed, the problem is the reaction to these feelings (images).. I will give a more picture example... take a raisin or some other little edible object and observe it as completely as you can, Touch, Sight, Smell, feel the action of putting it in your mouth, and feel it in your mouth, the tongue, notice where you place it before you chew, examine and appreciate the moment you bite it and notice the flavor(s) you experience, attempt to observe what you experience in your body, is your mouth watering more? is your belly doing anything, how does your jaw feel, etc...
the purpose of that exercise is to engage purposeful thought, it is easy for us to go off on a tangent in our minds without doing so on purpose so we miss the experience, much like just stuffing a bunch of raisins in the mouth and chewing and swallowing.

Letting go to me is not making the thoughts/images go away it is learning to appreciate them and being able to not be caught up in rumination of critical thought.

Hope that makes sense.

Yes, the first time a therapist suggested I could just "let something go" I was shocked and offended. But she was right. It's not about forgetting or changing your mind; it's more about deciding not to let something you can't change rule your head.

Plus, we all do need a lot more conscious thinking. have you read The Power of Now by Tolle?

BTW Welcome to Wrong Planet

I have not read that book, but will certainly keep an eye open for it when finances allow, thanks for suggesting it.

Hmmm.......I once heard that it's unwise to get friendship and counselling mixed up, because the personal involvement can cause problems. Maybe that's what's happening here?

I've also heard that Aspies often feel empathy too strongly (contrary to the popular idea that Aspies have no empathy)...they have no way to detach so the strong emotions really hurt them.

Even trained counsellors can have a traumatic time listening to clients with horrific stories of their experiences.

Strangely enough, although I know that, I find it very hard to resist trying my best to be a good ear to those I love. Luckily most of them haven't dug up anything too awful yet.

I did have to stop my partner telling me about some time way back in the past when she was molested. I felt terrible about it and so did she..........unfortunately I had issues because of a previous relationship in which the woman had been in the habit of dropping out some very scary and upsetting experiences, as if she were trying to hurt me with them - she'd actually talk about those things as if they were funny, and would pretty much laugh at me if I showed any abhorrence - and I'd built up barriers to that for my own protection......I'd refuse to listen when I got the impression that she was about to do that. So I felt at a very deep level that it might be the same thing. Anyway, I stopped her and said that if she really hadn't come to terms with it then she ought to get some professional help because I was out of my depth.

I think I know what you mean when you say that the pictures kept playing back in your mind. That's exactly what I was seeking to avoid.

I can also feel quite negative if anybody I care about brings me problems that they've fallen into by doing stuff that I wouldn't have dreamed of doing - like trusting people too much, or borrowing money and then finding out they can't pay it back, taking on too much work and collapsing under the strain. I still try to help mostly, but I wish people would be as careful with their happiness as I am with mine. It's like I've spent all my life fixing up my defenses, and then just because I start caring about people, in spite of all my cleverness, I still have to suffer as if I'd never worked out how to defend myself.

Some book suggestions:

Allies in Healing: When the Person You Love Was Sexually Abused as a Child ( I have not read this one, but it looks like it would help a lot for this particular situation)

The Courage to Heal 4e: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

The Survivor's Guide to Sex: How to Have an Empowered Sex Life After Child Sexual Abuse

I have read the second and third one, as a survivor, and they were of course "triggery", but helpful in the long term.