The Voice We Give To Heal

I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve cried as an adult.

Earlier that day was one of them. I had a strange feeling inside my gut that it was the beginning of the end for me. I was scheduled to meet with my supervisor later that morning so we could discuss my future there.

Things hadn’t been going well for a long time. The problems actually started my second day on the job, when she walked into my office and laid it out for me: “There are two camps here. You need to choose which one you want to be in. You have to pick who you’re going to be loyal to: me or him”...

Recently, two listening connections I was part of propelled me right back to that day more than 15 years ago. As I listened to two different people at two different times, their stories reflected a lot of my story. 

Let me tell you the whole story here, and then I’ll express more about how those two listening connections made me feel.

… I didn’t know how to respond. I was stunned at her statement. I tried to be as diplomatic as I could. She was playing me off against her supervisor.

I was instantly struck with terror. What have I’ve gotten myself into?

Many moments like that one followed. None of them felt right to me.

Whether it was constantly being criticized for not keeping the room I worked in clean enough, the office administrators who wouldn’t relay messages for me when I was working outside of the office, or the people who tried to undermine my authority and questioned my competence, there were always fires to be put out. Those fires made it increasingly difficult for me to do my job. All of that and more served to increase the doubts I had about my worth.

Why would people act this way? Why would people anywhere operate like this?

Two years later, when I cried and waited to be called into her office, I knew exactly what to expect. I expected that it wasn’t going to be good, and it wasn’t. For two hours she told me everything I had been doing wrong. There seemed to be absolutely nothing that I was doing right. I felt like a complete failure. A disappointment. Incompetent. Useless.

Halfway through the meeting I started crying. Again. Twice in one day.

Embarrassed, I asked if she could close the door.

“No. I can’t do that.”

I wasn’t even given the dignity and the safety of absorbing all of it in private.

She gave me an ultimatum: change everything I’d established and do things a different way—or get out. Intellectually I knew that she was telling me what she had been pressured to say. My heart was broken by those words. Reeling and despondent, I stumbled home, propelled by a force that wasn’t my own. I felt utterly worthless.

When I got home, I climbed the stairs and went straight to bed, pulling the covers over my head. In my cocoon I desperately ached for the world and its pain to go away. I lay there, still and numb, most of the rest of the day.

I have never entertained suicidal thoughts, but in those hours I could empathize why someone could feel that way. When you feel as if your life is wholly worthless, it could be incredibly easy to simply give up.

I truly thought that I’d resolved my feelings about that time more than a decade-and-a-half ago. And for the most part, I have. I’ve come a very long way since then. I don’t think about that time very much, ruminating and playing the pain of it over and over again in my mind. But every once-in-a -while something will trigger a disturbing thought or feeling or two. Maybe three. On occasion, four. But those occasions are fleeting, rare, no longer raw.

That’s how it can be with trauma that we have come to terms with and significant time has passed. Every so often something is said, often unexpectedly. A memory is triggered. A scab is rubbed open, and we bleed a little. On occasion, we bleed a lot. 

My scab was rubbed open when I listened recently to two individuals who also talked about their own toxic work situations. They both felt as if the carpet was pulled out from under them and they, too, lost their jobs. Their lives changed dramatically in an instant. 

Their stories evoked strong and raw emotions in me that surprised me and caught me off guard. It was hard for me to shake off my own bad memories in those moments. Suddenly, I was reliving the feelings I had back at that old job. And in those moments, I didn’t like it one bit.

It can be painful to listen to someone’s story that dredges up those parts of our own stories that we wish we never had to re-live or visit again. Just when we think we’ve moved on, healed, from a painful trauma, back it comes and, frankly, it’s incredibly difficult to be the most attentive listener to the one whose story we’re hearing. 

So, what do we do when we just can’t listen as well as we know would be best for the person who needs us to be a compassionate, empathetic, and fully-present listener? What do we do when it hits so close to home that we want to shutter the windows and lock the doors and retreat inside ourselves, not wanting to hear any more?

To listen well also takes the intentionality of self-care. We need to ground ourselves and center ourselves before taking on certain triggering topics. Or if the topic surprises and triggers us, we need to take a step back to admit we can’t listen at that moment. That’s one reason why we listen in pairs. To have a partner who can take the lead when we need to step back can help so much. And at the right moment in listening to someone else’s story of trauma, we may even be able to share our own story - not to make the time together ever be about us, the listener. But to share enough of our story to help remind the person that they are not alone in theirs. And especially, when we have found healing and peace from our painful moments, we can share how we have overcome and found light amidst the darkness in our lives. 

Writing about it here helps tremendously, too.

To listen with intention, deeply and compassionately, is hard work. But that work can also be joyful work, satisfying work, healing work - not only for us - but also for those who are giving voice to their pain, their tears, their heartbreak, too.