Why pain in grief and trauma is so repetitious and listening is so important

My best counsellors were available exactly when I needed them.  I’d just lost just about everything that ever mattered to me and would ever matter to me.  They were there, and they continued to listen, time and again, to the same confused utterings, and they were just there, and they did what was required to love me back into shape.

It took months and months and months.

There were times we’d all sit there bewildered for what to think or how to respond.

It was the very shape of loss and of grief and of trauma, because loss propels us into grief, and I’m sure with all I have in me that grief is trauma.

There are so many situations in our lives that leave us devoid of rational response, like there are no words, or the words just don’t make a difference.  There is a place for just holding space, for containing, somehow, the mess that flows out of a person in a traumatised state.

I know first-hand having experienced such a lengthy bout of grief—patterns that would recur—involve the process of repetition, for repetition shows us what is not so easily wished away.  It lingers for a reason.  It remains because it refuses to be digested.  What’s unpalatable just sits there, like oil on water.

So, for me, it doesn’t necessarily take patience, but empathy carries a counsellor much further, for it shouldn’t be about patience.  And the empathy I mention here is a FELT experience of having been there.

When you’ve been there it’s not hard at all sitting in the pain with another who endures.  It’s the most natural thing in the world, I find.  Why would you not sit there with another person who is a brother or sister by the designation of their pain?  Especially when you’re the one who’s been there but has processed all your pain appropriately given time.

The emotions and the words circle around the mind, and the concepts seem brutally abstract yet altogether so concrete.  The words are tried in different order, the narrative shifts ever so slightly in wondering ‘what if?’ and the same old ‘why’ questions emerge.

The shapes of grief move and shift, yet the methods and patterns of pain remain the same.  These shapes of grief are anger one moment, resignation the next, then perhaps depression, and then maybe a little dread of anxiety, before some bargaining.

It’s exhausting, yet inescapable.  It’s the same cycle of pain rehashed and regurgitated over and again, and the afflicted are sicker of it than anyone.

When you’ve been there, you know it’s all beyond choice.  A journey of a million miles is worth every courageous step, for you will get there!

So, being there, sitting in the mire of the pain with them, that’s not hard.