I have a hard job.
Like, really hard.
I joke about it sometimes to not give it so much weight. The difficulty, that is. When people ask me what I do for work, I jokingly tell them that I hear horrific things for a living (even though that's exactly what I do, whether it be from my clients or my supervisees. Vicarious trauma is a thing, y'all.). The more I do this work, the truer that becomes. There are times in this job where I've found it harder and harder to separate myself from the work that I do, and that's because who I am is part of the work that I do, to be sure, but also because sometimes I'm confronted with feelings in myself that I can't put a label on. For all of the work that I do in helping people to even identify their basic feelings (which is harder than it looks), there are times that I struggle with this significantly myself.
I have been sick this week. Because of that, my capacity to deal with all things is lowered. Also because my capacity is lowered, those things that do make it into my current capacity get more attention. I often have these weird moments of insight, and they often happen at weird times. For instance, I just had moment of insight when I was taking a hot shower and trying to soothe some of the yuck that is currently in my throat. (This is relevant, I promise.)
The entire time I've been doing this work, after I'm done hearing someone's story, or after a session that I know has been really hard for a client, I have a fleeting feeling that I've never been able to name and I've never been able to really look at because it's so fleeting that sometimes I don't even know that it's there.
The other day it happened again, and for some reason, it stuck. I've been having this internal thing happening since then around some work that I did with a person and for some reason, that feeling lingered. Yesterday, while in the shower doing the yuck-soothing, I finally was able to figure it out.
It was awe.
Sometimes as counselors we forget how hard it is to sit in that chair across from someone whose job it is to help us. We forget how hard it is to tell someone our story, and then to tell it again, and then to work through it while telling it again. I sometimes forget that I will never know how difficult or deeply seated the feelings are that my clients experience, and yet I go along with the boundaries and the compartmentalization because I think that if I were to ever just put those skills down and actually feel as deeply as a client does about their own issues, I wouldn't be able to do the job.
The other day after sitting with someone in something really difficult, they got up and walked out of my office because their time with me was done, and I got that fleeting feeling. It was just a second, but it stuck. I found myself wondering how they could even function, and yet here they were in my office, telling a perfectly coherent, yet very difficult to tell, narrative of what they had going on. Yet they did it. They sat there and did it. Then they pulled themselves together and went about their day.
Awe makes sense to me. Awe is the only logical explanation of this feeling (I say that as if feelings are logical. Spoiler alert: They're not.). There are times that I feel awe just going about my day, and there are times that I feel it and I don't know it's there. It's one of those feelings of mine that is visceral, and it has become more so since I've been a counselor. I find myself consistently in awe of a person's resiliency, or their ability to perform even the most basic functions of their day. Getting out of bed. Maybe getting in a shower. Maybe it's writing in their journal for that day. Sitting in front of me, even if they only show up and don't even say anything.
Part of it is that I've been there. I've been faced with the impossible task myself, so I know exactly how hard it can be to leave your house to put gas in your car and feel like it's a huge accomplishment. I also know personally how hard it is to sit in front of someone and tell your truth, even if they're paid to sit and listen to you and help you work through it.
A colleague about a year ago asked me what helps me keep my sense of joy, which is pretty abundant, in the face of the work that I do. It's this. If I can keep my sense of awe, I'll be able to keep my sense of joy. Even on the hardest days, I can manage to find something to help me keep my sense of awe, without exception yet. I'm hoping the day never comes that I search and can't find it. Don't get me wrong, some days I have to really look for it, but it's there.
Here's hoping I never lose it.
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