Thanks Nightingale for your clarification.

You said: >>My comment was not directed at you.>>

Your original post [ http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,821013,821802#msg-821802 ] in the subject line addressed me Re: "Just sit with it" was from Robert, Helen, just to be clear" so I thought your post was directed at me. I took it literally since you addressed me by name :-)

>>I like to see you (I think we're fellow Canadians?) >>
Nice seeing you too. Yes, I'm Canadian from the opposite coast, Halifax, NS but transplanted in Florida.

>>We may have moved through our thing/s but remembering the challenge, the difficulty, the feelings, helps us to help. That is partly what I meant too when I said above that when I felt grief myself I could help others so much better than when I was in that younger former bubble where nobody close had died and I had no idea what that loss felt like.>>

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross was one of my teachers and she would tell us that "our pain is our greatest teacher." When we go through our own pain and grieve it and heal from it then we can offer our patients our affective empathy as well as cognitive empathy.

>>I don't actually think that we "move on" to a place where we are unscathed again, as the sadness and other emotions layer onto us, in my experience anyway, and shape and change us. It's hard work to turn it all into a positive, which is always my goal or else I fear a state of despair - not sure if that happens to others. I mean, otherwise the sadness becomes too great. I have to find something uplifting, at some point. For me, it's perhaps being able to understand someone else or even be able to help them. I find that all many people need or want in some situations is for someone else to listen and connect with how they're feeling.>>

I have worked many years in psychiatry and hospice and have sat with and cared for many dying patients and their families and for me because I worked through my own issues, my own grief, my own pain I could be there for my patients and their families in the present moment and to quote Robert "sit with it" and "sit with them".

>>When I worked as a lay counsellor for a while (with not much training) I was broadsided by the major life problems people were burdened with. So much so that I was always very afraid, mostly from feeling overwhelmed and not knowing what to say. I was always so nervous at the beginning of every session that I would not know the right thing to say to someone in great pain.>>

I remember that feeling of being broadsided as an 18 year old student caring for dying children. After graduation I decided the field I would pursue would be psychiatry I decided I better understand what's in my own head, deal with my own life issues, and so I got into therapy and I didn't have to feel broadsided again. Then I did Hospice work for years and I did personal grief work with Elizabeth and her staff and that is what kept me from despair. Sadness yes, but not despair, and I was able to grieve for each patient and then move on to the next patient. We had our own bereavement group for staff where we could talk about our relationship with our patients and get support and even respite if we needed it.

>>Little did I know that the "client" would solve their own problem by not really needing me - by accident, from not knowing what to say, I would just sit and listen, and in many cases that is all the person would need (from me at that time). When clients would express amazement at how much better they felt and look at me like I was some kind of genius, I figured out that the strength and the solutions came from them and I just gave them an ear at a time when they needed to talk. For many, it seemed a new experience, that they would find a quiet hour and someone to just listen to what they wanted to say. It was a good lesson for me, that I was not there to give them solutions, as they mostly already knew it themselves. (That applied to that particular program of lay counselling; it is undoubtedly different according to other needs people may have). I realized too that there was no "right thing to say". Also, I made sure to tell the client that they had the solution themselves, it didn't come from me.>>

They needed you to listen and that is what you did. When I spoke to students at the university or to groups in the community often they would ask, "What do you say to someone who just lost a loved one?" I would remind them how we are so programmed to "Don't just sit there do something" instead we could " Don't just do something, sit there." I think some of the best counsellors are the ones who practice deep listening. Most patients/clients are not seeking advice or answers as much as they are seeking validation of their experience and their feelings and that someone is willing to LISTEN gives them that validation. By being truly PRESENT is the best thing we can offer. Like you say though some ask for advice and answers according to other needs and that too can be appropriate.

>>I too have had that need, that yearning, for someone else to listen and really understand not just that I'm hurt, but why it hurts. It does seem magical when it happens, like if you make the connection the pain lessens (and like you're not wrong and weird and hopeless, as you may have been feeling).>>

Grief and sadness and hurt don't just visit us once eh? I can relate to that need, that yearning you speak of for someone to listen, to understand. I had a particularly difficult time this summer when my DH was diagnosed with cancer and one of my dearest friends was out of the country when we found out and I had emailed her as she knew we were waiting for DH test results. The day she came home my doorbell rang and there was my friend and she said, "I came to give you a hug." She didn't have to say anything else. I felt so loved.

>>I didn't mean that I had given you a lesson, Helen (far rather the other way round!). While I was writing that, I was thinking of that passage in Ecclesiastes about the seasons ("turn turn turn"). I always find comfort there. That's why I said "a time to mourn, a time to read poetry"). And then because it was Sunday, a stupid joke - "here endeth the lesson", referring back to my thoughts from Ecclesiastes.>>

I have always loved "Turn Turn, Turn" that was my era :-) I didn't make the connection to "here endeth the lesson" and again I was being very literal since I thought you were addressing me.

>>I'm so sorry that I was entirely unclear, especially on such a beautiful thread. :( >>

It's okay, really it is. Don't give it another thought.

>>(Re all the edits - they were to try and clarify my words as much as possible. I hope I succeeded).>>

You succeeded.