This article tells the story of a therapist working with a dying patient. The patient eventually asks the author if she'll stay along with her, agree to continue the sessions, until her death.
The author says "Though my instinct was to do what people tend to do when somebody they care about brings up death, which is to deny it completely, I had to remember that I was there to help Julie, not to comfort myself"
She goes on to say "What if I said or did the wrong thing? What if I couldn't handle my own sadness? What if I let her down?"
Physicians, nurses, therapists all have such intimate relationships with their patients/clients. It is remarkable to me that they might still be faced with these same questions. I guess we all have our armour, and we all have varying degrees of how we let empathy steer us in our professional lives.
For those of us whose work may not directly touch death, I'm not sure we'll ever be ready or fully aware of how and when death may dictate our professional interactions. That in itself is very scary.
If a teacher asks those same questions posed in this article 'what if I can't handle my sadness' when dealing with grief in the classroom, what does that look like? If a lawyer wonders 'what if I let her down?' does the grief start to eat away at the empathic professional?
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