Reducing Secondary Traumatic Stress: Skills for Sustaining a Career in the Helping Professions by Brian C. Miller

Author:Brian C. Miller [Miller, Brian C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000415582
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Foundational Narratives

There is an anonymous saying—often apocryphally credited to Ronald Reagan—that “Some people wonder all their lives if they’ve made a difference. The Marines don’t have that problem”. If you have consciously cultivated your narrative, you don’t have that problem either. You work to alleviate suffering of another human being. You have the capability to transform trauma into growth. You have the luxury of having a vocation in which no one can question that what you do has meaning. But I fear that you only think about the difference that you are making when you read a passage such as this, or when you attend a conference. How personally affected you are by the drive to make a difference—and how connected you remain to that purpose—will potently affect your willingness to engage in your work, and how you experience the stress events within it. If you are doubting that what you do makes a difference, stress and trauma exposure will certainly affect you negatively.

An essential foundational schema is that you believe—deeply and in a felt way—in the importance of your work. Everyone in the helping professions will profess that they do this work because they want to help others. But it is those who feel a connection to that purpose deeply and often that are doing well in their roles. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj said that, “the mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it” (Maharaj, 2017). We must feel the purpose of our jobs in an embodied way to cross the abyss of how difficult and painful the work can be. Our clients can’t be merely characters in our personal fiction. We can’t just say it or think it; we must feel it. And for those for whom this sense of purpose is only a concept—as opposed to a deeply experienced connection—or those who are consumed by mere survival in their job—this sense of purpose must be conscientiously cultivated into a foundational narrative.

You recite a foundational narrative to others when they ask you why you do what you do for a living. You have a narrative that you employed when you had your job interview in response to the question “What is your interest in this position?” If you were giving a talk at a professional conference entitled “Why This Work Matters”, you’d have a pretty good idea what you would say.

But here is the challenge: when was the last time that you felt an emotional connection to that purpose statement while you were doing the work? Was it yesterday? Did you think of it once last week? At least once last month? All of us have a narrative about the importance of our work. But the busy-ness and—frankly—the monotony of some of our work, takes us away from this narrative.

In order to tell our story properly, we have to remember our story. And we need to tell that story on purpose—to ourselves as well as to others. Those who thrive in long careers in this work have a personal sense of meaning in it.

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