Trauma: ‘But look at how far you have come’.

The papering over of hardship, perceiving people as doing just fine and ignoring pain, can feel invalidating and minimising.

Brené Brown on the difference between empathy and sympathy

As counsellors and psychotherapists meeting with people who have experienced trauma or hardship, we must be able to sit with hopelessness and despair without papering it over or being so supportive that there is no room for your experience.

As a narrative therapist, I do invite hope into the conversations I have with people by listening for it. But not without listening to despair and creating room for feelings of grief or deep rage against injustices at the same time.

Listening for hope and listening to despair happen simultaneously and as an interactive dance.

This does not just happen in therapy. Sometimes a person can have a circle of people, be it friends or family, that can do the ‘double-listening’ for hope and despair and have your back.

But if you get the ‘But look at how far you have come’, or ‘at least…’ such as in this animated short story by Brené Brown you may feel like your experience is minimised.

Brené Brown says, ‘rarely can a response [like that] make something better, but what makes it better is connection’

Connection happens through understanding. Asking about hope and resilience in relation to trauma, curiously, rather than imposing meaning, is what brings repair and agency.

We might ask questions such as these, adapted from narrative therapist, Angel Yuen (2019):

• Is that something that matters to you or not?

• It sounds hopeful, but that is my interpretation. How does that sit with you?

References

Brown, B. (2013, December 10). Brené Brown on Empathy. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Evwgu369Jw

Yuen, A. (2019). Pathways beyond despair: Re-authoring lives of young people through narrative therapy. Dulwich Centre Publications.