The Graceful Confidant : Listen, but Make it Trauma-Informed

Have you ever mustered up the courage to share something personal only to have it received with a jarring or not so welcoming response? We’ve all experienced it. You share something you’ve been toiling with for days, weeks, sometimes years hoping to find some relief and then the way people respond is just — all wrong. It kinda feels like whatever happened is happening all over again. We put something precious in the hands of people we trust and sometimes people just let us down. Human things with human things doing — human things. It can get messy.

As a social worker I’ve been trained on how to receive information from clients in an array of circumstances and settings. And beyond that I would say that I’m what some might consider a highly sensitive person or HSP. I feel everything. When a person is sharing I can often feel the origin of the trauma and every pause and arrangement of words tells an additional story in juxtaposition to the story that’s being delivered. Things said and unsaid, I consider them all. It’s a great test of boundaries because even though I may want to respond to the entirety of problem, it’s imperative that I show up for people the way that they want to receive me.

One of the most uncomfortable feelings for me is the feeling I get when someone shares something personal and then I have to…