Empathizing With Suffering

I am brokenhearted. 

I have lived brokenhearted for most of my life. 

As I started on my road to recovery in the mid-1990s, I often struggled to find a place for this perpetual pain. It didn't seem to fit with the optimism needed to fight back against the world. 

But I needed to recognize and validate these feelings. I had to navigate between being considered depressed and taking a long and real look at what had transpired in my past, all I had lost, and how that loss would affect my future. 

I needed to translate this suffering to gain a fluency in my life experience that allowed me to navigate my memories and live with the extreme circumstances of my life. My initial work in advocacy gave some utility to my suffering and allowed me to work with many people who also found themselves in life situations they could not believe. 

My work took me into state psychiatric hospitals, community mental health centers, and day programs throughout New Jersey. I was constantly face-to-face with citizens who had spent a large part of their adult lives buried in the public mental health system. 

You have to decide how deeply you will let in the suffering when you deal intimately with people who have lost so much. You can drown in the misery, but I wanted to meet the people I was working with where they were emotionally and spiritually. 

I took my time with each person. I let them get comfortable with the pace of the discussion. I let them see I was there to connect with them.           

That I was one of them. 

Many of the people I worked with had lost absolutely everything. They had cycled in and out of state psychiatric hospitals to community-based living situations and back to the hospitals numerous times. They had lost their careers, their families, and their friends. Many truly had nothing. As I was finally gaining traction in my own life, I was spending every day with people burning alive with the pain and anguish of living lives of solitary torment.

That is where I met “Anna.” 

She was a participant in a day program in central New Jersey and had signed up to speak with me at the end of the day’s training on tobacco abuse.

The day program was located in a strip mall in a downtrodden part of New Jersey known for its violence and gang activity. Many of the state-sponsored programs were located in areas you wouldn’t enter without a police escort. 

Although Anna had signed up to meet with me, she wouldn't speak when we were first together. 

She was 100 pounds overweight and her clothes were two or three sizes too small for her. She pressed her old purse to her chest as if it contained all her life’s possessions as she stared at the table between us. 

I settled into the moment and tried to offer a safe place for her to meet me. A place where she was free. Not judged. Acknowledged. 

After a few minutes she began to talk about her cigarette use while avoiding my eyes. As she described her daily usage, she remarked that she understood what I meant when I said in my training that life was very painful at certain times. That it seemed hopeless. 

With this intimate revelation, Anna looked up at me. Her eyes were scared. Timid, but yearning for connection. 

Eye to eye, we locked onto each other like two people lost at sea. 

She began to tell me about her life. The foster homes. The hospitals. The abuse. The terror she feels living where she lives. 

I had no answers for her. 

All I could do was to be there with her to share her pain. To give her a moment to let it all out. To let her be vulnerable. 

Slowly, Anna began to look different. Her face softened as she gave more and more of herself to me. 

As we were finishing up, she was smiling, but a gloom washed over her. She put her head back down and asked how she could earn more money while on state programs. I started to brainstorm with her when I asked what she needed the money for. 

Tears dripped onto the table as she told me she needed to buy her father cigarettes. That he wouldn’t see her unless she came with cigarettes for him. 

She had walked across the Trenton Bridge to drop him off a few cartons before, but he said he was embarrassed by her weight, and it wasn't worth it to him to meet her unless she had the smokes in hand. 

I died. 

My heart ripped open in my chest and a flooding sorrow pulsed throughout my body. Anna continued to cry while asking me if her situation was fair. Was that how a father should talk to his daughter? That she had no one. That she was absolutely alone. 

Brokenhearted, I left that day and decided to own this part of my life and my work. 

I am drawn to the pain and suffering of life. It gives my life meaning to be able to meet the “Annas” of the world in their desolate isolation and just hold their hand and let them know they are not alone. 

That they deserved better. 

That I love them. 

How do you deal with the suffering you see each day in your work? 

How do you help your patients deal with the sorrow and pain of early recovery, while still motivating them to continue on with the arduous task of dealing with a serious mental illness or any other behavioral health condition?

Eric Arauz, MLER, is an international behavior health consumer advocate, trainer, and inspirational keynote speaker. He is a faculty member at the Rutgers-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Department of Psychiatry, the Vice-Chairman of the current New Jersey Task Force on Opiate Addiction in citizens 18 to 25 years old, and a person with the lived experience of bipolar I disorder, PTSD, addiction, and suicidality. He is the SAMHSA 2012 "Voice Award" Fellow and the author of An American's Resurrection: My Pilgrimage from Child Abuse and Mental Illness to Salvation. 

The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the blog post author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Psych Congress Network or other Psych Congress Network authors.