Empathy in the presence of trauma and grief

There is so much trauma on display these days with so many people exhausted and overwhelmed in many ways.  What everyone needs who’s stretched to capacity is the simple space of empathy.

Paradoxically the overwhelm involved in traumatic stress is the exact thing that teaches us the importance of empathy.  When we’re bearing the strain of overwhelming stress, it’s then that we see the implicit value of empathy—because it’s US that needs it.

Nothing sheets home the reality of what other people 
need more than the reality of what we need.

Sensing what another person needs 
and wanting to help them is empathy.

Having experienced such pain that feels like it’s ripping our heart out, which is such a telling experience it converts us regarding what pain truly feels like, and it causes us to be converted to empathy if we otherwise weren’t already.

The experience of overwhelming pain changes us in empathy for the rest of our lives.  If there’s a good thing that comes from it, it’s that our heart’s been softened compassionately for those who suffer now and into the future.  The eyes of our heart are truly opened, and we see more like how God sees.

Experiencing empathy in the presence of trauma and grief is the offer of hope if only we’re not floored by the experience.  This is helped all the more when we experience the empathy of another person’s compassionate presence in our trauma.

Empathy is what we need in the grief that overwhelms us, and this is the actual care that we’ll pay forward.  Indeed, the comfort we receive when we so desperately need it we feel compelled to offer to others, and it’s not always when we’re recovered that we do this.  Often, we try out our care amid the storm, and sometimes we experience the power of care right there in the torrent of overwhelm.

It’s true that at the very time we’re most pressed with grief and disabled by traumatic stress is also the moment that teaches us empathy and motivates us to exercise this precious care.

Isn’t that truly a magnificent compensation for the suffering that otherwise threatens to swallow us whole in despair?

It reminds me of the golden truth and absolute wisdom in this quote by Billy Graham singer, Wintley Phipps:

“It is in the quiet crucible of your personal private sufferings, that your noblest dreams are born, and God’s greatest gifts are given, in compensation for what you’ve been through.”

Can you see how being broken by grief and trauma is only the beginning, and that the normal human response in the presence of care is the resilience that redeems those losses through a response that grows us up at the same time?

“In the presence of care” is the operative statement, and if a person doesn’t receive such care, they must give themselves that care, or otherwise receive that care from God.

The empathy that suffering connects us with is the compassion that will get us through.  This empathy is the care that sees the truth of how unmistakably lamentable the reality really is—without denying the pain, condemning oneself or feeling condemned (which is cosmic unfairness), or any other response that doesn’t honour the truth.

The truth of the pain must be honoured, and that is empathy, and empathy can heal in and of itself.  It is the redemptive power of God.