Over the past several weeks the problems of returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan has been making headlines. This weeks Newsweek had an article about some peripheral damage done to counselors working to try to help those returning vets deal with the trauma of what they have experienced. The "vicarious trauma", or the Army's term "provider fatigue" appears to be a growing concern for the army. They even launched a "provider resiliency" program, according to Newsweek. They are applying the same therapy techniques the providers use to help the returning vets, help them expunge themselves of the content of the stories they have heard. This has become and expensive and significant problem for our nations military.

For the past 10 years, I have been working with similarly traumatic stories. In some ways, the stories are worse because the traumatized individual was a child when the horrors occurred. Many of my clients are survivors of severe childhood abuse, which frequently results in psychic splitting. Some even carry the legacy of having been brought up in homes where the abuse had been a part of a religious or satanic cult. The stories they tell are unthinkable. My job is to help them maneuver the memories and deal with the reality of what their lives have been. Not, as one counselor in the article laments to, "take this person's pain away". My job is to help my clients cope with what has happened to them, to find a way of making sense out of experiences that were largely senseless.

When counselors enmesh themselves in their clients' pain, it is virtually impossible to remain a helper. The pain our clients feel belongs to our clients; it is not our job to take it away. Once we become identified with the pain our client is experiencing we are no longer able to help them. What's more, the entire premise of regarding our clients' pain as our job to remove is at core, disrespectful. We are then expressing to our client that we see them as incapable of managing their pain. We become Rescuer's trying to help out a poor helpless Victim.

Using the paradigm of what I refer to as the Cycle of Egocentrism, Rescuers keep themselves in a position of authority and power by communicating to the Victim that they are helpless and cannot manage without the Rescuer's intervention. Now, I fully realize that this is not the effect that counselors consciously intend, but it is the outcome of their behavior nonetheless.

In my own experience what I hear from my clients is that they believe they cannot manage the effects of the trauma. They feel that they will die from the terror, the shock, the horror and the pain of what they have been through. If we hear these stories and put ourselves in our clients shoes, we may feel that, well, I couldn't manage this, so how can they? We easily buy into our clients' belief that they cannot manage. When we do this we do our clients a major disservice. Buying into their reality that they cannot learn to cope with what has happened keeps them stuck in the position of Victim. They are then forever tied to the medical system and can never see themselves as the capable and incredibly resilient individuals they truly are.

My job it to help them make sense of what has occurred to the best of my ability. I can guide them through the processing of the horror without having to take on the horror myself. It's their story, not mine. Making that differentiation clear results in my not taking ownership of their experience. It allows them the respect of allowing them to remain in ownership of their experience while I provide them empathy, not pity, for what they have been through. I respect that they can indeed manage what they are feeling, that they can work out a way to understand what has happened to them and to come to a resolution that works for them. It may not be my way, but it is theirs and it is their right to manage it in whatever ways they can.

Teaching them that they are stronger and more capable than they even imagine allows them to begin to experience their strengths. It allows them to express that which before seemed inexpressible.

When they begin to recognize that what is happening in their mind is primarily a physiological reaction to overwhelming trauma and that the images going around and around in their brain are a survival mechanism that can be positively impacted through their own efforts, they regain a sense of control. One of the components of the kind of trauma abuse survivors and vets suffered is the sense of complete loss of control. Helping them regain a sense of power and control over their own experience communicates to them that while they were helpless at the time this occurred, they are no longer helpless, and are capable of working through the horrors they experienced.

As counselors, we must first and foremost provide our clients with the safety of recognizing their experience as belonging to them, and it is not our place to "take away" any of it. Our job is to respect that they can and will work through it, and provide them with empathetic support as they do so. In doing this, we not only serve our clients better, we preserve our own ability to continue providing services to other surivors of violence.

Melody Brooke, MA, LPC, LMFT is an author, motivational speaker, workshop presenter and counselor. Melody holds an MA in Counseling and Guidance from Texas Woman's University. She is also a Certified Radix Practitioner, Right Use of Power Teacher and InterPlay Teacher. Melody's 19 years work with individuals, couples and families provides her with a unique approach to solving clients' problems. Her life-altering book, "Cycles of the Heart: A way out of the egocentrism of everyday life", is based on her experience helping people resolve their relationship difficulties with themselves and others. To find out more about "Cycles of the Heart" go to Melody's Homepage