lessons i learned in cpe: #5. it's easy for other people's baggage to get caught on your own baggage

During my unit of CPE at St. Mark’s I spent a lot of time in hospital rooms, but also with my peers and supervisor in group sessions twice a week.  We each processed our experiences of chaplaincy in detail.  As it turned out, we ended up talking as much about our own stories, flaws, and fears as we did the patients.  It was enlightening and terrifying.  But it taught me another important lesson when it comes to vulnerable conversations…
 
It’s easy for other people’s baggage to get caught on your own baggage.
 
I definitely hadn’t expected this going in.  I’d done a fair share of processing my own emotional and spiritual baggage before this internship began—learning about my personality, my strengths and weaknesses, how my childhood experiences with addiction and divorce and being the oldest child shaped my coping mechanisms and social habits, etc.  I thought I had a pretty strong sense of who I was… enough to “keep myself out” of the conversations with patients and just focus on them. 
 
Big mistake.
 
The truth is: no matter how hard we try, we bring our whole selves—baggage and all—everywhere we go, including conversations with other people.  As I wrote in “Lesson #1,” everyone has a story, and our stories shape who we are (in both good and bad ways).  When other people’s stories remind us of our own, it impacts how we feel and how we’re able to respond. 
 
One of the most formative—and informative—exercises we did as part of our CPE group work was called a “verbatim.”  Each of us, several times over the course of the internship, wrote out word-for-word (as best we could recall) a spiritual care conversation we had with a patient during our clinical hours.  We then brought these verbatims to our group and spent an hour evaluating each one together.  The patient remained anonymous, but we noted in the written assignment:

-          Some basic demographic information,

-          Our first impressions when we walked in the room,

-          Our thoughts and feelings throughout the conversation based on the verbal and nonverbal interactions,

-          Our assessment of the individual’s spiritual care needs, and

-          How we thought we “did” as spiritual caregivers (our strengths and areas of growth).

 
That final evaluation of ourselves also included a reflection on how we related to the individual or their story, which turned out to be a major factor in the quality of the conversation!  For instance, the first patient I wrote out a verbatim on was a woman that reminded me significantly of my mother.  As I processed the conversation with my supervisor and group, they helped me see that the ways I interacted with her—including the topics of conversation I leaned toward or away from—were heavily influenced by how I relate to my mom.  Despite my best intentions in keeping the conversation focused on this woman, I indirectly channeled my own assumptions and habits based on my own experience, which (to my later disappointment) kept me from engaging in certain ways that may have been helpful and healing.  To their credit, my group was incredibly gracious and supportive, but we didn’t hold back on one another.  I went from feeling like “I did a pretty good job” to “you’ve got to be kidding me—how did I not see that?”

Since that experience (and many others like it), I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on the reality that my history has affected me in the past, but is also still affecting me now in ways I might otherwise prefer to ignore.  No matter how much work we’ve done to grow through our experiences, they still have an impact on how we relate to the world—“who we are” in relationship to other people—for better or worse.  None of us can truly be an unbiased third party.    
 
And the best response to that is not to “try harder, stupid.”  That goes back to “Lesson #3” about how burying our baggage or pain is ultimately damaging.  You won’t being able to receive others’ thorny personalities and stories any easier by pretending your own thorns don’t exist—they’ll just get tangled on one another regardless.  BUT we can learn to have grace and make space.
 

When you notice that someone’s behavior or stories are making you uncomfortable or hitting raw nerves, let that show you where you still have work to do in addressing your own baggage… and then learn to practice self-compassion. 
 
Give yourself permission to feel whatever’s coming up in those moments.  Ask yourself what’s behind it.  What assumptions did I make about that person?  Why did that comment make me angry (or sad, or scared, etc.)?  Why did I feel like I needed to react in that way?  Who taught me to believe whatever I just said?  Be gentle with whatever you discover.  Then, even if there’s more to work through, your ability to identify and be compassionate with yourself in whatever is coming up will make it much easier to receive whatever the other person is bringing to the table. 
 
I realize that could sound overly simplistic, but it’s not.  It’s hard to be fully aware of yourself when you’re trying to keep your focus on someone else.  But it can and does make a difference.  I’ve still got a long way to go, but it certainly has for me.