Hidden Suffering and the Effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2017, Vol 8, Issue 3
Abstract
To understand suffering is to understand what it means to be human. Suffering focuses our attention on our vulnerability, which we would rather ignore or deny. As health care professionals (HCP) we need to be able to listen, to attune and be empathic to the suffering patient. If we act as an “enlightened witness” we provide a safe place for a suffering patient to grieve their loss and be vulnerable. This is skilled and demanding work, it is also important to tend to our own needs through a practice of self-care and reflection to prevent burn-out and compassion fatigue. The topic of adverse childhood experiences (ACE), which are common in the general population, are addressed in the second part of this paper. Their effects are profound, and increase with the degree of maltreatment. The maltreatment and suffering of these children usually remains hidden into adulthood beneath years of shame and denial. One aspect of our job in health care is to help patients acknowledge, experience, and bear the reality of life with all its pleasures and heartache. In order to do this well, we need to keep in touch with our own humanity, but also continue to take care of ourselves.
Authors and Affiliations
William Fulford
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25684
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8030031
- Views 311
- Downloads 9
A Commentary on Michael King. “The Challenge of Research into Religion and Spirituality.” Journal for the Study of Spirituality 4 (2014): 106–20
King’s publication based on a key note presentation at the 2014 British Association of the Study of Spirituality (BASS) conference, a well written and thought provoking paper, leads us to consider the contribution of t...
Selecting the Best Version of SHALOM to Assess Spiritual Well-Being
This paper extends the reporting of contemporary use of the Spiritual Health and Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM), which provides flexibility to researchers, enabling them to choose the version of the instrument that...
The Justice Game: Augustine, Disordered Loves, and the Temptation to Change the World
Augustine’s thought on justice offers enduring wisdom to today’s undergraduates as they grapple with the difficult questions that arise when they ponder what it means to change the world in the light of the reality of...
Children’s Spiritual Lives: The Development of a Children’s Spirituality Measure
Previous researchers who have studied children’s spirituality have often used narrow measures that do not account for the rich spiritual experiences of children within a multi-faith context. In the current study, we de...
Hermeneutic and Teleology in Ethics across Denominations—Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth
This study arises from the context of current debates in the Catholic Church on the place of rule and law in moral reasoning. I suggest that ethics may be best served by approaches that place the human subject in a tel...