Here’s what people tend to forget: Therapists are human. That's easy to forget in formal therapeutic settings, but some situations bring it home, situations that show we’re not immune to what affects everyone. Like most people I know, personally and professionally, I was dismayed by the results of the U.S. presidential election. I slept poorly that night, and for days afterward felt defeated. I turned right away to a group of therapist friends as we discussed being clinically helpful when we ourselves were freaking out.

As clinicians, we deal with a great deal of trauma. After all, people don’t see a therapist when they’re feeling great about their lives and the world around them. So therapists do trauma. And by and large, we are pretty good at what we do.

I’m no exception. Every day, I sit with people who have been profoundly hurt. In over 40 years of practice, only a handful of situations have found me sharing my clients’ horror: 9/11, the AIDS crisis. Sometimes I feel an echo of what they’re talking about in my own experiences—for example, when a gay man talks about having been teased and bullied in school, I can relate as I am also a gay man who was teased as a child. But these traumas aren’t new and fresh to me; I’ve processed them over time and have found some peace. So even when I feel empathy for a story I can relate to, I still have........

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