Being Human Too

There is, however, an occupational hazard.

We forget that we are human too.

Recently I found myself unexpectedly affected by something that, on the surface, seemed insignificant. It wasn't a major life event. It wasn't a crisis. It wasn't even particularly dramatic. Yet it stayed with me and demanded my attention.

My first instinct was to analyse it.

• What exactly happened?
• Why did I react the way I did?
• What childhood experiences might have contributed to my response?
• Which needs had been activated?
• What attachment dynamics were at play?

Years of training meant I had no shortage of theories.

The problem was that while I was busy analysing the experience, I was in danger of missing the experience itself.

This is one of the great paradoxes of psychological knowledge. The more skilled we become at understanding human behaviour, the easier it can be to stand outside our own experience and observe it from a distance.

We become both participant and commentator.

Instead of simply feeling something, we become fascinated by why we are feeling it.

The analysis is not wrong. In fact, it can be immensely valuable. Insight matters. Self-awareness matters. Understanding the origins of our reactions matters.

But understanding is not the same thing as experiencing.

At some point I realised that beneath all the analysis was a much simpler truth: something had touched a vulnerable part of me.

Not because I am a counsellor.

Not despite being a counsellor.

Because I am a human being.

Growing Up and Seeking Understanding

I grew up in a family where emotional expression was limited. Affection was not absent because anyone was cruel; it simply wasn't part of the emotional language of the household. Feelings were rarely discussed and vulnerability was something to be managed rather than shared.

Like many people from similar backgrounds, I became highly interested in understanding people. Looking back, it seems almost inevitable that I would eventually study psychology and train as a counsellor. I wanted to understand the things that had always seemed difficult to grasp.

Over the years I learned to sit comfortably with other people's emotions. I learned how grief works, how attachment develops, how people make meaning from their experiences. I learned how to help others navigate pain, loss, uncertainty and change.

What I didn't fully appreciate was that self-awareness does not exempt us from being affected by life.

• It does not make us immune to longing.
• It does not eliminate vulnerability.
• It does not remove our need to be seen.

One of the more uncomfortable discoveries of adulthood is that insight does not automatically heal everything. We can understand our patterns and still find ourselves caught by them. We can recognise old wounds and still feel their ache. We can know exactly why we crave connection and still struggle to receive it when it appears.

For years I thought the goal was to understand myself.

Now I am beginning to think the goal may be something different.

Perhaps the goal is to understand myself well enough that I can stop fighting my own humanity.

• To acknowledge that I have needs.
• To accept that I am vulnerable.
• To recognise that I want connection.
• To allow myself to receive affection without immediately analysing it.
• To stop treating every emotional response as a problem to be solved.

Awareness Versus Acceptance

One of the most important realisations for me has been this: awareness and acceptance are not the same thing.

I have spent much of my life developing awareness. Acceptance is proving to be a different challenge altogether.

There is a voice in my head that still occasionally dismisses emotional experience as self-indulgent, overblown, or unnecessary. I recognise where that voice came from. It is not really mine.

The older I get, the more interested I become in listening to my own voice instead.

That voice is quieter. It is less certain. It is more curious. It says things like:

• "That's interesting."
• "I wonder why that affected me."
• "What might happen if I didn't push this feeling away?"
• And perhaps most importantly: "What if being human isn't something that needs fixing?"

Messy, Shared Experience

For those of us in the helping professions, there can be an unspoken pressure to have it all worked out. To be insightful, emotionally intelligent, self-aware and psychologically informed.

The truth is that we remain participants in the same messy human experience as everyone else.

• We still feel grief.
• We still feel loneliness.
• We still feel attraction.
• We still feel fear.
• We still carry old stories.
• We still long to be seen.

And maybe that is not a professional failing. Maybe it is the very thing that allows us to connect with others.

The longer I do this work, the less interested I become in achieving perfect understanding. What interests me now is learning how to live alongside uncertainty, vulnerability and desire without trying to explain them away.

Because underneath the counsellor, underneath the psychologist, underneath the professional identity, there is still a person.

And she is human too.