Awakens Our Own

By Andrew Mullen

When another person shares their trauma, I am not only processing their experience intellectually. I notice myself opening up emotionally, physically and mentally to what they are expressing. Human beings are relational by nature. We mirror what we witness. Our nervous systems constantly read tone, posture and emotions.

Sometimes while holding space for another person’s pain, I notice my own nervous system activating. My emotional state shifts. My body tightens. My thoughts narrow. In those moments, I have questioned what exactly is happening internally.

Am I experiencing their trauma?

Am I absorbing their emotional pain?

Or is their experience activating unresolved emotional trauma within myself?

I have come to understand that what often feels like “absorbing” another person’s pain may actually be emotional resonance with unresolved wounds already present within my own nervous system. Their trauma becomes familiar to me. Their experience touches emotions, memories or survival responses that have not yet been fully processed or understood within myself.

This helps explain why I sometimes become lost for words when supporting another person. Rather, my nervous system may be shifting from grounded presence into emotional activation. Part of me remains focused on supporting the individual, while another part is reacting internally to what their experience has awakened within me.

At times this can create emotional turmoil, where empathy shifts into sympathy in another person’s suffering. Instead of remaining present with the individual, I begin emotionally descending into the pain alongside them. Two nervous systems, both activated, unintentionally amplifying emotional distress within one another.

I now recognize the importance of distinguishing empathy from sympathy or emotional resonance. Empathy allows connection while maintaining awareness of self. Sympathy or emotional resonance occurs when unresolved pain within myself becomes activated and intertwined with the suffering being witnessed. 

Although the traumatic experience another person shares is uniquely their own, the emotional resonance we feel often mirrors something familiar within ourselves. We may not be experiencing their exact traumatic experience, but rather our nervous system is recognizing / remembering, emotions, fears, helplessness, grief, shame, or survival responses that resemble unresolved experiences within us.

In this way, what feels like absorbing another person’s pain may actually be the activation of our own unresolved emotional wounds through human connection and emotional mirroring. Although you are connected through the shared felt pain. You are also disconnected because of the unresolved wounds resurfacing. Two people connected through unresolved wounds.

This raises an important question internally:

Am I feeling sympathy toward them?

Am I feeling sympathy toward myself?

Or is it both occurring simultaneously?

The suffering of another person evokes genuine compassion for them, while simultaneously awakening parts of ourselves that once felt familiar, overwhelmed, abandoned, afraid, powerless, or unseen. The nervous system does not always consciously distinguish between witnessing pain and remembering pain. Sometimes another person’s suffering becomes the doorway through which our own unresolved emotions quietly re-emerge.

The areas of my past I have processed more fully no longer affect me in the same overwhelming way. I can approach those experiences with greater self-awareness, perspective and emotional regulation. In some cases, I can even laugh gently at the emotional suffering I once placed upon myself through fear, shame, or misunderstanding. That resolution allows me to empathize with others without becoming emotionally consumed by their experience.

However, unresolved emotional wounds function differently. When another person describes a similar trauma, those unresolved areas can become reactivated. The nervous system responds as though the past is present again. What appears externally as “absorbing another person’s pain” may actually be unresolved pain within myself resurfacing through emotional resonance and sharing/mirroring human experience.

This realization has changed how I understand helping others. Remaining present with someone does not require abandoning myself emotionally. Support does not require internalizing another person’s suffering. True presence may involve maintaining awareness of my own nervous system while compassionately witnessing theirs.

The goal is not emotional detachment. The goal is conscious awareness, recognizing when empathy is merging into my own unresolved experiences, when my nervous system is becoming activated and when my own unresolved trauma may need attention as well.

Because sometimes the pain we believe we are carrying for others is pain within ourselves still waiting to be understood.

Perhaps this is why so many healers suffer quietly.

Not simply because they care, but because another person’s suffering can awaken unresolved pain within themselves. The pain they witness touches the pain they know all so well. The fear they hear echoes fears once carried in silence. And when they cannot immediately ease another person’s distress, they often turn against themselves.

Self-criticism rises.  Shame follows.  Guilt settles heavily into the nervous system. “I should have done more.”  “I should have said something better.”  “I should have been enough to help.”

But these reactions often reveal something deeper. Many healers carry an internal belief that another person’s suffering is their responsibility to resolve. And when they cannot remove the pain, they internalize the experience as personal failure. Yet your presence was never a failure.

To sit with another human being in their suffering while feeling overwhelmed is not weakness. We may not always be able to help in the exact way we imagine or remove the pain they are carrying. But our ability to remain present, steady and compassionate in the face of their suffering allows another person to feel acknowledged, understood and truly seen, something they may have rarely experienced before. Sometimes healing does not begin through perfect answers or the immediate resolution of pain. Sometimes healing begins the moment a person realizes they no longer have to suffer alone.

This is where awareness becomes essential.

When we pause long enough to observe ourselves, we begin noticing the internal patterns activated beneath the surface, the self-judgment, the shame, the fear of not being enough. And through awareness comes the opportunity to reassess, recalibrate and update old beliefs shaped through our past pain.

Secondary trauma is not simply exhaustion from helping others. Often, it is the accumulation of unresolved emotional activation within the healers themselves, combined with repeated exposure to the suffering of others. The nervous system begins carrying not only the weight of what is witnessed in the present, but also the unresolved emotional residue of the past. Feelings of isolation.  Feelings of inadequacy. Feeling unsupported while trying to support everyone else.

Over time, the healer can begin defining themselves through perceived failures rather than recognizing the immense good they continue offering others every day.

And this is the irony: Many healers would rather suffer themselves than allow another person to suffer alone. But eventually the nervous system asks for care too. Not punishment.  Not shame.  Not self-criticism.  But Care.

You have already given more of yourself than you realize. Every moment you remained present. Every moment you listened.  Every moment you stayed when someone felt alone. Every moment you offered steadiness in the middle of another person’s storm. Those moments mattered.

The people you support often trust you far more than you trust yourself.

So perhaps healing for the peer begins with healing for the healer. Not by becoming emotionally unaffected or disconnected from suffering, but by learning to remain present without abandoning oneself in the process. The more a healer understands, processes and tends to their own unresolved pain, the less likely they are to become consumed by the pain of others. Awareness causes one to be steady. Steadiness creates safety. And safety allows another human being to feel seen, supported and understood. True healing does not come from carrying another person’s suffering alone. It comes from meeting pain with presence, compassion and the ability to remain grounded within yourself while helping another find stability within themselves.

And maybe that is the lesson secondary trauma was always trying to teach us:  Compassion must include Compassion for you too.