When the Listener Needs to Be Heard: Holding Space for the Healer’s Heart

As mental health practitioners, we are trained to hold space, to sit in silence, to interpret body language, to track the tears, and to offer calm in the storm of someone else’s pain. Week after week, we listen to stories laced with trauma, grief, anxiety, and heartbreak. And while we offer grounding and guidance, many of us are silently absorbing the weight of the wounds we witness.

We hear the stories of PTSD, generational trauma, childhood sexual abuse, systemic injustice, addiction, neglect, and deep, gut-wrenching loss. And with every story, we bring our full presence, not only as professionals but as human beings with hearts capable of deep empathy. We sit with our clients in their sorrow, offering tissues, tools, and therapeutic models. We reflect, affirm, and gently challenge ourselves. We guide them toward self-healing and self-love.

But who holds us?

We don’t always talk about the tears we suppress, the internal ones. The ones that build up behind the practiced smile, the warm giggle, and clinical calm. The truth is, we carry these stories with us. Not out of burden, but out of empathy and compassion. And without intentional release, compassion can harden into emotional exhaustion. Burnout. Silent suffering.

There is a unique sorrow that therapists carry. We walk through the emotional landscapes of others as if we’re detectives of the soul, uncovering clues, tracing patterns, identifying trauma’s root, likened to a crime scene chalk outline around the victim of pain. Though we were not physically there when the offense of pain occurred, we mentally and emotionally journey through it with our clients, trying to help them reclaim their narrative.

And yet, in all our clinical clarity, we must not forget we are not exempt from needing care. We, too, need safe spaces. Spaces to cry without judgment. Spaces to laugh at the absurdity of what we carry. Spaces to collapse into community and be seen, not as therapists, but as people. Of course, we as therapists have our one-on-one therapy session with someone who understands the professional journey of a therapist; however, it is knowing, like holding space within the village of those who know the journey themselves.

This is not just an article. It is a call to action.

As the CEO of Know Thyself Journey, we are building a village for the healers, a sacred space for us. A place to talk shop with others who understand the acronyms, the body cues, the therapeutic modalities, and the deep spiritual act of holding someone else’s grief in your chest like it’s your own. A place to exhale.

We need moments to sob, you know that ugly bubble snot-nose cry, to share the raw and real behind the session notes. We need somatic movement, sound healing, and community connection. We need other therapists who simply get it and get us. Not because it was explained, but because they live it too.

To every mental health practitioner reading this: You deserve to be held, too.

You deserve a circle of peers who won’t rush your tears or minimize your weariness. You deserve to feel safe to release, to move, to rest, and to reconnect with why you chose this sacred work in the first place.

Let us gather to cry, to heal, to laugh, to share, and most importantly, to remember ourselves. Because when the listener is finally heard, true healing happens on both sides of the couch.

Written with love and lived experience by Yssis Saadi El, CEO of Know Thyself Journey space, where the healer’s heart is sacred, and your humanity is never forgotten.

www.knowthyselfjourney.com

"The Mirror That Listens" An Illusion of a Therapist’s Sadness by Yssis Saadi El, MSW, C-MMT

In the quiet room where hearts unfold, A figure sits warm, still, and bold . Smiles gentle, eyes deep wells

of grace, A lighthouse for pain, a calm, safe space.

But behind the clipboard, behind the nod, lies a soul

who walks with feet unshod. Feeling every crack in

the stories told, yet hiding their ache in the professional mold. The illusion? That they are whole.

They wear empathy like a second skin,

A mask of peace drawn soft and thin.

But no one asks how they sleep at night,

after holding shadows and dimming the light.

Tears never fall in their sacred chair.

They weep in silence; no one is there.

A therapist’s sadness is not a storm;

It’s morning fog, a quiet form.

You cannot see it, but it clings to coffee mugs, to wedding rings. It hums beneath each soothing phrase and lingers in a long, reflective gaze.

They are the illusion: Strong but breaking. Full yet aching, held together by the very hope they give away.