Empathy may be the life's blood of good therapy, but scientifically, it's remained a rather fuzzy concept. Now a serendipitous lab discovery is showing how exquisitely vulnerable therapists are to "catching" their clients' vulnerabilities and perturbations.

Much as we don't like to admit it publicly, it's an open secret among therapists that the road to recovery from trauma can be fraught with clinical missteps. So my approach to trauma work is rooted in an experience I had when a friend asked me to teach her to drive. Sitting in the passenger seat next to her as she prepared to turn on the ignition, I suddenly panicked. I quickly realized that before I taught her how to make that powerful machine go, I had to make sure that she knew how to put on the brakes. I apply the same principle to therapy, especially trauma therapy. I never help clients call forth traumatic memories unless I and my clients are confident that the flow of their anxiety, emotion, memories, and body sensations can be contained at will.

Emergency relief or other work with traumatized people is always demanding and wearing: it frequently poses the risk of vicariously traumatizing caretakers, and yet, our field isn't well prepared to help them. As a matter of course, we recommend supervision for therapists and social workers, and we encourage clinicians to discuss difficult cases with colleagues, but we don't always recognize that, for people working with traumatized clients, just talking about it may not be enough.