Post-traumatic growth (PTG) is a hot topic in today’s therapy world, a catchall that many clinicians use to describe a client’s potential for resiliency after a traumatic event. I see this as a positive trend in a field that’s historically been focused on helping people cope with tragedy, instead of grow from it. But while PTG is a great concept, in our enthusiasm to help clients tap into their strengths and heal in a way that opens new doors for possibility, many of us forget how difficult—and therapeutic—it can be just to sit with their clients’ pain. After all, you can’t plant even the smallest seeds of PTG without being able to walk alongside clients in their darkest times, offer compassionate presence, and demonstrate patience and nonjudgment.

Having lost my husband to suicide, I’m particularly aware of how often therapists, despite their best intentions, get caught up in the “fixing” mentality and don’t work to acknowledge the pain that accompanies this type of traumatic loss. Even now, I can still drop into the moment when I round the staircase, walk into our bedroom, and find that my beloved husband had taken his life. Moments like these rearrange a person’s world. So when I sit with clients whose hearts are hemorrhaging in grief, whose core beliefs about life, God, and the world around them have all come into question, I want to offer more than a set of therapeutic tools to foster resiliency: I want to listen to their stories in a way that acknowledges…