roller-coaster principle

My job can be emotionally stressful. In order to provide cognitive therapy you have to relate to where the patient is coming from so you can build a bridge to better thought organization. Relating to patients often involves talking to their spouses, especially if the patients have expressive aphasia and can't do a very good job of speaking for themselves. At other times it involves talking to their parents. Either way, you get a sense of the patient's life, interests and home environment and can thus make therapy practical. So. That means that at any given time there's a bunch of people that you pretty much don't know, who are of no relation to you, and who you will never see again after the next 1-6 weeks, but who you care about. And caring is hard because it's not like your emotional reservoir has an on/off switch (OK, maybe "yours" does ... maybe my casual use of second person wasn't the best idea). It's hard to sit with a fairly young senior citizen who, despite maximum cues, insists on confusing his daughter with his dead wife, and then working with a hit-and-run victim who is your little sister's age and lists her favorite thing to do as "heroin," and then hearing the father of a 20 year old who is learning to eat again say he doesn't know if he can review positive events from his son's life with him (recommended, to work on memory and orientation) because everything his son ever did was worthless. During the workweek I feel perpetually wide-eyed and braced, like, OK, I'm doing my job, I'm on the move, if you have a problem yo I'll solve it, but I'm not going to allow a feeling to form. At work I am better able to witness the importance of family and/or a supportive community. Imagine, if you are old and have a stroke and there is no one to look after your interests! You could lose the ability to talk and/or efficiently process information and wind up in some marginal adult care home for the last 20 years of your life! Chilling. And a host of faithful pets won't cut it because many facilities don't allow them. At work also I am forced to develop coping strategies. Sometimes my brain repeats "not your problem" like a mantra, when a patient's situation threatens to push buttons and stroke heartstrings. Last week I remembered my favorite strategy for dealing with life in general, realized a few years ago during a rousing ride on the Belmont Park roller coaster with Eliza. What's the best way to reduce the impact during the ride? What if I relax my limbs? It worked, which was really cool, although my screams were somewhat less inspired. "Relax" is something that is much easier said than done, but "relax your limbs" seems more attainable and also feels good. So between caring and trying not to feel and teaching people to talk and thinking desperately about roller coasters, I often come home to Neil a wide-eyed, hyperverbal puddle of mush. But at least it's a learning experience.