Overall, I am a pretty quiet person. I have always been more of a listener than a talker. Over the years, with the best of intentions, friends have tried to coax me out of my shell. Then, during those rare times when my brain and my mouth actually worked together in harmony, I overwhelmed people with the quantity, intensity, and speed of my thought process. Although my tendency to be so quiet is sometimes frustrating and unsettling to the people around me, at least they don’t worry about my sanity when I’m quiet. So, for years, I took the safer road and didn’t talk much.
The safe road has been fascinating. I’m quiet, have good eye contact, and am an intent listener. I have a way of putting people at ease…or maybe I make them uncomfortable…either way, I tend to have an “effect” on people. People spill their guts to me. I’m not just talking about friends. I’m talking about acquaintances…and complete strangers.
What has struck me most over the years of listening to people is how alone each person feels in whatever it is they are experiencing or have experienced in the past. I have become, over the years, a walking encyclopedia of second-hand human experience. Probably hundreds of people have confided their secrets to me…and not a single secret has shocked me. Well, I take that back. The extent of the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse so many people have endured shocks me.
The downside of being such a good listener is that I never learned to fully share myself with other people. After hearing so many stories, my story didn’t feel as compelling, interesting, or worthwhile as other people’s stories. I gave into my childhood tendency of empathizing with other people to the detriment of embracing and validating my own experience. Fortunately, I finally found a good therapist and over the course of almost two years of therapy (twice a week), I told my story to another person.
I finally allowed another person to listen to me. I finally took center stage, even though I don’t like being the center of attention. I shared my issues with someone else. Unlike the people I’ve listened to over the years, I knew I was not alone. Instead, I had to learn how to stop discounting my own experiences just because they weren’t always as horrible as other people’s experiences. The traumas I experienced growing up in no way pushed the boundaries of human experience, but they were traumatic to me. They hurt me, disabled me, and affect me to this day.
Posted by Cindy Thomas 
