ABSTRACT
Some people are natural listeners. People like to talk to them and feel heard by them. They are the kinds of people who are suited to working in the `helping professions'. They are drawn to do the kind of work that others might ®nd anything from not particularly interesting to incredibly demanding and distressing. There are many professional ways of helping other people ± teaching, social work, occupational therapy, care work, psychotherapeutic work and so on. And it is probably fair to say that, in all of these professions, being in professionally appropriate and varying degrees of close contact with other people who are suffering in all kinds of ways is bound to have an impact on the listener.
