”Man är ju ingen robot så det är klart man blir påverkad” - En kvalitativ studie om hur kvinnojoursanställda beskriver sina erfarenheter av att lyssna till våldsutsattas berättelser

The aim of this study was to explore how women’s shelter employees who work with survivors of domestic violence described their experiences of listening to the survivors. The method chosen for this qualitative study was semi-structured interviews with six different employees who work in three different non-profit and three municipal organisations. The data collected was analysed using Hochschild's’ theory of emotional labour and Folkman and Lazarus coping theory. This study found that the employees were well aware of that their work affected them emotionally as appearing emotions of frustration and anger while listening to survivors of domestic violence. Those emotions become their incentive to continuing working by the wish of helping others. From a sociology of emotions perspective, the employees continuously worked with their emotions and feelings by using their profession as a way to suppress their emotions in dialogue with their clients. The employees used different coping strategies to handle their emotions as talking to their colleagues and use external guidance as support and advice. They showed awareness of how the work affected them, how they handled to listen to the survivors and the meaning of external guidance together with collegial support. The employees used their loved ones to get positive energy and several informants expressed that they were taking a bath, reading books and exercised as a way of recovering from their onerous work