Internship experience...once again

As the days go on in this internship I have noticed I have started to settle in. I have began to notice that the hard stuff doesn't bother me like it used to. I am not saying it isn't hard and emotional anymore, I'm just saying that it isn't effecting me emotionally like it used to. I think I am starting to handle things better and am able to focus on the more important things. However, yesterday when I went to therapy I started to realize a new effect it has had on me...
For the past few weeks I have started to become very jumpy and am very "alert" all the time. I have started to have dreams/nightmares about being robbed, shot, assaulted, etc. We have students at my job at TCH and they are sharing my office with me and every time I walk in the office and they are sitting there I get startled and sometimes scream. If someone touches my shoulder from behind or walks out from a corner I get startled. I never put it together but my therapist put it in perspective for me.
In my internship I am dealing with the darker side of life, and so that has started to make me scared and paranoid. I sometimes don't feel safe anymore and that is why. If I was dealing with being a career counselor or something I would feel full of hope and dreams (not that I don't) but so much of what I hear is so dark and unbelievable that it is effecting me in ways I don't even realize. I definitely have hopes for these girls coming back and living real loving lives with a better support system, but so much of what they say is so hard to swallow and can sometimes be hard to know if things can change for them. Some of these girls are involved in gangs and actually say that they are "addicted" to the gang and the violence. It's hard to know that they won't leave the treatment and go back to the things they have always done because they feel the addiction to what they have grown up with.
This experience has been so amazing and the experiences that have happened to me have been so interesting. Some people say that it isn't normal or that you shouldn't become emotionally involved. But if I am not there and listening with everything I can and have, then I don't believe I am being a good therapist. If I just treat them as another hour in my day and sit there only listening to the words and not the emotions and anger behind what is truly being said, then I am not invested in them and their treatment. So...in conclusion, although I have been having some hard personal times with what I am hearing and seeing, I think every second of it is worth it. It is part of the change and the experience of becoming a therapist, and what I hope is the road to being a good therapist.