Overcoming Burnout, and fostering resilience, with a little help from your friends…
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. — Maya Angelou
I grew up in a household wherein one way that my family showed love was through the way someone was made to feel in your home. My mom is an incredible hostess. She will cook for days in preparation for a dinner party. And she doesn’t like to let people help. She thrives on it!
As an adult I went on to do something similar. The challenge for me was that sometimes I prioritized the wrong thing, I prioritized showing my love for people through having the perfect dinner party, over actually spending time with people when they were there.
This seemed to work well. I didn’t always get to enjoy spending time with my guests, as I was too busy making tons of food. But I had the satisfaction of knowing that they were all well fed, and that they all enjoyed spending time with each other.
Then one day, I was preparing for a BBQ, when I hurt myself and had to go to Urgent Care… I had over a dozen friends on their way and I was sitting in a waiting room… Freaking out. This may not sound like a big deal, but it definitely felt like one. Remember, I was equating hosting the perfect BBQ with showing love. In my mind I was letting everyone down by not getting everything ready. In my mind, I was ruining the BBQ…
Never mind that I was at Urgent care, and obviously my friends were more worried about my wellbeing then the menu. I was more worried about the menu! And if I’m being honest, that started to spiral into one of those completely ridiculous moments wherein I found myself, telling myself that my friends wouldn’t be my friends anymore. I know that sounds ridiculous. I also knew it was ridiculous then. But sometimes when I get worried, my brain starts to spiral, and goes into what I refer to as a ‘kitchen sink’ moment- where it throws all of my fears at me…
So, I left the Urgent Care, and went to a different one. Hoping to be seen sooner…
On my way from one Urgent Care to another, I called a friend of mine and told her what was happening, and she quite helpfully laughed at me. She pointed out that I was being a bit of a control freak, trying to control something that was completely outside of my control (the wait at the urgent care).
She was right! So while I was at the next Urgent Care, I called my guests to let them know the BBQ would probably start late…
Several hours later, I finally got back to my apartment, three of my friends were there ready to help. Up until that point, I had never actually let anybody help me in the kitchen. (Note the earlier comment about sometimes being a control freak). But, I had willing friends, and honestly no choice. Interestingly, what I learned, is by not letting them help at previous gatherings, I was doing the exact opposite of what I intended, I was making them feel like I didn’t trust them. And I wasn’t connecting to any of the love my friends had for me on those occasions.
Of all of the many dinner parties I’ve hosted that remains one of my favorites. I still have the image in my head of my friends and I cooking together. And I still feel a sense of relief when I think about it. Of course, that sense of relief had nothing to do with a dinner party. It had to do with a feeling of connection to my friends. By letting them help me, I found a new sense of self, and an increase in self-confidence. Allowing people to help, or even more bold, asking for help reinforces the strength you possess as an individual.
In the book Attached: The New Science Behind Adult Attachment and How it Can Help You Find And Keep Love[1]. The authors talk about how humans are social creatures and how much stronger we are when we have people who support us. When someone has our back, we are braver and more willing to try new things, and more resilient when we make mistakes. In that moment in the kitchen, and all that day, I was reminded that with who love and support me, nothing is insurmountable.[2]
For those of us in the helping profession, practicing self-care means fostering resilience. One key aspect of building resilience is connecting with others.
If you can visualize a stress ball, and now mangled it looks when you squeeze it, then notice how it reforms itself into its original shape when you let go, then you can visualize resilience. Resilience is being able to absorb the things that feel like they mangle us and rebound to our normal selves or our equilibrium.
This is not as easy as it sounds, sometimes we need to adapt to find resilience. Meaning, sometimes we won’t return to our exact original shape, instead we will be a little different. Different, but just as capable of mastering our craft and our profession, and, if the adaptation is similar to resilience, just as worthy of receiving the love and support of our friends and family.
Allowing ourselves to feel worthy of love and support is perhaps the biggest barrier between us and resilience. Often times, as a Counselor, I hear people explain that they don’t talk to the people they love. They say, ‘but I don’t want to burden them’. What people mean when they say that is usually, ‘I don’t want them to look at me differently or love me less.’ This is especially true for those of us who define ourselves by our work. As humanitarians, people often feel that this work is supposed to be hard, and if I can’t handle it, people will think I’m weak. Then I’ll think I’m weak… Or, I won’t know who I am anymore if I don’t want to do this work. And so, we push our people away when we need them most… Walking into an overcrowded refugee camp will always be hard. But we can make the life we live a little easier for ourselves, by allowing ourselves to connect.
Ironically, those of us who do humanitarian work often see the most strength in the beneficiaries who bring people together and help people to rely on each other.
I know it’s not the same, they’ve experienced a shared trauma… And we often think it shouldn’t feel traumatic for those of us who are just there to help. But of course, it does. It feels traumatic because it feels familiar, or because it overwhelms our sense of justice, or because we come to find that the world we experience when we help people doesn’t fit into the world we thought we lived in. Because we hear about the horrific things that people do to each other and we become baffled by humanity, or the lack of humanity. Because we try to protect ourselves. But sometimes we protect ourselves indifference, cynicism, pessimism and hopelessness. And we begin to wonder if anything we do really matters…
So, as our sense of self changes, our understanding of the world changes, and we adapt. But, if we adapt without the love and connection we feel towards the people who are most important to us, we become a shell of ourselves and unrecognizable. And we create the circumstance wherein the people we love do look at us differently, because we are different.
Most of us can’t really talk about our work, due to confidentiality. And many others, frankly, just don’t want to at the end of the day, because it feels like too much. But we can talk about ourselves and how we feel. We can find out about what’s happening in their lives. We can make plans and look forward to opportunities to connect with those we love through skype, facetime or whatsapp, and sometimes in person.
For those of us who are fortunate enough to have a career that reflects who we are, it matters that we do it well. But to do it well, we need to foster our own resilience.
So, if you’ve been feeling burnt out or if you’ve started having nightmares, or if you find yourself becoming angry with your colleagues or your clients… Connect with someone you love. Call a partner, parent, sibling, best friend… Someone who can help you feel like yourself again.
Fostering Resilience tip: Connect with someone who helps you feel like yourself.
* The American Psychological Association has put together a list of 10 ways to build resilience: making connections, avoiding tendency to view things as insurmountable, accepting change as natural and unavoidable, moving towards your goal, taking decisive action to face challenges, looking for opportunities for self-discovery, nurturing a positive view of self and abilities, keeping things in perspective and context, hopeful outlook and practicing self-care[3]. This article is the first in a series that will look at each of these resilience building topics.
** Kristen Guskovict is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and the founder of Humanitarian Empathy & Refugee Trauma (HEART) of Aid Work. She specializes in work with refugees and refugee service providers. More information about her can be found at www.heartofaidwork.com
[1] Levine, A., & Heller, R. (2011). Attached: The new science of adult attachment and how it can help you find- and keep-love. New York : Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2011
[2] Avoid seeing problems as insurmountable is #2 in the APA’s list of 10 ways to build resilience.
[3] American Psychological Association (2018) The road to resilience: 10 ways to build resilience, APA Help Center. Retrieved on 10/8/18 from https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx
