Burned at Both Ends
As caring professionals, we are taught how to care for others in specific ways. We are taught to hold healthy boundaries, listen well, and feel deep empathy. In order to do this good work, we are told that our own “self-of-the-professional” work is critical to providing care for others. In training we may have shrugged it off, but likely we learned about the ways in which our world outside of the professional space collides with our work inside and vice-versa.
But no one, no one, prepared us to be working professionals during a global pandemic.
No one prepared us to be providers at the height of racial justice movements.
No one prepared us for an unprecedented election year fueled by vitriol and fear.
Self-of-professional work? How can we?! Our clients are in crisis. Our families are in crisis. And frankly, it feels like we are working through sludge. Ending each day feeling as though the biggest accomplishment we had was making it through. Survival.
Just a few days ago I had a colleague reach out to me saying how upset they are with their rights as a sexual minority being continually up for debate, while working directly with clients who hold strong opposing views to the colleague’s rights to live. They said “I used to hold that space well for others...now it seems I am just mad.” We hear the hurt that is being felt inside.
Another colleague remarked, “It feels like I cannot give enough resources. It feels like the work I am doing is not enough because everything is so stressful - yet I am doing what I can and am never doing enough.” We hear the exhaustion and helplessness.
Like Atlas, we therapists deeply feel the weight of the world on our shoulders and the righteous burden that we must carry it.
It’s a great paradox isn’t it? We entered this field to help others and now more than ever, we are so needed. But how do we care for ourselves as well and not feel self-serving or guilty? How do we ask for and accept support from those who are willing to support us? We are not exempt from feelings, friends. We are not exempt from needing support and care. We are not exempt from the experience of living through 2020.
We know that everyone is having to juggle so much right now, and we want to help where we can. We know that it’s hard to do the work we are passionate about when we are not also restoring ourselves. Many of us are so close to burnout...if not there already.
In solidarity with our professional community, we are offering free self-care sessions for therapists. These sessions are brief yet meaningful conversations that give you time with a licensed and experienced therapist to identify some of those self-of-the-therapist things we all need to check in with. Since they are one-time self-care sessions and not therapy, we can offer them across the United States, wherever you are.
To schedule, click here.