Burnout? Me? Part 3

I've only put 3 items at a time on each blog, because 1) busy people don't have time to read much, and 2) it allows it to be "digested" better when there are fewer. 

Again, just about all of us can relate to these somewhat. In this day and age where we move quickly, and don't take time to reflect, to take care of ourselves... PAY ATTENTION! 

7. Inability to Listen/Deliberate Avoidance.  We refuse to answer the telephone. We hope fervently for bad weather so we don’t have to work, we knock softly, hoping that they aren’t home. We choose not to go out at all, or if we do it’s with people who won’t engage in depth with us. We avoid the pain.

 As we get overwhelmed with trauma exposure, we lose interest in things that once gave us joy: friends, family, yoga, sports, dancing, art, hobbies. We don’t listen anymore, for fear of what we’ll hear. Avoiding can become a habit, and it is very serious. 

Addictions are common with trauma exposed persons. Why? Because they allow us to numb ourselves, or avoid overwhelming feelings.  Drugs, alcohol, food, sex, electronic games are common ones. While we may understand that the thing we are addicted to has a potentially destructive nature, we allow ourselves to become attached to it. 

Overwork, for many of us, becomes an addiction. The rush of adrenaline that come with moving fast, and the rewards given by our productivity-based society to us for overworking make it nearly impossible to stop. 

We need to ask ourselves: do I have a productivity-based identity? Am I only as valuable as what I DO, not who I am? Do I lack the inner capacity to deal with my reality, or am I seeing a thing, substance, or person to help me avoid it?

Ps. 84:11 “The Lord is a sun and a shield, The Lord gives grace and glory; No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly.”

Prov.11:25 “The generous man will be prosperous, and he who waters, will himself be watered.”

Phil. 2:10,11 “At the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow,… every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Lord, break the power of idols in my life! Our hearts are idol-makers, and we must keep diligently aware, to break the power of addictions before they become too powerful in our lives.

8. Inability to Empathize, Numbing. An inability to feel with a person, or feeling numb, happens as a result of being overwhelmed with bad things that happen to people. One person described it as if you are a sponge that gets completely saturated and is never wrung out. You can only hold so much. 

The body naturally used a complicated mix of hormones, chemicals, and sensory cues to manufacture feelings. These alert us to danger, focus our attention, and calm us down. But we can override it, that is “numb out” by shutting them down. 

Alcohol and drugs are used to numb our feelings, but also they can be numbed by adrenaline, caffeine, and even too much sugar. 

Overwork many times takes our attention, and this is not a good thing. Many people addicted to overwork report that when they take a vacation, they are sick the first half of it, because they are not used to living in a relaxed state. Imagine going on a 7-day vacation and being sick the first 5 days from adrenaline withdrawal. It happens, frequently!

Here's a quote from Thomas Merton: “The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”  (p. 108, Trauma Exposure)

“Be still and know that I am God.” Ps. 46:10

Ps 119:32  “I will run the way of your commandments for you will enlarge my heart.”

II Tim 2:3 “Endure hardship with us like a good soldier in Christ Jesus…”

9. Dissociative moments. We all know what it is like to dissociate temporarily, having our mind wander when we’re listening to a story, or not remembering where we were when we were going along a road that we had gone on 5,000 times.

 But the dissociative experience we are talking about here is caused by intrusive or overwhelming feelings. A person cuts themselves off from their internal experience in order to guard against sensations and emotions that would be overwhelming to them. Not only are they in their own little world , separate from those they are supposed to be listening to, but their mind is wandering. This is common for people who are exposed to suffering. 

Don’t try to pretend it isn’t happening, just admit it and ask for them to repeat the last few sentences. And get help!

Is 42:19,20  “Who is so blind but My servant? Or so deaf as my messenger whom I send? …You have seen many things but do not observe them, your ears are open but you do not hear.” We need to be so focused on God that we just see what He wants us to see. Like a horse with blinders on. This will help our getting overwhelmed with the trauma all around us. This is one of my favorite self-care verses. 

Lam 3:22-26

 ²² The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
For His compassions never fail.
²³ They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
²⁴ “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I have hope in Him.”
²⁵ The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the person who seeks Him.
²⁶ It is good that he waits silently
For the salvation of the Lord.

Self-care. We ALL need it, no matter of we are in a people-serving business or not. Those in such professions (counselors, teachers, pastors, missionaries, lawyers, doctors, nurses, caregivers) need it twice as much. Let's calm ourselves and enjoy life. God is on the throne. 

Burnout? Me? Part 2

These are for the people who got high on the "2" of the enneagram. The "Givers," who are very compassionate people, and give and give...    

            

4.) Diminished creativity- Diminished creativity is when you think to yourself “When was the last time I had an original thought?” You may find that you’re bored with what  you’re doing and you can’t remember a time when you felt creative. “Only a person who is relaxed can create, and from that mind ideas flow like lightening.” (Cicero) But trauma exposure makes us crave more structure and less creativity.

One group decided to cancel one business meeting a month, and just devote it to having people write. They were to write the latest theories and approaches to their work, then think outside the box, trying to get creative ideas. It worked! But the emphasis had to be on creativity, not productivity, or the people’s resistance to relaxing would come out.

“The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still.” Ex. 14:14

“Therefore let us fear, lest while a promise remains of entering His rest, any one of you should seem to have come short of it …there remains therefore a rest for the people of God.” Heb. 4:1, 9

"Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, to stay up late, for He gives to His beloved sleep." Ps. 127:1,2

5. Minimizing. People who witness lots of trauma become increasingly inoculated to others’ pain. We trivialize a current situation by comparing it with another situation we consider more serious. For example, we say, “What, you’re complaining about your fight on the playground today? It’s not like anyone got hurt or killed with a weapon.” Or someone comes to you with for help dealing with the death of a relative and you say (inside), “Well it’s not Auschwitz.”
 Minimizing is losing our compassion and ability to empathize because we are comparing others’ suffering, and putting it into a hierarchy. We feel saturated, and can’t let ourselves feel anymore.


Prov. 14:21 “He who despises his neighbor sins,
But happy is he who is gracious to the poor.”


Is. 42:3  “A bruised reed He will not break
And a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish;
He will faithfully bring forth justice.”


Jer. 8:22 “Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?”





6. Chronic exhaustion/physical ailments. There are 2 kinds of exhaustion: feeling tired because you put in a hard day’s work, and feeling fatigued in every cell of your being. You feel bone-tired, soul-tired, heart-tired mind-tired from trauma exposure, and when you awaken the next morning you don’t feel refreshed. This happens to people who are completely overwhelmed by the urgency of the tasks to do, or the despair from feeling that you have no choice but to remain in the helping profession. After all, who would do it if you did not?

Some of the physical symptoms from trauma exposure are: back pain, migraine headaches, high blood pressure, body aches, clinical depression, stress-induced diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome, cancer, strokes, and heart attacks.

 I had a stroke in 2015, a wake-up call to do less. Trauma exposure is very tiring. As we accumulate it, our bodies and minds will require extra attention in order to become fully rested and refreshed. A colleague of mine gave me good advice: “Take frequent vacations,” she said.


Ps 71:17-20 “O God, you have taught me from my youth, and I still declare your wondrous deeds. And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me, until I declare your strength to this generation, Your power to all who are to come…You who have showed me many troubles and distresses will revive me again.”


II Cor. 4:16-18 ¹⁶ Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, ¹⁸ while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

These 3 symptoms may or may not resonate with us, but we can be on the lookout for them just the same. Only in the Lord is there victory!

Burnout? Me? Part 1

Isn't it selfish to take care of ourselves? Not really, and we all need to do it.

We all are subject to burnout when we work with people. Whether we call it compassion fatigue, burnout, or secondary trauma, it is very real, and we close our eyes to it at our peril. What I am going to present here are 12 warning signs of trauma exposure response. Some of us have experienced trauma first hand, and need to get those wounds healed. All of us experience it second hand from talking to people who have gone through it (or are still experiencing it).

They are from a book by L. Lipsky called Trauma Stewardship: Guide to Caring for Yourself While Caring for Others. They are particularly relevant for counselors, teachers, pastors, lawyers, missionaries, doctors, nurses, and caregivers to the sick or disabled.

In the next 4 blogs, I'll discuss 3 items each time. Some may resonate more than others with you. Pay attention to those!

At the end of each one, I've put some Bible verses which we can use to counteract them, and receive encouragement from. How vital that we receive encouragement in our journey! 

1 1.)     Feeling helpless and hopeless- probably one of the most common responses to trauma. It’s not unusual for a worker to feel “Why even get out of bed? The job is so great, and my contribution is so small.”  There are 3 perceptions that contribute to such helplessness.

a.      Individuals hold themselves personally responsible for every troubled situation. While you know in your gut there is only so much you can do, you still feel responsible in some way.

b.      The traumatic event will be long-lived; they see no possibility of relief. A war-torn situation, or family problems that continue for decades are two examples of this.

c.       The individual believes that no matter where he/she goes, they will repeat their current struggles. “I’m not good enough!”

Hab. 2:2,3 “Record the vision and inscribe it on tablets, that the one who reads it may run. For the vision is yet for the appointed time; it hastens toward the goal and it will not fail, Though it tarries, wait for it; For it will certainly come, it will not delay.”

Is 35:3,4 “Encourage the exhausted, strengthen the feeble, take courage, fear not. Behold your God will come with vengeance…”

Is 49:24,25  “Can the prey be taken from the mighty man, or the captives of a tyrant be rescued? Surely, says the Lord, Even the captives of the mighty man will be taken  away, and the prey of the tyrant will be rescued; for I will contend with the one who contends with you, and I will save your children.”

 Lk 5:31 “It is not those who are well who need a physician but those who are sick. I have not come to call righteous men but sinners to repentance.”

Is. 55:10,11 "For as the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth, making it bear and sprout, ..so shall my Word be which goes forth from my mouth, it shall not return to me empty, but without accomplishing what I desire..." 

2 2.)     A sense that one can never do enough- This powerful, widespread message often starts from childhood. As children, were we taught to take care of ourselves, prioritize our health and well-being? Or did we learn of the urgency of the cause we champion? This sense of urgency is often communicated to volunteers and workers, distracting them from pacing themselves at a sustainable rate. After all, there’s always one more child in need of care, one more woman whose been beaten and abused, one more poor family needing money…

His yoke means giving up our self -imposed ideas of changing, controlling, and manipulating others and co-operating with Him to accomplish His kingdom’s work.  “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you shall find rest for your souls.” –Jesus    (Matt. 11:28-29)

Gal 6:2,5 Bear one another’s burdens and thus fulfill the law of Christ… Each shall bear his own load.

Rom 9:16 “So then it does not depend on the one who wills or the one who runs, but on God who has mercy.”

3)  Hypervigilance- This means a person has an abnormally increased arousal, constant scanning of the environment to detect threat. It causes and is caused by anxiety. This experience is common for people who have survived trauma. But it also shows up in people who have secondary trauma.

Whenever I do a seminar about sex trafficking, for days before and afterwards, every man I see I wonder “Is he a perpetrator?” Or after I’ve counseled a series of troubled marriages, I go into a store, see a couple, and assume that the man is controlling the woman.

 It is made worse by modern technology: cell phones beep and ping every few minutes. We have difficulty turning off the information, getting away from work, and relax and be present with our lives. 

Who suffers? Ourselves and our families!

            "Be still and know that I am God." Ps. 46:10

            "'For the mountains may be moved, and the hills may shake, But my lovingkindness will not be removed from you, nor my covenant of peace shaken,' says the Lord who has compassion on you." Is. 54:10

Is. 54:15 “If anyone fiercely assails you it will not be from me, whoever assails you will fall because of you.”

Hopefully you don't struggle with these symptoms too much. Recognizing them is half the battle towards beating them!