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!