Dr. Jen Clifden
Educator | Researcher | Burnout Preventionist
Serving Those Who Serve Others
Hi! My name is Jen, and I am an educator, mother, and burnout survivor turned professional burnout preventionist and mental health researcher, educator, and advocate.
I serve individuals called to human-service work to PROMOTE well-being, PROTECT mental health, and PREVENT debilitating chronic stress and resilience fatigue we call burnout from dimming their light and diminishing their impact in
Education | Public Health | Healthcare | Leadership
"There's no doubt in my mind that we've had healthier educators working with our students, which really impacts the overall student experience and also helps those employees."
- District Curriculum Director
Those who care are the most susceptible to
burning out.
Mental Health, Social Emotional Well-Being, and Stress Management Education
in the Workplace
The Light You Cast™
is preventative care professional development that positively impacts personal mental health and collective well-being at the same time.
The light you cast -- your Presence -- is not only your most invaluable personal asset; it is the single most significant variable of your professional impact. For those called to relationship-based callings, your healthy Presence is the intervention that positively transforms relationships and creates spaces where those in your care feel safe, seen, and supported.
CARE, COMPASSION, and CALM, invisible resources core to creating safe spaces and healthy relationships, are sourced from the core of who we are. When our our mental health and emotional well-being - our core - is stable and strong, our capacity to care for another is energizing - not depleting. When we feel energized by the relationships with those in our care, our mental health and well-being is reinforced and a positive cycle of burning balanced is what keeps burnout at bay.
Our inner, invisible states of mental health have outer, visible impacts of positive influence.
Individual mental health
is a positive determinant of communal health and contexts that promote well-being.
Investment in individual mental health and social emotional well-being professional education and support in the workplace is not only a strategic act of burnout prevention, it is a direct investment in ensuring positive, authentic relationships that create a climate of safety and support for all.
The Light You Cast™ professional development experiences are interdisciplinary, science-backed, and based on a salutogenic (focusing on the origins of health), asset-based healing-centered approach that braids together
Stress Management
Interventions
Social Emotional Learning
Competencies
Mindful Body
Practices
Trauma-Responsive
Approaches
designed to train your nervous system, mind, and soul to integrate stress; not dis-integrate as a result of it. Burnout is often described as a slow dis-integration of the selfhood of the caregiver that goes unnoticed and feeds mental dis-ease that manifests as feelings of lack of worth and low self-efficacy, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization (feeling numb and disconnected from what energizes you).
The Light You Cast™ mind-body curriculum is designed to enhance and expand one's physical, mental, emotional, and psychological tool-kit of simple, trauma-responsive REST, RESTORATION, and REVITALIZATION practices proven to reverse the negative cycle of stress fatigue by promoting mindbody mental health awareness, practices, and strategies that build and bolster your body's innate healing and health capacities to fuel a positive cycle of stress resilience that manifests as increased social emotional well-being, improved mental health, a stronger nervous system, a healthy immune system, and deeper, resonant relationships.
REST, relax, and "re-fine" the nervous system to a set-point of safety to regenerate inner energy reserves efficiently and effectively.
RESTORE cognitive clarity, asset-based perspective-taking, and emotional resilience during stress triggers and times of uncertainty.
REVITALIZE safe connections, resonant relationships, and healthy boundaries so one can give of one's self without losing one's self in the process.
Where to Start
Start by creating and holding SPACE.
Mental, emotional, physical, and psychological health are innate conditions within each of us all the time. Burnout is not an indicator that these internal capacities are lacking, or that we are not resilient enough. Unrelenting demands, too much to chronically do, and unrealistic expectations coupled with reduced agency, support, and time suppress the expression of these innate health capacities.
Space, time, and support are essential preventative and protective contextual factors that provide the necessary context for one's innate mental health and well-being to be expressed.
You create the space and time, and we will provide the support!
Introductory
Support
[IN-PERSON, On-Site]
Self-Paced, Sustained Support
[ON-DEMAND, Online]
Deeper, Sustained Support
[IN-PERSON, On-Site or ONLINE]
Invigorate and inspire your staff with a keynote, 60 minute, 2 hour, half-day, or full day professional learning experience, and be sure to check out our signature TLYC | Mindful Movement experiences you can bring to your organization or staff to support their holistic health.
The entire (8) module (4.5 hour)
The Light You Cast™ ON-DEMAND curriculum fully online and self-paced can be licensed for just you, a cohort or team, or your entire organization/staff either on its own or to deepen and extend any in-person offerings.
Provide sustained, on-going, in-person mental health support and experiences that create systemic change through The Light You Cast™ IN-PERSON Comprehensive Curriculum, TLYC | Communities of Practice Support Groups as well as targeted, multi-session trainings for specific groups, roles, cohorts, and leaders at your site.
"In the Spring of 2022, I almost left the profession. This training helped launch me into a healthier school year of setting firm boundaries that created more balance for me. It allowed me to fight for positive perspectives and an inner peace throughout my day-to-day."
School Counselor
Immediate and On-Going
Mental Health Support and Education
The Light You Cast | ON-DEMAND
Heal, restore, and reinforce your mental health system at your own pace while earning 4.5 Continuing Education Clock Hours of Professional Development.
6,000 +
human-service professionals
served
26,000 +
views of modules
18,000 +
hours of engagement
Designed specifically for busy human-service professionals to be a slow and low-dose of accessible and integrateable 35 minute modules that can be engaged at any time, from any device, as many times as needed.
The Light You Cast™ ON-DEMAND is our comprehensive, gold-standard (8)
35-minute interactive and interdisciplinary video-based modules designed for easy and on-going access to immediate trauma-responsive stress reducing movement practices that heal, rejuvenate, and "re-fine" a fatigued nervous system, guided mental health exercises ground overwhelm and relieve anxiety, and concrete preventative care strategies that create healthy boundaries that protect against compassion fatigue and promote work-life integration that make your light INEXTINGUISHABLE!
For me, healing from and preventing burnout and compassion fatigue is both professional and deeply personal.
As a former elementary reading interventionist and middle school reading teacher, I assumed that feeling burnt out, professionally, meant I was a good teacher. I had little to no awareness about the phenomenon of burnout, so I just assumed that I was the only one who was incapable of coping. Worse yet, I blamed myself and my high-sensitivity to stress and other people's emotions and moods as the reason for my inability to cope. For a long time, I thought I was wired wrong and that was the reason I felt overwhelmed, anxious, and burnt out as a teacher even though I loved what I did.
Then reality forced me to face the depths of burnout to an extent I was definitely not prepared for. I became a mother to three infants in the span of 17 months.
Burnout and compassion fatigue set in hard and fast as a mom. I had never felt a caregiving force like I felt caring for my children, so before I even knew what hit me, I was mothering from stage three burnout and coping with postpartum depression (PPD) while attempting to care for three infants. *See the 2024 Surgeon General's Advisory on Parents' Mental Health and Well-Being.
The unrelenting and chronic demands on me as a mother disabled my capacity to care for my three girls and myself. The chronic stress was frying my nervous system and clouding my capacity to think or see clearly.
The most severe impact the chronic stress had was that it negatively impaired my ability to create healthy attachment bonds with my babies, and I fell into a self-neglect spiral that atrophied my relationship to myself. The more disconnected I felt from my very self, the less I could feel, sense, and respond to the needs of my kids. And the more I disconnect from myself, the more stress and anxiety grew exponentially. It was a vicious cycle that overtook my capacity to cope with calm, compassion, and clarity.
Every day, I felt less and less like myself. The less I felt like myself, the more I felt guilt, shame, anxiety, and fear. Burnout was a sophisticated signal that let me know that my heart and soul were sore. I was no longer able to love or care about the things that mattered to me most. Compassion fatigue was a very real force that co-existed with feeling completely burnt out.
Then one sunny morning at 7am (with no sleep the night before because twin babies don't always sleep at exactly the same time), I broke. All I had the energy to think was -- "No one is coming to save you."
That one thought was the most terrifying and freeing thought that ever crossed my mind.
the Burnout Prevention Collaborative
The Light We Cast is potent.
Burnout is not the primary problem; it is the symptom of a system that has become unrooted and disconnected from honoring core human values that are necessary for health and well-being in the workplace:
Reverence | Trust | Respect | Agency | Recognition
The Burnout Prevention Collaborative is designed to create space and provide support, training, and educational opportunities for leaders within the education, public health, and healthcare systems to nurture and care for their own mental health and well-being while providing them with resources to support the mental health of those within their care.
We must collectively respond the burnout crisis in systematic ways that promote communal wellbeing, interdependence, and healing-centered care for our human-service professionals.
Coming in the fall of 2025
