Dr. Jen Clifden

Healing and preventing burnout is human-science.

 

Developing, nurturing, and protecting Mental Health and Well-Being of the human-service professional is burnout prevention. Symptoms of burnout do not arise if humans are cognitively, physically, and emotionally healthy, and they able to express their talents, strengths, values, and gifts through the work they do in the world (self/soul-fully healthy).

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As a professional human science researcher, I explored decades worth of research on what causes the cycle of burnout. I discovered that there was very little research on how to heal, treat, and prevent it from happening in the first place. I wanted to know what the opposite cycle to burning out was. My research focused on bringing together science-based mental + emotional + physical + psychological practices that create a cycle of burning balanced -- in both personal and professional contexts to cope with healthy, chronic, and toxic stress.

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What we learn, know, practice, and embody to maintain our own mental health (cognitive, emotional, physical, and soul/self health) and well-"being"ness (relational health) is fundamental professional knowledge that is simultaneously personally necessary as it is professionally needed to do our jobs with integrity. Since we work with other humans day-in and day-out, human-science perspectives, principals, and practices we learn to embody our own mental, self, and relational health is rich professional knowledge that helps us to know how to support, teach, lead, and care for those we serve.

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Professional development in human-service professions must help us to learn and know:

• what mental health is and how to be mentally healthy in our professional work contexts;

• what well-being is and how being well impacts our relational health - personally and professionally;

• how the social contexts in which we live and work influence and impact our mental health and well-being.​​​

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Burnout is an indicator that your your system (cognitive, emotional, physical, and psychological/sense of self) is working really hard to regain and remain in balance; burnout is not a sign of lack of resilience. It is the opposite, in fact.

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Those called to human-service vocations like education, health care, leadership, public health, and counseling work day-in and day-out in systems/organizational settings where the chronically outpace the resources to meet those needs. We know from the research that work-related burnout is a distinct phenomenon that signals the need for a rapid prioritization of systems-oriented, organizational-level solutions that support professional autonomy, agency, and choice while strategically enacting policies that protect the workplace environment so that human-service professionals are trusted, valued, visible, and know that their impact contributes the to collective mission.​

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The staggering statistics of burnout among parents, teachers, leaders, nurses, and public health (to name a few) are visible indicators of a deeper, invisible problem. As the pressures, work, stress, and unrelenting demands are on the rise and support, acknowledgement, space, and time are on the decline, wise, committed, talented, and dedicated humans are fleeing their callings because everything feels sore -- their minds, bodies, and souls. 

 

Because you are resilient and health is your system's natural set point, your system is sending you sophisticated, protective smoke signals alerting you to the fact that there is an imbalanced relationship between the energy going out and the energy needed to stay within to function in alignment with your strengths and sense of self. 

 

This is why you "don't feel yourself" when things get really out of balance. Not feeling yourself is NOT your natural state, and it is a burnout red-flag.

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The reason that manifestations of burnout are so serious is because low self-efficacy, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization (feeling numb and not like yourself) signal that the core of who you are is being corroded by unrelenting stress that cannot be metabolized (or metabolized fast enough). This is why we feel depressed, irritable, and unmotivated by the things that usually bring us to life.

 

Not unlike some forms of trauma and PTSD, burnout is complex (a lot of forces and factors and contexts and conditions are at play), so the remedy to healing and preventing burnout must also be complex; but NOT complicated.

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Burnout is not only a work-place phenomenon. You can feel burnout in your personal life, too.

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Any time and any place where the needs and asks coming at you chronically exceed your capacity and your internal and/or external resources to cope, burnout symptoms start to show because the stress and pressure are suppressing the expression of who you are-- your soul/psyche/sense of self feels unable to flow, move, and express itself.

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​Burnout is a sign you are burning.

Those who are not burning do not burn out. 

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Ever wonder what the fuel is to the "burning" that can lead to burnout? If we want to know the source of burning out, we first must direct our attention to the source of the burning. Then and only then can we discover what is blocking the burning and knocking the system out of balance in order to know exactly how to get back into alignment, nurture this state, and protect it at all costs.

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Burnout is healable and preventable.

and it is scientific as much as it is soul/self guided.

 

Since burnout symptoms represent a imbalance in health and energy movement in the mind, the body, and the psyche, we leverage the first law thermodynamics -- The Law of Conservation of Energy - to find our solution: Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; it can only be transformed. 

 

There are human-science based mental, physical, emotional, and psychological (think sense of self) strategies, practices, and principles we can use to reverse stress from metastasizing in the system and metabolize manageable stress as a catalyst for healing and optimal health.​​

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Institutionally, we must direct our attention and energy to putting the human back into the center of our human-service work. We do this by intentionally providing on-ongoing professional learning and education that honors, supports, validates, and protects the development and expression of MENTAL HEALTH and WELL-BEINGness.

 

Given that MENTAL HEALTH and WELL-BEING is directly influenced by the social contexts in which we work, we must also work explicitly to create healthy work contexts by reducing excessive work-loads, fine-tuning role duties so they align with the core purpose of one's job, promoting mentorship and peer support, and revitalizing professional agency, autonomy, and freedom of our caregivers to make informed, intuitive, and instinct-based decisions

Individually, we all need ongoing education, support, and community to help us actualize our natural ability to heal, embody health, and express ourselves in and through our personal and professionals lives. We know that disconnection drives disempowerment and burnout, and that connection fuels empowerment and burning bright. ​

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