So, often the first sign of burnout or compassion fatigue (which I affectionately refer to as burnout's less oppositional cousin) is the loss of the ability to be surprised or shocked by things. I've been experiencing that since at least when I was working in community mental health, but it was something that I thought came with the territory. I just shrugged and moved on with my life and didn't miss it because I felt more regulated so I, in my mind, thought that was a good thing.
Nope!
I was able to keep a straight face (most of the time) when people sat in front of me telling me horrific things. I literally had no outward reaction, and honestly, it was pretty rare that I had an internal reaction, either, after a while. That was a bit concerning, but again, I just figured it was part of the territory.
I started to get the inkling that it wasn't normal when I left community mental health and when I would talk to my supervisor, her flabber was consistently gasted when I talked to her about my clients. I was told continually that my clients might need more care than I could give them, which was absurd; these people that I was seeing were so in my wheelhouse that it didn't even occur to me that anything could be different or easier.
Then I started my practice, and even the most egregious shit, I would shrug and say "yup! Comes with the territory. Sounds about right." And it continued this way for...years. Several of them.
Then I started going through all of this medical stuff (today is, in fact, the three-year anniversary of that emergency cerebral angiogram that caused me to be out of the office abruptly for five days and for my neuro team to unabashedly freak out. Thinking back, probably one of, if not the most frightening week of my entire adulthood. I remember one of my clients telling me that she thought I died and I remember thinking "What? Of course not. Why would she think that?" Now I get it.), and I was going through all of this scary stuff and starting this business and having surgeries and I was like "Meh. It's all right. I'm going to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I'll get through it."
At the time, I literally had no feelings about it whatsoever. When I get in front of a doctor and tell them about my medical history of the last four years, they have a MUCH stronger reaction to it than I have ever had. My therapist was like "Um. You ok?" and was SHOCKED when I was like "you know? Yeah! I actually am."
If someone came to me for therapy and told me what they were going through and it matched what I'd been through, I'd be like "Let's talk about you taking time off from work and see how feasible that is for you right now if you're open to talking about that."
About a year ago, I became worried about this. Am I just processing all of this stuff extraordinarily well? What the heck is going on?
Then I started to make all of these changes. I hired an AMAZING admin staff. I hired a fantastically, amazingly competent clinical director. I put a structure in place that allowed me to actually detach in a healthy way. These things are the specific things that I can point to that have decreased my burnout, and I knew they would, even though it was really scary to do both of those things. Then something magical happened. MY BURNOUT ACTUALLY STARTED TO DECREASE. I wasn't lying to myself this time. It was actually, literally happening. I started being able to take time off from work for things that were not medical. I started going to more trainings that were actually compelling for me instead of just the ones that I thought I wanted to go to. (I have one today, in fact!) I started to get interested in things again.
It's been on a steady decline for about a year and a half, and a much quicker though still steady decline for about the past six months. This year has been a real lesson in letting go and letting things unfold, and genuinely, what a gift I have given myself.
You know how I know that my burnout is decreasing?
My gob has been unabashedly smacked four times in the past two weeks. I didn't even recognize that it was shock at first - that's how long it's been since I actually felt it - and not only did I welcome it in, I felt such relief that I actually felt it. I'm actually allowing room for my actual feelings about things instead of just letting it sit in there and rot. I've been through really tough stuff over the past half decade of my life (not just medical stuff - I still had...you know...a life to live) and I haven't allowed for my feelings around any of it.
Luckily I have amazing support. Luckily I have a very good therapist who puts up with every single one of my shenanigans. I am a very firm believer in the idea of "Everything in due time", and apparently, this is the time for this phase of healing from burnout. This finally feels like something I'll come back from. As a result, I feel more present in general, I'm less avoidant of things, and I'm feeling better. Also, anyone who tells you that they can bounce back from burnout quickly is either lying to you, lying to themselves, or both. I get that there's some white-knuckling and a healthy dose of "Act as if" that needs to happen in order to get through certain phases of the healing process, but it often takes literal years.
(It's helpful that I think I'm through the worst part of these most recent medical shenanigans. I'll know more on Tuesday, but I had some rough results from my endoscopy recently that require follow-up procedures and Big Diet Changes. Hopefully nothing too scary, but I'm hopeful either way and problems that I've had for most of my life are in the process of getting solved. Oddly, in spite of the shenanigans, I feel closer to pre-2021 Ryan than I have in the past three and a half years.)
Also, I'm knitting fun things, and I've learned some new stuff, like how to knit a sock starting at the toes instead of the cuff, and I'm SUPER excited to see how it comes out.
I'm also going to teach my dogs how to talk.
More on this later. There are talking buttons involved. They may use it to manipulate me, but what else is new. When given the option to either cave to my dogs' will or not, I will cave every time.
