Occupational Hazards & Spiritual Practices

Well, it has been almost 2 weeks since I last wrote in this blog, and that is certainly a sign of the times.

As many of you know, I have 2 jobs: one as mother to 2 young children and the other as full-time psychotherapist at a hospital along with a very small start-up private practice.  This puts me in a category with millions of other working parents who I know can relate to the potential risk in both jobs for burn-out.

Burn-out is an occupational hazard for both parents and psychotherapists, which for me is both! 

Burn-out can look a little different on each individual. For me though it includes 2 primary ingredients: abandonment of my spiritual practices and disciplines and body aches and pains. 

What I've come to believe though, is that my two signs of burn-out are actually one and the same. I think my neglect of my spiritual practices and disciplines is what largely contributes to my body "keeping the score" to borrow a phrase from the modern-day famous Dutch psychiatrist Bessel Van de Kolk, MD. 

Without meditation, yoga, physical activity in nature, spiritual writing and reading, and church to process through and digest the information and experiences I have taken in through my use of self as a parent and psychotherapist, my body begins to carry the weight and burden of all of my encounters.

I once heard an interview given by playwright and activist Eve Ensler who discussed this very thing. 

You might remember her from her play The Vagina Monologues which came out in the 90's, and then led to a movement called V-Day in which people all over the world speak out against domestic violence and sexual violence against women every year on Valentines Day, February 14th.

More recently though, she wrote a book called In the Body of the World.  This book is a memoir in part about her experience surviving uterine cancer.  When discussing this book in the interview, the playwright said she was not surprised when she received the cancer diagnosis.  Despite her well-known work as a activist to promote a woman's right to the safety and security of her own body, she admitted to a long-time personal disconnect from her own body.  In part due to her own history of sexual trauma, but also due to listening to what she described as "thousands" of stories about the trauma of others.

I am fortunate to have not had any sort of sexual trauma in my own life, but I was certainly able to relate to Ms. Ensler's description of the potential long-term effects of what we call in the psychological world as "use of self" which is part of the therapeutic process of helping another.  If unchecked, this can manifest into burn-out, or worse, vicarious traumatization where the clinician herself begins to have her own symptoms of a trauma she herself did not directly experience.  Not good. Not good at all.

When discussing this body-disconnect, by no means specific to her or I, in another online magazine called Guernica, Ms. Ensler said this in December, 2013:

"What this whole world has been about up to now is separations. We’re all in our silos. Women’s bodies are seen the same way as the earth—as something we need to tame, something we need to control, something we need to use, dominate. But we don’t see them as something as connected to us. I don’t know why it took cancer to fully break through my own numbness and denial, but it did and it brought me back into my body. I am not anti-intellectual by any means, but I think we’ve worshipped the brain at the expense of the heart and the body and the spirit. As a result, a terrible separation and split has happened. Our work now is to embody intelligence. To make us whole and the world whole."

After listening to her interview, which was some time ago now, and reading other articles about this idea, I have begun to imagine these stories I hear as swirling balls of energy that I have to carefully handle alongside the patient I am working with.  Gently, we must hold and guide this energy so that it does not convert into something destructive, and personally, I must be vigilant to not allow this ball of energy to take up residence inside of me.  This seems to require a regular "detox" of sorts in the form of all of my spiritual practices and disciplines, but particularly the body-based activities like yoga.

But here is where the paradox presents itself: what is the very thing I have little to no interest to do once signs of burn-out are already present (e.g. headaches, hives, jaw clenching), but it is one of the very practices that would be exactly what the doctor ordered? Yoga.

Seane Corn, the well-known Yoga Instructor and founder of the non-profit Off the Mat Yoga, has also discussed the necessity of a practice that helps an individual process through all of the emotional residue that can transform into disease if not addressed.  She said in a radio interview:

"Your body remembers everything and even though we have as human beings a gorgeous ability to reconcile or to reason, our bodies don’t have that same ability to heal unless we’re moving through experiences in our life…If we’re holding on to hate, blame, shame, anger, rage, sadness, or grief, something like that, those emotions can be as toxic on our physical body as poor diet or as inertia and they manifest as tension, stress, and anxiety. So our physical body is actually masking the emotional resonance that lies beneath it."

This is the dilemma.  And I think it is equally true in parenting. 

We recently had a run of two different strands of viruses go through our family, and after several days of sleepless nights, taking temperatures, and visiting the doctor's office, the very spiritual practices that would have been unquestionably helpful, I could not bring myself to even consider.  All of the sudden any moment of downtime (a.k.a. the children were napping or sleeping) I found myself binge-watching old seasons of Grey's Anatomy on Netflix, and just disconnecting to all things fundamental in myself- including my own body.

So how does one get back on the horse? How does a slide of couple days not turn into a couple weeks, not turn into a couple of months? How do I begin again?

My old way would be to push myself.  To use relatively harsh language, sometimes of a shaming nature, to "get my act together." Yes, not very compassionate.  And honestly, not very helpful in the long-run.

I recently read an article in the June, 2015 issue of Mindful called "Does Why You Meditate Matter" by Shauna Shapiro that suggested returning to your intention. 

I like this idea. Rather than pushing and shaming and, as I'd say to my patients, "shoulding" yourself (as in: I should do this), reminding yourself of why we are coming to the cushion to begin with from that deeper, wiser place inside, which for me is to reside with god.  To sit together for a while.  Just us two.  This converts into a greater ability to do all of my vocations- be they work, parenting, or the one we all share, being my true authentic self.

So for today, I will try to come back to my intention.  And whatever happens, happens.  I will try to use my intention as a tool to gently, compassionately come back to my spiritual practices and disciplines which I know serve me well.

How about you? What strategies do you use for managing burn-out? What spiritual practices help you with the occupational hazards you encounter?