Defending Against Our Own Needs: Reflections on Burnout

By Jeanne Denney

 It has been about ten months since I made plans to start the Kairos Network and Project to study and address needs of people who give care to others.  It was an experiment.   I started the Network for death and dying professionals  after having a good experience in  a regional birth professionals Network here in New York called Birthnet.  Birthnet is a good natured sisterhood that has been around for years advocating for natural birth.  It now functions mainly as an online  group for referrals, information, networking and support.   It demands nothing but a small yearly membership and is a place one can go after supporting a bad birth experience to process and regroup, to find out about an M.D.’s birth practices, or the herbs for pregnancy ailments.   It was so clearly a model of positive support,  I thought that the value of connections between death professionals would be self-evident to those who work the other end of life.  Having worked one year as a spiritual care coordinator at a hospice, I knew something about the needs.

Death and eldercare workers are busy and often tired.  Trying to offer something as undemanding as possible, I first established an internet group that required no face time or money and asked friends and colleagues to join as a simple experiment in the value of connection.   I got about ten no’s to each yes, for a long time getting only no’s.   I was overwhelmed by reluctance.   Here is a sampling of responses:  “I am just too busy to add anything else in my life.”  “I don’t need to connect with co-workers, I have my family.”  “I just don’t want to talk or read about this stuff after work hours.”  “I do enough.”  “When I am not working I want to think of something else.” “Maybe later.”  I realized that I was talking with people who were probably overwhelmed and had an image and experience of connection as a thing that necessarily depletes, rather than renews.   

As the data from my first naïve experiment came back, I was filled with new questions.  Was there really no need for support and connection?   It certainly didn’t seem that way to me from the conversations I continued to have with friends and colleagues in the field. Surely I made errors in process and my intentions may have been hard to understand.  Surely there is a sacred right to say no.   But was that all that was going on?  Had I done something foolish, inappropriate, embarrassing or ill-conceived?  Did this have to do with the stigma of offering something free in a culture of seduction and betrayal?  Fear of groups? The refusal to eat of the starving?  The blithe indifference to self-preservation of the hypothermic?   Are death and dying workers fundamentally so different from birth doulas?  And finally, did it really have to be this way?  

The Upfront Cost of offering Free Hugs

Reviewing these questions in these ten months I have to notice how often I have felt remarkably isolated despite my strong intention not to do it alone.   I felt much like I do walking into a room to offer support to an angry or unreceptive person at end of life.   I had to reflect on how difficult it is to bring the idea of connection as a net positive when there has been a history of disappointment,  and to be fully present with both misunderstanding and rejection.  Like Juan Mann in the Free Hugs video, what I hoped to bring to others through simple connection has most often been feared as an inappropriate demand on limited resources.  I too became familiar with the look of “what weird thing do you want from me?” when the answer, had the question been asked, would only have been “to make connection” “to give and receive” “to co-create” or “to explore the power of the heart to change both of us and our work.”  Indeed, these days that may be weird.  The overwhelming response brought me, like Juan Mann, to my first learning:  Opening  even small opportunities for heart connection in places where it is not usually present brings up things for people.  Doing it without enough support is risky.

Unpacking the mystery of indifference

I probably would have taken this all as a personal failure had I not been familiar with research on compassion fatigue, burnout and vicarious  trauma.   Though I may have been naive, I also understood that, just as my colleagues were being affected by the traumas of the people they were touching without adequate support, I was beginning to experience vicarious trauma by offering to touch the pain of  their caregiving as well. 

Fortunately, having studied body psychotherapy, I also understand some of the origins of this problem in our body, energy system and our human development.  Many of us become caregivers because we did not ourselves receive adequate care in early development.  We became especially sensitized to the problem of needs of others and took a deep vow very young to meet them at all costs, to be a really “good giver”.  At the same time, we were usually equipped with a relatively weak experience of receiving deeply ourselves and a damaged self-care low fuel alarm that seldom registers “empty” until our resentment makes us ready to kill.  It is likely that we learned to defend against the voice of our own needs as if it was an inner enemy.  Later we present as needless, appropriate and efficient.  “What me need?  I don’t need anything.  I am a good giver.” (Not a bad, vulnerable, needy receiver).  Of course this is my own story as well. In most cases, this split and heartbreak was also shared by our primary caregiver.   

Unfortunately the imbalance of our young responses to needing sets us up for caregiver burnout, a pattern that needs conscious adult re-patterning so that we can truly receive the joys of our work.  To quote writers Grosch and Olsen  “The hunger for mirroring and the inability to find it in many work environments are the primary causes of burnout” (When Helping Starts to Hurt, 1994). 

 What are some of the most effective ways of re-patterning this?  Alas, one big one is creating community with others who do similar work, supporting the task of finding meaning and pleasure .   Others are finding venues for respect, recognition, and sources of needed information.  Another is the speaking and hearing of our work stories.  Others are creativity and body awareness.  Measures such as these support clarity, renewed energy and meaning, even though initially, yes, they seem like just more things to do.

Admittedly Kairos has had a timid beginning.  But it has begun, thanks to a few fearless friends willing to contribute, engage with me, listen, help me laugh and be excited.    I have to remind myself that a principle of Kairos that interested me from the beginning was the idea of allowing things to unfold from intentionality, rather than forcing with an imbalance of will, allowing myself not to lead in an ordinary way but by making mistakes and “learning with”.   That this project began through an enactment of my own issues, indeed the very issue it seeks to be with has made me laugh.  This form of creation may have a more meandering and uncertain course.  I am not able to control its process.  Yet this is the way of the heart as I understand it. 

I am still here and feeling better now that I have openly reflected on my own experience.  I am still interested in creating safe haven for heart work in concert with others.  I am still willing to hold space for change with the optimism of a sign that says “Free Hugs”.  Saying no is always respected.   Still, saying yes is so much more interesting.

Jeanne Denney is a therapist and hospice worker in Rockland County, NY.  She directs the Rockland Institute for Mind/Body Education and Kairos, an organization for helping professionals. If you are a caregiver interested in joining the Kairos Network, just send her an email. jeannedenney@gmail.com