“I am burned out. What else can I do for a living?”

I walked out of a daycare with another therapist, who is also a dear friend, and she burst into tears.  “I am burned out. What else can I do for a living?” She is one of the most experienced therapists in our area dealing with severe oral motor, hearing impairments, and feeding issues.  She has worked in the NICU, hospital system, and now in the early intervention system for 15 years.  She gives one hundred percent to our children and their families, but she is done, she is tired, and she doesn’t know how to keep working in the systems that have been created around our children and families.  She doesn’t feel understood by family and friends that don’t do what we do and see what we see on an hourly basis.   

How many of us have felt this way and asked ourselves the same question?  How many of us feel burnout in the career we once loved, or start to question our worthiness and value as a therapist?  I know I certainly have.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a magical wand to make those feelings stop occurring or to “fix” the systems that are many times broken and not supporting our children and families.  I also didn’t have a solution for her for another job that she could support herself as a single mom raising a daughter with her own individual needs.  Sadly, her idea of being the smiling and sticker doling Wal Mart greeter won’t quite pay her bills.  I don’t have any answers to take away the stressors in her life.

All I could do was stand in the parking lot alongside her and let her feel and share all that stress that she was holding in those built-up body sensations and emotions.  I couldn’t take away the stressors, but I could be there to let her share them in that moment.  Once she let it all out, we laughed at our mini meltdown (but really, we could rephrase this to a self-care break) and shook those feelings off, because well, we had other kiddos to go see and other families that need us to walk alongside them and be attuned and connected to them.  We have to be regulated ourselves to do any of that.  

We have all experienced those feelings and the overwhelming urge to run away to a deserted island far away from everyone and everything that was causing us pain.  Therapists are innately helpers, and we have to do hard things all the time. We keep showing up and being our best therapeutic selves for our families and kiddos, but we don’t have to do this alone.  We weren’t meant to do these hard things alone on an island.  We were meant to connect and regulate one another.  We have an insatiable craving for connection and community.  We were literally created to wire and fire together with others.  That doesn’t make us weak.  It is what helps us to be strong enough to walk through the scary and uncomfortable moments with our kiddos and their families.  It is what helps us stay connected and be a safe space for the trauma that so many of our families and kiddos are still experiencing.  It is what helps us to be strong enough to stand up to insurance carriers, medical professionals, and systems that don’t always see the child and family like we do.  We can’t forget though to make certain our support circles are strong and populated with therapists that know what we are going through and can walk alongside us when we can’t regulate ourselves anymore.  We desperately need that community of like-minded therapists we can turn to and see ourselves reflected in.  

I always thought the biggest benefit of working in a multi-disciplinary clinic was seeing the whole child from so many perspectives and working together as a cohesive team to support the child and their family.  I still think there is magic in that approach, but I also realize what a gift it was to have those people I could turn to and who made me feel safe and seen right in the same building.  Now that I am in solo practice, I have to keep finding those times to connect with mentors and community therapists.  Today was a good reminder of how much I need them and that I need to make a conscious effort to keep those connections for my own regulation capacity.  I would encourage anyone to start looking around for your own support group of colleagues and allies.  If you don’t have anyone close by you can reach out to, consider looking for like minded people online or through the many Facebook groups that are available to therapists.  Therapists have an amazing superpower to connect with our kiddos and families, but even superheroes need connection and a group to feel safe and heard too!  

For more information I highly recommend:

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski, Amelia Nagoski, et al.

Or the podcast the authors did with another favorite of mine…Brené Brown.