Stress and the Caregiver

Health care workers have one of the largest incidences of burnout than any other career.  One of the reasons for this is that individuals in the health care field are so used to giving to others, that they sometimes forget to put themselves on the list of people to care for.

There are a number of issues I’d like to address.  The first is your ability to simply receive help.  When you are a health care worker, or a therapist, or anyone who is a helper, you are perceived as an expert giver.  Often, expert givers are not taught or expected to be expert receivers, yet without learning to be an expert receiver it is often then difficult to be a good giver.   When you give to others without getting filled up yourself, you can burn out.  The implications of burnout are significant.  Some of the symptoms of burnout are feeling tired and drained a great deal of time, lowered immunity, frequent headaches, back aches, change in appetite or sleep habits.  Emotionally you might feel a sense of failure, helplessness, less motivation, feeling cynical or negative.  Other behaviors might include withdrawing from responsibility, isolating yourself, skipping work and using food, drugs or alcohol to cope.

Some suggestions for dealing with burnout include:

Finding time during your day to do something relaxing or nurturing.  Whether it be taking a warm bath, putting on some relaxing music, doing yoga, stretching, or reading something inspirational.

• Learn to set boundaries for yourself. One of the problems of health care workers is to learn how to say no.  If you are always saying yes to everyone around you, then there is a good chance that you are feeling overextended.   One of my favorite speakers, Ram Dass, said that it is important to learn to say “no” with an open heart.  What I believe he means by that is to learn to say no, with love.  It is not an easy task but it is a worthy one.

• Realize that you are worthy and deserving of time to yourself. Sometimes there may be inner feelings that you don’t deserve to be happy or that you don’t deserve to feel good.   I have a basic tenet that you deserve to be happy simply because you are alive.

• Practice the basics of stress management. There are three basics needs for managing stress, eating a balanced meal, sleeping about seven hours a day and exercising.  Make sure that you are doing these on a regular basis.

• Practicing relaxation techniques. For the past six years, I have shared numerous techniques with my reading audience.  There are many techniques available, for those of you who are mental reactors, physical reactors or mixed reactors.  Find one, two or more and practice them regularly.  The more you practice relaxation techniques the easier they will become, and people that practice these techniques develop a resistance to stress.  What is stressing you out now, will not necessarily stress you out in two weeks if you practice these techniques.

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