Patience – What I’ve Learned (or am Trying to Learn!) from Burnout from Professional and Personal Life
One hears many cliché mantras about the value of patience. And when we hear the same idea articulated over and over again, we may tend to tune out the subject subsequently. But this subject, being patient, is one that is worth your time, bandwidth, and energy to reconsider. I believe that impatience is one source to many of an individual and society’s problems, and that having the intention of patience (and walking the walk too!) can help unlock ample benefits and derive more satisfaction from life. In this piece, I examine patience as it relates to professional and personal life Burnout, in order to foster insight about the utility of living patiently, as well as to begin to offer reasons and strategies for prioritizing being patient.
I am a Social Worker, more specifically a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. This degree and licensure allow me to work in many settings, performing multiple roles, for varying populations. What’s not to like, right? Shouldn’t I be set for the next few decades until I kick my feet up and retire? (Shockingly, no). I am also a dad, with a wife and two sons. While there is no degree or licensure needed to raise a family, it is a powerful thing not to be taken for granted. Both of these aspects, of my professional life and my personal life, while incredibly valuable and meaningful to me, come at costs. And from the title of this post, maybe you know in which direction I am moving – that these parts of my life have also contributed to the feeling of Burnout, and also that I am starting to realize the value of patience in preventing and recovering from this feeling of Burnout. In this post, I try to raise several perspectives and strategies to prevent burnout and remain patient, that can apply to multiple domains of life.
Many people have biological and/or environmental (risk) factors that may predispose them to becoming burned out, in addition to the busy-ness of life and all of its stressors. Many people (but a different subset of the population) also have what is called protective factors, which help one overcome the difficulties of life; many of these are in one’s control, like the support network you develop or the coping skills you build, but some of these are outside of one’s control, like the neighborhood you grow up in or the medical conditions you have. I would consider myself to have many of both risk factors and protective factors to burnout. For example, biologically, I have/had several neurological/mental limitations, in a Brain tumor diagnosis at age 19, several mental illness diagnoses, some degree of perfectionism/OCD, and the psychological tendency to “spread myself thin” or “bite off more than I can chew”. However, I have many protective factors too, from ample support from family, friends, and professionals, to the skills and insight related to mental well-being that my career has helped me to gain. Essentially, it is worth considering these two sides ( risk and protective factors), in determining one’s likelihood to be knocked down and kept down by stressors.
To connect the ideas of burnout and patience, I want to share an example of sources of burnout, and how cultivating an attitude of patience and developing this skill is relevant. Recently, after about 5 years of intense professional work in various settings for mental health treatment, like many others post-pandemic, my optimism and desire to help others has taken a hit, from which I may or may not recover. In this same time frame, I have also experienced the pleasurable and depleting source of parenting young children. My patience has, you could say, “been tested”, in that my willingness/ability to be caring and compassionate has honestly taken a hit, for both reasons somewhat outside of my control (biological/medical) and for reasons which are somewhat in my control to adjust (the psychological and social ones). More specifically, in caring for patients in crisis due to their suffering mental health, whether from building professional relationships and to some extent taking on the psychological weight of their burdens, and/or from the everyday challenge of giving part of myself to help them recover (both implicitly in simply attending to them or explicitly in teaching coping skills), I seem to have at least temporarily lost some passion for helping vulnerable populations. And many can relate to the stressor of raising young children (which I will not delve into here).
So wait, how is patience related to the subject of Burnout? I believe there is a cyclical nature in this relationship, in that impatience can contribute to burnout, and also burnout can contribute to lack of patience. More specifically, if we are not patient enough to make sure we are “calibrated” or “filling our cup”, and instead rush forward with life because of internal and/or external pressure we face, we may be more susceptible to burnout. And when we are feeling burnt out, despite our efforts to engage in the present moment, our attention and compassion are more easily interrupted by fatigue and frustration. So, an important question is how/where to intervene to disrupt this vicious cycle. Below are several skills to develop or approaches to consider to facilitate patience and wellness, for which there is ample opportunity to explore further elsewhere.
- Practice mindfulness meditation
- Practice distress tolerance skills
- Practice psychological flexibility
- Slow down and consider the influence of societal values on your own “operating system”
- Compassion for self and others
Patience is not just an idea; it is a skill, that many of us need to practice to improve. Doing so, and even incorporating it further into your mindset and life philosophy, has tremendous benefits for your quality of life (see the research!). Not doing so can have multi-dimensional, deleterious effects on your mental and physical health that can take a long, long time from which to recover. A good place to start to practicing patience is to consider your assumptions and beliefs related to professional attainment and identity. Figure out what your priorities are, and what allocation of your valuable internal resources will lead to the life you want. That can’t be too hard, right?..
Site Title 