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Tag: health

  • Post #3

    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.

    1. Practice mindfulness meditation
    2. Practice distress tolerance skills
    3. Practice psychological flexibility
    4. Slow down and consider the influence of societal values on your own “operating system”
    5. 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?..

  • Post

    Barriers to Employment for Young Adults with Mental Illness

                Statistics about rates of employment can be misleading. A simple google search would probably yield an “unemployment rate” for young adults in the U.S. to be 9 or 10%; this figure is a good bit higher than the rate for all Americans of around 4%. However, it is important to remember that this figure only include those people who are “actively seeking work”. The “economically inactive” rate, measuring the percentage of people not actively seeking work, for Americans was about 30% in 2024. And this rate for Americans with disabilities? Around 75%. Of course, many of those encompassed in this rate are in the geriatric population, but it is estimated that approximately one quarter of this population is under age 35. Another way to look at this issue is that young adults (ages 16-34) with disabilities are almost 5 times more likely than their peers to be economically inactive. So, clearly there are significant disparities, but what factors and considerations are behind these numbers? In this post, we take a deeper dive into the barriers for young adults with disabilities, particularly due to mental illness, to gain and maintain employment.

                For those who struggle with mood disorders, like depression and anxiety, which are often cyclical in nature and not necessarily chronic, there are ample barriers to maintaining employment. Some hallmark symptoms of depression, like low level of mood or energy, feeling fairly hopeless, helpless, or worthless, and disruptions to physical health (sleep, diet, physical activity), can make it very difficult to consistently meet expectations at work, as well as limit an optimistic outlook that can help one to persist through challenges. Anxiety symptoms, whether cognitive ones (i.e. racing thoughts, ruminating, intrusive thoughts) or more physiological ones (i.e. heart racing, tightness in body parts, GI distress) also can significantly limit productivity and distort our interpretation of our own performance, often for the worse. In addition, those with mood disorders may spend much of their willpower, bandwidth, and internal resources managing their limitations, leaving less to give to professional life. In the short term, these trends may lead to missing deadlines or producing unsatisfactory results. In the long term, burnout and unemployment are prevalent. The logic of this paragraph has pertained to those already employed; for those not economically active, it is possible that many of these trends underlie the more apparent barriers that would be more evident in one’s lifestyle choices (level of activity and connection, maintaining of physical health, etc.).

                For those with more chronic conditions and/or neurodivergent ways of being, like ADHD or OCD, different factors are relevant to difficulty maintaining employment. In addition to difficulty maintaining concentration in ADHD, an important deficit lies in one’s executive functioning skills, which are critical in helping us stay organized, plan, control our emotions/states, and follow-through with tasks. Problems in these areas over time can interfere significantly in sustaining work. Persons with symptoms of OCD experience significant impairment in their functioning, regardless of how apparent their obsessions and compulsions are to others. The energy and time consumed by the irrational distractions characteristic of OCD are also significant impediments to maintaining employment. 

                Examining this trend from a cognitive-behavioral perspective is helpful to illuminate the cause-and-effect of various components of the difficult experience of staying employed. That is, our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are connected, in response to events or situations. Something happens at work or in our life, and it affects our cognitive and emotional state, which then again can affect our actions. For example, we may receive some explicit feedback (being told that you are not meeting expectations) or implicit feedback (describing standards that others are meeting to a greater extent than you do). This would be likely to somewhat negatively impact our sense of competence; and for those who struggle with anxiety, depression, or other mental illness, we are more likely to distort the objective reality of one piece of feedback to hold greater significance, thinking that, for example, “I am a total failure”. This sort of irrational conclusion may lead to uncomfortable emotions, like sadness, worry, or shame, which could then be a further detriment to our likelihood to put forth a solid effort. In other words, because individuals with mental illness symptoms are more likely to struggle with rational thinking and may tend to distort reality, the deleterious effects of an unfortunate event can be amplified. And when this trend becomes a pattern and happens more regularly, it can exacerbate symptoms and result in an untenable employment status.

                To paint a more concrete picture of how the conglomeration of these factors can make maintaining work profoundly difficult, I will share a few of my challenges/barriers. Initially, I have a variety of symptoms of mental illness, including of depression, anxiety, and OCD. And depending on one’s level of stress, these symptoms can be exacerbated. In the recent past, my son experienced a medical problem, which resulted in a significant sleep deficit, exacerbating my already vulnerable system due to treatment in the past for a brain tumor. Another change occurred around this time, in my medications prescribed by my psychiatrist, which contributed to the storm of worsened symptoms. Outside of my mental health, for a variety of reasons, both external and internal, my employment at this time was becoming less of a source of fulfillment and contribution and more of a labor and stressor. MY performance was suffering, negatively impacting my confidence and self-esteem, as well as struggles with cognition for medical reasons, which likely all negatively impacted my work with clients. This cycle seemed to be a downward spiral, until I was no longer employed. You can see how a combination of biological, psychological, and social/environmental factors contributed to my decline. Millions of other young adults with mental illness struggle to enter or maintain employment due to a combination of predispositions/symptoms and stressors, like or unlike mine.

                So, given these considerations, where can you individually and we as a society, go from here? In my next post, I will explore strategies and solutions to address these barriers. It is also worth acknowledging that not all readers will share the same goal related to employment; for some, now might not be a realistic time to seek employment. But regardless of your situation, I believe it is worth more fully considering factors making it difficult to maintain employment, and then depending on your personal goals, exploring relevant strategies to help you reach your goals.

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