FROM BURNING OUT TO BURNING ON



I just finished reading an interesting article in New York Magazine entitled The Science of Burnout written by Jennifer Senior. As a massage therapist, I frequently encounter this phenomenon. I am around people who feel burned out most of the time. This summer I started feeling like I could burn out myself. According to the experts quoted in Jennifer Senior's article the general consensus of what burn out is seems to be "the gap between expectation and reward" and a "mismatch between effort and recovery". The people that I see each week call it stress - I call it stress - stress as defined by Wikipedia is: Stress can be defined as the sum of physical and mental responses to an unacceptable disparity between real or imagined personal experience and personal expectations. So what's the difference between stress & burn out. With stress - you're still responding - with burn out - you have no ability to respond.

I try to help people before they burn out and because I try to help these people before they burn out, I had to figure out a way for me not to burn out. Being in a helping profession I of course have an idealistic view of a world where everyone is at peace and everyone is fulfilled and if they're not - well I should be able to help them - every one of them. I'm a type-A, zen-massage therapist - is there such a thing? Yes. While I did attend catholic school, I am far from Mother Theresa! I soon had to learn that I can't help everyone - not even all of my clients! OH NO - I'M NOT THE PERFECT PERSON!!!!!!! After a lot of soul searching I realized that the only thing that I could do that may make a dent for people is I needed to take care of myself. The first thing I needed to do was to figure out what that meant - "take care of myself".

I realized that it meant more than a weekly manicure or being sure I worked out 3 or more times a week. Taking care of myself meant a whole new way of life for me. I started to seek out professional help in a few different areas. I found a nutritionist and a great body/mind/energy worker. I had to look at my diet so that I could let the nutritionist know what I had been doing and I discovered that my diet was not one that I could recommend to people - in my twenties and thirties my diet mostly consisted of coffee and cigarettes and before I turned 40 I gave up the coffee - only for vanity reasons mind you. (My sister saw John Pericone, MD on Oprah and he said that coffee made you age faster and prevented weight loss). The cigarettes I gave up about a year later.

So, after years of being strung out on coffee and cigarettes I went a much healthier route - I started stringing myself out on nicorette gum and green tea with an occasional cup of yerba mate for the caffeine. I subsisted on chocolate and an occasional meal consisting of real food once or twice a week. After consulting with a nutritional counselor it became evident that if I continued on my diet, I would probably be without a gallbladder & a spleen by the time I was 50.

I started on a new diet and I couldn't believe how much energy I had. I drink hot water with lemon and then I eat a full breakfast that powers me up. No cigarettes, no coffee, no nicotine gum. It was really difficult to make that change and now after about 13 months, I love breakfast! I started taking vitamins and supplements and eating about 4 times a day and I drink fresh green vegetable juice every day as well. Chocolate is still in my life, but I find I crave it less and less. Eating correctly has helped me be more functional. That doesn't mean I have more to do - it just means that I am better capable of handling what it is I already do. That translates to the fact that now I am less likely to burn out.

Eating well and getting enough sleep isn't the only thing that I did to prevent burn out. I used to go for a massage once a week just to see what other people are doing. Most of the time I would end up with an hour of aggravation because I'd spend the time wondering why the therapist was working the way that they were and not the way I would have. Now I see a truly wonderful bodyworker every week for my tune-up/tune-in. His name is Rick Barrett. I call him my energy guy. His work is nothing like mine so I'm able to really let go and surrender. His specialty is polarity therapy and cranio-sacral therapy. This settles my spirit. This work that I lovingly give to myself every week is my fuel and that's what makes me a better therapist because I remember myself for an hour or so a week.

Finally, I had to renegotiate my expectations about a lot of things. I had to realize that I am not a miracle worker. I can give people an hour of peace and I can do my very best to relax their muscles and offer suggestions for changes that they could make that might increase the quality of their life - whatever they decide to do with the information is up to them. I had to realize that in building my Empire, I needed to pace myself. I really can only do so much and I really can only expect so much. In order to assuage my type-A/New York City -need-to-make-it-big attitude, I constantly remind myself that if Rome wasn't built in a day then it's OK that my Empire isn't as big as Rome - YET - Maybe one day it will be - I shoot for that and I do what I can do each day to keep myself going.