Managing Stress and Preventing Burnout
INTRO
This section opens with a video on managing stress and recognising vicarious trauma. Supporting others in challenging situations can take a toll, so it’s essential to understand how to manage stress and address the emotional impacts of this work. As you watch, reflect on ways to build resilience and maintain balance to support both yourself and those you help effectively.
Stress management – video.mp4Being a refugee involves painful experiences, losses, and difficult life situations. Working with people who have experienced various traumas requires a special ability of empathy from the mentor.
On the other hand, helping work can be emotionally draining and burdensome. Working with refugees can sometimes involve strong emotions. Strong feelings and memories of another person can easily be transferred from one person to another. The better you understand this phenomenon, the better you can feel your own feeling and notice the signs if there are changes in your well-being. Prolonged emotional load can expose you to compassion stress and burnout.
It is important after meetings and a working day to remember your own feelings and focus on your own life: spend time with family, friends, or other close people, exercise, and do things that are meaningful to you. This helps to maintain balance and ensures that you can continue to be a support to others.
"Compassionate people are geniuses in the art of living,
more important to the dignity, safety and joy of humanity than scientists".
Albert Einstein
Empathy and Sympathy
Working with people who have experienced trauma requires empathy.
Empathy and the ability to identify with the situation of the person being helped are skills that allow you to put yourself in the other's position and better understand the other's point of view. The ability to empathize helps to create a strong connection.
Empathy and identification are central in helping work, but they also expose the professional to emotional stress.
Empathy should not be confused with sympathy, they are different things.
The ability to empathize means the ability to put yourself in another person's position and understand their situation while keeping the other person's feelings separate from your own emotional experiences.
Sympathy, on the other hand, means experiencing the same feelings as the person being helped. Sympathy can be harmful to the helper.
Professional Distance
Helpers are advised to keep a professional distance from their clients. According to Tuija Turunen, Ph.D. in psychology, the same is also recommended for those doing volunteer work.
Professional distance means the ability to maintain an appropriate mental and emotional detachment from the situation of the client or the person being helped.
Setting limits does not mean trivializing the suffering of others, but on the contrary, taking care of one's own humanity and ability to empathize.
Professional distance helps maintain objectivity and protects the helper from burnout. It also enables setting clear boundaries between work and private life, which is important in long-term helping work.
Professional distance is an advantage for both the mentor and the mentee.
Helping work can be emotionally draining and burdensome. Prolonged emotional load can expose you to compassion stress and burnout.
Sympathetic stress is a phenomenon where the client's difficult and traumatic experiences are transferred to the helper and cause mental stress in him. Signs of compassionate stress are normal responses to situations that are abnormal and often dehumanizing.
Sometimes the load can be too strong and long-lasting. Sometimes there is a lack of channels to unload it. The experiences and feelings transferred from the customer to the employee may expose you to excessive stress, which can lead to compassion fatigue.
Compassion fatigue manifests itself as, for example, difficulty sleeping, anxiety, frustration, irritability, indifference, difficulty concentrating, lack of humor, and various physical symptoms and pain.
It is important that those who work with refugees are aware of the possibility of compassion stress in their own work, recognize its symptoms, and try to avoid compassion fatigue.
Preventing Compassion Fatigue
It is possible to prevent compassion fatigue:
By recognizing the risk of compassion fatigue. We take in another person's feelings through mirror cells, facial expressions, and postures. The better you are aware in advance that another person's strong emotional experiences and memories can be transferred, the better you are able to feel your own feeling and notice the signs if there is a change in your own feeling. If we are not aware of this, we may take on another person's sadness and anxiety. This kind of emotional transfer only occurs between loved ones and family members.
By being encouraged to discuss compassion fatigue without fear of being labeled as weak.
By acquiring information, participating in trainings, where you can get information about the effects of mentally heavy work. Awareness of available resources and services is also important.
Releasing sympathy stress as much as possible within the work community/with other mentors.
By prioritizing o maa well-being: It is important for a mentor to take care of his own physical and mental well-being so that he can be a support to others. This can include regular rest, nutrition, exercise, and self-care (see Mental health hand exercise from the previous section).
By setting boundaries: Separating work (including volunteer work!) and personal life is important. Excessive emotional involvement and constant availability can lead to burnout. It is important to set clear boundaries between work and free time.
By breaking away from work and spending free time. It is good for the mentor to reserve enough free time for himself so that he can recharge his batteries.
Mindful doing gives energy, but also increases creativity and brings new ideas. Such things can be, for example, meeting friends, exercise, being in nature, reading, listening to music, sauna, mindfulness, etc.
If there are too many rushes, one good way is to mark separate time reservations for relaxation in your own calendar. In this way, recharging the batteries and relaxing do not fall under other expenses.
With good self-knowledge. A mentor must be aware of his own feelings and reactions so that he can recognize potential signs of stress or burnout in time.
🡪 Think: How do I react in stressful situations? What are the signs that I'm overworked and not feeling well?
It is possible to prevent compassion fatigue:
By processing emotions with different methods. Dealing with emotions is one of the most important ways to prevent compassion fatigue. When the helper recognizes and processes his own emotions, he can better manage the stressful situations he encounters at work.
Dealing with feelings can include venting your feelings by talking to colleagues/other mentors, writing, or participating in job counseling. This avoids the accumulation of emotions and their negative impact on coping. Regular processing of emotions helps to maintain mental well-being and the ability to work, which is essential in long-term helping work.
For example, a mentor experiences sadness or frustration after a difficult client situation and decides to write about his feelings in a diary or talk about it with another mentor.
By regulating emotions. Emotion regulation means the ability to manage and shape one's own emotions in a way that suits the situation. It involves reducing, intensifying or maintaining the intensity of emotions
Regulation of emotions helps to stay calm in stressful situations and to react sensibly to different emotional experiences.
Mentors should learn to regulate their own emotions in a constructive way, for example by calming down and finding balance in emotionally challenging situations. This helps to remain a supportive helper in situations that may evoke strong emotions.
Important Questions
In addition to the things mentioned above, stress management and the prevention of burnout are significantly affected by:
the mentor's overall health and life situation 🡪 Is your life in balance? Are there ongoing crises in your life?
in which stage of integration is the mentor himself 🡪 It is important that the mentor is further along in his own integration process than the mentee.
resources 🡪 How much time, resources, experience do you have at your disposal?
knowing how to meet people 🡪 Do you come naturally to work with people?
knowing your own limits and yourself 🡪 How well do you know yourself and know how to set limits for your work?
Information about the importance of keeping boundaries and setting them is available in the next section.
See the Stress Reduction Exercise and the Broken Coffee Machine Exercise here.