Shining Your Light Without Burning Out: How do we take care of ourselves while we are taking care of others?
I have been on a long journey of learning how to take care of myself while working as a medical intuitive, acupuncturist and energy healer, and I am delighted with where it has taken me.
Over time, the more I practiced meditation and did intuitive work, the more sensitive, empathic, and open I allowed myself to be. There are a lot of gifts in that, but empathy and intuitive sensitivity can quickly become a liability if not skillfully managed and supported.
It is so easy to get burned out as you hold space, day in and day out, for people who are suffering and struggling. In my clinical work, I wanted so much to help people and to move them toward a better place that I often gave too much, took on too much, or even made myself sick in the process.
Over the years I have found my way to taking really good care of myself and my nervous system while I am working. My passion now is supporting and teaching healers and care providers how to take care of themselves more thoroughly and easily as they work. This allows them to offer their gifts and help in the world with more ease and sustainability.
The best way I have found for healers and helpers to find their way towards a sustainable and self-compassionate form of serving is to take excellent care of ourselves, and this is done through learning the skills needed to take care of our nervous system, emotional body, and spirit while we are caring for others.
It is heartbreaking to me to watch really wonderful healers, or very empathic, sensitive and loving people get overwhelmed by their work because they don’t know how to take care of themselves energetically while they are working.
Burnout is unnecessary!
We need all the helpers we can get in this chaotic world! So let’s find ways to take care of ourselves so we can keep showing up with our gifts and open hearts. An open heart and strong spine works well, but a bleeding heart without support doesn’t. Showing up as the loving light, the way-shower, or the torch bearer is a gift, but not if we’re burned out by the light and service we carry.
Monica, a long time patient and student of mine, is a great example of this. Monica works as a hospice nurse, and is such a kind, empathic and dedicated person. But in her desire to be an excellent support for others, Monica was getting completely overwhelmed in her job. She even had panic attacks after especially stressful periods of time that left her in a state of complete shutdown for days afterwards. Monica had a handful of survival techniques to manage her overwhelm and anxiety the best she could: frequent stops to get fast food treats on her way to and from different patients’ hospice rooms, starving herself at other times to try to get her weight down (which just led to more cortisol and weight gain issues), returning repeatedly to a depleting relationship because she just needed physical contact to feel like herself again, overworking, etc.
All of the hospice clients and their families requested Monica to be their nurse, and for good reason. To them she was incredibly kind, attentive, giving, warm and respectful. But inside herself and toward herself, Monica was drowning in self criticism and overwhelm, and getting so burned out she was contemplating quitting all together.
What were the blockages to Monica taking care of herself?
Through our work together in private sessions and my classes, Monica began to see some of the core patterns that were keeping her stuck in a burnout cycle. We worked with uncovering areas where her negative beliefs about herself, and her tendency to deprecate or scapegoat herself, show up. These patterns block her wellbeing in work and relationships.
We worked with belief patterns such as the codependent pattern (I define codependency as “If you are ok, I’m ok”, which most empaths take on to survive), and self sabotage that rear their heads in hers and so many health professional’s lives. She saw that she was trying to earn her value by helping others and getting their approval. Monica’s sense of her own inherent value and enoughness was almost non-existent, so she got her wellbeing from feeling needed and approved of. She had a history of trauma and addiction, much of which was connected to her unprotected empathic heart that went to extremes to avoid feeling the suffering of others, even at great expense to herself.
Monica didn’t believe that she was worthy of the support and care that she desperately needed. She did not know how to take care of her empathic and highly attuned nervous system, or how to manage her tendency to become overwhelmed by the pain and struggles of those she cared about.
What helps prevent burnout?
I offer my students and patients as useful and wide-ranging of a tool box as I can. Monica and I worked with a lot of different forms of energetic and physical self care, psychic hygiene practices, and creating a supportive energetic setup that she can rely on when working with others. These grounding and resilience building practices creates a stable and regulated nervous system over time.
We started with her learning how to ground her energy body and physical body (see my blog on grounding here).
We then worked with ways for her to visualize and actualize a support system for her empathic and sympathetic nervous system so that she could self-regulate and clear out dissonant energy more quickly. One of my favorite ways to do this is to visualize a sphere of grace and light around my body, a wise and ever-present semi permeable membrane around my energetic and physical body that automatically helps me manage what is coming in and out of my system as I work with others.
Above all, the deepest resource that I kept pointing Monica towards was the truth that she was already enough, worthy, and a bright light in this world, even when she wasn’t actively helping anyone else. That she was a child of the Divine, worthy of love and support, as much as anyone else. That the sensitivity and awareness that she had for the needs and challenges of others must also be lovingly turned towards herself, so that she could be sustained as she held others. I invited her to keep getting curious about what the beliefs were inside of her that were causing her to overextend so much, not take care of herself, or ask for what she needed.
More tools to take care of your empathic system
Once a person has learned how to ground and stabilize their nervous system, and to create an energetic support system around and within them while they work, there are so many different tools one can use to take care of our energetic and psychic hygiene. We need to release and let go of other people’s pain and energy that does not belong to us, get clear on what is ours to give, and where we are working harder than others for their wellbeing.
Some of my favorite tools are:
- visualizing a grounding cord, which can be used to release intense energy, or the burden of others’ pain or beliefs that may be affecting you.
- putting a sphere of grace/light/love around you to protect your energy body and awareness while you are helping others.
- practices to clear your energy field throughout the day.
- plugging into a much larger battery than your own by calling on support from your guidance team, Divine love, open awareness, etc.
- ways to ask better questions about what you are perceiving inside your intuitive system so you get better answers and more clarity.
Helping others by helping ourselves
Every time I see Monica now, I see more and more energy and brightness in her, more ease, and less inflammation in her body and nervous system.
Last week she came into my office and was crying as she shared with me how much these tools and new ways of caring for herself have changed her life. She is not feeling burned out, she is a lot kinder to herself, is working a better schedule, and asking for her needs from her boss. But the thing that brings her so much joy, and makes me so passionate about this work of supporting healers, is that she feels able to show up for her patients even more. She feels more loving, skillful and present with them than ever before.
It has been such a joy and honor to watch Monica make this potent and impactful journey towards intentional and empowering self care, healthy boundary setting, and kindness towards herself. In that process she has continued to be the most requested nurse on her team, and of incredible benefit to others, but now she is including herself in that sphere of support, and is no longer feeling burned out at the end of her day.
Yay! This is how it is! When we honor and care for ourselves as healers and helpers, we actually can show up more fully and benefit others even more.
Join me for the Clinical Intuition Practice Group this October, to learn more of these skills and techniques to support you in your work with others!
This group is for health care providers, therapists, group facilitators, etc. who want to learn how to take great care of their nervous systems while they are working, and increase their intuitive skills. I led this 6 session course last spring and received excellent feedback from participants about how helpful and supportive the group was. We cover a lot of the skills and support systems I have referenced in depth, and we include time to practice skills and techniques to enhance intuition and regulate your nervous system, and that of your client, while you work. I hope you can join us!
