How do you deal with burnout and compassion fatigue while maintaining your social work values?

Take the vacation. Communicate with your bosses. Ask for what you're worth. All of these can help with burnout, as well as self care. If we are in a bad head space, it's easier to feel drained and like it's harder to manage the difficulties of social work.

Throughout my tenure in social work, I've witnessed burnout's significant impact, often linked to job stressors like emotionally taxing roles, challenging client situations, and systemic issues like high caseloads, extended work hours, and inadequate support. I've personally experienced and observed in peers symptoms such as depersonalization, reduced sense of personal accomplishment, and emotional exhaustion. These underscore the urgency to address and mitigate burnout in our profession.

I set reasonable and healthy boundary lines with clients, coworkers and the company. I’m tactful in my delivery while also making expectations clear. A balance of compassion and directness is needed to not cause extreme sway one way or the other. If any particular person consistently disrespects the reasonable boundary lines, it is addressed in writing. If more people operated in logical expectations instead of subjective feelings, business, work, humanity, and society would have more quality in every aspect of life. I have found society has an unreasonable expectations for women as if we are limitless in our tolerance and incapable of normal human experiences.

In my role as a social worker, I've found that continual exposure to trauma and hardship can induce compassion fatigue, a state marked by emotional and physical exhaustion diminishing one's capacity for empathy. Systemic issues, such as overwhelming caseloads, inadequate resources, and the emotionally intense nature of our work, exacerbate this susceptibility. It's essential to acknowledge this risk and take proactive measures for prevention and management.

The signs and symptoms include feeling irritable or angry, anxious, restless, and distractible. It can make you question why it is you even joined the profession in the first place.

In my own social work career some of the emotional symptoms, such are feelings of anxiety, irritability, and apathy, coupled with a growing detachment from clients and loved ones. Physically, exhaustion, insomnia, and frequent illnesses, possibly due to lowered immunity. Professionally, dread about work, feelings of incompetence, and depersonalization towards clients. Cognitively, challenges concentrating and making decisions, accompanied by forgetfulness. Behaviorally, changes in appetite and social withdrawal . On a spiritual level, crises of faith and questioned the meaning and purpose of the work.

Throughout my career in social work, I have adopted a number of strategies to combat compassion fatigue. Prioritizing self-care, I've ensured regular physical exercise, a balanced diet, and adequate sleep while making time for leisure activities. Mindfulness practices, like meditation and yoga, have been crucial in managing stress. I've leveraged professional support through regular supervision and peer interactions, offering valuable insights and shared experiences. Continual learning about compassion fatigue and its management strategies have been central to my professional development. When feeling overwhelmed, I've sought help from mental health professionals.

As a leader and collaborator, it is important to be mindful of burnout and compassion fatigue in others. Doing this well is way more important than what you say if you notice it might be happening. It requires a foundation of modeling authentic caring for colleagues. It takes time to build this kind of psychological safety culture. Leaders can choose to build it right now, so the foundation is there when needed in the future.

Get your own therapist, manage your time, build your support system, take vacations, leave work at home, and implement self care physically and mentally.

Sometimes we need to take a break from the vicarious trauma and do something else. The word sabbatical comes from a historical idea (albeit complicated) of taking a year off every seven years from field work. Outside of school social work and academia, sabbaticals and extended breaks aren't built into the jobs. With such a high level of burnout, we need to ask for this. Promotions, changing jobs, and unpaid leave are often the limited choices. We have intimate knowledge of humans and a lot of innovative ideas to improve the systems we work in. More short-term paid intrapreneurial positions and social entrepreneurship programs could really make a difference.

While recovering it's important to be kind to yourself, accept that you are not going to be able to keep up with all your normal activities. If possible take some time off and focus on activities that you enjoy.

Recognize your self-worth and take the time to implement a self-care practice that works for you. It's not all about meditation breaks, and/or spa days but rather allowing yourself to reflect,process and giving yourself the grace when you need it the most.

I haven't found that following the social work code of ethics, respect the rights and dignity of your clients, maintain confidentiality and privacy, and document your work accurately and timely to be protective factors in reducing burnout. Finding ways to leave work issues at work, debriefing issues or concerns promptly, and self care strategies have been a lot more effective in preventing or delaying burnout.