Motivated by Crisis and Obligation

Recently a police officer came to me with a problem. He explained that he’d been on medical leave for a few months so he has had plenty of free time. What he finds odd is that despite this, he rarely seems to be able to complete a small list of tasks to help his wife before she returns home from work. He finds himself doing this instead.

He sits on the couch and stares off into space or his phone for most of the day. Then, about 45 minutes before his wife returns, he feels a surge of adrenaline and stress when he imagines how unimpressed she’ll be to find him sitting on the couch with nothing done. So he bolts around finishing as many of the tasks as he can. He rarely gets through the full list.

In contrast, when he was working as a police officer, he’d be juggling a thousand things at once and somehow managed to get the job done.

After explaining this, he asked me, “Why do I do this?”

There’s rarely ever just one reason someone in his situation would have this problem. Like many of the first responders I treat, he has PTSD and as a result, experiences mood disturbances, poor sleep, recurrent intrusive thoughts and a bunch of other symptoms that get in the way of life.

But I was curious about something, so I asked him this.

“At work, when did you get to motivate yourself with anything other than crisis and obligation?”

He thought about it for a second and said, “Pfft, almost never”.

He explained that he’d spent over 10 years in a role that required him to move from crisis to crisis. As a result, he’d learned to switch off from his own wants and needs, even the biological ones. Like many first responders, he told me that if you needed to go to the toilet, if you were hungry, if you were thirsty, you ignored those things when the job required you to, which was often. On an emotional level he did the same thing. He couldn’t just say no to a job because it made him feel sad, anxious, angry or numb. He had to stick it out because that’s what you did.

Now, when he tries to motivate himself based on things he freely chooses, like his values, it doesn’t feel ‘natural’. He’s become too used to being motivated by crisis and obligation.

And maybe it seems obvious how this might shape someone working as a police officer, but what about us as psychologists? Can we fall into a similar trap? I think so.

When we work with complex clients, we move from crisis to crisis. Everything feels important and arguably, it is. In service of crisis and obligation, we can learn to ignore our wants and needs. Whether we’re working for a company that pushes us too hard or we’re the ones pushing too hard. We learn to move from session to session with little to no break. Wolfing down our lunch. Ignoring the stress building up and pressing on because if we don’t, there might be terrible consequences. We learn to put the needs of the client and the organisation ahead of ourselves.

Outside of work, the other stuff doesn’t seem as important or pressing. The exercise can wait, the relaxation can wait, the creativity, the joy, the fun and the love can wait. We’ve got important things to do. And even when we recognise this, we can feel so exhausted that we simply hope that at some point in the future we’ll have the energy to do it differently. Just not now.

This is what heading to burnout looks like. You’re motivated by crisis and obligation. You forget to check in with your own wants and needs. It’s a surprisingly easy trap to fall into when your work involves attempts to alleviate human suffering.

So my gentle challenge to you, whether you’re new to this or have been doing it for a long time, is this. Ask yourself, “Am I motivated by crisis and obligations or am I walking the path I’ve freely chosen?”