Tag Archives: burnout

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to do list

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The to-do list for this weekend was daunting.  Year-end accounting, reports dangling from two weeks ago, documents to upload to the clinic blog site, and announcements to send out about exciting new changes in the clinic.  Oh, and slides for the upcoming Chaplaincy thesis presentation and (drum roll) ordination!

Drawing all these strands together has given me a massive headache but it does remind me to practice gratitude for the privilege to have the resources to get all this done.  The to-do list is now a TA-DA list and I must say it is going to be interesting to squeeze 28 slides into a 20 minute presentation.  However, all this also reminded me to present the issues of Burnout and Spiritual Incongruence on this blog.  Perhaps it would be easiest to start with my own burnout even though I can hardly say I was the poster child for positive action and recovery.

It’s all in the To-Do list, you see.  A list of things to get done is a bit like a set of aspirations or expectations.  In my case, the internal To-Do list is a harsh task-master with a poison-laden bull-whip.  Over the years, that list took on Herculean proportions and required an equally Herculean effort to pick up each day.  And, I’m talking just picking up the list.  We haven’t got to the tasks yet!

Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter (Canadian content noted!) define burnout by three factors: exhaustion, cynicism, and a sense of personal ineffectiveness.  The exhaustion is physical, emotional, and cognitive.  Dragged out, numb, and in a brain fog, I’m amazed I managed to get done what I did.  Ironically, this was ten years ago and I had just opened the Mindfulness Clinic.  Once you stop laughing, you might take a moment to note that the most important requirement of a mindfulness teacher is his/her own personal practice.  It was on my to-do list and it was done; and, getting my sorry butt on the cushion is likely what saved it in the long run.

Now, Maslach was the doctoral student of Phil Zimbardo, primary researcher in the Stanford Prison Experiment and author of The Lucifer Effect.  She noticed some interesting things in the study, confronted Zimbardo to end the study, and went on to develop the values dissonance model of burnout.

Burnout happens when our values are not in alignment with those of the organization.  We become exhausted as we try to try to meet the demands of the organization with rapidly depleting resources.  We try to change the organization, find a different way to meet the mission statement, and get caught in the crossfire of intentions and production.  I was no different and my downfall was not from dealing with only one organization but several at the same time.  But more than that, I was also caught in the cross-hairs of my internal sniper who eliminated every success because stopping to enjoy it was a threat to ambition.

Depleted, emotionally crippled, and fearing the worst about myself, I realized that my compass had lost its bearings and I had lost charge of my self-stewardship.   The To-Do list with all its implicit judgments about my worth and competence had taken on a life of its own and was about to drag me into deadly waters.

to be continued…

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strands

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I attended a talk the other day, given by a hospital Chaplain who spoke about weaving the threads of body and spirit together.  This, he said, is the role of the Chaplain.  It struck me that when we do this we are joining together what “man tore asunder.”  Descartes, Spinoza, and all those heavy hitters of mind-body dualities are well beyond my capacity to weave together in this thread of thought but it is giving me a hint of the challenges about to face me in writing the next section of my thesis.

As I plod through the sections on burnout and spiritual well being, I feel very much like that spider in the picture.  Strands of knotted thoughts secrete out the tips of my fingers sometimes gluing them to the computer keyboard as I frantically try to keep the unrelenting winds of work and other demands from tearing it all apart.  Practice is helping.  Just this one word, just this one sentence.  It helps too that the old habits of academic writing are still lurking around the edges of my awareness.  One day, one hour, one word, one moment – and slowly I’ve come to the end of the dreaded, mind-parching “literature review.”

However, I’ve actually learned some things, acquired some insights to the nature of burnout and the corrosive action of being in organizations that cannot live their mission statements or manifest their values.  That, it turns out, is the realization that precipitates the exhaustion and cynicism we associate with burnout.  Interesting, isn’t it?  An incongruence in values that leads to a physical depletion and the arising of the judgmental mind. And yet, for so long we’ve focused on the physical nature of “work-related” depletion, missing the crucial role of the heart/mind which says, “This, this is not right.”

Is this what faced Siddhartha?  Raised in a life sheltered from the reality of poverty, illness, and death, a royal corporation that enjoyed an ease not available to those outside the palace walls, how did he meet the incongruence between his unquestioned values and what he witnessed on that fateful ride outside?  Was his disillusion and release from the trance of privilege a manifestation of this clash of values?  Did he Occupy Kapilavastu?  Methinks he did – and more!

The mythology of his intense emotional reaction after seeing illness, aging, and death suggests he felt the weariness of unrelenting hedonism and the cynicism of the worth of the path he tread.  I think he felt the rift in a place beyond the simple mind/body fracture point but it would be years before he would experience it.  It was only after determined rejection of the body which brought him to the brink of death that he wove together the threads of body and spirit, heart and mind.  It would take years and many teachers before he would know deep in his being that the most dangerous gap is between his wisdom and his choices.

If the Buddha’s life is an exemplar of ours, there are questions raised from his direct experience of incongruence that are worth asking.  Is this where you are – this place where the threads have been torn from your fingers, spun but not anchored?  Is this where you see most vividly the vastness of the canyon between what you believe in and what you are living?   Is this where you can feel the futility of continuing to feed the delusion that your victimhood is your privilege?

What now?