7 ways to keep yourself sane and mentally and emotionally healthy in a care-giving profession

My mind doesn't work in a linear manner, but since many people's minds do, I will attempt to linearize my thoughts and present my own opinions on...

7 ways to keep yourself sane and mentally and emotionally healthy in a care-giving profession - written by Xin Ying!

Disclaimer: Do understand that I come primarily from the setting of a school counsellor. I have nil knowledge about how care-givers in other settings work 

1) Set a self-care day/evening and protect that time.

Being in a care-giving profession, it is the responsibility of each individual to take personal responsibility for his/her health to prevent burn-out. One good way of doing this is actually by setting aside a time for himself/herself in the week to reflect through the week, to plan for the next, and to basically just detox by engaging in projects you enjoy, or just by chilling out.
(This paragraph sounded as if it belonged to those self-help websites)

I usually take Sunday, Monday or Wednesday evenings as my detox day. Haha. Once a week. (oooh my brain is not working. Apparently this linear thing is not working very well for me. Hahahaa) A standard detox day will probably encompass me checking out the movie timings in the daytime and then going to watch a movie. In the time before and after the movie, I’d be either reading a book, or will be just thinking and praying through certain things. I find that an aircon environment with music in the background helps me to consolidate my thoughts better.

The key is to know what relaxes you, helps you make sense of the week, and for healing and filling of care tank to take place.

Certain things that one can reflect upon in that period of time:
1) What affected you in the past week? Have you resolved the emotions that arose from the incidents?

2) Taking another perspective (or if the situation was changed in just one day), would the reactions from you be different? What caused you to react that way?

3) Were there incidents in the past which influenced your way of reacting? Were there incidents in the past where you reflected the same way?

4) What are some things you may need to understand (or learn) to help yourself deal with the situations better?

5) Did you portray professionalism during the period of time in your care-giving? What limited you? What helped you?

6) What is one thanksgiving point you can give for this week? What is something you learned? Who is someone whom you can thank God for?

A self care evening is especially important if you know that your care tank is low and you are going to burn out very soon. Symptoms will include reluctance to go to work, an increase in diseases (such as colds, migraines) and prolonged tension in the body. You’d find that you feel more ready to be angry at the students, and find it harder to want to even meet the students.
Take care of yourself well : )

2) Know the reason for your profession

When there’s a purpose behind the doing, the doing becomes more bearable (if it’s unbearable) and directed. Remembering the reason behind why we came into the profession in the first place will drive us. Just like how people in the arts scene are primarily motivated by their passion and desire to practice that passion (and various other reasons), keeping in mind the reason as to why we wanted to come into the care-giving profession (which doesn’t pay much and puts us into the high risk group for mental diseases :D) would push us further and give us the drive to want to meet the challenges in our work and continue helping the people under our care.

I would guess that most of us came into the profession because we want to help. We want to help the hurting not to be as hurt, we want to help people make sense of things with the limited knowledge we have. We feel fulfilled when we invest our time and our life in another human being. We have gladness in our hearts when we see someone respond, or someone heal, or when we can help someone understand.

3) Know your strengths, weaknesses and limitations.

We are all human beings.
When you cut us, we bleed.
When we’re hurt, we cry, or become angry, or become sullen, or keep it all inside. Or develop defense mechanisms.
We have strengths, weaknesses and limitations.
Knowing your limitations help us to be soberly aware of how small we are as human beings, and sometimes, how small the changes we can effect are as well. But it’d keep you sane.

When you understand and really know in your heart that not everybody you reach out to will respond (but that doesn’t mean we stop reaching out to), that not everyone will change, that we’re not God and we can’t force the person to do what they do not want to do, we take things a little easier.

Knowing your strengths will also help you to be a person who’s more effective in the work. For example, I know that my strength lies in affective interventions. As such, I gear towards dealing with cases with self mutilations and emotional management. And I convey this to the people around me as well (such as my fellow colleague and the counselling ministry people). I am not so much of a discipline person. Students are not really scared of me. So I’m limited in the sense whereby discipline cases will not sit well with me, and they might not respond so well to me too.

Playing on my strengths help me to enjoy my work more, and it also helps me to be more effective in administering care to each person I meet using my own unique way.
Knowing your limitations is part of being professional too ;)

4) Plan interaction times

God created us to be interdependent. That’s why He created communities! Being a people person (which I’d suspect most people in care-giving professions are), I am often refreshed after pockets of times interacting with people who lift up my spirits. It might not have to be at the workplace, after work is good as well:)

Don’t be a loner. The last thing you’d want to do is to withdraw somewhere, stone and then wallow in self pity and misery (which is different from self care evening!) Look for people whom you enjoy the company with. Talk things out. Give them hugs. Receive hugs from them.
Know that you’re loved : )

Interaction times would also mean interacting with other caregivers, to share ideas, to identify with one another, to just grumble and gripe at times, and to hear of how others cope with the situations in their workplaces or to discuss cases.

5) Decorate your workplace

I find that it’s important to have pleasant memories associated with the workplace, rather than a sense of foreboding and fatigue and whatnots. Visual cues such as soft toys and bright colours keep me sane at times.

6) Keep work separated from home…

If you can help it. I understand that in a society such as Singapore, sometimes it’s hard to keep the boundaries between work and anything out of work clear. It gets especially blurred when counsellees sms or call you out of work hours with regards to certain things. When do you choose to reply? And when do you not? (This is more of a question that’s specific to boundaries in the counselling settings though).

I feel it’s very important to keep that boundary clear. The problems of the person you’re taking care of/helping is not of your own. Do not adopt these problems and ruminate over them. Not bringing work home to do will help to associate these things with the workplace, such that when you physically leave the workplace, it’s easier to ‘switch off’ (quoting one of my fellow counsellors). This is essential because one will burn out upon continual rumination of the things in the workplace. Protect your mind and emotional health please.

7) Spend extended time with God

We are not superhumans. Even as we give care to others, we have our own limited supply of emotional and psychological resources as well. And many a times, other human beings may not be able to continually meet our needs. (That’s not their role in life as well. Hahaha) So spending time with the One who can meet our needs infinitely will definitely refresh your soul.
I believe that the different areas in our lives are linked. Such that emotional fatigue can bring on physical fatigue and vice versa… When we spend extended time with God, we are emotionally refreshed, physically recharged, spiritually replenished, psychologically renewed : )