In Honour of Social Work Month, March 2024
In the intricate fabric of social work, where doors are opened to hope and healing, the challenges faced by social workers demand a nuanced approach to enhance their own well-being. Amidst the tireless dedication to others, social workers can find themselves prone to overwhelming stress, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout.
According to Stats Canada, over one-quarter of those employed in health care and social assistance experience high or very high levels of work-related stress. Left unchecked, that stress can become chronic. Chronic stress can have a wide range of negative effects on both physical and mental health, including anxiety and depression, cardiovascular problems, immune system suppression, sleep disturbances…to name a few.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of addressing these challenges is more apparent than ever. Mindfulness Practices as set out in Dynamic Balance can help alleviate ailments that are all too common in social work.
Dynamic Balance is a state of inner equilibrium in the face of adversity, external stress, and life changes. Achieving Dynamic Balance requires centering, grounding work. When negative energy comes your way—whether from a client, colleague, media streams, etc.—where does it go? For too many people those negative charges build up in the physical, emotional, and psychological parts of their makeup. Life then tends to feel heavier and heavier as time marches on. It is vitally important, if we want life to feel good more of the time, to direct that energy away from us--as opposed to projecting it outward (more on that idea in Dynamic Balance). An analogy of grounding electricity is apt to impart the importance of incorporating grounding practices in your life.
Grounding electricity directs stray voltage into the ground where it discharges safely instead of building up in places where it could be dangerous or destructive. For the very same reason we, in the social work field, need to direct harmful emotional charges away from us, lest they take the form of the following ailments:
Vicarious Trauma
Vicarious trauma is a silent burden carried in social work as we empathize with the traumas of others. To create a healthier society, it is important for us to engage with our work experiences without being overwhelmed by them. By cultivating present-moment awareness and redirecting difficulty energy away, we can create the psychological distance that allows us to empathize without absorbing the trauma. There are many ways to do this. We will explore two options below.
Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue, often a consequence of the unrelenting demand for empathy and support, finds a counterbalance in mindfulness. Dynamic Balance encourages social workers to not only replenish their emotional reserves by fostering self-compassion, but also employ the power of breathing deeply and pausing in the moment of stressful situations. This inward focus enables us to maintain empathy for others without depleting our own well of compassion. The power of pausing increases space between stimulus and response and fosters response-ability and facilitates healthy outcomes in stressful situations. This idea is covered in more detail in the book Dynamic Balance by Arthur Lockhart and Brad Hutchinson.
Burnout
Burnout, a looming threat exacerbated by the challenges of the post-COVID world, can be mitigated by the release of stuck emotional energy. Dynamic Balance principles and practices encourage and empower us to establish boundaries, prioritize self-care, and recharge our emotional batteries. This proactive approach is fundamental in preventing burnout and ensuring the sustained effectiveness of our work.
For people that have been in the field a long time, "rust-out” can happen; people that have been in the field for decades can become a host to a general malaise that creeps in, little by little, year after year, where optimism, hopefulness, and joy wane in the face of ever-increasing demands and decreasing resources. I have seen this many times in my work across Ontario. For these people, life feels heavy, and they then tend to ‘go through the motions’ of their work, guarding their hearts, and yearning for the time when they can retire. This is not living well.
Mindfulness is the Antidote
Weaving mindfulness practices into the fabric of social work not only serves as a solution to individual challenges but also contributes to the collective resilience of the profession. Mindfulness practices, including still and moving meditations, mindful breathing, and self-reflection, offer a holistic approach to well-being, and acknowledge the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit. We will be exploring many techniques as we continue forward on our journey through Dynamic Balance.
The two practices below can be incorporated immediately to stave off the ailments of vicarious trauma, fatigue, burnout. Try them for 15-30 days (5-10 minutes each day), journal your experience, and notice if your perspective opens a little, and if you're feeling more joyful and happy.
This exercise is a good skill to hone if you are in a workspace where you handle trauma regularly. A wider perspective gives you the power to work with trauma, but not become enmeshed within it.
To give context for the exercise, consider what Alan Watts refers to as a spotlight and a floodlight consciousness in his book, The Tao of Philosophy. Spotlight consciousness is focused on the task at hand and is a vitally important skills to hone. Our schooling tells us that this is the most valuable type of consciousness, to fix our mind on one thing at a time. Conversely, floodlight consciousness is more diffuse, wider, it opens and has the power to disperse trauma, alleviate its heaviness, and maybe more importantly, allow the natural beauty inherent in life to effloresce into experience more often.
When spotlight mode is our primary focus, we can become susceptible to the above ailments, providing attention solely on the pain and suffering we see on a daily basis. Then we tend to live between the states of urgency and emergency, and it can feel like we’re always putting out fires. We can't see the forest through the burning trees. Dynamic Balance encourages employing more floodlight consciousness into our daily lives. Floodlight consciousness is a wide avenue for insights to spontaneously surface; insights that can help solve dilemmas and open possibilities for new ways of thinking and being in the world. In short, spotlight consciousness hones in; floodlight consciousness opens and expands. Finding dynamic balance between the two can significantly improve your daily experience.
Spotlight and floodlight consciousness are not mutually exclusive; we can use both at once. Watts talks about driving a car and having a conversation with your passenger. The spotlight consciousness attends to the conversation while the floodlight consciousness attends to driving. And while we can use both at once, we need to practice them separately to strengthen their power of transformation. For most people, floodlight consciousness is rarely practiced, and as such we decrease our ability to achieve Dynamic Balance in life.
Here are two SIMPLE exercises to alleviate ailments related to Social Work, the first to increase floodlight consciousness, the second to express it outward and widen Spiritual Gateways 2 and 3 in Dynamic Balance.
As we celebrate the indispensable contributions of social workers throughout the month of March, it is paramount to recognize the need for ongoing support and training. Integrating these practices into the professional development of social workers can enhance their capacity to navigate the complexities of their roles with grace and efficacy.
In a post-COVID society, where the challenges are multifaceted and demanding, the power of Dynamic Balance principles and practices become guiding lights. By embracing mindfulness, social workers can not only open doors to positive change for others but also cultivate a resilient and balanced foundation for their own well-being. In this symbiotic relationship between mindfulness and social work, the profession stands poised to create a future where empathy, resilience, and dynamic balance intertwine to weave a more compassionate and sustainable society.
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With deep gratitude for all you do to open doors for hope and healing.
Article by Brad Hutchinson
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