Social Work Clinician, Family Life Educator, Writer, Activist And Speaker
Healing Conversation #189
“Burnout” as a term was first applied by Freudenberger (1975) to describe what happens when a practitioner becomes increasingly “inoperative.” According to Freudenberger, this progressive state of inoperability can take many different forms, from simple rigidity, in which “the person becomes ‘closed’ to any input,” to an increased resignation, irritability, and quickness to anger. As burnout worsens, however, its effects turn more serious. An individual may become paranoid or self-medicate with legal or illegal substances. Eventually, a social worker afflicted with burnout may leave a promising career that he or she has worked very hard to attain or be removed from a position by a forced resignation or firing.
In the intervening 37 years, burnout has been the focus of several studies, each of which has affirmed the phenomenon (van der Vennet, 2002). We may instinctively realize that therapeutic work is “grueling and demanding” with “moderate depression, mild anxiety, emotional exhaustion, and disrupted relationships” as some of its frequent, yet common, effects (Norcross, 2000). We may even have gotten used to some of the factors promoting burnout such as “inadequate supervision and mentorship, glamorized expectations...and acute performance anxiety” (Skovholt, Grier, & Hanson, 2001). Yet, as social workers, we may still not pay full attention to the reality of burnout until suddenly everything seems overwhelming. At such times, we may lack the knowledge of what is transpiring or the critical faculties to assess our experience objectively that would enable us to take proper measures to restore balance to our lives.
To explore and understand the phenomenon of burnout before it is too late, researchers have found it useful to introduce several components of the term or attendant syndromes, specifically compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and secondary traumatic stress. Although there is a great deal of overlap among these terms, each of them poses a particular risk and originates from a different place in the practitioner’s experience or psychology.
Valeria interviews SaraKay Smullens. She is a social work clinician, family life educator, writer, and activist. A best-selling author, she addresses complex issues that threaten individuals, families, communities and societies, and has coined the term “emotional sense of direction” as a goal in navigating life’s complex slippery slopes. A recipient of a both a Social Worker of the Year and Lifetime Achievement Award from NASW-PA, SaraKay was one of five graduates of the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy and Practice inducted in their 2018 Inaugural Hall of Fame. Her most recent book, Burnout, and Self-Care in Social Work: A Guide for Students and Those in Mental Health and Related Professions, focuses on three primary causes of burnout; the interactive loop between personal, professional, social and physical burnout; the differences between burnout and depression, and evidence-based self-care practices to address burnout. SaraKay has recently published on another extension on this wide-spread syndrome, Societal Burnout. Since burnout is in the wings for us all during this surreal, dangerous and complicated time, her readership has extended beyond mental health professions. SaraKay’s professional papers and memorabilia are divided between the Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, Goucher College, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
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