eMOTION in the Mirror
48 / 116
Experienced helpers can experience burn-out simply from avoiding engaging in self-care, as they have seen it all and done it all before. We need to do things to bring our minds (and bodies) back to a neutral, calm, restful place. And it is a continuous process. “The multiple, unpredictable challenges, such as empathy on demand, piles of paperwork and numerous meetings are like being on the front lines of the war against pain. The constant strain of being a ‘human doing’ can gradually leave the nervous system habitually tense and in need of repair. Fortunately, research has un-covered another function of the autonomic nervous system which is to rest and repair the body.” (Michael Hughes, 1995) Signs One way to look at the signs (and also to deal with it) is along the brain & body factors. Symptoms are different; our group of helping professionals could share quite broad scenarios from personal experiences and what they noticed on colleagues. They vary along different personalities, working area but generally some combinations of the following are signals that something is out of balance. Bodily, physical symptoms: chronic low energy called tiredness or exhaustion, aches and pains in various body parts (often shoulders or back), increased intensity and length of having flues and infections, and either not being able or needing too much sleep. Brain, mental symptoms: may include boredom of work/life/person/places, forgetfulness of otherwise important/not so important/work or not work related issues, excel in finding fault everywhere, poor concentration and loosing connection to topics/people and irritability. The relationship of helping professions – entrepreneurship – burn-out Why? “Burn-out – to deplete oneself, to exhaust one’s physical and mental resources. To wear oneself out by excessively striving to reach some unrealistic expectation imposed by one’s self or by the values of society.” (Dr. H. Freudenberger) Within the entrepreneurship we focused from the beginning on the social entrepreneurship and on the capacity to respond positively to changes. We foresaw it as a base to be able to start something novel – instead of repeating old patterns. The capacity to identify opportunities to find new solutions parallel with training ‘the attitudes and behaviours associated with creativity, innovation and risk’ (EU Skills Panorama, 2012) was our vision for the whole project. Dealing with the above-mentioned complex problems of helping professionals and their development requires in our eyes a flexible, adaptive and complex solution, resulting in creative learners and approaches. “Entrepreneurship is associated with being responsible for your own personal development and professional growth. Often times this could be related to dealing with unknown, unpredicted and even risky situations. Keeping this in mind entrepreneurship might mean extreme stress and work overload that (combined with fear of failure) might eventually lead to a state of burn-out. There could also be a positive relation between the two notions (burn-out and entrepreneurship) – entrepreneurship aspirations might have the power to motivate a person to engage in something meaningful and get him/her out of a burn-out state where the person is stuck and sees no real inspiration and sense in the near future.”
Result of ‘The Artist Within – Applied eMOTION’ Erasmus+ project