What if it’s more typical than we think for this work to burn us out?
I responded to someone’s post a few days ago with an answer that I want to make a bit louder because I’ve been thinking about what I said a lot since then…
there’s a trend here to chalk up burnout and/ or needing a lower caseload ‘than normal’ to either trauma, lifestyle imbalance, needing more supervision, or neurodivergence.
what if, instead, we decided that it’s really flipping weird and a-typical to be able to have six or even five 50-minute long trauma or negative affect-focused conversations a day and feel like you are in your ‘zone.’
I’m sorry but I think if I went to a grocery store and selected 20 to 30 random people, maybe one person would say that sounds appealing. More likely, nobody.
The fact that there’s some gold standard for caseload is absolutely ridiculous given how strange this job is. And what it takes to do it. And while I commend and support people trying to find a reason for why it’s too much sometimes, I also want to give folks some grace. And tell them they don’t have to fish for some pathology to explain why they can’t do it all day.
And i say this as a nuerodivergent person.