Soul Care and Burnout

Baking is my teenage son’s love language. He and I share recipes—from cakes to cookies and muffins to quick breads. We find ways to adapt them because when we have the impulse to bake, we rarely have all the ingredients. Sometimes important ones!

The result is never perfect, but that isn’t the point I suppose. He learns about adaptability, and I re-learn how to let go of control. Oh, that sticky, shuddering habit of mind that trips me up and distracts me from what matters!

In baking, we use what we have and in the end it works out; the muffins may taste a little chalky or the cookies a little gummy, but we laugh anyway– the time spent together is the delicious part.

*ours don’t typically look this perfect…*

This is how I think about soul care.

As caregivers, we are busy and often overwhelmed with a schedule that doesn’t seem to quit. We have a leadership and caregiving roles where hours can be nebulous and demands high. I have known what it is to fall prey to the guilt tripping we women can get trapped into. “Do it because you’re the best for the job.” “Don’t let down your coworkers.” “Just one more call/email/txt…” “Who else will pick it up?”

What distracts me most is the efforting. It takes tremendous energy and effort to not take care of myself. Because when i do–just like the ease it feels like to move through the kitchen with laughter with my son–it just feels like ease.

When I get all controlly-like and stressed, I know it is time to reconnect with my soul.

Oppression to Freedom

Soul care to me is about accessing the deep well of resourcing that is beyond our immediate obvious knowing. It is about accessing the deep inner connective tissue of our humanity that is connected to love, awe, wonder, peace. It is often accessed in stillness, mindfulness, and presence–and always about re-connection.

When we are traumatized, under chronic stress, or burned out, our meaning making centers are hijacked as we orient ourselves to safety and security. Without meaning making for any length of time, however, we are listless, forlorn. Our soul strives for connection.

Our willingness to seek support and connection is stymied in systems of oppression, but it is still findable. None of us are islands. The current symptomization and syndroming of burnout doesn’t work because it focuses on the individual over the collective and neglects the soul. Reclaiming our lives post-burnout must include meaning making and community.

Thing is, in the world we are living in, in this climate of discord and fear, our souls need resourcing more than ever. Everywhere we turn, we hear noise about how broken things are–and we often begin to believe that we are broken, too. Soul care re-orients us back to the truth of our wholeness, regardless of anything. We are whole, always, even when we feel broken, overwhelmed, and fearful.

Soul care is never about forcing ideology or religious implications; it is about expanding one’s concept of how universal love or wisdom can move through and teach us to orient ourselves back to our wholeness. Spiritual direction is a type of soul care. But so is dreamwork. Sharing a song with a church choir. Looking at the stars. Taking a mindful walk in nature. Praying or meditation. Or, baking with your teen.

Regardless of our busyness, our pain, worries, distractions…we are invited to the love language of connection, using what we have at our disposal, and sometimes it can come out better–if imperfect–in the end.

What I’ve found in my work over years is that folks in burnout don’t need stuff to do to make things more manageable. The number one predictor for sustainable burnout recovery? The ability —and practice— to create and maintain soul-full connection. To your work, to your relationships, and to your inner world.

The Open Secret About Burnout

If life seems overwhelming, don’t worry, you’re not alone. The barrage of information we get, especially seeded with fear, rage, and discord, is created by design. Whether voiced from governments, administrations, news outlets, or your boss, fear mongering is useful to maintain power differentials that keep a select few at the top, and those of us who do labor for them, at the bottom. If we don’t see how this manipulation is affecting us, then it is working. But most of us when we are soul-weary, we have an opportunity to wake up and take our agency back.

Burnout has no fuel when you are connected to your agency.

Sure, like you, I worry about the state of the world, about my kid’s health and well being, whether my clients will feel better under my care, whether these choatic times will last well beyond four years. At times, for all of us who attempt to see the world in eyes of compassion and hopefulness, things can certainly feel bleak. Yet the despair only comes when I’ve been disconnected from things that resource me back to my own sense of grounded connection. So the challenge here is to ride the waves of overhwlem back to our ground, our resourcing, and our truth.

My own truth? My own values? I trust that.

ReConnection is a Birthright

We are capable of connection not because we are taught it. No, it is built in our neurobiology as social creatures entirely interconnected to one another. I am because we are is not just a saying, it is biologically true. We are fully linked to our loved ones, our neighbors, and the collective.

Don’t underestimate the power that truth has.

The thing that burnout coaches don’t want you to know is that it is quite simple to resource ourselves in this way. It’s not about efforting—it is about allowing. Re-connection with each other and our soul is the most natural thing in the world. It is who we are, at our core.

Watch kids engage in joy, laughter, wonder, and awe. The ease at which they can is remarkable–all it is is that we’ve been socilized away from this–into work, effort, being of service, martyrdom. It takes effort to not notice–and then it becomes a habit. We can practice once again how to engage with our inner world of deep reconnection and resourcing. Its right here, all along, ready for you.

One way to reconnect to your inner wisdom and soul? Soul care and spiritual direction. As a certified spiritual director, we are trained sit with you to discover ways to listen more intently and access your inner compass when you feel lost or burned out or dejected. Our dark nights of the soul require witness, affirmation, and support. I’m interspiritual, earth-based, and cosmic in my spiritual perspective; inclusive of all faith backgrounds and rooted in universal wisdom of peace, love, and justice.

Learn more and schedule consult here.