Article At a Glance:
- Helping professionals have experienced extra stress since the pandemic, and it’s hard to hold others’ pain while you’re living in the same world.
- When your nervous system is overwhelmed, fight/flight/freeze and escapism can show up as survival responses (but they’re not a long-term plan).
- Try sustainable, low-barrier support practices grounded in nervous system and trauma frameworks, plus co-regulation with safe people.
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” ― Fred Rogers
When Helping Feels Hard: Navigating Rational Anxiety
Folks in the helping professions (nurses, teachers, doctors, health care workers, etc.) have been going through it for the last 6 years. These are difficult and scary times. It’s hard to do the job when the skills we were taught don’t match up with the heightened level of distress exhibited by the people we serve.
As helpers we are taught to challenge anxiety as it is often irrational. What happens when the anxiety is very rational and very true in a client’s life? What about our own anxiety, a natural response to being inundated with ‘scary things’ as Mr. Rogers puts it. How do we manage that at the same time we are holding space for the folks we serve? I have been ‘joking’ with my clients that Graduate School did not prepare us helpers for the huge amount of ‘scary things’ happening all at once. We are co-creating spaces to hold rational anxiety without invalidating the experience of living a world that creates anxiety.
Weltschmerz: Understanding “World Pain” in Care Work
In German literature there is a word that I connect with to describe the experience of being in a helping profession right now, ‘Weltschmerz’ or World Pain. The loose translation is close to a psychological pain caused by depression/weariness because of the awareness of cruelty happening in the world. We know that there could be a better world and yet totally aware of the difficulty we are all living through. It activates our nervous system to be aware of the overwhelming difficulty happening. When a nervous system is overwhelmed with no viable way to resolve a situation humans shift into fight, flight, freeze state.
Freeze, Dissociation, and Escapism
In a long-term state of freeze, dissociation is used just to help us survive. Bodies are not meant to be in these states long term and humans can turn to escapism as a way to cope. One of my favorite ways to discuss this urge towards escapism is the title of a book by Robert A. Heinlein called “The door into summer”.
The title came from his cat’s behavior. Hineline described the way the title came to him. “Our cat wanted to get out of the house so I opened a door for him but he wouldn’t leave. Just kept on crying. I kept opening other doors for him and he still wouldn’t leave. Then Ginny [his wife] said, “Oh, he’s looking for a door into summer.”
I think we have all tried escapism at one time or another. to “find the door that opens up onto ‘summer’.” There is nothing inherently wrong in escapism in moderate doses, but it is not a long-term solution, especially for helpers. We show up daily to hold space, provide empathy, and be a compassionate witness to the experiences of our clients. Escapism is only a short term remedy to long term burnout.
[Support for the Frontlines: If you are struggling to manage the distress of the people you serve, explore our specialized Therapy for Medical Professionals.]
8 Practical Support Practices for Your Nervous System
I am suggesting support practices that are hopefully sustainable and have low barriers to entry. Each support is rooted in nervous system regulation and trauma framework. None of these things are quick fixes or the be-all end-all way to stop feeling the ‘world pain’, but they can help.
Many helpers use humor as a coping skill (I am part of this group). I like to use irreverence in my writing, to help make the writing memorable. Each of these suggestions have roots in somatic practice, neuroscience, and polyvagal theory. I just use humor to help it stand out.
This is a starting point with some suggestions to help you find support activities for your nervous system. We must be curious, explore, and find what support activities work for each of us. For example, if you see me running, a bear is chasing me. It’s not a regulating activity for me but some therapists love to run and find it helps them practice mindfulness.
Regulation is also a group effort. It’s a group project that might actually be fun to participate in. It’s not up to us to regulate on our own so please connect with others to co-regulate.
1. Let’s Make It Personal: Meaning-Making
The use of intentional meaning-making about experiences helps our nervous system integrate difficult and scary content. If we know ‘why’ we are doing something we are far more likely to engage in it. The unfortunate news is there is no one-size-fits-all support activity. No magic ‘do this one thing for your nervous system and you will feel better instantly’. If we can create context and meaning to our experiences it is easier for the nervous system to downshift.
2. Plot Twist: Internal Flexibility
If we are playing emotional twister daily and must adapt quickly to new information and new needs from the people we serve, we must hone in on internal flexibility (now put your right hand on anxiety). Flexibility is a core tenant in staying regulated and how we cultivate this is by increasing our openness to change, skills to adapt, and narratives we employ to understand change. Flexibility can be framed as our internal management of change and external response of using effective ways to manage stressors. That sounds a little too therapy so in the parlance of the internet, flexibility is yelling ‘plot twist’ and making a new plan.
3. The Call Is Coming from Inside the House: Self Compassion
Being caring and supportive towards oneself can be one of the most beneficial yet hardest skills for helpers. Helping professionals often are called to care for and support others, but it can be hard to hear and validate our own needs. Many of us must practice “hearing that call coming from inside the house” of our own heart. Giving yourself a hug can provide information to your body to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and signal calm and security.
4. Lizard Time: Light and Warmth
5. Make A Cave: Low-Demand Safety and Co-Regulation
In long periods of stress/darkness/cold early humans would be together in a secure enough place. How this can show up in modern life is a space/time in your day where the lights are low, the sounds are muted, and the expectation is creating intentional safety/connection.
This is a great time to make this a group project if you have someone you feel comfortable to co-regulate with, help each other regulate emotions. Parallel play can also be beneficial here. Making art, playing a cozy game, or re-watching an old favorite movie can help our brain gently soften in this safe enough place.
With the demands on the nervous systems of helpers all day, it can be essential to have time where there are very few demands on your nervous system.
6. This Or That: Reduce Decision Fatigue
Most helping professionals have to make an overwhelming number of decisions, assessments, and ethical reviews of how we respond all day long. If there is the ability to lessen decision fatigue this may help stop the feeling of being immobilized (freeze).
Using the framework of ‘this or that’ can help support ease and decrease feeling stuck. If you ask me, “What do you want for dinner?” that opens the door for a huge amount of choices and decisions that have to be made. Such as: Do I have the energy to cook, what do we have at home to cook, should we order out, if we do order out what food do I want, and so on. If you ask me, “Would you like tacos or pizza tonight?” that offers far less decision fatigue.
7. Make Something (Badly): Creativity and Play
When I say “make something badly,” I mean giving yourself permission to be creative even if it’s not perfect. You may not hang the painting up but the process of making it is regulating the nervous system through movement, color, mindfulness, and play.
Until we are taught to try to be ‘correct’ our skills in creativity don’t depend on making a good product. Kids draw pictures upon pictures because it’s FUN; they are not focused on the perfect picture.
Creativity can be art, writing, music, performance, theater, lip syncing in your living room, etc.
8. Reach Out: Build a Support Map
Helpers will often prioritize themselves last on the list. It’s kinda our job to help other folks so it’s pretty easy to slip into that role even outside of work. We are all humans and we are holding our own experiences and the experiences of our clients.
Balancing all of that all by yourself is not ideal or sustainable. Creating a visual map of contacts for yourself can help you identify who you would call for support, who you would call if you needed a laugh, and who you can share the weight of difficult experiences with.
Receiving Support as a Helper
To offer an answer to the question from the start: Who helps the helpers?
Practices like ours. Self-regulation, co-regulation with safe people, and having a space to step out of the role of helper and receive support all can help reduce the intensity of our fight, flight, freeze response.
If you need help, reach out to us or another practice who specializes in supporting helpers in crisis.
If someone tells you that doing one simple thing will heal your nervous system, it’s a pretty sure bet they are trying to sell you something.