ess: Resisting vicarious trauma with and justice-doing in ways that centre the
of practitioner wellness is how we treat the persons we are working alongside, if persons are centred in the work, and if we are enacting our collective ethics. T ere are two main ways that what gets
called burnout shows up with workers, enmeshment and disconnection. As workers we either move too close into persons enacting transgressions of intimacy, or too far away enacting negativity and disconnection.
Enmeshment
they should be doin’ this. You should be doin’ that. Everybody should be doin’ that.” We feel incompetent, thinking we are personally responsible for fi xing persons’ lives. We abandon our teams, work in isolation, set ing the team up with inconsistencies and special favours. We also set persons up, because they are then required to join in these transgressive, precarious and scary special relationships. Enmeshment can lead to workers losing their jobs because they convince themselves it is reasonable and required to do things like taking persons home. Enmeshment leads to transgression and intrusion, losing our collective ethics that centre persons and the collective responsibility of our teams.
Disconnection When workers enact enmeshnent,
we move in too close and transgress the boundaries of persons. We position ourselves as heroes, moving outside of what is humanly possible. Heroic posturing leads to isolation in eff orts to hide actions we know will invite critique. We create ‘special’ relationships with persons, not unique, lovely, generative, connective relationships. ‘Special’ relationships replicate the conditions of sexual abuse, and are a threat to the safety of the community. Sexual abuse is most oſt en not a stranger jumping out from a bush with a knife, but usually happens in intentional, well nurtured exploitative relationships. For example, a young person is required to go with their uncle in his car, even though they know he is going to abuse them and then buy them ice cream, under the guise of a ‘special’ relationship. Whenever we replicate special relationships, we replicate these conditions, which ruptures the safety of the community. Workers enacting enmeshnent say things
like: “I’m the only one that cares. I’m the only one that really gets it,” situating ourselves as saviours. We are taken with guilt, but also righteousness, and full of ‘should’. “You know, what this organisation should do is
Context 164, August 2019 Burnout can also show up as workers
enacting disconnection and moving too far away from persons. As workers, we start to disconnect and detach. T is does not usually lead to us losing our jobs, but coasting along the fringes of what has plausible deniability. We experience diminished empathy, and alarmingly, and at times astonishingly, situate ourselves as the victims of our jobs, organisations and other individuals. As workers, we disconnect from our own bodies, emotions, persons and teams. When taken with disconnection, we police other workers. We do not have broken hearts because we do not bring our hearts to work. When a person dies and you are crying, an embodied emotional experience, a disconnected worker slams you on the back and says, “If you’re gonna cry every time someone dies, you’re never gonna make it here”. To which my response is, “If I don’t cry every time I’m involved in a person’s death, I’ve
lost my humanity”. We side with cynicism, and claim we are merely devil’s advocates while the barrage of negativity and negative judgement encourages the staff to organise around their own struggles with each other. Cynicism does not require that workers only reject innovation or working harder: we have to squash everybody else, steal the hope of fellow workers, and take everybody out at the knees. New workers come in with innovation and energy saying, “Look, I think this is what we’re gonna do. I think we’re gonna start new groups, I think we need to see a lot more people”. Disconnected workers cut those folks off saying, “Listen, here – everything you’ve thought of we’ve thought of. Everything you wanna try we’ve tried. None of it works. Go ahead with your idea”. Meanwhile, everybody else quietly bemoans the interaction as audience not participants: “Oh no, there they go again” like they are merely unkind. It is not unkind, or a personality problem: it is bullying hidden behind cynicism. When we disconnect, we start to situate ourselves as martyrs of the work, construct staff -centred teams, mitigate and mutualise bullying and massive negativity, and persons are lost.
Connection: The Zone of Fabulousness
When we get harmed in the work,
responding to the spiritual pain of being unable to do justice with persons, we can either get enmeshed and way too close to persons, or we get disconnected and too far away. We need to prioritise being person- centred teams not staff -centred teams. We want to be in the Zone of Fabulousness
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The Zone of Fabulousness
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