Releasing Trauma through Self-Care

About 10 years ago I went to see a therapist, because I had been working as a chaplain for roughly 6 years and I felt close to burn out. At the time I went to see the counselor, I was a full-time hospice chaplain for pediatric and adult patients. My on-call schedule meant that some weeks I was working 50 or more hours a week. Fifty hours a week may not seem like a lot to you, but when you are working this many hours in end of life care, it can take a toll quickly. 

Imagine a job where you witness people struggle to breathe or deal with pain that cannot be controlled, despite valiant efforts by their nurses and doctors. Consider what it might be like to work in a field where you daily listen to patients struggle with fears about dying or guilt and shame about perceived mistakes they have made. In my work as a hospice chaplain, I experienced the death of too many children and young adults, and there were times I shouted the existential cry of “Why,” as I struggled with understanding why so many beautiful souls had to die so young. 

Even though it was the hardest job I have ever had, in other ways it was also the most sacred. I was able to sit with people in the darkness and hear their stories and it was always my hope to convey to my patients that their life mattered and that they mattered to me. In my conversations with patients, I encountered folks who wanted to be forgiven, loved and seen. I had the unique privilege of sitting with patients and discussing spiritual matters, singing hymns and praying to the One who numbers the hairs on our head. My days serving as a hospice chaplain was a time in my life when the presence of God was so palpable, and yet seeing the deaths of patients I adored also left me feeling profound exhaustion and grief.

And so on the verge of professional burn-out, I showed up in the office of a kind counselor who listened deeply to me as I told her about how much I loved my job and yet how drained I was by it. I learned from her that I was experiencing vicarious trauma. Vicarious trauma is a secondary trauma that people in helping professions experience, as the pain of what they witness in their professional work starts to accumulate in their bodies. As the counselor described this term, it registered to me that this was exactly what I was feeling. I was carrying the stories of my clients in my body. I held the weight of seeing young people die inside of me. As a naturally empathic person, I was storing too much pain within me. I will always remember the counselor telling me, “Because of what you do, you are going to have to work twice as hard as the average person at self-care.”

As a chaplain, I knew all about self-care. In our chaplain training, our supervisors taught us that we were going to have to maintain boundaries and ways of caring for our mind, body and spirit if we were going to have any sort of tenure as a chaplain. But even though I knew all about self-care, I had lost sight of how vital it was to living life abundantly. The counselor helped me identify self-care practices I needed to engage in again including yoga, a healthier diet, walking and reading. She advised me that this would help me release some of the trauma I was holding onto in my body. Change for me did not happen overnight, but what I found is that one change led to another and over time my self-care practices led me to greater balance in life. Eventually I also realized I could no longer be healthy working 50 hours in end of life care and with the help of supportive bosses I slowly cut my hours, which meant I was exposed to less trauma and this allowed more time to practice self-care.

Now that I work as a counselor, I am able to encourage my clients to practice self-care and find healthy ways to release trauma in their bodies. Recently, I have listened to clients share their experiences of navigating both COVID-19 and the tornado that hit Chattanooga in April. As I have heard their stories of fear, pain and grief, it has made me realize that between the tornado and the coronavirus many people in our area have experienced something similar to the secondary trauma I experienced as a hospice chaplain. In order to heal the trauma we are experiencing, we have to find concrete ways to release this trauma from our bodies. We can release trauma, grief and feelings from our bodies through writing out our feelings in a journal, talking out our feelings to a friend or therapist, painting out our feelings on a canvas or moving out our feelings on a yoga mat.

Many years ago my therapist advised me that I was going to have to work twice as hard as the average person at practicing self-care care, but right now because of COVID-19 and the recent tornado, I think this advice rings true for most of us. We need to do a little more these days than usual to care for our mind, bodies and spirits. We have collectively been hit hard by the isolation, sadness and anxiety of these times, but we can heal some of the trauma of these recent events through self-care. I encourage you to take some time today to contemplate what you need to do to take better care of yourself during these unprecedented times.

Let’s practice self-care,

Christy

This article was originally published by The Lookout Mountain Mirror. www.mountainmirror.com