People who enter helping and caregiving professions often do so because they want to help others — and helping others can be a source of joy and fulfillment. Even so, research has found that rates of job stress, particularly emotional stress, are higher among this population, increasing susceptibility to burnout.
That makes self-care especially important. Yet for many in fields where caring for others is the priority — healthcare, teaching, and social work — self-care can be easy to overlook.
National Director of Strategic Development Steve Miranda has firsthand experience with the challenges, first as a Certified Employee Assistance Professional with the Massachusetts Department of Corrections and, more recently, as a treatment liaison. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Miranda has helped more than a thousand people get help in one form or another, from addiction and mental health treatment to grief services, marital counseling, or childcare.
We recently reached out to Miranda to invite his tips and insights for those in helping professions who may be aiming for more work-life balance and better self-care….
Job Stressors in the Helping Professions
Stress can look a bit different in a profession where the main motivation is to help others.
In Miranda’s case, he was (and is) constantly interfacing with people in crisis and triaging requests for help. What are the biggest stressors in this work?
Being Able to Help and Help Quickly
“The biggest stressors are the person who is looking for help and being able to find the help as quickly as needed; and the stressor of not being able to help that individual immediately. There’s always immediacy to that issue, whatever it is, and not a lot of availability of these [mental health] services.”
The Need Is 24/7
Another stressor is the sense in which the job never ends. People call Miranda at many times of day, and “you’re available 24/7.”
The Motivation to Help and Related Pressures
Miranda became an EAP after working for the Massachusetts Department of Corrections for about 10 years, during which time he “noticed multiple peers struggling with everyday life as it pertained to their job.”
“They were coming to work intoxicated, carrying work home from work, or over-using medication or alcohol,” Miranda said. “I was looked upon as someone who listened, and a lot of these people opened up to me, so when a position opened up, I threw my name into the bucket.”
A Day in the Life of an EAP
As an EAP, Miranda was part of “a peer support-driven unit that manages day-to-day issues concerning employees, helping them navigate services for financial, mental health, or addiction needs or find clinicians for any issues or concerns.” Many EAPs are also clinicians who see patients, Miranda said. He noted that EAPs have evolved to help employees “navigate not just work issues but their home and family life as well.”
What is a typical day in the life of an EAP? Miranda described it as “helping employees do trainings and find resources, and being proactive to help employers help employees with trainings and services.”
The Work of a Treatment Liaison
After retiring from the DOC, Miranda was offered a position as a “treatment liaison” in the behavioral health world. His job was to help build relationships with and resource member assistance programs across the country, helping them find the right services for their employees.
How was this work different from Miranda’s former job as an EAP? “I compare it to working for state government and being confined to a shoebox, and I wanted to go out and play on the football field — I wanted to help more people,” Miranda said.
Much of the role entailed building relationships with EAPs, employers, agencies, unions, and HR departments to help them find services for their employees.
What’s Most Rewarding About Helping?
“Helping the person or employee find the foundation to get well — and watching them get well, return back to work, become a productive husband, father, citizen, or employee, and get back to where they feel good about themselves,” Miranda said.
Yet this motivation to help also helps to explain why those who view themselves as helpers can find it hard to see their own needs or limits and be slow to ask for help or accept the offer.
Self-Care and Mental Health for Caregivers and Helpers
Miranda offered these tips for self-care and mental health.
“Stop and smell the roses.” “We’re so busy helping others that we don’t have time or make time to take care of ourselves,” Miranda said. “Then, over the course of that, however short or long it may be, you hit the wall and realize that you were so busy helping everyone else that you didn’t realize what was going on in your own life (physically, emotionally, or in your relationships); you didn’t make time for that.”
Set some boundaries between work and personal life. Here, Miranda shared how he has learned to manage the stress of getting round-the-clock calls from those who need help:
The reality of that is understanding whether an emergency or something that can wait until the next day. It’s triaging the situation to determine if it’s an emergency; and it’s making sure you have those supports in place, so that if it’s an emergency, someone is still able to seek care. With non-emergency calls after 7pm, I will call first thing in the morning.
Effective time management. Determining what’s urgent and what can wait is critical, Miranda said.
Burnout Prevention Tips and Tools
As another form of self-care, it can be helpful to have some tools for preventing burnout. Miranda shared some that have helped him:
- Mindfulness of signs of burnout – “For me, it took a long time to learn, but it’s to stop and make sure that I’m looking out for those signs in my relationship with family and making sure I can align my personal beliefs.”
- Prioritizing personal life – “Taking care of what needs to be taken care of and prioritizing my own personal space, home life, and time off.”
- Separating work and home – “And it’s very difficult — but leaving work at work and being able to separate it from home.”
- Regular exercise
- Finding a hobby – “I love sports and am an avid golfer.”
- A therapist or someone with a clinical background – Even if you only meet with them once a month, that support and feedback can be a useful way to get perspective, prioritize your emotional health, and “navigate the day-to-day stress.”
Miranda has also learned from his own experience with burnout “that I didn’t have to save the world” and that “I needed to treat it situation by situation and know when to say ‘no.’”
Why It Can Be Hard to Ask for Help
Why do people in helping professions often struggle to ask for help, and what’s difficult about receiving help as someone in a helping profession?
“We’re the helper: It’s our identity, so how do you give that up? How do you say, ‘I need help,’ when you’re in the middle of helping so many? We look at it as our obligation,” Miranda said.
What message did Miranda have for those who may be struggling with burnout but uncomfortable asking for help?
“It’s okay to ask for help and to need help — and to say, ‘enough is enough.’ It’s ok to stop and smell the roses and seek professional help. It strengthens your abilities. I like to call it a ‘reboot,’ and everyone needs a reboot and to ensure they’re getting their peer-to-peer time in with someone they can talk to about their personal and professional life.”
“It’s ok to ask for help. The stigma of you having to be the strongest person to do what we do is a stigma. It doesn’t make you any less of a professional or any less of a husband, father, or friend.”
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