Five Good Ideas on how to help yourself to help others

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Elizabeth McIsaac: Working for social change and caring for others can be exhausting. Burnout is a risk to you and to our sector. Many people feel they don't have any choice but to leave their work for the sake of their own mental health. Much of the problem is systemic -- broken social and health services, oppression, global crises. So what can we do about it? To find some answers, we're joined by Farzana Doctor. Many of you may know her as an award-winning author of four novels and one poetry collection. But Farzana is also an activist, a community organizer, and a social worker who has been working with individuals and couples since 1993. She has also just released her latest book, 52 Weeks to a Sweeter Life, a self and community care book for helpers and activists. So we're well-placed to have this discussion with Farzana. And over the next 45 to 50 minutes Farzana and I will talk about her ideas on how to address burnout and finding ways to bring more self and community care into our workplaces and into our lives. So let's begin. Farzana, welcome to Five Good Ideas, and thank you for joining us here today. Farzana Doctor: Thank you so much for having me. Elizabeth McIsaac: Well, thank you for saying yes immediately when we reached out and this conversation is important in this time. Why do you think we should be having it right now? What's the timeliness of this? Farzana Doctor: I think we probably should have been having this conversation a long, long time ago. I remember when I was in social work school, we had one lecture on the topic and there wasn't really much practical information about how to think about this over the long term. But the reason why I'm so interested in all of this is over the years I've been talking with so many people who work in social change or advocacy or helping who are having such a hard time. And often those people are a little bit confused about why it's so hard for them to implement all the good ideas they already know about. I think we need to talk about what some of these misunderstandings are, some of the myths around burnout, and self, and community care. Elizabeth McIsaac: So let's start with the basics. How does burnout happen? Farzana Doctor: Burnout is structurally rooted. In order to address it on societal, organizational and individual levels, we have to start with the idea that it is structurally rooted. We're talking about all the isms. Capitalism. Unfair wages and overwork. Racism and colonization and ableism and sexism and all the other oppressions that devalue us as humans and just wear us down. If we look at this as being structurally rooted, we're going to come up with better organizational strategies. We're going to come up with better individual strategies as well. I wanted to talk about that level of things at the very end of this webinar because we have this really bad habit as a society of individualizing all of our problems when they're not individual and putting all of the blame on the individual to fix this. And it's not possible. Elizabeth McIsaac: We think about our own care and we think about care for the community as two separate things. Is that the right approach? Farzana Doctor: The two concepts, self and community care, are completely linked. Every person who is on this webinar has probably seen self-care Sunday hashtags, and then cringed a little bit. Some of the individualistic and consumeristic approaches to self-care are not terrible. We can enjoy some of them, but we have to get beyond those ways of thinking. Here are some ways I think they're linked. When we get in the habit of supporting one another to do self-care and to learn community care, it just becomes community care because there's this kind of way that we're doing things together. All of our self-care efforts end up being contagious. If we aren't caring for ourselves, that also has the opposite effect. The ways that we can be not dealing with our conflict very well amongst each other, the ways that we can impose overwork on other people, all of that becomes contagious. So self-care becomes contagious and we can start to create new norms in our spaces. Also, when we start to see ourselves as part of, and responsible for, our community, self and community care are completely linked. These things are just inherently political. When we focus on things like self-care and community care, we are resisting these cultural ideas that value work and capital more than us as people. We can start to think about what are the barriers to self and community care when we start to see how all of this can be political as well. That's very theoretical. I'll talk about some specific examples. How do we talk about self and community care being linked in an organization? So here are some questions to think about. Can you do a meaningful audit of your work practices and norms? Are you supporting people in a real way to have work-life balance? What if somebody has unpaid caregiver work that they're doing? What if they're parenting? Are we supporting people in that regard? Do we actively encourage people to take breaks or do we just talk about it? Do we encourage people to have good debriefs with one another? Are we honoring the right to disconnect, which is that Ontario piece of legislation for organizations that have more than 25 people? Are we truly questioning how we're setting up workloads, how we're creating unnecessary urgency in our spaces? I think sometimes we work on autopilot and we don't think about those things. Then I want people to think even further afield. What about sabbaticals? What about shorter work weeks? What about shorter work days? Are we having conversations about internalized capitalism? Those are some ways that you can start to think about that in an organization. I also wanted to just highlight something that Diana Chan McNally said in a previous lunch and learn. She talked about helping our folks to be more involved in advocacy work. Nearly everybody who comes into this field is here because they are just so passionate about social change. Then we end up realizing, "Oh, our systems are kind of broken." So we must not thwart efforts to create social change because this is part of why people are in this field and we need to encourage it. That's both the stuff we do within organizations and also on the external and the global kinds of issues that we're working on. Sometimes we separate those things out. We think why should people be focusing on global issues? But these global issues affect us in huge ways too. Elizabeth McIsaac: That answer does give us a sense of in how many directions people are pulled. Personally, emotionally, in terms of the issues, and then how do you intentionally and mindfully navigate that so that you protect the person. So how do we start addressing burnout? Because if we respond to everything, if everything is urgent, if everything has an immediacy to it, how do we prevent that burnout? Farzana Doctor: First of all, we've got to normalize burnout, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, all those things that happen to us. We really need to acknowledge that care and advocacy work does have an impact on us. We are supposed to feel upset, right? We are supposed to feel upset by human suffering, oppression, colonization, all of these things. Maybe rather than focusing so much on prevention, we want to focus a little bit more on ways in which we want to acknowledge it and notice it, and respond to it. I like to see this as an experience that falls on a continuum. On this end, maybe there's feeling a little crispy. And on this end, we have feeling totally burnt out. I can tell you in my 30-year career, I have been crispy probably dozens of times and fully burnt out twice. And I say that to normalize it. There are some ways that we can very practically notice, acknowledge, and respond to it. What are your early signs of burnout? And just maybe that's a question for everyone to ask themselves right now. What are your early signs? For me, it's always things like changes in my sleep pattern, ways I feel less generous, ways that I am just less curious. I might be way more irritable at home. Notice what are those early signs for you and encourage the people around you to do regular debriefs. I have this technique that I've kind of coined the sticky feelings technique that's in my book, and it's just one way for us to stop and notice what feelings were sticky today in our work. Then we need to find good ways to respond. So if we have pathologized this, hopefully we're noticing things when they're happening at the early signs of it. I can tell you that when it's the early signs for me, I would just talk to a friend. I would maybe schedule a little more time off for myself, try to cancel something. But if I'm at the late stages of burnout, which I've been through before, it might mean having a meeting with HR, having a meeting with a manager, seeing if I can talk to them about some of those other strategies I talked about earlier. The biggest way is we just have to stop seeing it as an individual shame. Elizabeth McIsaac: And have our own early warning system and identify that early warning system so that it doesn't get to a point where it's beyond repair, but you can actually still fix where you are. So what should be guiding us to address this and navigate our way through it? I think that's what we all struggle with. Farzana Doctor: Let your nervous system be your guide. That's something that's inside you; that's your early warning system. I wanted to just encourage people to join in with a little guided meditation because I wanted to talk about a couple of concepts. Close your eyes. Notice your feet on the floor if they're touching the floor. Notice your seat. Notice if you have a backrest, what the backrest feels like. Notice your body in space right now. The whole package of your body in space and perhaps take a couple of nice deep breaths. Through your nose is always better. We want our exhalations to be longer than our inhalation. Keep doing that deep breathing and be conscious of what's happening in your body. Notice any places where you're feeling ease in your body right now. Notice any places you're feeling a lack of ease, maybe soreness or tension or pain. Notice those in a really non-judgmental kind of way. As you keep breathing, I want you to notice your current nervous system state. So this is how we let our nervous system be our guide. Right now, I'm hoping that with just that very quick calming, you may have experienced something in your nervous system that brought you into the window of capacity or window of tolerance. The concept of the window of capacity or window of tolerance is a theory developed by Dan Siegel, and it's this nervous system space to be in that often feels like it's creative and we feel a lot of curiosity and connection. It's a place of flow. It's a really nice place to be in. But we leave that window a hundred times a day and that's normal. We bounce around to a place where we get anxious. That's called hyperarousal, which is a kind of dissociated, numbed out spacey place. Constantly throughout the day, we're going to be moving around like this. We want to just take a moment to notice our state and kind of go, "What can I do right now to help myself come back into the window? Would a couple of deep breaths help? Would getting up and moving? Would going for a walk help me? Would shaking out my body like dogs do help me?" That's the window. We can also do this as community care. So if we can normalize this as something that we encourage, those we work with to notice. And again, non-pathologizing. You're just saying, "Hey, this thing just happened. Do you want to just take a moment with me and notice your state?” When we come back into that state of the window of capacity, we feel calmer, we feel more compassionate, self-compassionate, and we feel more creative and we're able to address the things that we're dealing with. That's also the place where we can say to ourselves, I am having a hard time. Can we talk about that? What are we going to do about this? So that's an individual level as well as a community level thing we can do for each other. Elizabeth McIsaac: You frame that almost like it's like a reset. Just pause, close your eyes, breathe deeply of the awareness, and then you can... And I like that term, window of capacity. Suddenly there's this opening that you can come back into, and that's a very positive framing for all of that. Thank you. So that's four good ideas. Is there a big thing that we can do? Is there the one big silver bullet to making this happen in our practice? Farzana Doctor: Yes. So the fifth idea is ditch the grand gesture approach to self and community care and replace it with multiple daily practices. So what is the grand gesture approach? You might recognize it in yourself. I'm going to tell you what I used to do, which was the grand gesture approach. It was working, working, working, working, working, working, working, and then going on vacation. And the first three days I was sick because my body was keeping the score. Or once I did take those couple of weeks of vacation feeling like it just wasn't enough. It might look like going to a spa and wishing I could live at the spa. Even the community care had a similar ring to it. I'd find myself just rushing headlong into other people's crises because I loved and cared about them, but not checking in on what was happening inside of myself, my own capacity or only asking for help from my community when there was an utter crisis in my life. That's what the grand gesture approach looks like. The opposite to that is multiple daily pauses. It's checking in with your nervous system multiple times a day. It might look like standing up multiple times a day and moving in whatever way you're able to move. For me, I really like to do a quick three-minute dance. And there is this kind of important thing that's going on. It's not just like I get to be silly, it's that somatically, we need to kind of complete the stress response cycle. We need to shake out. We need to come back to a sense of calm by completing a stress response cycle like that. Self-care multiple times a day. Community care multiple times a day might mean I'm reaching out to friends when I don't really need them very much or when my needs are really low. Or offering that kind of support, not just when people are in crisis, but on a regular basis. And I want to say something that's important around this. To do this, I needed to understand my blocks and I want to come back to this idea that this is all structurally based. So I needed to understand what my blocks were that were structural and then what my blocks were that were personal but structurally influenced. I'll give you a little list of what some of those things were. I needed to thoroughly think about internalized capitalism and how it was impacting me and how much I was hustling in the world. I needed to look at the different forms of trauma that I had experienced and what trauma adaptations were intersecting with my work life that were making me really value overwork and having trouble with some boundaries. I had to think about being raised by a workaholic dad. And while I love him so much, he taught me some really hard things that I had to untangle. There are structural reasons behind why he's a workaholic too. It was really unpacking a whole lot of bags. All of these multiple daily practices need to be supported by an organization if we're working within an organization too. If the organization is not supporting it, it's very hard to do it as an individual. I've already addressed some of the ways that organizations can be thinking structurally about this, but I want to just mention that relying solely on things like wellness days or yoga classes or bringing in the massage students. Those are lovely things by the way, but relying solely on those things are not going to have the impact that you are searching for. Those kinds of periodic one-off things are not supporting daily practices. So if you can to create a culture that is nurturing, that encourages each other to connect, encourages everyone to see one another as community that truly supports the work and home balance like I mentioned before, you're going to be doing a lot more than these periodic one-off approaches. And then finally thinking about how most of the people on this call are people who really come into this work because you care so deeply about social change, about helping others. We really need to find ways to balance out all the hard stuff. So we need to remember the beauty of our work, the wins in our work, what's sacred about our work, what's meaningful about our work. And we also need to find joy in the work. And if you're having trouble finding joy in the work, talk to other people about that. But we have to find joy and then we have to find joy outside of the work too, right? Because we're not just our work, we are hopefully a hundred other things besides our work. Elizabeth McIsaac: So much in there. Thank you, Farzana. That was just terrific. Those are a whole slew of ideas, but I think in this last point it's really about this building a bit of a culture for yourself of how you take care and knowing what your knowing what your early warning signs are and building things that really address that in a regular pattern. And not to say that spa isn't a nice thing to do, everyone likes the day at the spa, but there's more that can happen. That's just terrific. Thank you. I'm not going to be taking questions from the chat, so please put your questions into the Q&A. But many of you sent some questions in advance. So I'm going to start with some of those questions because they are absolutely picking up on some of the themes that Farzana has been taking us through. And the first one I think picks up on something you began to allude to, I think in terms of your father and the work ethic that you inherited from there. And the question is, how do we apply the concept of wellness in an immigrant's life? It's a privileged concept to many of us. Farzana Doctor: What was going on in my own family's life is we came to Canada when I was very young and my parents were focused on the work of creating financial stability and without a lot of community supports, because they didn't have them yet. It took some time for them to build that stuff up. And so what I learned very much was this life of we have to work really, really hard to get ahead. And I'm putting that in quotes, the get ahead. There was a lot of stuff that we were doing that was very much around being model minorities. So don't rock the boat, be the first in your class, don't complain about racist bullying. All that kind of stuff was very much part of what was going on. I don't blame them for that. They were just surviving and they created a very good life in the end for me and my sister. But we really can try to unpack our bags. We really can try to understand where some of this might be wrong thinking. So maybe this self-indulgence. Maybe we can find new ways of creating survival for ourselves. And again, if we think about the links between self and community care, if we are not doing this work to create nurturing environments for ourselves and others, we are creating the opposite. So this isn't just about the self. When we unpack these bags and we try something new, we are also supporting our families differently. We're supporting our communities differently. Elizabeth McIsaac: There's a question in the Q&A: If you can share a bit more about differentiating between structural and personal blocks. How do we understand the difference there? Farzana Doctor: A lot of the people who I have met who come into this kind of work are people who experienced a great deal of hardship growing up, and they may or may not be conscious of it, but they might have been parentified children. They might have been their family's interpreters. They may have been kids who were experiencing trauma. They may have been the mediators on the school ground. They may have experienced all kinds of different forms of oppression. So one of the things that happens, and so I'm talking on the personal level right now, is when all of these structural things come at us, we create these trauma adaptations that sometimes make us super functioners, over-functioners. The good side of that is we grow up to become leaders and conflict resolution people and activists and therapists. We grow up to do these kinds of things. But on the negative side of that is we maybe were never taught how to metabolize all the messy feelings or to figure out what the boundaries were because a lot of these trauma adaptations start young in childhood when there's no way to figure that stuff out. So that's on that individual level. But as I mentioned, it's all that structural stuff that is beating us down. Then there are things that are completely outside of us. When I think about my first burnout that happened in my 30s, all of what I brought as an individual was being completely reinforced and taken advantage of by the workplace that really valued overwork that didn't value its employees, that talked about self-care and taking breaks, but didn't really put that into place because we were expected to do more and more and more. So that stuff is very clearly outside of us. So I wonder if that answers the question. It's like we know what's really outside of us, but we also have to take a look at what's inside of us, but what's structurally created too. Elizabeth McIsaac: I think I can group maybe eight or 10 of the questions that I'm seeing around leadership. What is the role of leadership? And the first piece builds a little bit off the structural. So you've spoken about the isms and we know that there is embedded systemic racism in all organizations in our culture. It's part of what we are moving to change, many of us. So that's part of the structural reality. What kind of different care should an organization offer to a racialized person who bears more of a burden of care of racialized community members? Are there specific ideas there? Farzana Doctor: First of all, there's so much information out there to educate ourselves about anybody whose social location we don't share. We need to be doing that work to understand all of that. And with the starting point of just understanding that, yes, a racialized person is going to be bearing more than someone who is white. But here's a few things to do. I would say start by listening to the person. Now, we're not listening to the person with the aim of having them educate us. We're just listening to them. And as we're listening, we need to be challenging our own biases as we're listening because we all have them. So challenging our biases about their social location, if it's different from our own or even if it's the same because we might've internalized a lot of biases. We also need to challenge our notions about burnout. So if we are still sitting in the place that, "Well, they're just not taking enough care of themselves. Or why didn't they go and access EAP?" If we're not thinking structurally, we need to keep challenging our biases. Listen to them with that structural understanding of what needs to change in their job. Also, let them know that you're listening to them with that structural understanding. Make that transparent because that'll probably make the person feel much safer. So what are some of the things that the organization could be changing in order to support this person? What needs to change in terms of workload, in terms of urgency, in terms of balancing all that they're doing at home and all that they're doing at work? What are some of the things that they might be doing that are that added work? Sometimes racialized people end up sitting on all the committees, the anti-oppression committees, and then what burden is that placing on them and how do you offset that burden in some other way? Are leaves possible? I always want to talk to people about leaves. Can they take a paid leave? We need to think about what biases do we have about leaves? When I've talked to people about when they're really burnt out and they need to take a leave. They'll often say, "Oh, this will be looked upon poorly. People will see me in a negative light if I take a medical paid leave. And it will bite me in the ass, right? So I don't want to do that." Can we start talking about leaves differently? Can we actually encourage that as one of the good options that people can take if they're nearing or in burnout already? And then we need to talk about what does the reentry look like afterwards? Has anything changed to make this better for folks? And the opposite of this is where people will just say something like mildly or moderately and judgmental and focusing on individual areas only. So you want this full conversation about what is going on here that has harmed you, essentially? Elizabeth McIsaac: So much of what you're saying comes down to being able to have an open and honest dialogue and good communication. We all know that different workplaces and individuals within workplaces will have different abilities or capacity for that openness and honesty. But in the best of all possible worlds, you work on that to allow for an honest question about a leave or what your needs are and that type of thing because that's where you can perhaps cut it off at the pass, almost deal with things before they become problematic. One of the structural issues of openness, and honesty, and hierarchy in a workplace is the board. And so one question is there's a tendency to feel that we have to tell our boards how great everything is. But are there hints about how we can express that vulnerability, potential burnout to our boards so that that level of communication can happen and that level of permission to be taken care comes from there? Farzana Doctor: Boards are made up of people. And just like we encourage boards to have anti-oppression education so that they are informed in a really good way into the work that an organization is doing, maybe they need to be informed in a good way about understanding burnout differently and understanding some of the structural reasons for burnout and the organizational responses. I really think that this is a societal problem that we have a lot of wrong ideas about burnout and self and community care. And so probably those board members do too. Maybe they have a lot of internalized capitalism bouncing around in their brains that they would really enjoy being able to loosen up around. Elizabeth McIsaac: There's a number of questions around the correlation or the intersection of income and burnout. And so there's someone asking about community nurses whose work is undervalued and the pay is not good, and they work with vulnerable high level of burnout. Others that talk about having to choose between burnout or financial stability. So how do we address that? I mean, that's a very structural issue. Farzana Doctor: That is completely structural, and that's one of those things that you say, "This is not me. This is external. This is not fair." Where my brain goes is there any room for advocacy? Is there any room to get together? Is there any room to work with unions around some of these larger workplace income based problems? But then what do you do in the meantime? What do you do while you're on a day-to-day basis just feeling so awful? So this is where I would say lean into the daily practices that you can use. Some of them can take one minute to do to reset your nervous system. These are just survival strategies while you're waiting for your advocacy efforts to bear fruit. Elizabeth McIsaac: That's great. So what should the organization be doing to deliver options and solutions? What is the responsibility, their duty in doing some of that, and what are some ideas? Farzana Doctor: I'll talk about a past workplace of mine that I shall not name. They talked a lot about, "We really value families. We really value parents who are in this workplace. We really value women." But when it came to a worker having a sick child at home, were they encouraging the person to use some kind of strategy that would benefit from them? Could they work from home? No, they weren't allowed to work from home at that time. She asked, "Could I take one of my own personal sick days? I don't get sick very often, but my kids sure do. Can I use one of my own personal sick days?" And she was told no. She had to take a vacation day. So we really need to think about what are we doing in these nitty-gritty situations. You can just survey your staff. What are some of the hardest work-life balance things that they're coping with? What about some of the people who are in the sandwich generation and who are doing unpaid caregiving work? How are you helping them to sort some of this stuff out? Do we have some outdated ideas about how long our workday is supposed to be? I was talking to someone recently who told me that he's got this really great boss. They have decided together how much work he's supposed to do, and if he can complete that work in three hours instead of eight, he gets to leave. Now, that could be a really challenging notion for a lot of workplaces, but why? Why are we still working with some really outdated ideas? So I would say it's really sit down and think about your people. What's causing them stress and what can you do to support them? Another good practice was they built in regular debriefs as a matter of practice. They would say, "Okay, we want you to try to spend at least 15 minutes a couple of times a day debriefing. We're going to build that in and consider that part of your clinical time." It's stuff like that. Elizabeth McIsaac: But it's really beginning with what is the reality of your workplace? Because as much as we can categorically say this is the not-for-profit sector, there's everything from high needs people working in the addictions field. There are others working in classrooms, there are others working in advocacy, there's others. So there's a whole range of what people are doing and the realities of what's possible are different. Many organizations have kind of gotten past that punch the clock mentality because of COVID hybrid remote work. So there's a different sensibility around timing. Other people to show up. They have to be there at 8:00 AM. They have to be there till 5:00, and they're facing people all day long. So where your points of intersection are going to be very different. Farzana Doctor: Yes. Elizabeth McIsaac: But your point is that audit thing, almost like an organizational audit. Farzana Doctor: Yes. Do your own audit. How could you ask some really meaningful questions? How could you set it up so that people will respond to you honestly? Elizabeth McIsaac: Can you give an example of that? Because I think that's really the nub. How do you get to get into it? Farzana Doctor: Let's say you're having a meeting with your staff. You might say to them, "Listen, I know burnout is a structural issue. I know it's not your personal failing. I see it on a continuum. I see it as normal. It's not a pathological thing. I see it as something that is just a risk for all of us." Start there. Now, I want to ask you some questions about how is it that we can build more community care into our team. I really want to emphasize the structural thing, so you get where I'm coming from and then give people time to answer that. They might answer that in the team meeting. They might want to send you their answers later, but give them a few examples of things that you have been thinking about so that you're on the right track. What makes it hard for you to ask for a paid leave? What makes it hard for you to take breaks? You are entitled to this amount of time of breaks, but what are you finding is getting in the way of that? What's eating into your time? What do you think we could do to take care of that? What do you think we could do all together as a team to create a nurturing environment? Dr. James Maslick who is at St. Jo's was on CBC radio last week and he talked about how they created this really lovely staff lounge that allowed people to come together and connect in a really human way. Is that one of your strategies perhaps? Is that a good place where maybe people could not just connect and calm, and debrief, but also organize, also work on some advocacy? Elizabeth McIsaac: So I think these are all such great ideas. A lot of this comes down to good communication. As you're describing it, it's about building trust and people understanding the expectations. Because the other thing is people come to a work environment sometimes with the baggage of what the expectations were in the last place. And so they may have real reservations about coming forward with what their needs are, because that didn't work the last time. Even if you are a forward-thinking or progressive or thoughtful employer around these issues, people may not come forward because they don't hear it clearly enough, or their past experience prevents them from doing that. So it's so much of what you're saying is so helpful in thinking through what the approach needs to be. We have a question about boundaries. How do you recommend organizations find their boundaries on what they can and should be doing for employees within the context of the workplace versus what's outside of their scope and more for individuals to do with their community outside of work, be that therapy, be that a daily yoga practice or meditation? How to navigate those boundaries? Farzana Doctor: Focus on your own responsibility as an employer first because you probably aren't doing enough there. I don't know if this was the emotion behind that question, but sometimes I do hear some frustration that we've tried, we've done enough, but now it's up to them. Why aren't they looking at their own stuff? And fair, because I think sometimes people don't. Fair. But I would say start on that organizational level. Start with talking the structural first. So yes, it is true. It is true that when a person finishes work and goes home and is in their own sphere, they need to figure out their own stuff. But was there enough debrief during the day for them to be able to let go of things so that they have a clear head at home? Do you have really good benefits so that they can seek therapy? How much are you actually covering? Therapy is expensive, right? So are your benefits good enough for people to do that? As an individual, I do need to focus on my own nervous system. I do need to look at what my own individual barriers are, even if they're structurally influenced or structurally created. I need to look at where do I need to place a little bit more emphasis on some boundaries? Where do I need to start learning how to talk to my friends a little bit more? Have I learned somewhere in my own childhood that I'm supposed to help everybody else but I can't ask for help? Or if I do ask for help, it's more work for me somehow. These are some very common personal barriers that people will have. So those are the places. So I would say if you feel like, "Okay, I've done everything as an organization and we have everything in place." And you have a staff person who says, "I'm really burnt out." Then maybe you talk about a leave and you say to them, "We feel like your reentry is going to be good because we have done everything. But while you're on your leave, can you think of a really great plan for yourself to maybe see if you can unpack some of the personal things too?” Elizabeth McIsaac: As I mentioned before, there's a variety of work contexts that we're talking about, and there's a couple of questions clearly from people who are working some very hard front lines of difficult human experiences. And so one question is, "Would like to hear more about supporting staff through grief and loss, mostly resulting from the drug crisis." And so some of that very traumatizing experience as part of your job. My expectation is that puts a much higher burden of support on the employer. I'm going to double barrel this with some more questions. If the employer isn't coming forward with support, how do you advocate that that's a necessary part of what's needed? First, the hard edge of grief counseling or specific interventions through the workplace. So not off you go, use your benefit and figure it out, but is there a more interventionist approach that an employer can use? Farzana Doctor: So first of all, I just want to validate. When we are encountering work where we have a high level of crisis and a high level of death, it is supposed to impact us. We do have a higher risk of burnout, and I'm going to say vicarious traumatization and compassion fatigue. Those are real. And for me, when I think to the couple of times when I experienced burnout, it was always vicarious traumatization that was intersecting with it. It was suicides that I was trying to metabolize. It was maybe a collision of things happening at once. One of the times that was really hard. It wasn't a full burnout, but it was definitely a crispy time was maybe about three months into the pandemic. Every client I was working with, every social worker I was supervising, everyone was so anxious. So super, super anxious. Our whole world was anxious, and I was anxious. We were in this kind of situation where we were just so bogged down with a lot of feelings. So I just want to say when we are in crisis moments, when our societies are in crisis moments, it's rougher. So that's the validation. What I would say is, are you building in enough time for these folks to have their debriefs together during the day so that they're not just going from client to client to client to client, emergency to emergency? Are they getting times to do a nervous system reset? Are they getting time well to eat, to drink water, to do all those basics that come in having breaks? Are they able to sit down with somebody else, a team member and say, "I need to talk about that last thing that just happened, this is what's coming up for me"? The sticky feelings technique that I use involves on a daily basis doing a little list of all of the memorable or meaningful interactions that I had. So generally, I list the list of clients, but I'll also list other things, like maybe I talked to an activist friend and we were talking about something that was really upsetting us, or I was talking to a friend who I was supporting through a breakup or something. I'll list all of those interactions. Then I'll make a list of what were the important themes of that conversation, like two words. Then I'll list what were the sticky feelings? What are the feelings that have stuck with me that I'm still thinking about that might keep me up at night tonight? So I make a list of those sticky feelings. Not all of the interactions will leave me with a sticky feeling, but I pay attention to that. There is something pretty magical that happens when I acknowledge those feelings, when I send some compassion to myself when I'm doing it in a pairs exercise with a colleague in particular. Then if it's still sticky after that, we need to then look at what was a personal trigger for us? What might be some counter-transference going on? What is the me in all of this? What's the bad memory that's becoming alive in this moment, right? So that's an example. Do you have enough time for your employees to do that is what I would ask. Elizabeth McIsaac: Wonderful. Thank you. Farzana Doctor: You're welcome.