Dr. Broder will be leading our upcoming CBT Strategies for Work-Life Balance webinar on June 10, 2022, providing evidence-based guidance to fellow mental health professionals for self-reflection and to increase well-being for better work-life balance.
For mental health practitioners, treating clients during a pandemic while trying to maintain our own mental health has been a novel challenge. Challenges that preceded the pandemic such as heavy workloads, distressed clients, and unpredictable events have only been exacerbated by COVID-19. Now maintaining a work-life balance is especially hard, and we can end up feeling overwhelmed or anxious.
The irony is that we mental health professionals are often very good at helping our clients achieve a good balance, but we do not necessarily practice what we teach. In addition to reducing stress, we can aspire to promote and maintain well-being. And, by recognizing and modifying our own unhelpful thinking, we can focus on taking valued action and increasing self-care.
Self-care is imperative to being your best self and ethically imperative for mental health professionals. We need to take care of ourselves first so we can properly care for others. Some suggestions for self-care include reconnecting with your community, creating meaningful connections with friends and family, spending time outside, exercising, and doing acts of kindness. Another avenue is using your values as a guide for your actions. For example, if you value creativity, consider scheduling some artistic endeavors. If you value orderliness, take the time to organize your space.
If you are experiencing stress or find yourself worrying excessively, it might help to distinguish between productive and unproductive worry. Productive worry is reasonable and rational. You identify a specific problem, think through potential solutions, and take action. On the other hand, unproductive worry leads to spinning your wheels, often about a future problem over which you do not have control; you obsess over the problem, trying to find the perfect solution, but not taking action.
If you find you are engaging in unproductive worry, the following coping strategies used in CBT can help you manage your anxiety.
Create an image of yourself in the future.
Picture yourself over the course of a typical day a few years from now. Where would you like to see yourself waking up? How do you want to be feeling? If you’re feeling that way, what are you thinking? What do you want to see yourself doing next? Next? Next? Continue this image until you see yourself falling asleep that night. Make sure your actions in the image reflect what is important to you, how you want your life to be, and how you yourself want to be. Doing this exercise can help you see that the problems and stresses you are experiencing right now may be temporary and that you may be able to fashion your life in the direction you want to go.
Build your confidence that you can handle problems, either by yourself or with the help of others.
Do skills training, if needed, to enhance your problem-solving abilities or other competencies.
Change how you think about uncertainty.
Uncertainty does not necessarily bode a negative outcome. We often imagine problems with a low likelihood of occurrence. And you often cannot prevent a problem, nor solve a problem until it happens, if it happens at all.
Notice when you are engaging in catastrophic thinking.
Ask yourself if the worst happens, how can you cope? What could you do? Then also consider the best outcome and the most realistic outcome. Most people go to the worst-case scenario and do not consider other possibilities.
Take a break from the news.
Turn off news notifications for a day or two or even longer. Or maybe take a break from the news altogether. Ask someone to let you know if something especially important happens.
Practice mindfulness.
Try an app to help you disengage from your thoughts, accept them without judgement, and shift your attention to the present moment.
Reflect on what is under your control.
Understand that you cannot control the outcome of all situations, but you can control your response.
The work you are doing is so important. Beck Institute is proud to support mental health clinicians with training, resources, and community.