I hate feeling like I don’t know what I’m doing

When I first started doing compassion fatigue education I’d get super stressed when people cried or got angry during one of my workshops. 

It’s not that I didn’t understand. The work makes me furious and weepy too. 

But I didn’t know how to handle the group dynamics when things got intense. 

When things got salty, I wasn’t confident that I had the technical or emotional skills needed to support them (or myself).

So, I started to dread doing in-person workshops. 

Not because I hated being in the same room as other humans, but because I hated feeling like I didn’t know what I was doing if things got weird. 

Now when someone interrupts me to say “I’m sorry, but I call bullshit” I feel a little excited. 

Oh, a plot twist! 

These days complexity feels interesting instead of intimidating. 

What changed? I’m just more competent than I used to be. 

I’ve done intensive training on holding space for other people’s big feelings and grief. 

I’ve done a lot of work on my nervous system, so I know how to regulate my stress response (which always gets activated by human shenanigans). 

I make plans, pre-workshop so that if ___ happens, I’ll do ____.

That doesn’t mean I get it right all the time.  And I still don’t know what I’m doing sometimes. 

But now, instead of feeling overwhelmed when things go sideways in workshops, I feel moderately stressed (the healthy kind that helps me deal with challenges). 

And that's where the inspiration for our next book highlight comes from...

This month we have an excerpt from Reducing Secondary Traumatic Stress: Skills for Sustaining a Career in the Helping Professions by Brian C. Miller. 

“Your role requires you to manage your emotions under intense circumstances and that is hard work. That is why it is all-important that we learn strategies to reduce the amount of emotional labor that our job will require….

The sensation of being overwhelmed…is one of the sources of secondary traumatic stress. When we feel overwhelmed this doesn't help motivate us towards positive action. It is, rather, a freeze response - the most injurious of the stress responses. 

Therefore, when we are overwhelmed we are in the paradox of experiencing high emotional labor (the accelerator is pushed to the max) but we are not engaged in productive effort (the engine is disengaged). 

Of particular focus are two circumstances that are extremely high in emotional labor:

1. When we are overwhelmed by the complexity or unfamiliarity of a task or client situation. “Wow, I don't even know where to start” or “I don't know what to do or say or what decision to make”.
2.  When we are overwhelmed by the amount of work that we must do each day. “No matter how hard I work I just can't get it all done.”

Feeling ineffective is high in emotional labor…Effectiveness is experiencing a sense that you’re mastering the circumstances before you. Conceptually it's very simple. Doing something that you have mastered takes very little effort (emotional labor). 

But being in charge of a task that you don't know how to successfully complete is very difficult and therefore high in emotional labor. And even more so if the “task” is a life-and-death situation with the client.

With any task that you hate, it is worth considering what portion of that task aversion is attributable to a lack of mastery. You hate it because you hate the feeling of not knowing what to do…

It is hard to hate something that you have mastered. Even if it's something you will never truly enjoy, completing that task becomes less effortful because - if you have mastered it - you are now doing it in the most efficient manner. And, if nothing else, you are spending less time on it…

Mastery of the job’s craft [includes] knowing how to intervene in a case, but also a sense of mastery [might come from] our ability to manage our emotions…

“I can't fix this. But I'm willing to remain present for the person who's suffering.” 

“I can't make this go away for him/her. But I know how to express my empathy for them and that is important…”

…Being overwhelmed by workload requires a very particular type of equanimity to resolve. 

It begins with a truism: you work in a role that will never be completely finished. 

Most days you don't go home because you did everything. You leave because it’s time; you leave because you saw the last scheduled client. But not because you accomplished everything you could possibly accomplish.

You won't naturally have the feeling that you are done. Rather you will - and you have - set personal limits. 

Equanimity refers to the ability to remain calm in the midst of difficulty…the ability to find ease in situations that others might find effortful. One of the greatest challenges for most of us in many work settings is resolving the difference between our personal limits and organizational expectations.

The first step to identify the difference: Is this sense of being overwhelmed by your workload because you're trying to do too much? Or is that stress coming from the supervisory/organizational requirement for a workload that is higher than you are emotionally or physically equipped to tolerate?

It is critical that you make explicit your personal limits. 

Is your perfectionism or unrealistic need to save the world the reason you are operating beyond your personal limits? All just organizations will accept workloads that are reasonable to accomplish.

It may be up to you to declare the zone between your comfort and your mission orientation. Not less, and not more. If this is not an acceptable workload to your organization, then your decision to remain equates with the decision to accept this level of overwhelm.”

This passage is helpful because it reminds us that when we feel competent we are more resilient in ongoing stressful work environments.

This is important because let’s be honest, we often throw our workers into the deep end with minimal training and support. 

We ask people to do lots of tasks that also require managing emotions, such as de-escalating an angry customer, comforting a grieving client, or making a tough euthanasia decision.

If you believe you have the technical and emotional skills to handle that challenge you will be less stressed by it.

Take a moment to think about this: 

• What tasks do you hate to do? 
• Do you 100% hate the task or do you hate the feeling that you don’t know what you’re doing?
• What training do you (or your team) need so you can feel confident in your ability to handle these tasks?

Competency doesn’t mean you’ll never feel upset or stressed while doing hard things. 

But if you feel like you know what you’re doing and have what you need to address the challenge, you won’t feel overwhelmed. You will feel more in control. 

Finally, there’s an important nod in that passage to the fact that we will never feel like we’re doing enough because this work is never “done.”
 
Feeling like we’ve done “enough” is an inside job. Want more on that idea? Check out this blog post on the concept of enough.