When Burnout Comes, Whose Fault Is It?

Are treatment centers letting down their recovering professionals or are the professionals letting themselves down?

This is a question I've asked myself many times as I've watched treatment professionals give their all to their clients and their treatment centers. Of course, one of the basic tenets of recovery from substance abuse is self care, but of course, with many treatment centers operating on a shoestring and many recovering professionals determined to help as many addicts as possible while making up for lost time in their careers and their lives, self care often falls to the wayside.

In its place comes:

• long hours
• double shifts
• overnight hours
• clients in crisis
• understaffing

which often leads to less time for the basics: meetings, meditation, phone calls, sponsoring, being sponsored. Soon, for some in the recovery field, running groups and helping clients replaces attending meetings and sponsoring, let alone having a sponsor or a strong spiritual relationship to fill the recovering treatment professional up after a particularly difficult day in the field.

This replacement of the steps and program with the treatment center and work happens gradually and insidiously. After all, you still get to tell your story. You still get to help people. You're still connected to the program and the steps, aren't you?

Yes, but somehow, it is not the same.

The missing pieces leave a gap almost unbridgeable that can eventually lead to switching addictions and eventually relapse if not brought to the surface, faced and corrected. What might those gaps be? The same as they are for anyone who is letting their program slide over time, such as a lack of...

a daily 10th step and a sponsor to share it with

• a daily routine of prayer and meditation
• time to relax, unwind, enjoy family and friends
• regular attendance at meetings without the clients
• continued attention to the issues that presented at the beginning of your recovery journey or along the way that have not yet been resolved or that need continued treatment, therapy or medication

So how and why does this happen?

Remember hearing, early in recovery, that one day things would be going so well you wouldn't know how to fit it all in? Most of us do.

And, years later, that becomes true. Recovery brings a sense of normalcy to life that is a blessing. But just as the Big Book of AA points out: "We are neither cocky nor are we afraid That is how we react, so long as we stay in fit spiritual condition." (page. 85)

And it is easy for people who work in the treatment world to think that the work they are doing is enough to keep them in "fit spiritual condition." But for many, it is not. Recovery, plain and simple, is an inside job. Without taking care of our inner selves through the tools of the program and whatever tools we need to employ from the medical and spiritual traditions that got us sober in the first place, we will soon be empty and searching for a fill up so we can keep on giving as much as we have to give in the treatment world.

So, whose fault is this?

There are those who say, it's totally the addict's responsibility to get and stay sober. A treatment center is just another place of employment. It is not responsible to take special care of its recovering employees.

Perhaps that is true, but wouldn't it make sense to have percs in place to make it easier for people in recovery to stay clean and sober...such as:

• 12 steps on sight for staff members only (including but not limited to AA, NA, OA, CODA, Alanon, and Naranon)
• professional development for recovering staff members that will expand their inner growth
• staff workshops on how to avoid codependency in relationships with clients
• meditation trainings and workshops
• life purpose trainings and workshops
• counselors and/or recovery coaches on staff for the staff to talk to and get help with as they travel their own recovery journey?

Offering opportunities for staff to grow in their own recovery at work can only help the quality of help they are giving to the clients - to say nothing of helping professionals in recovery to grow and flourish!

Another option is to have an organization in the community like the one recovering doctors have, Physicians in Recovery Network. This organization helps doctors who have a relapse or whose addiction gets uncovered during their professional years, get help.

It could be called Treatment Professionals in Recovery Network, be funded by the treatment world or by NAADC another professional organization for treatment professionals or through grant funding. What would it take to put a program like that in place so that when recovering drug addicts or alcoholics give their all so that others might get clean, their all doesn't completely deplete them.

Recovery coaching is a new field that can offer much to the seasoned recovering person's life. Whether looking for renewal in recovery or setting off to find one's life purpose, a recovery coach's job is to help the client (in this case the recovering professional), figure out where they want their life to go from where they are now and to help them work through the blocks holding them back.

Burnout doesn't have to happen to treatment professionals in recovery or anyone in any job in recovery or not! The key is to know, from your deepest core, why you are on this planet at this time, what you came to contribute, and how to move forward to make it happen in the best way possible!

Treatment centers can go a long way to ensuring that their recovering staff members stay clean and sober by making recovery coaching available to them! Here are a few ways to do so:

1. Have a recovery coach on staff who is available to work with staff
2. Contract out with recovery coaches (particularly those who specialize in working with long-term recovery clients)
3. Provide workshops for staff on topics like:

• How to Find Your Life Purpose as a Recovering Person
• Career Growth in Recovery
• Work-life Balance for the Recovering Person
• Step 11 Revisited: Advanced Meditation

To learn more about how to renew yourself and how to help keep treatment professionals in recovery from burning out, keep reading this blog! And feel free to sign up as a follower.

To take our survey on whether life purpose coaching is for you at this point in your recovery or if this is not the best time, go to http://www.recoverycoachbev.blogspot.com/

Just another thought on another day from -


Recovery Coach Bev
www.theempowermentcoach.net/lifepurposeinrecovery.html



Have a lovely day!