As therapists, we dedicate our lives to supporting others through their challenges, but what happens when the weight of this responsibility becomes too much for us to bear?
The truth is, the very nature of working as a therapist can lead to high stress levels, burnout, and compassion fatigue if we’re not careful. We must employ therapist self-care measures to safeguard our well-being, ensuring we can continue to provide the best care for our clients and enjoy a balanced, healthy life.
How to Feel Less Stressed as a Therapist
1. Reduce Your Stress Load
The daily grind of therapy sessions and managing your own business as a psychotherapist, coupled with the emotional toll of empathizing with clients and feeling like there just isn´t enough of you to go around, can accumulate into a significant stress load. Without effective stress management, this can lead to chronic stress, impacting your mental and physical health.
We know that you know this stuff. You´ve been around the block. You urge your clients to take better care of themselves because you know the holistic implications of stress. You help them have better boundaries and you directly or indirectly coach them about stress reduction. But, how well am I practicing my own advice?
If you are feeling like your stress load as a therapist is too heavy but you´re not currently taking actions to reduce it, it may help to remind yourself of the harm that chronic stress can have on your body, and mind.
10 Dangers of Therapist Chronic Stress
- Anxiety: Prolonged stress can lead to heightened anxiety, affecting mental well-being and daily functioning inside an outside your clinical private practice.
- Depression: Chronic stress is a significant factor in the development of depression, impacting mood and overall sense of wellbeing, which can have a direct affect on your relationships with clients in addition to your family, friends, and colleagues.
- Digestive Problems: Stress can disrupt the digestive system, leading to issues like stomach aches, diarrhea, and constipation.
- Headaches: Frequent stress can trigger or exacerbate tension headaches and migraines.
- Muscle Tension and Pain: Chronic stress often causes muscle tension, leading to pain and discomfort in various parts of the body.
- Cardiovascular Problems: Long-term stress can contribute to heart disease, hypertension, and other cardiovascular issues. As heart disease is the leading cause of premature death among women in the United States, and many of our course participants are women, we are especially concerned about your heart health and longevity.
- Weight Fluctuations: Stress often has a direct affect on eating habits and metabolism, leading to unintentional weight gain or loss.
- Sleep Disturbances: Chronic stress often disrupts sleep patterns, leading to insomnia or poor-quality sleep. This creates a vicious cycle of increased stress and poor quality sleep that can be difficult to remedy.
- Immune System Suppression: Prolonged stress can weaken the immune system, making the body more susceptible to infections and illnesses, also making recovery from illness a longer process and harder-won.
- Increased Risk of Chronic Diseases: Chronic stress has been linked to the development of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and autoimmune disorders due to its role in promoting inflammation.
The kind of therapist chronic stress that poses significant risks to both physical and mental health can often go unrecognized as it creeps in and builds over time. We haven´t discovered how to avoid stress as a psychotherapist – our work loads are heavy, the content we are dealing with can be intense and provoking, and we feel a lot of pressure to be effective because our clients (some of them in life or death situations) are depending on us. This emphasizes the importance of effective stress management strategies for all therapists.
2. Prevent Therapist Burnout
Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress. It can lead to feelings of cynicism, detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness. Regular self-care helps prevent burnout by allowing us to recharge and refocus, ensuring we stay passionate and committed to our work. Check out the list below of popular therapist self-care to manage stress.
3. Reduce Therapist Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue, often described as the cost of caring, can result from the constant demand to empathize with clients’ suffering. It can lead to decreased enjoyment in our work and a diminished ability to empathize. Self-care practices help us maintain a healthy balance between empathy and detachment, preserving our capacity for compassion.
Self-care provides us many benefits in our personal and professional lives. When we take care of ourselves, we’re not only better equipped to handle the demands of our profession, but we also improve our personal relationships, take time to enjoy ourselves outside of our practice, and live with a stronger sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. We become more present and engaged with our loved ones, experience greater job satisfaction, and enjoy a healthier lifestyle.
5 – 7 Ways to Reduce Stress as a Psychotherapist
- Establish Boundaries: Set clear boundaries between work and personal life. This might mean turning off work emails and calls after hours or setting aside specific times for documentation. It is very important that we establish clear boundaries with our clients so that we can best serve them for the long-term.
- Practice Mindfulness: Incorporate mindfulness techniques such as meditation or deep breathing exercises into your daily routine (not just in the moments when you are feeling stress overwhelm). These practices can help you stay grounded and present, both in and out of therapy sessions, and make it easier to sense when you are starting to feel overwhelmed so that you can take remedial measures earlier – before it you burn out.
- Engage in Physical Activity: Regular exercise is a powerful stress reliever. The best exercise of stress reduction and overall health is lower-intensity zone 2 exercise. Whether it’s a brisk walk, yoga, or a low-intensity gym session, find an activity that you enjoy and make it a part of your routine.
- Seek Supervision and Peer Support: Regular supervision and peer support groups provide a space to process difficult cases, share experiences, and receive guidance, reducing feelings of isolation and overwhelm. This is one of the reasons we started our new Trauma Wisdom Circle, to give our trauma therapy training students more access to support on a regular basis.
- Prioritize Self-Compassion: Be kind to yourself. Acknowledge the challenges of your profession and recognize that it’s okay to feel overwhelmed at times, and it is okay to feel your own limits when it comes to helping your clients. Practice self-compassion as diligently as you would treat your clients with compassion, and as fervently as you wish they would practice self-compassion with themselves.
- Schedule Regular Breaks: During your clinical practice workday, take short breaks between sessions to decompress. Use this time to step outside, practice breathing exercises, journal (other than client notes) or simply sit quietly and no absolutely nothing.
We think you’d enjoy incorporating a few easy somatic practices into your breaks. If you have a few minutes now, watch this free short video session with our resident yoga therapist De West, or simply register and you´ll get a reminder in your email to watch it later: Self-Care for Therapists, What To Do Between Sessions
- Keep Your Hobbies and Interests Alive: Pursue activities outside of work that bring you joy and fulfillment. Whether it’s painting, reading, or gardening, engaging in hobbies and activities with no other goal than enjoying them can be a great way to unwind and express yourself creatively.
In conclusion, as therapists, we must remember that taking care of ourselves is not a luxury, but a necessity. Most therapist feels stressed on a regular basis. By prioritizing our well-being through self-care, we not only enhance our personal lives but also ensure that we can continue to provide the highest quality of care to the clients who rely on us. Let’s embrace self-care for therapists as a vital component of our professional practice.
