Clinician Stress During the Pandemic and it’s Recovery

In the general news, therapist stress is being recognized as a challenge in their availability to serve clients. This is certainly true, the stresses on clinicians are real and even more-so as the pandemic unfolds and we move into recovery. Clinicians are on the front lines of emotional processing through this event and we are showing up without hazmat suits or the public’s awareness that we are taking emotional, if not physical, risks to do so. It’s great that this article is highlighting these challenges to the general public. I do wish they would have also highlighted that we know how to take care of ourselves too and are here to do our work; this is a better balanced article which highlights our our transparency and responses to our own stresses can be a role model to our clients and each other. We know how to self care, reduce our stress, reach out to one another to ground our experience through confirmation.

We also know how to integrate our stressors to make us stronger. Early in the pandemic, being a routine meditator, I was breathing into a deeper grounded way of being and realized that the pandemic was a crisis of breathing. This realization made each breath more and more precious, not to be taken for granted but cherished as a lifegiving exchange with the world around me. In meditation, we practice this realization but during this time, the realization deepened and sweetened in a way I had not experienced until then. In working with my clients and supervisees, I drew our attention to how these challenging times can be a doorway into a level of appreciation not experienced until now, each breath being an act of courage, gratefulness, and experience that life is both delicate and tenacious.