Written by: Jen Barnes, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Whatever name you give to the exhaustion, disconnectedness, and feelings of being “so done”, waiting for the healthcare system to change isn’t the best way for you to feel better. In fact, putting the problem outside of yourself just adds to the sense of powerlessness you feel.
I get it. The healthcare system is broken. Nurses and other healthcare professionals bear the burden of it every day at work; our anger and frustration are valid. I feel it too. This is not our fault.
And, if you want to feel better, you are the only one who can make that happen.
Waiting for the broken healthcare system to change is like a combat veteran with PTSD waiting for the Army to change so he can feel better. It just keeps them from ever really healing.
And, if you keep waiting for the system to change until you feel better, you could continue to feel awful for months or even years.
So what do resilient people do? They choose to take charge of their own well-being regardless of their circumstances. Take Viktor Frankl for example. He was an Austrian, Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist who not only survived Auschwitz but found a way through it that helped him enjoy life post-Holocaust.
How did he do this?
He found meaning and purpose in his day-to-day interactions while imprisoned in Auschwitz. It turns out, that when there is a stressor outside of our control, one of two effective strategies we can use is Positive Reappraisal. This is what Viktor Frankl did.
Positive Reappraisal is a form of meaning-based coping through which stressful events are reframed as benign, valuable, or beneficial in some way.
This doesn’t have to mean we are excited, happy, or falsely positive about the tough stuff that happens. Instead, it means that when we’re done sitting in the suck of our experience, we can choose to look at what’s happening or happened differently.
For smaller things like being stuck in traffic, this could mean reframing it as an opportunity to listen to our favorite podcast or radio station or perhaps even calling a friend (hands-free of course). It could even be a time to engage in a simple breathing practice.
Why does this work? Well, when you’re stuck in traffic you’re not going anywhere anyway so you can sit there and feel anxious and upset or you can accept that since you have to sit there anyway, you may as well enjoy the free time.
For bigger things like the death of a loved one or dealing with the broken healthcare system this may be a practice to work on over time once you’re ready. When my mom died in 2019, I knew this practice was available to me but for the first four or five months, my brain was like “NO WAY!!!! There are absolutely ZERO benefits to her death.” And of course, I felt that way! Yet, as I actively mourned and worked through my feelings, I became more open to the possibility that I was learning and growing from the situation.
I started to notice how smaller things weren’t bothering me as much as they used to ‒ I mean, does it really matter if someone cuts me off in traffic compared to the fact that my mom is dead? While the former is annoying and it’s valid to feel irritated, I just didn’t see a need to spend much energy on that anymore.
Further, I started to notice how I was better able to support my clients and others in their experiences of grief and loss. Sure, I’d rather have my mom back than be good at grief work. But since that isn’t an option, it feels good to be able to support others in this new way.
So how does this work for you?
What are you learning through this process?
How are you growing?
Where would you rather spend your time and energy instead of raging at a system that doesn’t care that you’re mad at it?
Do you still want to keep focusing on the system that you can’t change (at least not quickly or on your own)? Or are you ready to shift your focus to what is within your control so you can feel better faster?
If you’re ready to make a change and start feeling the best you've likely felt in years, then click the link below to join the Priority Notification List for my in-depth program The Resilient Nurse™ showing you exactly how to recover from burnout and build resilience, step by step, so you can feel better in your body, take back your life, and maybe even enjoy nursing again!
The underlying focus throughout will be how to get yourself to follow through on using the tools and doing the things you know you need, including a special section dedicated to learning a super effective process for getting yourself to do stuff. Click the link below and I will see you there!
Jen Barnes, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Jen Barnes is a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker in private practice in Minneapolis, MN. She specializes in complex trauma, PTSD, stress, and grief. The daughter and sister of nurses she has a passion for empowering nurses to build resilience. She has worked with nurses 1:1 hoping to expand her reaching to a broader audience. In 2021 she completed the Dare to Lead certificate program in order to more effectively address organizational challenges in healthcare. Most recently she spoke at the American Association of Critical Care Nurses’s 2022 NTI conference on Building Resilience in Nursing.
