Healing Is Not Sustainable Unless…
By Dr. Linh | Doctor of Chinese Medicine & Acupuncture, Licensed Acupuncturist, Somatic Practitioner, Hypnotherapist
Something has to change.
A quiet stirring within is asking to be listened to. Can you slow down enough to notice?
Caregivers are not as different from other professionals as we might imagine. We work hard. We give a great deal to those we care about and feel responsible for. And overtime, the responsibility can feel like a heaviness on our shoulders. We feel the pressure of what our purpose sometimes entails. We are holding others’ in their lived experiences with love, pain, suffering, memories. We hold space for life.
This experience of holding and caring for others can affect how we live. Research tells us that 60% of caregivers in various health fields reported feeling burnout (1) and that counselors-in-training experience compassion fatigue with more workloads and less support (2). Signals that our work is becoming unsustainable or needing change might look like burnout, emotional sensitivity or reactivity, secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, insomnia, general tiredness, anxiety and depression. This is a signal of a system and process that needs support.
As we look within to make changes, we must remember this is also part of a societal and cultural system that is rooted in hyper-Yang. It rewards hustle, rather than restoration. It ties value to productivity, rather than character. However, nature reminds us of what is simple and true — heavy rain does not last, just as using constant energy is not sustainable.
Without returning to intention, purpose and alignment, we as caregivers sometimes lose sight of why we started in the first place. Especially in moments of burnout and exhaustion.
Caregivers are not only healers, but it also includes nurses, doctors, therapists, acupuncturists, bodyworkers, homekeepers and professionals tending to teams and systems. Anyone who receives people in their difficult moments and guides them through with presence, care, solutions, and hope.
This sometimes becomes heavier and less sustainable to do. Due to experiences with compassion fatigue, long days without many breaks, lack of self-care and the current culture of caregiving, burnout becomes the result.
Reset is needed. Reset looks different for each of us. It might be the quiet inner stirring or a sudden realization. A sudden diagnosis, a difficult transition, or a trip that sparks something within.
Listen to the body’s natural intelligence towards reset, pause and rest. It might point towards a way that feels more exciting, joyful, purposeful and life-giving.
As caregivers, healing work cannot be sustainable unless we listen and remind ourselves of these keys that maybe we are never taught.
Knowing your sacred why
What is the honest truth in your heart about what drew you to caregiving, healing work, consulting or holding space in the way you do?
What keeps you there? What is this work moving you towards?
When practitioners are running on empty, it is a signal for discernment. An invitation to redefine and return to the root of why we started.
To ask clarifying questions to get clear behind why you do what you do. Was this a true calling from my heart? Or was it what was expected of me?
Your why is allowed to evolve. There are roots beneath the work we do. What matters is whether those roots are grounded in the soil of our own hearts, in what is genuine, aligned and life-giving.
Knowing your why and following what is true in the heart helps the work be sustainable. Aligning your life to support that is the evergrowing practice.
Self-care is a skill, most of us never were taught
A major training gap I found as I trained as a Chinese Medicine doctor, was the lack of teachings of self-care. How do we as practitioners and givers nourish ourselves, while we help others?
I was taught how to assess, diagnose, treat, and educate. We focused on clinical hours, documentation, case studies. But what about tending to ourselves?
What about preventing ourselves from becoming unhealthy? Holding energetic boundaries? Recovering from compassion fatigue? Or how to show up, even when you’re moving through difficulties?
I learned the hard way. Experiencing the energy leaks, questioning, and experimenting. Asking questions and slowly learning how to care for myself as I also hold others.
Self-care must not be an afterthought or what people receive once they get to a certain point of their work. It is a skill to be cultivated and given weight similar to knowing how to do what we do.
Tending to your body and restoration is what help makes the work sustainable.
Boundaries help maintain shape and protect what is sacred
Our body contains millions of cells. Nature shows us that a cell’s structure contains a semi-permeable membrane or boundary that allows in what nourishes it while protecting it from what would bring harm.
Boundaries help a cell sustain its life. Structure makes it possible for its inner parts to be contained. This is what boundaries do for us as caregivers.
Boundary work is simply a practice of honest refinement and discernment, allowing what is helpful and limiting what drains you.
Establishing boundaries, when done in alignment, integrity and curiosity — can be a tool to clarify, align and hold one close to their inner resources. Rather than a tool of separation, allow it to be a tool for sustaining your health like a cell does for all its parts.
You are allowed to create a way of working that feels good (and different)
Sustaining life is personal and collective. It is an innate and intimate process to do what is life-giving. You are allowed to create a way that works for you that feels good and different from the status quo. When applied to our purpose as healers and caregivers, it can be what prevents us from burnout.
What would it look like to design your practice around what actually works for you? To design your days according to your energy rhythms? Carving out days for restoration, just as much as you dedicate time to support others?
What about curating a space or conditions where you feel most supported and supportive? What would it look like to prioritize days for you to restore, rest and pause, so you can arrive back to your purpose differently?
Sit with what feels like congruency between your schedule, purpose and heart. Designing what feels good for you is a key for sustaining practice.
You do not have to stay stuck in what you have always known
An inner stirring is a signal that change is natural and constant.
That is powerful medicine to remember to be flexible like water. Not to stay stuck on what you’ve always known or what society has told us to be.
Old patterns often run deep. Habits, beliefs and ways of being are influenced and shaped by training, culture, society and what was modeled for us. Value tied to productivity, rest as laziness or fear of slowing down prevent us from taking time to pause and reassess of how we are and if the path we walk is aligned.
Patterns can shift. What is learned can be rewritten. After a forest fire, seeds sprout. A way that feels supportive and sustainable for you, is regenerative for you and your purpose. You are allowed to practice in a way that sustains you.
Like the changing seasons, it first starts with listening to that inner stirring within.
Thank you for reading. I’m inviting you to…
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If you're ready to learn more or experience somatic work rooted in Chinese medicine, I'd love to support you. My practice integrates Chinese medicine, somatic principles, and hypnotherapy in a whole-person approach that meets you exactly where you are.
Dr. Linh is a Doctor of Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture, licensed acupuncturist, hypnotherapist, and somatic practitioner. She works with women navigating psychosomatic health conditions, anxiety, burnout, and stress through a nervous system-informed, slow, gentle and nature centered approach.
