Nurses! Have you ever been told to "Just Relax"?

Nurse burnout is treatable through counseling, yet despite experiencing toxicity, we tend to feel as though we are able to "fix" ourselves. Stop this madness! Find joy, balance and boundaries by cycling back to determine what led you to want to heal others. Nurses Announcements Archive Article

Nurses! Have you ever been told to "Just Relax"?

Alrighty then nurse person, so you cry on your way to work, fantasize about moving to a mountain top with a shaved head while cradling a book titled "How to Obtain Enlightenment in Three Days", and are enjoying your 5th diagnosed bladder infection in the last 6 months. Despite being an avid believer in probiotics you realize if you eat one more lousy spoonful of yogurt you will quite simply toss cookies, so just the idea of slathering this refrigerated dairy food complete with fruit chunks onto your urethra is actually enjoyable at this point. Enter reality. As you take your morning report and begin your rounds, one of your patients replies to your luke warm "good morning" by threatening to choke you if you don't medicate them for their pain. 7:34 AM, but look at the bright side. You only have 11 and half hours to go.

You aren't sure how to accurately describe the zone you just entered, but for some reason, thanks to some form of grace, you are in your car, ready to escape the madness. The minutes turned into hours, the hours melted into some sort of inexplicable space in time. The blisters on your heels are oozing and raw. As always, there is a nagging sense that you forgot to report something, or that something will go wrong as a result of something that you did or didn't do. You fleetingly consider returning to the unit to make sure that you dotted "T's and crossed your "I's. (Yes, I realize that this was reversed, but you are delirious). There is a quickening in your chest as you struggle with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. You limp aimlessly toward your vehicle. You'd haul *** if you could.

You manage to start the ignition of your car and peel off your shoes and socks that tell the story of the angst and pain that you have witnessed and endured. Hell, if you have breasts your bra may have already been winged into your back seat. As you operate your motor vehicle, the trees that pass you by turn into looming shadows which tell stories of the promise of darkness. For some creepy reason, you find comfort in that. A song comes on the radio that eventually becomes a part of a dream which you will never remember. In your driveway you realize that you do not recall the drive home.

A probably well meaning yet horribly ignorant family member tells you how lousy you look and possibly asks you what's for dinner. Your forehead becomes intimately close with your kitchen counter, and you may even at this point wonder how many bashings it would take in order for you to lose consciousness and at the same time, you cannot possibly endure any more pain. As you weep, the good intentioned sap has an epiphany. The words uttered out of their mouth actually sound something like this:

"Just relax"!

Your exhausted mind bends and twists in an attempt to comprehend. Did this person just tell me to...relax?

Oh, ok.

How on earth can a professional healthcare provider such as a nurse just relax? What that statement actually indicated was that the well meaning idiot cannot deal with how your stress affects them, or is simply at a loss to fully comprehend exactly what it is that a nurse endures during a work shift. Join the club you think, because neither can you. I mean, it's not that you haven't dabbled in aromatherapy, enjoyed some retail therapy or possibly enjoyed a cocktail or ten with your comrades. Did those actions create a period of time when you felt relaxed? Possibly. Yet they were all temporary escapes.

These things are simply fugacious bleeps in time. Look at the trends. They are all extrinsically obtained environmental actions. You may as well have put a Dora the Explorer bandage on a cavernous, extravagating abdominal wound. A 0.009 cc of the blood will be absorbed into Dora, yet the goal is to stop the bleeding. Even more imperative is to determine the cause of the bleeding in the first place.

Nurse focused, integrated transpersonal counseling creates an environment where you will cycle back intrinsically to determine root causes for your authentically personal energetic attraction to healing others. By coming to terms with, and embracing these issues, you will cycle forward with fresh perspectives, learn healthy boundaries and enjoy your profession again. You will heal yourself and others from a place of compassion and despite non-compassionate healthcare work environments, learn how to achieve an incredible work-personal life balance and get that bounce back in your step.

It is imperative that we raise awareness and demolish the stigma that the individual nurse as well as the collective consciousness of the nursing profession largely subscribes to, which is that nurses do not need counseling. This is highly detrimental, however completely reasonable in the manner in which this notion is derived, as the very definition of nursing includes being an expert in the diagnosis of the human response to various conditions. After all, we are fixers of humans. We ourselves are human. Therefore we can fix ourselves.

Guess what my friends? This simply cannot be accomplished independently. If you realize that you are apathetic or experiencing anxiety and dread when you even think about going to work, you need to be carefully and professionally guided back to your authentic joy.

Care to be contagious? What you learn about yourself will be magnetic, and those fortunate enough to be in your company will respond in kind.

Nurse your spirit, because peaceful and cohesive healers create a peaceful and cohesive planet.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Doc Lori, R.N.

About Doc Lori, R.N.

Private practice and consulting. A healer at heart and in spirit.

1 Article   135 Posts

Share this post

The only votes available for this article are "excellent," "good" and "average." That's a shame, as it's none of those. It sounds like an advertisement to me.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ER.

It may be an ad, but still rings true.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Dialysis,M/S,Home Care,LTC, Admin,Rehab.

I appreciate your comments. To clarify TakeOne, This article was written to raise awareness-- in an attempt to obliterate the stigma that nurses do not need counseling, that the stress and toxicity come along with the job, and to create a discussion. I hope it continues to do so.

If even one nurse in your work environment addresses their core rationales for burnout, they will be contagious. I feel as though we may not be able to affect change in the healthcare conglomerate, yet we can alter the perceptions of ourselves and how we respond to negativities tossed our way, therefore, the perceptions of our environments. So one peaceful and cohesive nurse creates another peaceful and cohesive nurse which causes happy and healing patients and so on and so on.

As far as this being an "ad" goes, I am well within Allnurses terms and conditions, which has strict rules about advertising. This work was reviewed by the Allnurses team, and approved. At the end of the article, there was an opportunity to write a brief bio, which I did.

I wonder what caused you to want to rate this article negatively, TakeOne? Is it the fact that you perceive this work to read like an ad, or is it that the content caused you to think about the context in a different manner than you normally would?

Have a great day everyone!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Oncology&Homecare.

When I was a new nurse, I was sitting in the nurse's lounge listening to my colleagues converse on a number of topics from family to work assignments. It hit me like lightening that we all shared common threads of dysfunction. I then sought counseling with someone who worked exclusively with health care providers. It was helpful, to say the least, and I would like to think that it enhanced my ability to cope with the stresses of the job. Counseling, or seeking help, carries an unfortunate stigma. Nursing has unique challenges that sap us physically and emotionally. Counseling or support groups should be encouraged not only to enhance our job performance but to help us find joy and fulfillment in all that we endeavor to do. Help, in whatever form you chose to take it, should not be considered a dirty word.:twocents:

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Dialysis,M/S,Home Care,LTC, Admin,Rehab.

You got that right, Cherryames. It is within our expertise according to the very definition of nursing,according to the ANA that we diagnose a human's response to various circumstances and conditions (paraphrased). I believe that this creates the toxic stigma. I think that you truly tapped into your higher Self/intuition on the day you were hit by lightning! Yay!

Additionally, I honestly believe that we are energetically attracted to healing in order to heal ourselves on some level. Granted, there are those of us who are either not ready to embrace this, or simply do not fall into this "category", if you will.

From a professional viewpoint, I am concerned, but not shocked when I encounter professionals who like to *****, moan and complain and simply blame the system for all of our problems. Offer or suggest help, and whammo...the dukes are up! "If I fix myself there will be nothing left for me to complain about, and heck, then I will have to be responsible for my emotions and corresponding behaviors. Counseling for nurses? Nooo thanks"!

While we may not be able to improve the profession of nursing, we can through counseling adjust our perspectives of it and by doing so, experience...Joy (what a concept) ahahaa

Much continued success to you!

Happy Healing! :)

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Nursing Eduator.

I found the article (not advertisement) enjoyable, funny and very true! I am a relatively new nurse; I have 2 years of experience. The one absolute truth IS indeed, that nurses of all professions and years go through nursing burnout. I have classmates that are experiencing it and I too have, that is until I took a step back and realized what and why I became a nurse. We get the distinct pleasure of helping people heal at their most desperate and needed times in their lives...To me, that is an honor and a privilege. Up until about 3 months ago, I never truly looked at nursing this way. I had to do some deep soul searching to find what things I needed to work on and what things were continuously making me CRAZY, STRESSED and NEGATIVE all of the time.....So, I chose to work in another hospital to "Find" my way and myself again. So, far this is working. But, what I have realized in all of this deep and dramatic soul searching quest is that negativity and optimism can both be very contagious...Happy people generally work around other happy people...It doesn’t take but one rotten apple to spoil the whole bunch so to speak. Attitude is EVERYTHING in life...It is the one thing we DO have control over!

In the words of Charles Swindoll ”…. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it." There is a lot of truth in this..... and if things seem to get to that stressful and burnout point again, I certainly am not against seeking counseling at any point! Nursing IS stressful but also very rewarding.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Nursing burnout retreat CE teacher, etc..

Don't rock the boat...is a common thread for many nurses and nursing work environments. Management says they want to have input to make the nursing environment better (what they really want is more productivity for less paid hours on the clock.) And nurses don't want other fellow nurses stirring up the dust too much by sharing their frustrations. Just get through the day, do your job (perfectly) and don't tell me about what you think needs to be fixed or changed.

I have been researching burnout for years, both from an experiential perspective (40 years as a nurse) and from a holistic "healing" perspective. To realize the complicity between both nurses and the job situations themselves, is a multi-faceted discussion. How do you talk about burnout with anyone--other nurses, family or friends--without it becoming just a gripe session or getting suggestions like this article's title says to "just relax"?

There is a fundamental core issue that relates to nursing burnout and to our so-called health care crises....that is that we are not becoming healthier or "getting well." We need to send ourselves, as nurses, an authentic Get Well card. We can change the nursing profession. And I know for sure that there are nurses who realize this, envision this and long for it to happen.

This author is one of these nurses. She offers her insights and tells us that we can change our mindset about how we approach our difficult and sorely needed jobs as nurses. She has discovered a process for transforming nursing burnout, born out her own personal experiences as a nurse who cares.

I have looked at her offerings and found that we share common views on how to help nurses with burnout. It gives me hope to find such a kindred spirit. And I know there are many more of us out there, and I hope some of you will post your perspectives here. Burnout is becoming a cliche, and we are supposed to couch it in different words like compassion fatigue, almost in a kind of denial that it is still happening. Nurses are not supposed to burn out, they have been trained to be professionals who get the job done. And now, with the economic times so unnerving for many people, nurses are feeling even more stuck in jobs that they fear they cannot leave or "rock the boat" in any way.

It is a documented fact that burned out, stressed out and overwhelmed nurses contribute to a less than helpful, and sometimes out right dangerous, health care environment for patients. Nursing burnout affects us all, whether we are immersed in it or not.

We need to welcome all the voices talking about it.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

What jumped out at me from this article was the importance of comfortable shoes - surely that would help. Self-care!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Dialysis,M/S,Home Care,LTC, Admin,Rehab.
:yeah: ginnymerc! ahahaa!
Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Med Surg, Parish Nurse, Hospice.

I could have written the first few paragraphs of this article about my self a year and a half ago. Prior to that, I too had been told by my MD to just relax. I finally realized when I was crying at work every day that I could no longer " care on demand". Seek whatever help is available to you and if you need meds take them. I was off work for 7 weeks- to heal. Now a year and some later- I feel like a new person. I go to work- do my job and come home. I am no longer in charge at work and only work the days that I have to.

I always saw myself as being able to do whatever was asked of me and if no one else would do something- I would take care of it. I'm still a little that way, but have learned that I can't fix everyone else's problems. I actually enjoy going to work. Nurse take care of yourself first. Do what they always tell you on the airplane- put your own o2 mask on first and then take care of others!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Dialysis,M/S,Home Care,LTC, Admin,Rehab.

Deeperwell, thank you for the validation and your understanding ! We seem to resonate, and the more we stifle the stigma that we are supposed to "suck it up", the better off we will all be! :yeah: to you too! :)

Up Vote Up Vote ×