a Kind of Refugee / 09.12.2023

BURNOUT

feels like listlessness a dull knot in the stomach because there is so much that needs to be done that your mind melts even beginning to think about it. and so you sit there dumbly. doing nothing.

Doing nothing with urgency is an art.

***

The yoga retreat center is a 40-minute cab ride from Kyiv. Its main building is a rectangle of glass, metal, and wood that sits back from the ice-covered road. From a distance it looks like the 3-story office buildings scattered throughout my childhood in eastern Connecticut. Inside, the conference room is filling up with people. The organizer said to expect around ten, as none of the workshops were mandatory. It’s encouraging that nearly twenty Ukrainian activists want to learn more about burnout and how to cope with it during wartime.

I invite the employees of a major Ukrainian civil society NGO to find a comfortable place on the floor. Some of them have been interviewing victims of war crimes in Warsaw, while others are preparing to monitor elections in 2024. They’ve all been hard at work while russia has been assaulting their country with missiles and armed attacks for nearly 700 days.

Marta speaks from a large screen at the front of the room. (My colleague, Marta Pyvovarenko, is a powerhouse psychologist and mental health advocate.) She talks about the effects of long-term stress on the body, how to recognize signs of burnout, and why it’s important to distinguish between empathic and professional burnout. I scan the room: some people seem bored and walk out, while others are enthralled by the scientific explanations.

I interject anyway: While it can be very important to differentiate between varieties of burnout and PTSD in certain situations, the physical exercises we want to share with you can benefit people dealing with any of these conditions. Being able to listen to your body and to hear its signals can help you rest or seek help or stop doing something before you get seriously hurt.

Put your hands on your belly and feel how it moves every time you breathe. What about your lower ribs? Even your collarbones can move when you inhale and exhale. Imagine a stressful situation. Did something change in the way you’re breathing? Now think of a moment when you felt safe.

“I didn’t feel any change,” says a young woman with curly hair. Her tone is dismissive.

Marta, the psychologist, intervenes: When you’ve been living under extreme stress for nearly two years, your body develops ways of coping that become habit. Tuning in to your breath for a couple minutes may not change the patterns you’ve been reinforcing for such a long time. It’s the act of attention, and repeated attention (it doesn’t have to be constant), that will help you see and discover and remember that you have other modes of being and action than this one you’ve become used to.

When the participants who’ve held out through all the theoretical discussion lie down on the floor for an Awareness Through Movement lesson, they display the physical tension that’s become natural to them. After half an hour their movements are smaller, more fluid, and less frequent.

The workshop stretches to three hours. At the end, the organizer and the participants are happy. They’ve had a much-needed rest and chance to release some of their questions and observations into this communal space. They head off to lunch, amidst healthy-looking people in white robes and slippers padding down the corridor. Hungry and spent, I sit down near reception to call a cab back to Kyiv.

The next morning my head is splitting. After breakfast I crawl back into bed, leaving my coffee undrunk on the table. Tomorrow is the Ukrainian national holiday celebrating the country’s tireless volunteers. I’m supposed to share some exercises for accessing your own powers of resilience at a high-profile event.

I’d agreed to teach the class to promote my friend’s volunteer organization, despite having too much on my plate, and had only today to plan my presentation. It didn’t cross my mind that I’d be incapacitated. My friend got sick over the weekend and wasn’t sure if he’d make it at all.

At lunchtime I will myself out of bed—these headaches are often worse on an empty stomach. My body refuses the food. All it wants is back to bed. The idea of looking at a phone or computer screen with all those letters makes me queasy.

The NGO employees treated to a weekend retreat outside Kyiv, with experts talking to them about burnout, all paid for by a grant from the UK, nag at my thoughts. If I’m to spend my time coaching civilians on resilience, shouldn’t I have a chance to recover too? Scenes from the past weeks and months flood over me: endless movement and effort, switching from one kind of activity/performance to another to refresh and keep my spirits up. Stopping would mean losing momentum. Were I to slow down, where would I find the power to start moving again?

Now it has happened and this “expert in resilience” is curled up in bed, unable to will herself up to prepare for tomorrow’s presentation. It’s an hour and a half sitting around a table with 10 people in a large, noisy hall. Unpaid—you work for the opportunity to network at the event. Who needs more contacts when you can’t even keep up with the ones you’ve got? When your burning desire is to wash the floors in your apartment and to cook yourself a decent meal?

I’m too beat to hear my inner Moshe Feldenkrais, who usually reminds me to “do less” when things get tough. This is what helps you to see things more clearly. Instead I call my friend: “Look, I know you’ve been sick, now I feel like shit, maybe we just cancel?”

Then I go back to sleep. Through the night and through most of the next day. Nobody calls to follow up about the event or to ask how I’m doing. I contemplate responsibility and my capacity to leave other people in the lurch. There’s a hazy connection between the workshop on burnout and how I myself succumbed to it all of a sudden. As if hearing a psychologist spell it out gave me the license to give in.

The bottom line? I need time to digest and reflect on the things that I do and see and that happen to me. Those two days were hardly enough.

You know, I don’t feel regret or remorse. People can perform tremendous feats while indisposed. My body and will colluded on this one. I did not make the effort to make this happen. Some voices in my head say I should have. Still, the loudest one says, “Congratulations, you took a rest.” And then adds, “At the expense of other people.”

I’m left wondering: What is the difference between following a pattern and being true to yourself?

***

a Kind of Refugee needs a vacation.

But don’t despair! At least not about this…

a Kind of Refugee desperately wants to keep writing—more regularly than it has been over the past several months. It wants a break from this personal narrative form of writing that we know and love and has grown familiar. It wants to practice playing with different ways of telling, without abandoning the fundamental principle: to be true to the moment and to my own state while writing in real time.

We are still aiming at reality. This is target practice.

It’s also an experiment. I might miss sometimes. But do please tell me when it hits the mark.

PS My friends at Community Self-Help, whom I ingloriously stood up this past week, are raising money for tourniquets, medical backpacks, and medical supplies to send to frontline units they support. Your contribution will help save the lives of people injured while defending Ukraine from russia’s heinous ongoing invasion: https://communityselfhelp.org/en/critical-needs

PPS My fellow Americans, please take a few minutes to urge your House representatives and Senators to vote YES to Ukraine aid before Congress adjourns for its 3 week winter recess! You can find state-by-state info and a sample message here: https://www.communityforukraine.org/2023/12/07/congress-pass-ukraine-aid-now/

Please share this call with your friends in other states! Your voice matters!