Marcy Melvin, Speaker, Counselor, addresses the pervasive issue of burnout that permeates the lives of too many. Whether it's educators, students, or parents, the feelings of exhaustion and emotional numbness in the wake of the pandemic are palpable. Marcy emphasizes that isolation can magnify feelings of desolation, so it's important to seek your trusted space, engage, and counteract the emotional weariness.
Transcript:
Battling Burnout
"We're exhausted. Students are exhausted, teachers are exhausted, parents are exhausted. We're exhausted. And what happens after over exposure to stress or increased exposure to like something that causes you to feel anxious? Is that like after a while, um, things just kind of like go numb and you, you just kind of begin to shut down. Um, and it's almost like a defense mechanism. It's almost like you feel the feels so much and so big until it's like you can't take it anymore and you just shut it off.
It's almost like a emotional rawness, right? Imagine with your, like, skin, have you ever worn new shoes? Right? And then what happens at the back of the heel, it rubs at the back of your heel and all of a sudden it hurts and it hurts, and it hurts until the place that it just becomes completely raw.
And so, uh, it becomes really important that we're staying connected, that we're staying charged in and connected with one another. That feeling of numbness, that feeling of shutdown, like isolation, exacerbates that. And when you start to feel overwhelmed with your emotions, you want to isolate, like you want to kind of pull away, but almost pulling away from people has the opposite effect. It can exacerbate those feelings and make things worse. So finding a safe person who you trust, who you can connect with can make all the difference in the world.
And that safeness and that connection can be just going for a walk with a friend, right? Sitting down, um, next to a parent and just kind of being in the same space with them. Lots of different things that we can do that are, that are very simple, that's gonna help us to feel that connection and that will counteract some of that numbness that may come from the increased, um, emotions that, that we become, you know, that we feel with."
-Marcy Melvin