Burn-out: The Hazard of Professional People-Helpers

During his years on earth Jesus lived a life of compassion, and he clearly expected that his followers would be similarly concerned, in practical ways, about the poor, the needy, and the distraught. In the epistles, compassion is a theme that comes up repeatedly. “Bear one another’s burdens,” we read. “Do good to all men.… Visit orphans and widows in their distress.… Contribute to the needs of the saints.… Practice hospitality.… Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.… If your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink.… If a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one.… Love one another.” If our beliefs do not result in compassionate acts, James wrote, then our faith is dead.

But helping people can be a difficult task. It takes time, effort, and patience, and according to recent studies at the University of California in Berkeley, it is common for counselors and other dedicated helpers to “burn out,” exhausted by the demands of people in need (“Burned Out Samaritans,” Human Behavior, September, 1976). Psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, and physicians were among the 200 people interviewed by Dr. Christina Maslach and the Berkeley research team, but the findings surely extend to pastoral counselors and other Christians who work intensively with people.

Burn-out occurs when we work closely with troubled human beings over long periods of time and with little opportunity to retreat. When a helper can leave his or her work at the office and return to a stable and relaxing home situation, burn-out is less likely to occur. But leaving the work behind is difficult, often impossible, for a church leader. The ministry is with us wherever we go. As a result, burn-out is a common—though often unrecognized—condition of Christian people-helpers.

People in need demand much in the way of counsel and help but can give little in return. This can be emotionally and physically draining for the helper. Helping requires intensive concentration. The counselor may feel the pain of those who are hurting. He exerts great amounts of energy in helping others with their problems. And the process of helping can seem endless. As one crisis is resolved and someone improves, other crises arise and more needy people appear. The helper is likely to keep on working when fatigue sets in. And when people don’t improve—as often happens—or when progress is short-lived, the helper may blame himself. He may think he is a failure as a counselor and keep trying harder, pushing closer and closer to the limits of his endurance.

Furthermore, in dealing with others the helper may encounter problems that trigger insecurities and stimulate awareness of hurts within himself. If he doesn’t know how to cope with these feelings, they can threaten his own stability and sense of self-worth. “There are a lot of hurting helpers, including pastors,” a counselor said to me recently.

Books and case studies can make counseling look easy and always successful, but in the real world, counselors soon realize that there are no easy, clearcut solutions to complicated problems, some of which arise from situations over which the counselee has little control. Helping people is hard work and sometimes unsuccessful. This can be threatening to the helper who is struggling to succeed.

As we burn out, slowly or rapidly, we become less and less effective in helping people. To protect ourselves we withdraw subtly from the needy people in our environment. According to the Berkeley researchers, there are a variety of ways to withdraw:

• We may, for example, detach ourselves by our language, describing our counselees and parishioners in ways that make them appear less human and more like impersonal objects. It’s no longer “Mr. Smith” or “Miss Jones”; it’s “that old trouble-maker,” “the neurotic,” “my thorn in the flesh,” or even “the congregation.”

• We detach ourselves by humor, laughing about our people or perhaps joking about them with a colleague in an unconscious attempt to feel less bothered by their pain. “I have to laugh,” one counselor confessed; “it’s the only way I can keep from crying.”

• We detach ourselves by aloofness. We don’t answer the telephone, or develop a more distant manner, or make less time available for counseling appointments (sometimes by arriving late), or simply cut down on the length of interviews or hospital visits.

• We detach ourselves by cynicism, developing a negative attitude toward people. “It’s their own fault that they have these problems,” one counselor concluded. Then there is guilt: we who are supposed to be loving don’t like to acknowledge even self-defensive tendencies that are negative and cynical.

Whether or not these detachment techniques are effective or even tried, people-helpers may notice that the stress of their work begins to take a toll in other ways. There is often tension at home when the up-tight people-helper begins to unwind. Physical symptoms such as back pain, ulcers, exhaustion, insomnia, and migraine headaches, as well as more serious illnesses, are all characteristic of burn-out.

Even social life can be affected. “We don’t have any friends and we don’t have much fun,” a young pastor’s wife stated recently in my office. Only six months into the ministry, this couple had found their “leisure time” being spent with people who were having problems. They were afraid to make friends with less needy couples in the church lest they be accused of forming cliques or playing favorites.

When all else fails, the Berkeley researchers discovered, people-helpers simply quit. They change jobs or go back to school, where they interact with ideas instead of people and prepare for some kind of work that is less personal and less demanding.

Burn-out is very common among Christians, but is it inevitable? I can’t imagine Jesus becoming burned out, and I think his followers can avoid it, too. There are some steps we can take to stay compassionate and avoid becoming cold, unsympathetic, and detached.

First, to prevent burn-out, we need spiritual strength. We know it intellectually, but in daily life we sometimes forget that we are involved in a battle with spiritual forces of darkness and wickedness (Eph. 6:12). Burned-out Christians may very well be people who have been losing the battle against Satan. Christian people-helpers need to be bolstered by regular periods of prayer and meditation on the Word. Other members of the body of Christ should pray daily for those who are involved in the struggle of mending broken lives.

Second, to avoid burn-out, we need support. When professional counselors meet together regularly to encourage and advise one another and discuss counseling cases, burn-out is much less frequent. “One of my parishioners is constantly trying to manipulate me and make me feel guilty,” a pastor told me recently. “This makes me angry, and that interferes with my work.” An honest sharing of such feelings with colleagues can be helpful, especially if there can be prayer together and a discussion of how to handle difficult situations.

A support system of three or four friends (including, perhaps, one’s spouse) can help one keep a balanced perspective on people-helping activities. It helps, too, if these supporting friends accept us completely because of who we are. Too often we are accepted for what we do, and this puts us under pressure to perform. We all need at least one person with whom we can be open, honest, and completely free from any pressure to succeed or perform. Each of us needs at least one person with whom we can cry, one person who knows our weaknesses can be trusted not to use this knowledge against us.

Such sharing with friends or other helpers need not violate confidences. Two counselors, for example, can discuss counseling problems without revealing information that would identify the persons involved.

The third way to avoid burn-out is to take time out from people. In hospitals and clinics it has been found that professionals cope better with the demands of people-helping when they can withdraw periodically into work that is less people-centered. Nurses, for example, are less likely to burn out if they have days on which they do paperwork or in some other way are relieved of contact with patients.

This is more difficult for counselors; they simply cannot turn over their counseling responsibilities to someone else. Unlike the professional psychiatrist or clinical psychologist, however, the pastoral counselor does have other responsibilities that permit a break from the demands of people. Withdrawing for a while each day into one’s study (or into a secluded place in a local library) can be a way of taking time out from the demands of needy people. In his solitary periods away from the crowds, Jesus undoubtedly was taking a much needed time out.

We must not, however, always take these respites when we are home. It is easy, after working all day with people, to go home expecting to avoid everybody, including the members of our families. A woman who sees only children during the day and yearns for adult contact in the evening isn’t going to be very happy if her husband withdraws after dinner each night. We all like solitude at home occasionally, but it is unfair to withdraw from our families at night because we need time away from people. To accomplish these times out without neglecting the family, it may be necessary to schedule “buffer times,” periods of relaxation or solitude that come at the end of the work day (or at the end of, say, a concentrated speaking engagement) and rejuvenate us before we rejoin our families.

Sharing the load is a fourth way to prevent burn-out. Professional counselors, including pastoral counselors, must learn to share their people-helping responsibilities with associates and non-professionals. There is increasing evidence that sensitive, caring laymen can do a very effective job as people-helpers. Occasionally they are even more effective than professionals. Often they can spot problems in the early stages of development and help to prevent them from getting worse.

Finally, there is the matter of training. We need to train lay people to be people-helpers. Even more important, we professionals must learn how to show love and compassion in our work with needy people but not be overwhelmed by the problems. This training should be part of any counselor-education program. Regrettably, few programs—secular or religious—teach future counselors how to handle the stress of working intensively with people.

It used to be said that believers should drive themselves in Christian service and “burn out for Jesus.” But to burn out is to be tired, ineffective, and aloof from others in need. Instead we need to pace ourselves, get our strength and wisdom from the Lord, find support from other believers, and share our helping responsibilities so that we can continue to show the compassion and burden-bearing that Christ expects of his followers.

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