Burnout doesn't even begin to capture the state I am in. "Burnout" is over-used and sometime amidst a global pandemic and national outrage about...everything - the word "burnout" lost its depth and weight. Burnout has burned out. We need a new phrase to capture this place we drift off to after too many weeks of aggravation at work, too many micro-digs in our personal lives that go un-resolved, too many bills that must be paid before we can splurge, too many lost opportunities for self-care, and too many god damn reminders about what the rest of the world is doing - faster than us, smarter than us - all while looking better than us. And so i find myself at the end of that road and I am partly-humored by my irritation, partly-disturbed by my ugliness. Mostly i am feeling flat and emotionally vacant by all of it - with small glimpses of comedy etched in between.
Today someone was waiting to be seen and i almost said "no i don't see anyone by the name of Benjamin...part of my practice policy" because i'm over it. sometimes the complaints i get are so asinine i want to print them out and frame them. maybe compile it into a book called "Office Space for the Modern Era". one day at work we discussed for 90 minutes whether or not we should allow office staff to wear t-shirts on Fridays. I got paid to be at work that day. and the homeless population is rising and access to good medical care is declining. [insert debbie downer meme]
So yea there are moments I think really offensive things in my head. and I wonder if I should not be in this profession - since I'm supposed to be all warm and fuzzy (at least that's what my research on google tells me). Why can't I throw truth bombs? I filter myself so much that by the end of a long day I fumble through my words trying to string a sentence together.
My morning starts with scrolling through a series of redundant emails of people asking/saying the same damn thing without an actual conclusion of any kind. A few emails that have me robotically hitting "click, send, redo". Then my first appointment shows up. They tell me "i got a lot going on , a lot of situations, a lot of trauma. can you give me something for that?" They want me to offer them a solution for all of their pain/suffering, that has accumulated over the last 30+ years of their lives - with no concern for the actions they took, the decisions they made, the behaviors they need to change - all the pressure is on ME. I need to give them something to fix/undo the chaos in their lives and I need to do that in the next 15 minutes. Go! I'm typing away - documenting what i can however fast I can. I glance over and they are scrolling through TikTok on their brand new smartphone. i pause my typing, start inadvertently staring hard at them - wondering if they will even notice that I have stopped typing (and stopped researching for that wonder drug they so desperately asked for 5 minutes ago). A few red flags come up - i ask, in the most non-confrontational way i can - "... the crack cocaine and marijuana...." - before I can finish, they cut me off and say: "no it's not the weed or the crack. the weed is what helps keep me calm, and i don't know why crack was in my system cuz i don't do it." ---- back to tiktok ----
i spend the next two minutes feeling frozen, flat, confused, irritated. Those feelings morph into an existential hopelessness and then I hear myself say "how about a sleep aid" - and they take it and they go away for a few months and then the same thing happens another 12 times. and then i close up shop and I go home, trying hard not to ponder too deeply into the meaning of my work.
T.G.I.F and Thank God there is a new real housewives episode this Sunday and thank god my teeth whitening kit is in the mail. thank god california closets will be here next week (so what if customized closets are my own version of a wonder drug). thank god i have a date night with my husband tonight. thank god our next trip to Coopers Beach is just a few fortnights away!
Don't forget to be grateful my spiritual gremlins, hallelujah and godspeed,
ElyVas
No comments :
Post a Comment