General
Transplant burnout
I’ve been having conversations with a lot of you lately on advocacy and different ways we can all get involved and one of the topics I keep hearing of is burnout, or how exhausting it can be to exist in this community and hear all these stories of people in rough times, or fighting for change in a system that sometimes feels like it’s going nowhere.
I’m curious how you all navigate this. For me I have created a lot of boundaries about the types of content I engage with and the conversations I’m willing to have. It’s meant pulling back from discussions when I know it’s not serving my mental health and at times “passing the torch” to my fellow advocates. I also mute and unfollow a lot on social media when I’m feeling overwhelmed, and double down on my self care practices.
I’m curious how you’ve navigated this and what helps you
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You sound so skillful in your awareness and doing what you need around kidney involvement burnout. I already learned something. I'm fairly new to transplant so have yet to reach that point. Very curious to see what others answer.
I am the queen of boundaries, haha. It's taken a lot of therapy for me to recognize when it's time for a boundary. I meditate a lot and when I am struggling with meditation, I know it's time to take a step back somewhere. As much as I love advocacy, it's emotional.
As transplant patients, we are already going through so much just ourselves. We have to navigate through medications, appointments, and relationships plus not feeling our best sometimes. I really try to cut back on activities when I start reaching my limit. Social media or even just a self-care day by myself at the beach. We all need to recharge sometimes. I also try to remember that I cannot help everyone. If I don't remind myself of that, I just get super overwhelmed. I just don't have the capacity. I love The Starfish Story:
A young man is walking along the ocean and sees a beach on which thousands and thousands of starfish have washed ashore. Further along he sees an old man, walking slowly and stooping often, picking up one starfish after another and tossing each one gently into the ocean.
“Why are you throwing starfish into the ocean?,” he asks.
“Because the sun is up and the tide is going out and if I don’t throw them further in they will die.”
“But, old man, don’t you realize there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it! You can’t possibly save them all, you can’t even save one-tenth of them. In fact, even if you work all day, your efforts won’t make any difference at all.”
The old man listened calmly and then bent down to pick up another starfish and threw it into the sea. “It made a difference to that one.”