Compassion Fatigue & The Need For Self-Care | E. 75

The Healthcare Leadership Experience

Post-pandemic burnout is affecting healthcare workers at every level. Certified Counselor Jahmaal Marshall shares his insights for effective self-care with Jim Cagliostro.

Jahmaal explains why his ‘’secret sauce’’ is to understand who people are, how uncomfortable places help us to grow, why healing begins by disrupting our narrative, and the importance of boundaries in overcoming compassion fatigue. He also shares why every hospital needs a resilience worker, how to advocate for yourself, and why we get what we tolerate.

Show Topics

• Background to LLC: A journey through loss

• ‘’I want to know who you are’’

• Growth occurs in uncomfortable places

• Power positioning to ensure sustainability

• Disrupting the narrative

• Overcome the need to people please

• Leadership lessons: Learning to advocate for yourself

03:46 Background to LLC: A journey through loss

Jahmaal explained how the loss of his father led to a season of darkness that shaped his future.

‘’Three days after I got home, he got critically ill. So we found a hospital for about two and a half months, a time of hardness, a time of misery. On December 5th, 2017, God called him home. I went through a long season of darkness. I mean, the celebration of life for him was amazing. The gospel was preached. Hopefully your guests just know I'm unashamedly a Christian, but I do have a broad audience of people who don't believe what I believe and that's fine. We walk together. But I went through about a year, and I would say six months for sure, of toying around with wanting to be an atheist, an agnostic. I hated God, hated Jesus, hated the gospel, hated everything I was. I questioned everything I was as a man, a leader, a counselor, a teacher, just all that stuff. Questioned everything I had poured into other men and families. I'd spent years, my best years really, serving other people. I'm like, "Well God, how could this happen?" So I hated God. I hated Jesus.’’

13:03 ‘’I want to know who you are.’’

Jahmaal explained why getting past the ‘’surface stuff’’ is the secret sauce to Listen Then Speak.

‘’…..in that northern Virginia, southern Maryland, DC area, and I'm right in Washington DC, it is cutthroat around here. You live and die by what you do. The first thing people ask you, especially guys, as soon as they see you, "What do you do?" So, I knew interviewing, I did not want to focus on what a person did and that what they did didn't define them. Especially as a person who's a counselor, who's looking into human behavior and how a person thinks and who they are, I want to know who you are. Getting my guests in that space, when you ask someone who they are, they'll throw up in your lap for lack of better rhetoric. So that actually is a part of this secret sauce to Listen Then Speak. I want to go past all the surface stuff of what you do. I want to find out about your faith, your background, your lack of faith. I've had atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Muslims, anything, because I can learn something from everyone. Just because I believe what I believe doesn't mean that I can't learn and doesn't mean that I can't be informed. I want to learn about the highs, the lows, the hills, the valleys. That's what I love about autobiographies because that gives me the full story, not just the highlight reel of who you are. So in about 30 to 40 minutes, I'm getting a bit of the fullness of their story by not focusing on just on what they do. We can put that in the show notes.’’

15:03 Growth occurs in uncomfortable places.

Jahmaal revealed how his early experiences helped him to understand the fear of rejection that he sees in his clients.

‘’I'll share a little bit of my testimony because for the longest time in early childhood, early teenage years, I didn't want to be uncomfortable. I lived for being in my comfort zone. Many people, and you've seen in my content, I honor my dad. I love my dad. He was my best friend. For 12 years, we were best friends. I'm nearly 40 now, but the first 22 years was hell on earth. Okay? He was like my worst enemy. Before God changed his life, he was an alcoholic and a drug addict. He used heroin and crack. So you can imagine, what type of household and environment that created. So I walked on eggshells and I grew up with a huge fear of rejection. Most of the clients that come to me, they have some fear of rejection inside of them. It may not be as traumatic as my childhood, but it's a series of things that have stockpiled, that have brought them to a belief system that they have to go overboard just to avoid rejection. So I avoided rejection. I avoided anything uncomfortable because the very place I lived was so uncomfortable. Anytime I'm out the house, I'm not going to be uncomfortable. When you take those subliminal hits, it informs the way you move about the earth. I avoided uncomfortable situations and uncomfortable conversations. So now the inverse is true. It's like, no, let's get into it. That's why that's my hashtag. Let's get into places that are uncomfortable because that's where the growth occurs.’’

18:01 Power positioning to ensure sustainability.

Jahmaal said healthcare workers need to challenge themselves to practice boundaries to avoid compassion fatigue.

‘’….we don't see how we're running ourself into a brick wall and we don't realize how worn out we are. We intend to do that which is good. Our intent is well, but it may be misplaced. And it's like, "Well, there's a sick person in front of me. What do you expect me to do?" However, I would challenge your audience and I challenge myself, are you practicing the needed boundaries so you don't end up full of bitterness and resentment? …… compassion fatigue is almost where you're working more hours than is needed. You're going overboard. You're doing what is not even required of you. In your field, it's difficult to speak to that because sometimes it's life or death. If I'm not in position, if I don't do my job, this human individual will become just a body. This will be a terminal. We don't want that to be the case, or there is disease on that or there is prescription that didn't need to be prescribed. It could be any number of things. So I don't want it for your audience. It's not lost on me the very real factors that you face. But I would challenge everyone as I challenge myself, especially in caretaking, to examine your motives and how are you power positioning yourself-... to make sure that there is sustainability. If you're not power positioning yourself for sustainability, what is the mindset that feeds you constantly placing yourself on the front line with your gas out? At some point you won't be there at all.’’

24:16 Disrupting the narrative.

Jahmaal said committing to your own healing and wellness is the first step towards moving beyond autopilot.

‘’I actually want to disrupt the ongoing narrative in your mind that's actually informed your behavior. So begin to seek out someone who can actually disrupt that narrative because when you're on autopilot, you know no other way. There's a scripture, I'm going to preach for a second, that says, "There's a way that seems right to a man, but it ends in death." So there's a lot of ways that seem right to both you and I that seem like, "Oh, this is fine. This is okay." But what is it producing? Is it producing fruit or is it producing a briar patch of sticks because we are burned out and because there is compassion fatigue and because we are caretaking, but we're not taking care of ourself. So encourage them to begin to seek out that help, get honest with yourself and then begin to go into your calendar and set aside time. "Okay, if I've made this decision, I need to make a commitment to my own healing, to my own health, to my own wellness." Sustainability is key. I think we don't think of that a lot. One of the books I work with clients through, depending on the client, is Steve Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I love his quote that says, "Begin with the end in mind." Okay, if I continue at this rate, what does the end of this look like? So to really go through that process with yourself so that you're serious. One thing I have clients do is write down your why. It's a whole sheet that I go through, a whole Google sheet. When you see who you're fighting for, it actually not only puts restraint on you being on autopilot, but it actually redirects you to be more intentional about your time, the way you're living your life, about your output, but also about your input and really dealing with the false guilt.’’

29:40 Overcome the need to people please.

Jahmaal said that people pleasers become that way through a series of events in their lives.

‘’Well, I want to go back, want to say, even with the question born people pleasers, none of us are born that way. We get that way through a series of events, and it may not even be anything traumatic. It just may be a series of events that stockpile in a narrative, again, that goes into our mind that says, "This is the way you function." So if you think about children, you got four beautiful girls. Children are the greatest recorders of information but the poorest interpreters. So anytime there's a people pleaser, and I want your audience to hear this, they have started out as a parent pleaser. I wanted my parents to be happy. Of course, my childhood was a bit more traumatic than your average person. So that growing up in fear of my father, I thought every other man had some X factor that I didn't. I knew I was being rejected at home. I didn't want to be rejected anywhere else. So I found myself going overboard in everything. I was a straight A student. ….. So each one of us has a hunger inside of us based on the belief system and the narrative internally. That's going to be what drives you….. With people pleasers, their hunger to please others, their hunger to not kick up any dust their hunger to not trouble the waters is what drives them. It can even drive you into certain professions or drive the way you navigate that profession. When you're in that and you have that desire to serve, a lot of times you're doing more than is required because it's feeding something in you. It's driving you to obey that thirst.’’

35:33 Leadership lessons: learning to advocate for yourself

Jahmaal said overcoming the fear of rejection can help you to begin to advocate for yourself.

‘’…. I had problems because I refused to advocate for myself because of my own fear of rejection. So I had to get help. Before I became a counselor, I invested in my own spiritual, physical, and mental wellness. So I'm not encouraging someone to make an investment that I haven't made. I spent months doing the hard work. I would encourage anyone in leadership or who is pursuing leadership, learn how to advocate and learn why you don't advocate. I wasn't advocating because I was in fear. Once I dealt with that fear of rejection, I began to advocate in a way that positioned myself for sustainable success. Part of the onus is on you. I know some of the fear can be, "Well, this is my bread and butter, this is all I got. I got mouths to feed." Those are very real things. I won't discount that in any way, shape or form. But also, you get what you tolerate. You teach people how to treat you, and you need to learn specific ways to do that, and then learn the mindset of why you have not done that in the past and how to do that going forward.’’

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You’ll also hear:

Digging into the weeds: Why establishing boundaries is vital to help people to move forward. ‘’It takes 90 days for the neuroplasticity of the brain to change and actually to begin to move in the direction it was intended… We have to dig into the weeds.’’

Advice for the healthcare C Suite: budget for a counselor or resilience worker for your staff. "’..if you're not budgeting for counseling staff, people who are certified, resilient staff, you are doing your company a disservice and you're actually burning out your employees and you're creating high turnover."

Why we’re all like Mack trucks in a sense: ‘’You go to the Walmart parking lot around like five in the morning, what do you see? You see these huge, larger than life, trucks, and they have about eight mirrors. Even with that many mirrors, that truck still has blind spots. It's still stuff that the driver and even the passenger don't see. You need the perspective of others.’’

Learning to interrupt your thoughts: ‘’Your mind is the control tower of your body. Your thoughts tend to overwhelm you, especially when you don't interrupt them, your thoughts tend to become true because it becomes your reality.’’

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