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What’s in Your Backpack? Mindful Self-Care and Emotional Rigor During the COVID-19 Crisis

by Jacquelyn Lee, PhD, LCSW

     In academic training, intellectual rigor is prized. We aim to challenge students to think in multiple ways, question old and new ideas, and demonstrate creativity and flexibility of mind—just as they will need to do in practice. This training is crucial; complex social problems cannot be addressed without complex thinking. Yet, this training is also incomplete.

    Preparation for social work practice must also include emotional rigor to prepare practitioners for the personal and professional emotional demands of practice. Emotional rigor is a process that invites us to feel deeply and fully, while challenging us to skillfully and constructively work with our emotions and all their nuance and contradictions. The process involves emotional honesty, humility, persistence, and flexibility. Emotional rigor involves emotional risk and offers the opportunity for reflection and growth.

    One foundational question facing the social work profession is how to continually embrace and participate in the emotionally rigorous contexts while sustaining energy, resilience, and hope. That is, how can we work to understand, move close to, and make space for others’ suffering without being consumed by it, instead maintaining needed emotional separation?

    The current realities of practice—greater workload demands, increasingly complex contexts of service provision, limited resources, and the profession’s high turnover rate—complicate this question and underscore its importance. The aforementioned trends have contributed to a growing interest in the concept of self-care. Particularly during this time of uncertainty and crisis, arguably no training remains more critical to caring for others than caring for oneself.

    One framework offered conceptualizes self-care as having both personal and professional dimensions (Lee & Miller, 2013). Personal self-care is understood as “a process of purposeful engagement in practices that promote holistic health and well-being of the self” (Lee & Miller, p. 98). Five structures of support—physical, psychological and emotional, social, leisure, and spiritual—can be used to categorize personal self-care strategies. Professional self-care, however, focuses on “effective and appropriate use of the self in the professional role” while still attending to one’s holistic health and well-being (Lee & Miller, p. 98). Six structures of support comprise professional self-care—workload and time management, attention to professional role, attention to reactions to work, professional social support and self-advocacy, professional development, and revitalization and generation of energy. The framework suggests self-care is behavioral, individualized, and responsive.

    Yet, the behavioral aspect of self-care is secondary. The ground floor of self-care is mindfulness. Mindful self-care combines these concepts. The practice of mindful self-care involves:

    Popular conceptions of mindfulness often misunderstand the practice, narrowly characterizing it as a stress reduction technique, an escape from uncomfortable feelings, or a quick fix to happiness. In contrast, mindfulness simply offers a gentle way of relating to one’s authentic moment-to-moment experience—a way of relating that is profoundly contrary to cultural messages about caregiving that can encourage martyrdom, subjugation of self, and even self-abandonment.

    Jon Kabat-Zinn (1994) defines mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally” (p. 4). The practice offers permission to be with the thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations that are truly present. The practice honors our lived experience, supports well-being, and empowers us to make conscious choices—personally and professionally.

    Often, our instinct is to move away from ourselves—to avoid, minimize, invalidate, suffocate, control, or manipulate the truth of our own experience. We may be particularly at risk for this when we’re feeling uncomfortable, frightened, or overwhelmed. Mindfulness invites us to instead practice four A’s:

    Whether or not we acknowledge our inner experience, we are always carrying it with us, perhaps in an invisible backpack. Right now, our backpacks may be filled with thoughts about what has happened around the world, how to support our clients from a distance during the coronavirus pandemic, plans to be made, plans that were lost, what we’ve learned about ourselves, and the health of our families. Our backpacks may be full with feelings of worry, grief, fear, gratitude, and disappointment. Our backpacks may be holding the activation, restlessness, numbness, agitation, tightness, and calm we find in our bodies.

    The work we have in front of us, particularly during this crisis, is to be intentional about how to relate and respond to our experience or, that is to say, how we carry our backpacks. Mindful self-care can help us brainstorm strategies to observe what is being carried, carry our backpacks with kindness, set down our backpacks, pack carefully, share the load, and strengthen our lifting muscles if and when we are ready.

Observe What is Being Carried

    The consequences of our history, social training, and/or occupation may leave us more comfortable or used to habitual focus on what others are carrying rather than our own backpacks. Observing what is being carried is a skill, and skills require practice. Observing what is being carried involves asking:

What thoughts are here right now? What feelings are around? What sensations am I experiencing in my body?

    Noticing is simple in concept but, at times, complex in practice, particularly given our tendencies to overidentify with our experience and privilege busyness. At these moments, noticing the thoughts, feelings, and sensations in the body that arise is still the practice. Maybe we think, “I have so much to do. I don’t have time for myself now,” which accompanies feelings of frustration and tension in the body.

    The act of noticing with clarity can identify the thought as simply a thought, a mental event, and not a fact (e.g., “The thought ‘I don’t have time for myself’ now is here.”). Noticing “frustration is around” highlights the temporary nature of feeling states and acknowledges that you are not the emotion (e.g., “I am frustrated”), but rather, you are experiencing the emotion (e.g., “I am feeling frustration”). Further, observing the body in the present moment often lessens the intensity of physical sensations, giving us more space to respond to them.

    Importantly, curiosity about what we notice, without judgment, allows us enough groundedness to compassionately respond (versus react) to our observations. We may want things to be different, and that’s okay. However, resistance to acknowledging what is happening for us only increases our suffering. Noticing what we’re carrying includes observing that thought or urge as it arises, too.  Centrally, observation of what we’re carrying involves the acceptance of what is truly happening for us.

Carry with Kindness

    Particularly when what we observe we’re carrying is heavy or difficult, carrying with kindness toward ourselves is essential and necessitates asking:

How can I honor my experience, and what do I need?

    When we uncover suffering in our personal or professional lives—however we choose to label it (e.g., stress, pain, discomfort, unease, tension, or an unpleasant emotion), self-compassion is a helpful strategy. Neff (2003) suggests that self-compassion requires mindfulness of our suffering instead of mindlessness, common humanity instead of isolation, and self-kindness instead of self-criticism. To practice self-compassion, we notice, “This is a moment of suffering,” remind ourselves, “I am not alone. Others have experienced this, too,” and give ourselves the kindness we would show a friend (e.g., “I’m so sorry this is happening for you now. What do you need?”). As we experience this particularly emotionally rigorous time, offering ourselves kindness can support us in navigating our emotional experience skillfully and constructively.

Set Down the Backpack.

    Setting down our backpacks entirely, even for a brief time, can be helpful when our backpacks get too heavy. This practice is meant to be an intentional, judiciously used self-care strategy, versus a means of avoidance. After observing what is coming up for us, we may choose to ask:

How can I get some space from the thoughts, feelings, and sensations I’m experiencing right now?

    This strategy helps us respond to what we notice in a way that gives us distance. The first step is the aforementioned strategy of de-identification—I am a person having an experience versus I am the experience. This distance in language inherently decreases intensity. Other strategies may include intentionally shifting our attention to sources of nurturance, inspiration, joy, meaning, or fulfillment. Professionally, we may choose to shift tasks, re-structure our workday to limit exposure to people or activities that may be activating for us, or draw boundaries around the workday and tasks. Setting down the backpack does not mean we ignore or diminish the importance of its content, but rather, acknowledges that we need a break to return to carrying with greater clarity and stability.

Pack Carefully

    Arguably, much of what happens in the mind and body is automatic. Our history and biology have created well-worn mental paths, and our body moves into flight, fight, freeze, or fawn often without us even noticing, particularly in a time such as this. Yet, we can work on carefully packing our backpacks by asking:

How can I intentionally generate thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations that are helpful to carry with me?

    After noticing what’s around for us, we might follow up with questions like, “What would be helpful for me to hear right now?” “How can I turn down the volume on this feeling state and turn up the volume of another?” and “How can I self-soothe or calm my body right now?” Answers to these questions will look different for everyone, but personal strategies to consider include: acknowledging our strengths, looking at mementos or items that bring up pleasant emotions, listening to soothing music, or taking a warm bath. Professionally, strategies that could be helpful may include considering progress and successes made—no matter how small, making a work gratitude list each day; expressing encouragement to a colleague; reminding oneself of positive feedback received from supervisors or co-workers; reviewing thank-you notes from clients or colleagues; or short meditations to transition between clients, meetings, or tasks. In addition, we may give extra consideration during this time about our consumption of information and social media, considering how we are affected in our minds and bodies. When we pack carefully, we construct our experience.

Share the Load

    Packing carefully and setting down the backpack are not always possibilities, so another strategy we may use is sharing the load we’re carrying, asking ourselves:

Who can help me with what I am carrying?  

    Personally, we may choose to seek out friends or loved ones to share our experiences, participate in a faith community, see a therapist, or join other organized or community groups. Consultation teams, professional conferences, peer or other supervision, and mentors can be resources professionally. During this time, we are seeing a rise in virtual connecting through social media and platforms such as Zoom, which helps to share the individual and collective loads we are carrying, both personally and professionally. Connection keeps us able to carry heavy things.  

Strengthen Lifting Muscles

    Mindful self-care typically begins by building our muscles to endure emotional rigor, but this practice may or may not be available for us right now. We can build our strength to carry a heavy backpack by identifying strategies that generally support our overall health and well-being, personally and professionally, to the extent it feels useful. We can ask:

What can I do to build my mental, emotional, and physical strength?

    Consistency of practice helps in the moment and builds our reserves and resilience for when the load gets heavier. In general, reading, journaling, meditation, and movement may be choices to consider for personal self-care. Professional self-care may include setting boundaries around work hours, designating specific times for checking email, saying “no” to tasks that are not essential, connecting with supportive colleagues, and taking work breaks (see Lee & Miller, 2013, for more ideas).

    In our current situation, particularly helpful techniques may be sticking to a schedule, staying connected to loved ones, prioritizing both social and personal quality time, and pursuing activities that provide normalcy. Conversely, conventional self-care strategies may not feel nurturing, available to us, or helpful at all, particularly if we are very activated at this time. In this case, we need to listen to ourselves and only look to strengthen our mental, emotional, and physical strength in ways that feel useful, even if counter-intuitive.

    Emotional rigor has much to offer us. Familiarizing ourselves with the present moment without demanding it to be different or grasping for it to stay the same helps us to practice embracing the only constant: change. Mindful self-care supports us in skillfully responding to our inner world, so we can be empowered to care for ourselves and one another.  

References

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. Hyperion.

Lee, J. J. & Miller, S. E. (2013). A self-care framework for social workers: Building a strong foundation for practice. Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 94(2), 96-103.

Neff, K. D. (2003). The development and validation of a scale to measure self-compassion. Self and Identity, 2(3), 223-250.

Jacquelyn J. Lee, PhD, LCSW, is an associate professor of social work at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Dr. Lee’s program of research includes four distinct but overlapping areas: trauma/secondary traumatic stress; pedagogical and curricular innovation; workforce development and well-being; and caregiving; cross-cutting themes that include mindfulness, self-care, and self-compassion.

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