Cost of Caring

           I was having a conversation with a co-worker of mine the other night, I guess you could say the topic was “The Cost of Caring.” She holds the same position as I do in Psychiatric Facility, but she is studying to be a nurse, and I a psychotherapist. Interestingly enough, this conversation had nothing to do with patient/client care but rather, care for one's self. I found this conversation to be quite fitting to a recent presentation in our class about “Secondary Trauma” to therapists ala vicarious suffering through their clients or counter-transference of suffering.

          We both shared experiences when we we “burnt out.” But there was more to it than that. The term “burn out” doesn't seem strong enough, and “compassion fatigue” doesn't fit; indeed, the curse was perhaps “caring” too much. As she described it at the end of the conversation, “It was like being a zombie on an airplane set to autopilot with the wings on fire.” In her experience she said that she was working three jobs and going to school. When people asked her how she survived she said she replied, “Coffee and B12 (vitamin).” She eventually had to slow down because after being asked by a loved one “Please stop. I never see you and I hate seeing you do this to yourself.”

          I had a similar experience in the fall of 2011. I was going back to school full time taking classes to round out medical school prerequisites (at the time I wanted to be a psychiatrist). I was also working a full time job and a part time job. To make a long story short, between school and work I was sleeping about two hours per night, seven days per week for ten weeks. To say I was a zombie on autopilot would be a severe understatement. To use Heideggarian terms, I had lost all sense of being and time; I was a machine, the anonymous “das man” … but machines break. There was no one asking me to stop, but one day I realized I was done. There was no agonizing internal debate, no emotional tossing-and-turning, one evening I just decided I wasn't going to do it anymore, it was over. I'd like to make one more comment and that was to the befuddlement of my professors when I withdrew from my classes (in spite of excellent grades) and turned in my text books. I spared them the long story and just told them I had had a change in career plans. That didn't seem to ease their confusion but as I walked away at about 8 am after working all night; somewhere in the weary black rings under my eyes they nodded as if they understood the unspoken and inevitable collapse of taking on too much.

          Anyway, the moral of the story is that caring, or rather “giving”, has a price and it is steep. Hardened nerves, iron will, and a clever wit can only take you so far. Some high-octane emotional fuel can increase this longevity but the trajectory still has an end. Perhaps that end is oblivion, perhaps not, perhaps it is a cataclysmic Armageddon, perhaps only a whisper. Some last longer than others, but it seem inevitable that when you truly give everything, sooner or later something important will fall through the cracks. Indeed, the cost of giving is expensive.

          This leads me to a more current predicament. Emptiness, a feeling of the “low fuel light” coming on … different from the previous experience in this sense. There's a secret, my foot's not coming off the throttle. Why? Because while I may feel that I'm “running out of gas” (perhaps I'm just anxious for the summer break to “refuel”) it is a satisfying emptiness rather than a hopeless void of defeat. When this semester is finished, I can look back and honestly say that there is not one thing more I could have given, not to my job, not to my coursework, not to my friends. I have given all that I can in the truest sense of “giving.” So while I may turn out “bankrupt”, the currency has been well spent. Perhaps on investments that I will never see “mature” (in the financing sense), but the return has already been “given.”