Too emotionally involved in your work

[mypprincess]

I'm working in an unlocked psychiatric facility. Patients live there but are free to go shopping and come as they wish. My problem is that I get too emotionally involved with my patients.
The good part of it is that my patients feel my empathy and let me know that. My coworkers and supervisor have told me that I'm very good with them. But the empathy of so many patients is leaving me exhausted. I researched everyone's illness to the smallest detail so I can understand them better. I then put myself in their situation and can almost feel their pain. I was told from the beginning that it's important to have some distance to our patients but their pain is real, and nobody understands them for who they really are.
Patients have opened up to me and told me the darkest secrets of their illness.
Any suggestions?

[medic09]

Daven. Really. I admire your compassion and commitment; but if you burnout you'll do them no further good. I don't know how we achieve balance, but we do. I believe prayer is important. In this case the serenity prayer from AA.

Your compassion is a wonderful Jewish virtue. Sometimes to preserve compassion we have to temper it and withhold it. Only when hesed meets g'vura do we achieve tiferet.

[psyched]

Wow. I'm thrilled to find another frum nuse working in psych! I work in a locked psych unit. My patients are mostly minority ethnicities, gang members, drug users. Needless to say, I don't over empathize with them as I spend most of my time trying to gain some level of understanding of them. However, we have another unit that deals with a lot of ptsd, the patients are of more similar ethnicities to myself, and sometimes there I have a hard time as I find that I do overempathize as you describe. It's very painful and sometimes I feel like I need to be admitted myself. I try to make boundaries but it's difficult as the very essence of our job is empathy and care.
Where do you work? I'd love to speak with you more!

[Rivka P]

1. maybe make a commitment to yourself not to bring anything home with you. like you can be involved and empathize while you are at work, during work hours, but once you leave, you are for yourself and your family and you don't think about your patients. I know that may be very difficult, but the more you commit yourself to that kind of boundary, you may find it easier.

2. I am glad these two psych nurses have each other to talk to.

3. I worked a day on the psych unit in my hospital recently and one of the patients was a young girl (21 or so) who was all stressed out because she really felt like she was helping a friend's soul pass on into heaven. I asked the charge nurse, do we not believe that spiritual, extra-physical things happen? I mean, I am a spiritual person and I believe there are spiritual forces at work around me all the time. I was treading on thin ice, as psyched says, I was afraid they would commit me too. She explained that you can have spiritual beliefs, but if it impairs your ability to function within the world, then a person is admitted.

but don't we say that the neviim fell on their faces and went into fits that were similar to epileptic seizures when they were receiving prophecy? so who are we to say that this girl is out of her mind because when she gets the feeling that she is assisting this soul, she feels anxious and gets a headache, throws up and needs a few minutes of rest?

help me here, before they admit me too!

[Rivka P]

oh and I wanted to say, that I felt empathetic too. for example, she was saying she wanted to be home with her parents for the non-jewish winter holiday and I was like "awww" and the charge nurse says to me: don't be sad about that, or you won't last long here!

[mypprincess]

Rivkah, I thought alot about your question, and after a while I came to the conclusion that there is a huge difference between the mentally ill and neviim. That is also the same difference between the true and false neviim.
The neviim saw and said things that ended up being true, and saving a soul did not make their lives and the lives of the people around them miserable. The false neviim just said things that the people wanted to hear. The mentally ill believe that they have to save the world and ruin their and their families lives as a result.
Does it make sense?


I was unsure if I should share this here, but there is a very real reason that I feel empathy towards my patients.
I have a very close family member that had 3 breakdowns. The last one was about 11 years ago, and he was never left alone for the 3 months he stayed in the hospital. It was me and my husband that spent every shabbos with him.

When I started working in the psychiatric facility it brought back memories that I did not want to remember. Every time my patient does something my family member did, I get lost in memory lane and feel intense empathy to my patient.
Sometimes I'm thinking what my coworkers would think if they would know...
When I started nursing school I always thought I will go into psychiatric nursing but changed my mind when I did my clinical rotation in a psychiatric hospital. The wound was too fresh and I was a wreck.
But I couldn't find a job and ended up accepting my current position. I'm coping now better than when I started, but its not easy.

[medic09]

Princess,

You've got a real challenge there. The good thing is, you clearly recognize it. I admire your fortitude. I couldn't do it.

As a relatively young man, I spent a lengthy time in hospital. As a result, I can't bring myself to work 'inside' the hospital. The ED is okay; it's almost 'outside' the hospital where I'm most comfortable doing patient care. But I've been asked/offered several times to work in ICU or CCU, and I've said no repeatedly even though I would learn a lot of things there that I want to know. Just won't force myself to do it.

Hizki v'imtzi! Hashem should bless you and give you strength for as long as you need it. Seperating the issues internally will be important and beneficial, if you can one day do it.

(I should talk. )

[mypprincess]

From about the age of 7, I went through an extremely tough childhood. To make matters worse I was alone with nobody to share my pain. This caused, from a very young age, so many nightmares that occured almost nightly that at one point I was afraid to go to sleep. I used to wake up in a sweat and shake so violently that I had a very hard time to turn the doorknob to open my bedroom door. When I was a teenager the hardships increased to the point that classmates where whispering that I lost my sanity. My family members told me nobody will every want to marry me because I'm totally nuts, will always say the wrong things and I act like a retard. I believed them.
Many years later:
B"H, now I have beautiful children that are at the top of their class academically, very well liked in school, very respectful, very sensitive to other people's feelings. People who meet them always come to us in wonder asking me or my husband what we did right.
I, on the other hand, succeeded to graduate nursing school with honors, and landed a job as a case manager. I earn a generous salary and great benefits.
So what is my issue?
After all those years, my past won't leave me as much as I try. The nightmares are gone, but the pain won't. I worked really hard on this. I saw professionals, did yoga, you name it I tried. It did improve a little bit, but sometimes when I daydream I feel like I'm there and reliving my experiences.
Now at work my past is causing me problems. In a place where 6 people work in close proximity with desks without cubicles, we practically sit on top of each other all day. In such an environment it is very normal for someone to tell another, "Shut up! There are times when I have real issues at work with my coworkers like I have posted here before. At other times I make a little mistake which is honestly not such a big deal. But when such situations occur, I can't function for the rest of the day at best. Sometimes it will drag on for a few days. I start reliving my past thinking all the negativity I was told and thinking that all I was told as a child must have been true. I will never ever learn to shut up my mouth, and will always say the wrong things, I will most probably be fired, so on and so forth. I have to struggle to prevent tears from escaping my eyes at work.
This can hurt my carrier and cause my coworkers to loose their respect to me.
I try to think of all the positive in my life, but for me, the pusik that time decreases the pain does not apply to me.
Any suggestions before I loose my job (and sanity)?

This is one of the reasons that I empathize so much with my patients. Sometimes I put myself so much in their situation that I can feel their pain.

[malkieh]

I know what you mean, I was the adult in my family. It makes things very difficult growing up when the child is an adult.

Because my mom's family was considered the "poor" family, when i wanted to do more I was always told that I could not do anything and that I should stop being "stupid."

Of course I did not listen to them, and became orthodox and married what I thought was a wonderful man. He unfortunately followed in their footsteps and forced me to drop out of college. It was not until I left him with my three children in tow, that I went back to college on my own and succeeded.

I think i realized through my own children that through my successes they grew and healed from the abuse of my ex. You need to look at the positives in your life, and heal.

We all have something in our past that defines us, it's if we let control us. B"H I got into nursing school this year, I start this february. I am now married to a wonderful man that treats me with respect, and tells me how wonderful I am. B"H I never dreamed I would be so lucky.

When I decided to apply for nursing school, my family did the "you would not make a good nurse it's a hard job, why not go for something easier." I proved them wrong, and it was not until I answered certain questions that they believed me.

I am not sure why I still feel the need to prove them wrong, but I have a husband that hugs me and tells me I am wonderful and I focus on that. Also on how my kids laugh that I have more homework than they do!

[mypprincess]

malkieh, thanks for your reply. I admire your strength to leave your husband before things got worse. Many women don't have the strength to do that. Especially that you didn't have your parents' support, or anywhere to go.
Do you still have flashbacks of the times past? How do you deal with it?
I'm not sure I'm right, but I think the reason you still feel the need to prove them wrong is because deep deep down, you are not so sure with yourself. You are not only trying to prove yourself to your family, but to yourself as well.
I decided not to tell anyone in my family (aside from my husband and kids) that I'm going to nursing school until I was halfway through and knew for sure I'll succeed.
What pushed you to become orthodox? How was the process? What kind of community do you belong to?

[malkieh]

I became frum my Junior year in High school, and that was no easy feat considering that my mother is so anti-frum. My home had always been conservative, going to shul on shabbos and yom tovim. We lit shabbos candles, and had a small meal.

So my junior year I went on the march of the living, and something inside of me changed. I saw girls and boys from my group going off as couples holding hands and making out. And these frum women women, well atleast women in skirts swaying back and forth probably reading tehillim. At first I started reading about orthodoxy. I was afraid to go to my local sheliach, because everyone in my community said he was this nutty man that danced outside of his house. I knew my mother would be less than thrilled at the idea of me becoming frum, so I came back from the march of the living and told her that I was a vegetarian, because of cruelty to animals so she accepted that and left me alone. Plus I started dressing tznius, and she assumed that I was older and maturing and wanted to dress nicer and left me alone. It was not until college that I met Chabad and it changed my life. B"H I had a normal sheliach that did not push things on me and told me to take my time and not take on too much to fast.

B"H when I left my ex I had a wonderful therapist, and she helped me work through many things. Plus I guess I was luckier than others, my ex and I made amends and we actually talk more than we did the entire marriage. When I had flashbacks she helped me work through them.

[Rivka P]

Not sure if this will help or not, but I just want to put it out there for you:
How Can I Forgive You?
The Courage to Forgive, the Freedom Not To
By Janis A. Spring

It's a book my therapist suggested to me. ;-)