Taking care of yourself and avoiding burnout while serving others in a humanity-based field is hard. Learn strategies to release the stress that can be taken in from this work. We can only help others when we have the capacity to take on more ourselves.

I have spent the first two months of 2026 in an exhausting cycle. I go to work as a high school behavior specialist every day, helping students make better choices and finding supports for chaotic home lives or whatever other challenges they are trying to work through. Then I head out into my community in the Twin Cities to support my neighbors as they hide from ICE agents trying to take them from the only place they know as home. I bring supplies, coordinate rides, and yell loudly at a government putting their people in more danger than they should ever have to face. When I get home, it’s time to take care of the animals, submit my school work, and head to bed. On the weekends, I take a break from the intensity and work at a bar serving people with a smile on my face.  

This cycle is pretty common for people in Minnesota right now, especially those in humanity-based fields. Besides the demands of our work, we feel called to help our community, which is being ripped apart. Our life’s mission to help those in need, love our neighbors, and use our positions or privilege to stand up for the minorities is being put into action in Minneapolis once again. But we are tired. We are falling ill from being out in the cold day in and day out. We don’t want to stop fighting, but we are running out of energy to keep going. We need to reset ourselves so we can continue the important work we are called to do.

Not Alone

As we slip into that exhausting cycle, we often forget that there are other people out there feeling the exact same way. I am not the only one out there, so why do I assume the entirety of the responsibility for the work that is happening? I certainly don’t claim any credit, so why am I thinking I’m on my own to provide for my community? It’s the idea that I would be burdening someone else that takes over. But that’s not true. We are stronger when we rely on each other. There are many people stuck in the same cycle who we can talk through those feelings with, develop a plan (including a rotation to ease the pressure), and validate the feelings that are occurring.

Finding solidarity through human connection, real or virtual, is a vital piece to avoiding burnout. Hearing other people’s journeys and how they are coping with the secondary stress from constantly serving others is a great first step in finding strategies that work for you.

I recently went to a professional development training titled “From Surviving to Thriving,” thinking I was going to get strategies for students to move out of survival mode. Instead, it was about how healthcare and education professionals are falling into a state of survival by bearing everyone’s trauma and stress. The training gave strategies to refocus yourself and set personal boundaries so you can thrive in your position, not just survive. The core message: we are not alone, and not everything is on fire. The fact that you are reading this right now may be all the sign you need to remember you are not alone in feeling like you are holding the weight of the world.

Gratitude

One of these strategies was gratitude. Now, hearing that makes me want to gag and definitely earns an eyeroll. Gratitude is a feeling. It cannot eliminate the trauma and stress that we are witnessing and hearing about daily. However, gratitude can shift our mindset and help us avoid taking on more of that stress. There are a few gratitude strategies that might refocus your mindset:

1. Gratitude Journal: Set aside five to fifteen minutes a day to journal things you are grateful for or things that you experienced in your day that make you thankful. Writing just three to five things a day has been proven to shift mindsets to be more positive and reduce harmful thoughts and poor mental health.
2. Message of Gratitude: Send a message at the start or end of a stressful task/experience to someone you are grateful for. No-strings-attached, meaningful connections can balance out a draining or negative interaction.
3. Reflection/Prayer of Thanks: Start your day (or take a break in the day) to quietly reflect and send a prayer of thanks for the skills, tools, or situation you have to make it through the rest of your day. This can frame your thoughts for the day in an affirming way, setting you up to handle more than you might otherwise. Plus, a conversation with God can count as one of those personal connections you make in your day.

I am grateful for the skills I have to help others. I am grateful for the people who have taught me how to love and serve. I am grateful that you are taking the time to read my writing. Those are three things I am grateful for as I write this after a long day of work.

Personal Boundaries

Another strategy to avoid taking on secondary stress is to set personal boundaries with your work (professional or passion-based). It is time for the idea of a working lunch to go out the window! Setting aside a specific four hours to volunteer your services in the community, turning off your work notifications at 5:00 pm, or not talking shop when you are in social settings are great starts to setting personal boundaries with your work. This lets you be a person—and a servant to others—in different capacities.

This also means that you need to uphold this boundary in your personal life. People in humanity-based fields often have friends or family who count on them to give advice, listen to their drama, or otherwise bear the burden of their stress. If the nature of a social conversation makes you use your work skills during personal time, it is okay to shut it down. “I do not have the capacity for that” is a statement that my educator friends and I have used with each other on a regular basis during the last two months.

I have found that I need to have a minimum of one night a week where I don’t do work and just do the things to set me up for success as the human I am. Lately, these nights have consisted of doing a load of laundry, showering off the day, and putting an eye mask on while I read my book or listen to music. It is the one night a week I don’t answer the phone, don’t look at social media or news, and definitely don’t leave the comfort of being with my dog. I have also started (although I am not a pro at this yet) turning off work notifications when I have a day off. Just because other people are available to work does not mean you have to be available for them!

Professional Help

Have you ever heard “every therapist has a therapist”? This is the idea that people who are in the work of taking on other people’s stress and trauma need someone to take theirs from them. It is a strategy that can help refocus your remaining energy into the areas it needs to go to if you aren’t quite sure where that may be yourself. It doesn’t have to be a therapist, but finding the person who has the capacity to take your stress from you is a crucial part of avoiding burnout. If you aren’t utilizing a professional, it is important that the person/dynamic you are choosing isn’t simply swapping war stories. That is the opposite of what is being suggested.

Yoga teachers fall into this category, along with the kittens, puppies, and goats they bring with them to my yoga class. An individualized class you enjoy going to that fills your personal bucket can take the stress out of your body in similar ways to going to therapy. It exercises different skills and parts of your brain than the ones used for processing stress and trauma. That is not to say all classes work, but exercise and craft classes, or even a book club for fun, may do the trick!

Conclusion

It is important for all people working with other people’s stress or trauma to have strategies to avoid taking that on as secondary stress and to avoid burnout. It is too easy to fall into an exhausting cycle of serving others without ever serving yourself. Setting personal boundaries with the work, utilizing gratitude to shift your mindset, and even finding a professional to work through things with are beginner strategies to avoid burnout. Using these can help kick-start a healthy balance between living life and being a servant to others. Oh, and also, if I wasn’t clear in my feelings… f*** ICE  

Warmly,

Elaine Seekon

About the Writer

Elaine is an educator by trade and passion, licensed in Special Education areas of Emotional Behavior Disorders, Specific Learning Disabilities, and Autism Spectrum Disorders, as well as Secondary Communicative Arts. Education-driven, she has previously completed a Master of Arts in Educational Leadership and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Social Psychology. She is currently working as a Behavior Specialist in a high school setting. With Spirit & Truth Publishing, Elaine is happily employed as a writer and editor.

This blog post is part of a monthly series of practical advice for faith formation leaders by faith formation and education professionals. Summaries of these posts are sent in a monthly email to email subscribers. Subscribe today!