Optimising resilience is a means to an end. That end being best outcomes for clients, performance and results. However, if when we feel resilient and keep saying yes yes yes and take more and more on to the point that we start to buckle, this is not healthy. In a social work team there is always more work to do.
So as a locum Social Worker I would tend to leave a job after about 1.5 years, which was quite a long time and was relatively easy to do. How long I would stay would often depend on a. the quality of the manager b. the working conditions c. the extent to which I was able to manage the stress of the workload d. the opportunity to grow.
Through my 20+ years as a supervising adult social worker I have observed a tipping point of stress that can rise up within staff. Which consciously or otherwise says enough is enough, it’s time to go. At that point it becomes about self preservation, survival. Taking time out or changing jobs helps rejuvenate us. Change is as good as a holiday as they say. Ending the cycle of never ending allocations due to lack of staff. Ending the trudgery of being full to the brim of stress with a complex and intense workload that often feels like your wading through treacle (unless you work in a fast paced duty team or reviewing team).
While the grass is rarely greener, moving jobs engages a fresh new start, time to breath and reflect, until the caseload is up there once again, at some point, for the time being there is some reprieve.
In reality, how we perceive high level stress depends on the mindset and the filters that interpret the inflow and quantity of data. The wider the bottle neck the better but at some point if we keep saying yes yes yes there is a risk of the neck not being wide enough. The outflow, if we keep taking more and more on without proactive management of stress, is stress related ill-health symptoms: physical, emotional, mental.
Doctors tell us that around 5% of all illness is purely genetic. For people with conditions like Diabetes T1 and sickle cell they are going to get symptoms what ever their life circumstance.
The other 95% of people are represented by those who have a predisposition to ill health and those who do not.
There are people who have a pre-disposition to a particular illness, given a certain set of environment conditions. That is, there is some genetic marker in the cells of the body that are switched on when the environmental conditions around the cell, ie stress chemicals, become too excessive. This is called epi-genetics, the termed coined by Dr Lipton a cell biologist, who states that a cell has the propensity to express itself in 1000’s of ways for better or for worse. There may be genetic coding which leave the person with the potential for an illness, based on their heritage, but that may only be switched on if the extent of the stressors give rise to a vulnerable electro-chemical landscape. That is electrical and chemical stress loops that naturally cycle around the nervous system.
Then there are people with no predisposition but their unbalanced lifestyle is chronically stressful to such a degree that it makes ill-health more likely. They might for example drink excessive alcohol and consume comfort food frequently as a coping mechanism to manage the stress of a job or life which over time can wear the system down (we know from research undertaken by Plymouth University in 2017 that social workers are doing this)
Stress therefore is a core driver of 95% of all illness. It follows then that we need to actively work on reducing or process out our stress related emotions. By doing so we can help to make resilience an opportunity for us. Win win for us and our workplace.
There is a book called The Body keeps the Score by Bessel A. Van de Kolk. The premise is that the sum total of ones lifestyle, both good and bad, is recorded in the body and the output is measurable health symptoms. The body vessel can only take so much personal and workplace trauma and unhealthy lifestyle until it turns into poor physical, mental or emotional health. There are simple measures we can take to protect us from this but they take awareness and consistent action. Better sleep/rest, particular types of exercise, nutrition are of course all the basics but in the throughs of busy-ness these can go by the way side. If you're willing to do these and and some addition stuff like Havening then there is a great deal that can be done to boost ones health and wellbeing in order to maintain resilience for longer and look after our health and welbeing too.
So we have to ask ourselves what are we going to stop doing, start doing and do more of something we are already doing well to support our resilience AND health. One of such ways is to start doing Self-Havening, a neuroscience informed technique that helps to reduce in moment distress and over time uses the power of neuroplasticity, to tune the mind into a positive mind and body set for improved health and wellbeing.
We know from hard university research that Havening has a positive impact on mood, anxiety as well as heart and blood pressure. Feel free to find out more here... www.turnoveranewleaf.co.uk/havening-for-you
So what do you think is Resilience a risk or opportunity? or both?
Written by Jan Carpenter