How to Prevent Burnout as a Practitioner | Self Care Tips for Healers

The topic of self care has been coming up a lot in my community, where people who are stepping into service, feel depleted, exhausted and like they need to withdraw or isolate all together. 

Especially for those of us that are holding space for people sometimes in their most heavy moments, we really need to be looking at what is self care for me, and what actually works moment-to-moment to make sure I'm feeling my best and can continue to be of service.

>>If you want to watch the full video of our conversation on the topic of Self Care for Energy Healers, you can watch it on our Youtube channel.<<

We’ve narrowed it down to four surprising reasons why you might be having a hard time maintaining your energy levels.

I hope that through this conversation it’s going to inspire you guys to really look at what’s been going on in your own life and close up some of those energy leaks and ways that maybe you haven't been looking after your human that's going to really help you get back on your center and be able to take on the rest of this year and the days to come with ease.

Reason 1: You're self-care needs have increased and you might not have noticed it yet.

Over the last three years I went from supporting around one or two people a week in healing sessions to now sometimes dozens on top of my student load and our Healers Rising Academy community.

I had increased the amount of people I was supporting, but I hadn't realized that in order to keep up I needed to also increase my self care.

And, I never realized how much that increase in workload actually took out of me because what I would do is I would cover up the need for self-care and balance with sugar.

My body will get cravings when I'm depleted, and so instead of actually doing the things this human needs to reset the system I tend to give it fast carbs to just keep it going one extra mile.

I noticed this happens especially when I'm pushing myself past that point where I should really be adding a little bit more balance to my schedule or where I’m driving really really hard to get things done and I don't listen to the signals my body is giving me.

Those are the times where I really noticed that I come up with some kind of crutch to keep me going instead of falling into the self care, which might be saying “No”.

I just took a week-and-a-half off of doing one-on-one sessions this past week because I was noticing some of my burnout signs. I was getting a little snappy and falling into control dramas and not being a super kind human to my family, which is not my norm. I noticed I wanted to have emotions about something in one direction but it would come out a totally distorted way for me because when I really haven't been on top of my self care I have a hard time regulating.

I see this in a lot of my clients where they have lived in this zone of being so stressed out all the time and not being able to regulate themselves for so long.

And so we don't often recognize that these ups and downs with the different emotions we are having truly are a sign of needing to change what's happening in our reality and look after ourselves.

I mean we can label that self-care but sometimes it's just a switch up of routine.

Reason 2: The routine you have is outdated for where you are in your life now.

If you were to take a good look at your life now versus when you might have originally set up that routine, whatever routine you have, are you even in the same place in your life now as when you created that?

And to take it a step further, how much of our intuition are we actually overriding?

How many of the signals that our body is giving us are getting overridden because we're just so used to getting up and making that cup of coffee in the morning, or we always watch the news at this time of day, or we always scroll Facebook before going to bed?

Our bodies are trying to give us the information we are asking for, but our routines can be blocking our intuition and magic from having a voice at the table.

So, I personally don’t adhere to much of a routine in my day-to-day life. I have little things that I tend to stick to, like my bedtime routine is pretty classic, but my mornings you never know what you're going to get out of me.

At bedtime, it’s my sacred time to wind down and I’m not really open to changing that much. But my mornings, I like to shake those up.

What I like to do is, as soon as I wake up in the morning I give my body the opportunity to show me exactly where it's at and what's required to get through the day with so much ease and joy and abundance and fun.

You know, there’s all this talk about creating a morning routine where you do your gratitude journaling and then you meditate and then maybe you go for a walk and you do your stretches and you do this every day without fail because that’s what makes you a productive human. And I can see where sometimes that could be helpful for some people.

But some days all I want to do is get up and make some toast, have tea and read a chapter in a book. And the next day maybe I want to meditate. And the next, I might want to go for a nice long walk or bike ride or do some yoga. But if I go into a strict routine and I overrode those signals, how many magic moments am I going to miss in my day?

We talked about this in Flow Body inside the Healers Rising Academy back in September 2020, how when we get stuck in a routine, that can quiet the messages that we’re getting from our intuition and from our Guide Teams.

We need to be open to spicing things up in our day-to-day to stay open to magic and flow.

A question you can ask yourself is, What is something I could do today that feels fun, playful, different to me that I don’t normally have going on? Or, what could I do first thing this morning to set myself up to experience fun, magic, and expansion?

Because chances are, if you’ve been doing the same thing day in and day out and it’s not working, it is probably not the right form of self-care for you for where you are right now.

Reason 3: You have “holes in your bucket”, and until those are closed, no amount of self care will fill you up.

Energy leaks are a huge source of stress and depletion for us. Things like too many options on the table (hello, analysis paralysis), too many unmade decisions or choices that need to be made, clutter in our physical (and digital) spaces and running in our heads, tasks left undone, etc.

As highly intuitive beings, we all know how much our external environments pay a role in our internal being, but sometimes it’s easy to forget or push it to the back of the priority list.

We have a whole section inside the Healers Rising library all about clearing negative energy from our spaces and places, and one of the first things we ask people to do is take a look around the room you’re in and notice if it’s a place of support and bliss, or does it raise your heartrate a little and make you feel tired and heavy because of all the piles of stuff everywhere or because all you see is tasks left undone?

What about inside your head? Do you have a thousand plans and dreams that you haven’t taken action on? That is taking up energetic space. So it can be a gift of self-care to close down the ones that are not for right now, and give more energy to the ones that can actually fly. Doing this can give ourselves the space to be more creative.

And sometimes we don’t even know that something has been draining us until we clean it up.

Reason 4: You’re trying to be Superman or Superwoman and do all the things on your own.

Are you wearing all the hats in your job and at home? Are you the only one that can handle it and do the job right?

Are you spending your time on tasks that you might be good at but don’t actually light you up or move the needle on your most important and in alignment goals? What is that distracting you from, that if you focused all your energy on it, you could really do something amazing for the world?

Listen, I’m totally guilty of this. It’s something I’ve been working on for a while, and until my business integrator Violet joined me in my business a little over a year ago, I used to have such a hard time asking for help. This was even with my spouse asking for help around the house and with the kids. So I would go and put myself in this position to complain about it rather than fixing the problem by reaching out to someone to ask for support.

Self care oftentimes is advocating for exactly what we need.

Recognizing where our energy and focus is best spent and allowing someone else to come in for whom this job is their zone of genius and they actually really enjoy doing it, allows both of you to shine.

This might be a triggering topic, especially for those of us who like to maintain a level of control and know ourselves to be the helpers on this planet. So another piece of self care is, when these triggers come up, when the thoughts and beliefs and emotions rise that we don’t want to keep playing out, we use our own healing tools that we so graciously use to support those around us to work through our own stuff and keep our mental and emotional fields strong and healthy.

Get into that spiritual toolbox and figure out what you can do to get the job done so that you can have a free mind, a free heart, and a free body to make life a little bit easier.

We can do things like emotional release, clearing statements, getting into your Akashic Records, running Reiki or D-Codes, or whatever else we know how to do.

We don't need to be carrying all this baggage. We don't need to keep telling ourselves all of these outdated stories that are holding ourselves back. That's a choice.

It's a choice to tell ourselves those stories, and when we truly take accountability for what we're saying not only to ourselves but also to the people and world around us and go, “Is this the story I want to keep telling?” and we're willing to rewrite that through acts of self care we become powerful beings. When we start creating our reality instead of being a victim to it, it’s a beautiful thing!

Sometimes self-care is a highly actionable word.

Sometimes it means getting our chores done, crossing things off the to-do list that are not the most joyful things in the moment we’re doing them, but once they’re done, oh man they create so much space and peace.

Maybe for you today it means changing things up in your day-to-day and being open to trying something new because your body is asking for it. Maybe it is taking a break and getting some physical activity in or trying a new meal or meal delivery service. Or asking for help. Or finally just making a decision to close out that project you’ve been thinking about but haven’t started yet because it’s just not going to happen right now so you can focus on what’s most important.

If you're looking for help to figure out where you're currently at and what comes next in your journey, check out my FREE Soul's Compass Quiz!

I've channeled this short quiz to help you discover your archetype & how you’re ready to contribute to the world. In this assessment you’ll find out where your gaps are and what to do next. https://www.caitlindianna.com/soulscompass

The awesome thing is, you get to do self care your way.

The energy behind looking after your human really comes down to this: What do you need to do right now that's going to give you the emotional, physical, and mental space to be able to move forward a little bit lighter one more step from now?

That's what it comes down to. So if it's an action, if it's a clearing statement, if it's a bubble bath or a pound of chocolate, whatever it is it needs to give you the space to walk forward throughout your days and weeks ahead lighter than when you came into it.

You don't need to write your self care by anybody else’s standards.

You don’t have to listen to others when they tell you that self-care is candle light, reading a book, and just walking in nature, because it might not be for you in that moment. Your self care might be a highly actionable word and that's okay, do it your way, I promise you will feel lighter in the end.

xo, Caitlin