Grief, Balance and Burnout for Deathworkers: Our 3 Overlooked and Misunderstood Siblings

Over the last decade-plus, I’ve worked with death and dying in all kinds of ways. From delivering death notifications as an interfaith chaplain at one of the countries largest jails to my work as a consultant to more than 100 death-related businesses to my hospice volunteer work and to my community deathwork, I’ve had the privilege and honor of working alongside death amongst a variety of backdrops. I’ve also had the opportunity to work with a variety of deathworkers and gotten to see how they manage and cope with this line of work as well.

Even though the job titles, locations, and granular details of the work might change, the person carrying the work—the deathworker—remains the same. As I’ve experienced these roles over the years, I’ve observed three things that deathworkers all know exist, but might be thinking of incorrectly.

The three things deathworkers often misunderstand within themselves are grief, balance, and burnout. Now, I sat and chewed on this paragraph for a very long time because I couldn’t quite find the right words here. I am not trying to tell any seasoned professional how they are doing something wrong. And I am truly hoping I do not come across that way. What I’m sharing here is that these three things—grief, burnout, and balance–these are things deathworkers (no matter where the work is happening) talk about all the time. If you work for a company that provides continuing education or attend industry conferences, you will almost always see sessions on skills related to burnout, grief, and balance. However, nobody is ever saying what I’m about to say to you. The perspective is off, I think, and in many cases, I see people putting the cart before the horse. 

Grief, Burnout and Balance

When professionals speak on things like burnout and balance, they are often talking about these things as if they are stagnant—as if they are stationary. Singular, immovable points on the map of YOU. But they aren’t still. All three of these things move, shift, change, and grow. They are not stationary things you can come back to at a later date and find in the exact same place you left them. And that is where the problems originate. 

What is Grief?

The most common misconception people have about grief is this—they think it’s something you only feel and that it’s something that will go away completely at some point. Grief is actually a response to loss. It’s the way you uniquely react to a loss. And the way that you react to loss (the way that you grieve) is different than the way that I grieve. And the way you respond to a loss at the age of 15 is different than the way you respond to a loss at the age of 55. The way we grieve changes as we age, too. Our grief response can carry with it a whole host of symptoms. I’d say 99% of the population understands that one of those symptoms is our emotions. But there is more to it. The grief response includes emotional, physical, spiritual, social, behavioral, and cognitive symptoms. And, you may or may not have symptoms from every single one of those categories. Grief is truly a force. A very unique-to-you-at-this-specific-point-in-time force. 

What is Balance?

While we have clinical research to back up our grief theories, the word ‘balance’ is not so scientific, at least in the way I am talking about it. When I talk about balance, I’m talking about when a colleague of mine might say “My life is SO out of balance right now.” It’s that. It’s when we self-assess and notice that our life is in or out of balance. Most of my colleagues would include work, home, and self under the “balance” umbrella. And I would too. And in most cases, we only really notice balance when we are OUT of balance. When work has overtaken too much of our home life and eaten away at our personal time—that’s when we realize we don’t have this thing called Balance anymore. Balance is the word for the unique-to-you interplay between your work, home, and self’s responsibilities, needs, and wants. 

What is Burnout?

Burnout, a term that’s been around since the 1970s, refers to the consequences a person experiences because of high-stress at work. It was originally coined in relation to those in the ‘helping professions’. If you work with death, dying, or grief in some way, you might find yourself in not only that ‘helping profession’ at work but also in your personal life too. When your friends and family know you know about ‘tough stuff’, they are more likely to reach out to you when they need help. Burnout results in reduced performance, exhaustion, lack of creativity, and cynicism.

Think of Grief, Burnout and Balance as Living, Changing or Moving

The approach to these three things tends to be rooted incorrectly, in my experience. All three of these are more like living, breathing things. Our grief response changes as we age and gain more life experience, right? So too does our burnout point. Under the same circumstances today, let’s say this is a time when you are NOT burned out, well, the same exact conditions might have led to burnout for you at the age of say, 25. Our burnout point is also a living, breathing thing that grows and changes as we do. Balance is no different. What gives you a sense of balance today, might have left you feeling depleted as a teenager, or a young adult. These are not stationary, stagnant points on the map of you. They live within you. They grow as you grow. And the tricky part is actually just staying in a healthy relationship with these three things. 

What can you do with this?

Whether I realized it or not, I found a way to manage these relationships for myself. First, I stopped viewing burnout or balance or grief as something to overcome, as something to figure out, and then completely remove it from my radar until it becomes a problem again. I started viewing grief, burnout, and balance as siblings inside myself, so to speak. Siblings that are prone to be forgotten. Three siblings that all share space with me. Yes, I’d like them to move out and move on—but they won’t. Second, I started checking in on these three siblings relationally. I ask “How is my sibling Grief today? What does your grief need?” Or “How is my sibling Balance today? What does my balance need?” Or “How is my sibling Burnout today? What does my burnout need?” Siblings are part of us, made from the same parents, but they are not the SAME as us. The same is true for grief, balance, and burnout. We are not grief, we are not burnout, we are not balance, but they are a part of us and a part of our lives whether we like it or not. There’s a mothering or nurturing aspect here. This leads me to my next point…

In Conclusion

Balance, Grief and Burnout are more like living, breathing, growing, changing things that share space with us, throughout our lives. They are like a sibling, in some ways. It’s up to us to live in relationship with these things and to recognize when our needs and requirements have changed. What made me feel ‘balanced’ at 17 is completely different than what makes me feel ‘balanced’ today. The hard part is just stopping and really taking a look at this in ourselves. You can’t notice what you don’t see.

Questions to ask Yourself

• What made you feel balanced at 17 years old? What is different about what makes you feel ‘balanced’ today? And what is the same?

• When was the first time you felt burned out? Would that make you feel burned out today?

• How did you grieve as a teenager? How do you grieve now?