Who Helps the Helpers? The Unique Struggles of Burnout in Immigrant Helping Professionals
From a very early age, I was taught to be a helper. Noticing others’ feelings, anticipating what will make their tasks easier, acknowledging the work that others do to make your own life more convenient - I was taught to continuously be aware of such things. As a kid, I was told to be a good example to my younger sister, to clean up after myself, to say please and thank you for every gesture of kindness, and to always be aware of minuscule changes in others’ emotional expressions. I imagine my entire family was raised in similar fashion: primed to be supportive to others.
It’s no wonder then that my family is made of helping professionals. We are teachers, doctors, nurses, accountants, full time moms, seamstresses, community organizers, religious workers, customer service specialists, and IT. And yes, we are Filipino, which has an entire history of colonization to account for our professions. In addition, I grew up in a devoutly Catholic family and went to Catholic school for all of my formative years; we were dedicated to going to church regularly every week and I was instilled every day with the value of self-sacrifice and using your God-given talents to make the world a better place.
I remember my parents working very hard, every day, no matter what they did. Work came first. House work or school work or work-work, it didn’t matter. It came before fun, it came before rest, it came before sleep, it came before eating. I rarely saw my parents having fun, and if I did, it was on vacation - but even then it felt limited. And they were exhausted, every single day.
The more friends I made, the more prevalent this seemed, especially among my friends whose parents immigrated to the U.S. Their parents were often in helping professions as well, doing thankless work with long hours and dedicated to supporting others in various ways, from nursing to cleaning houses to dentists to nail technicians to attorneys working in social causes. Their families also seemed bent on survival and getting a leg up in society. We were told to focus on our studies, go to college, and get good jobs. We felt the pressure of not only showing up for our families and the sacrifices they made to get us here, but also the feeling of showing up for our cultures in a society that did not always look like or move like we do.
All of this felt, and still feels, so true and meaningful to me. I am so proud of the people in my life: my parents who raised me to be as compassionate and empathetic as I am today and the friends and family who are generous in so many ways I can never count them all. At the same time, I saw the strain. Even though it was unspoken, we could all feel the difficulty of maintaining such a selfless momentum.
When I became a therapist, and I started to ask myself a very simple question: Who helps the helpers? What about us? How can we sustain if we don’t have help ourselves? Who helps those who dedicate their lives to helping others?
Immigrant families often have traditional values. Collective values of focusing on the family’s benefit as a whole rather than individual freedom; earning an ‘honest’ paycheck from a hard day’s work; respecting one’s elders to the point of refusing to question authority; keeping one’s head down and keeping your ‘dirty laundry’ at home; the more I think about it, the more I realize how difficult it can be to convince people from immigrant families to reach out for help, especially for something as private as your mental health. Even if someone was trying to reach out to help them, I wonder if they would have accepted it or even recognized that they needed it.
I suspect that our parents were burned out long before it became a well-known word in our culture. They were irritable, dissociating, checked out, and feeling lost, not to mention the intangible grief of leaving one’s home country to be thrown into the whirlwind of the American dream turned nightmare. In their jobs, they were expected to put on a smile, nod their heads, and do their thankless work with very little acknowledgement or none at all. At home, they were cleaning and cooking and fixing and coordinating an endless cycle of tasks. They scolded us for playing video games and chatting online and gallivanting with our friends. The U.S. machinery expected nothing less from them, and they believed that in order for us to survive, we needed to find our place in the machine too.
To our parents’ generation, burnout wasn’t even a concept. There was no ceiling. There was work hard or nothing. They pushed themselves far past the point of burnout, and this often results in health issues: we understand more and more how chronic stress depletes the immune system and creates the conditions for long-term damage in organs and tissues. But in their perspective, they did what they had to do to survive. They found a way to create a ‘better life’ for their kids.
Is it any wonder that we, their children, feel guilt when we decide to leave the dishes in the sink, push work tasks to the next day, or take a moment to sit and watch TV?
In order to interrupt the cycle and find balance again, the problem we face now is two-fold:
With all of this foundational messaging about feeling “never good enough” or work dominating our lives, how do we identify when we are overworking ourselves?
Community is essential to our well-being. We are social creatures. And yet, we are surrounded by other 1st gen and 2nd gen immigrant helping professionals who are unaware and still working themselves to the bone. Where do we turn for support?
The solution, as in all things, starts with small steps.
Easing into small moments of pause where you can find them. Breathe deeply, even just one. Taking even the smallest moments of slowness and appreciation for the moment will compound to help you find it easier to do in bigger steps.
Take a moment to notice who, if anyone, in your life shows up for you when you need them. How do they show up for you? What about their support takes a little bit of weight off of your shoulders? What makes it easier for you to accept their help?
Resentment is a painful feeling, especially for helpers, and it can also be a very insightful teacher. If you have felt resentment, get curious for a moment: what need is getting neglected or put to the side? What do I wish others would do for me or with me in mind? How can I make space for me to let go of the tiniest bit of control and allow someone else to support me?
When I ask myself, “Who helps the helpers?” (And yes, I did steal that from Watchmen) I acknowledge that I am a formerly burned out helper who chose to help those who are in service of others. I love being a therapist for helping professionals because every day I get to give back to those who have given so much to me and to their communities. I get to validate how much they care while also easing them into learning how to let others care for them and let go of their guilt, unworthiness, and impostor syndrome. I also know that therapy is only one part of the puzzle that frees us from the endless cycle of burnout. We need change on a systemic level; we need an end to oppression and racism and classism. All of these things are true.
And, my hope is rooted in the ripples of not only kindness and self-sacrifice, but also in balancing boundaries and self-worth founded in our inherent goodness and humanness. My hope is knowing that we can break these patterns with intentional choices. My hope is knowing: we as helping professionals already know how to help - we have to turn it inwards to connect ourselves to the help we so generously give to everyone else.
