Feminist Global Resistance will be posting a series of articles on techniques and safety tips for activists.

Our next article is a continuation of our discussion for #OpMentalHealth, specifically discussing burnout, “Activism and Preventing Burnout #OpMentalHealth”, was written in conjunction with Anon/Street Medics and other friends.

To all activists, “dancing the streets” can create stress and burnout.  Learn the symptoms and methods to avoid it.  

Burnout will throw us off our game, lead to conflict and keep us from being effective.  Severe burnout can lead to carelessness, overly emotional responses and self-destructive behavior. It becomes a threat to our comrades and our message.

We need to recognize it in ourselves and our comrades. Remember, we are in this together so together we help each other. 

Activism can be fun but it is serious business – take care of yourself and each other.

As always: Be prepared for confrontation and keep it safe out there!

 

 

Activism and Preventing Burnout #OpMentalHealth

 

We can all experience burnout in our work, in our day to day living and, as activists, in the streets.

Key signs of burnout are physical and mental exhaustion; a sense of dread; Feelings of cynicism, anger or irritability, and hopelessness; Difficulty in decision-making; And, one may notice, a dwindling compassion towards others as well as an inability to stay focused on tasks at hand.

If the stress and burn out continue, one may develop both mental and physical health problems including headaches, chronic fatigue, heartburn, and other gastrointestinal symptoms, and an increased potential for alcohol, drug, or food misuse.

In the streets, an activist can become quick to anger, apathetic and ineffective. It can lead to dangerous risk-taking which can jeopardize fellow activists and the action.

Below are some hints focusing on actions or mental attitudes that can be cultivated to prevent or deal with burnout.  We can help create an environment more conducive to positive mental health.

Depending on our situation and our individual personal makeup, we can take various measures to help mitigate burnout:

• Maintain healthy, friendly, and meaningful relationships with fellow activists; Develop a support group of activists and nonactivists in which we can discuss our feelings and frustrations.

• Live one day at a time while realizing that working for peace and justice is a lifetime job.  (work on stopping “future tripping”. We cannot predict the future because the future isn’t real, but today is here and now. Focus on today).

• Become a specialist and utilize our specific personal talents, while trying to emphasize those work activities that, on their own, are enjoyable and can be accomplished. Focus on those areas in which we feel we are doing a good job. Do successful and satisfying “work” that can transform into creative play.

• Reduce commitments to those for which you have passion and limit activities and projects to those you can do well and  do them better. One can never do all the projects one would like to do, so assign priorities to your activities doing those you deem the most important first.

• Be aware that it is not possible to control everything in one’s environment. Develop an attitude that changes one’s outlook. Instead of viewing stressful and anxiety provoking situations as a problem, begin perceiving them as personal challenges that you can, successfully, overcome.

• Realize there are actually ebbs and flows in activism and respond appropriately. Enjoy the down time and consciously try to pace one’s self during the busiest times.

• Take time to do things that rejuvenate the self  – play, socialize, creative endeavors. Re-create!

• Realize that the fact you are working on social concerns is a sign of a healthy, mature individual; Realize what you are doing is important – no matter the outcome – and celebrate victories, no matter how “small” (though no victory is really “small”; They are all huge). Reward yourself for the work you are doing.

• Become more aware of and tuned into the effects of activist work. Find a balance between the often undue optimism and undue pessimism. Learn to separate ego from action:
  • Focus on where we have come from in certain movements rather than just on where we would like to be realizing how much worse things would be without our efforts–thus we do have “influence” if not always “success”. Every action, no matter how small, that encourages another to question their paradigm is valuable.
  • Be aware that there have been many successes at the local level and some at the national level regarding issues such as labor/women/gay/African American rights, environmental problems, and certain anti-military concerns.  All these changes came from activism. This is amazing given the resources and media that often are in opposition.
  • Understand that certain successes result in “non-events” that are more difficult to recognize. Activists have helped stop events from coming to fruition by bringing attention to them .
  • Understand that successes may take years to see or understand (Activists helped to stop the Vietnam war).
  • Take heart from the successes, even those with which we disagree. All successes of activism from Gay Rights to the growth of the Evangelical Movement prove that, if we organize and educate ourselves and others, we can influence millions of people. The changes we seek can and will happen over time.

Vigilance and continued action is the only way to continue with progress building on those successes that came before. Without vigilance and action, we lose ground and we find ourselves rolling back hard fought victories (eg, Roe V Wade was never “the law”. It was a judicial opinion. As Bella Abzug admonished in 1973, we needed to codify it into Federal Law through Congress but the will of Congress was never there and the people rested on their laurels believing it was a done deal.)

Revolution is not a stagnant, one off, event.  It must be kept alive and understood as a constant, living push forward. We can never sit back, resting on or laurels, saying, “Our work is done”. Always keep in mind, new injustices will evolve and past battles won may have to be fought again; Those battles we believe we lost may well be reversed in the future. We cannot hold each win or loss as a definitive end of the matter.  It takes a look at the bigger picture of history to fully understand the changes that are influenced by a single rock thrown.

• Realize that feelings of sadness or despair about the world situation are legitimate and should be experienced but it is important maintain hope. That hope can be maintained by actively recalling successes in which you were a part and by inspiration that can be drawn from the actions and words of those who have gone before from Martin Luther King, Jr, to Angela Davis; From Emma Goldman to  Malcolm X.

• Recognize negative thoughts about yourself and your work that may not be legitimate. Be kind to yourself.  One can’t do it all by one’s self. Learn to detach – be careful not to define one’s self by the outcome of any one event or action. It is not just “me”; It is “we”.

• Cultivate a sense of humor .  There can be some humor found in everything.

• Take care of one’s self  – Work off stress by exercising; Learn to relax or meditate.

• Understand that more advanced cases of burnout or potential burnout may require participation in therapy. Learn the queues and keep watch on your behavior and a gauge on what your body is saying to you.

 

Stay safe!

Love and solidarity!