2 Keys to Understanding Burnout and Healing the Healer

July 3, 2018

Hello Dearest Subscriber,





Today, I would like to address the question posed by one of our group members in our private Facebook group, The Abundant Healer: 90 Days to Scale Your Practice Online.


I think this is really such a wonderful question to pose because I believe it most likely resonates with a lot of people in the helping professions.


“I guess the most frustrating thing is coaching the same point over and over. I just want to learn more about healing the healer. How do you not get too burned out when you keep hearing the same stories, and you’re frustrated yourself?”


There are two things to acknowledge here...and I am going to approach this from within the framework of the law of attraction.


1. You are probably hearing the same stories because your feelings of burnout are unchanging and thus attracting more of the same.


The law of attraction states that we are vibrational beings...incidentally, quantum physics would support this idea as well. Everything is made up of atoms, and atoms are nothing but moving particles that create a charge and vibrational hum, as they do so..and those particles are attracted to one another based on the similarity of that vibrational hum.


The behavior of particles..research has proven...changes when the particles appear to sense they are being observed. In other words, that which makes up all matter, appears to respond to intention and observation. And what is intention and observation, but also a firing of electrical charges and vibrational material in the brain’s synaptic pathways?


Thus, imagine, if you could change the firing of your pathways to harmonize with the charge of a particular observation, you would see the particles of matter change to accomodate the charge an vibrational “signal” you are giving off.


Now, that is a needlessly scientific and clinical way of saying, change your observations, and your feelings about them, and the conditions will change too. But trying to change the conditions first, is typically a harder way to go about doing it, because if you think changing your conditions is always the solution, you will have a hard time down the road, because you take yourself with you, wherever you go...along with your history and habit of observation.


By changing your internal experience first, you will start to see a shift in the clients you attract ...and accept.


2. The contrast you are experiencing provides clarity and direction on what will draw you into further alignment with your highest vibration, and away from burnout.


In the case of this question, I would say the “frustration” or contrast this person is experiencing, is helping them to identify two things: first,  their ideal client--what I call “soul clients.” And secondly, perhaps, to discern the best WAY of working.


This is to say, when you engage with a client that is telling you the same story, and you say to yourself, “Gosh, I am so tired of clients that come to me with the same old sad sob story…” you are, in that moment, also becoming increasingly clear on the type of client you WANT to work with.


You can imagine the type of problems you wish they had, and then you start to imagine all the ways in which you might be able to use your skills and talents to help them.


In my program THE ABUNDANT HEALER 90 DAYS TO SCALE YOUR PRACTICE ONLINE, I refer to these as soul clients. And soul clients are people that you WANT to work with. And typically they are individuals that are in some aspects a foil of yourself. The parts that you are interested in exploring and deepening your understanding of.


So, truly, at the root of this question, it is not that you keep encountering the same old sad sob story, but that you are not honoring or utilizing your talents and capacities, and you are relying on the conditions around you to either grant you permission, or to make changes for you, so you can get what you want.


You will never be in charge of your life or career, if you continue swimming upstream like that.


Secondly, the blessing this question has afforded you, is that it puts you in a more discerning position to determine the degree of alignment you are experiencing in pursuit of your current work.


In other words, it may not necessarily be that you are burnt out on the work, but rather the WAY you are working and experiencing it.


This acknowledgement that the WAY you have been viewing and approaching a situation is valuable in that it typically leads to a willingness to be open and to receive guidance from your own inner being, or Higher Self.  


Your conditions have become so terrible, that you are FINALLY  willing to surrender your limiting beliefs about what is possible for you and your career, long enough to hear what your soul has been shouting at you for a long time.

And it has become so intolerable at this point, because the more you keep deprioritizing yourself and your desires, the louder and more intensely your inner being is going to disagree with you---and make you damn uncomfortable until you start listening.


Now, the solution may not necessarily be to quit your job and find another one, especially if your vibration at the point of departure is in a state of “burn out.” Because that is sending out a vibration of “burn out” and you will only attract another burnout job.


If you cling to the notion that --”changing the conditions changes my feelings”--the same conditions will eventually find you again, and rear its ugly head, wherever you go, and you will always feel pushed around and burnt out.


People don’t want to accept where they are, and what they are experiencing in their life, in any given moment, because they’re afraid that if they accept it,  they’ll get stuck there.

The paradox is once you embrace the action of inaction, which is to say, you allow yourself to stop striving for what do you think would be an improvement upon what you think is “wrong” with you or someone or something else, the “rightness” of that allowance actually changes the direction of the momentum, and things start showing up, instead of you chasing them down.


I am not saying, however, that there is no action that may be taken. Leaving your job, for example, may be an action you ultimately decide to take.


But I would recommend doing that once you have made peace with it.


Once you no longer feel as if you are a slave to the conditions of that job.


Once you can honestly feel as though you are leaving as part of a discerning decision to follow inspired action steps to honoring your talents and skills in, maybe a whole other capacity and framework for you career, NOT as an escape.


When you shift the focus from feeling as though things are done to you, to the idea that my feelings dictate the doing...your vibration changes, and so too will your outcomes.


But, how do you find your way out of burnout, when conditions feel so terribly  intolerable?


3 Steps:


1. You search for the next good feeling thought; The next cognitive construct that allows you to see things from a different perspective.


2. And then you look for evidence of that fact.


3. Add to that, you shift your priorities to honoring the body’s pleasure and self care.


In other words, you take command of your inner space.


We will explore this more in depth in another installment with a “focus wheel” exercise. So stay tuned.


If you are a therapist, coach and/or healer and you are interested in attracting more clients, increasing your cash flow, and expanding your influence online, check out these 7 questions to help you to determine which of the 4 phases of The Abundant Journey you may be in, and your next steps.

Take the quiz: http://bit.ly/TheAbundantJourney


Warmest regards, 






Briana MacWilliam ATR-BC, LCAT

Licensed and Board Certified Creative Arts Therapist

Author, Educator and Reiki Practitioner



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