“By protecting others from our trauma, we offer them safety and the opportunity to build resilience. They can then pass this down to the next generation. We create more room for growth in their nervous systems by first creating more room in our own.” ~ Resmaa Menakem
Nurturers are those who are naturally empathetic and often find themselves in care taking roles at home and in society. They tend to be nurses, therapists, teachers, activists, and mothers.
Recently the coronavirus is demanding that nurturers take on even more work and care taking as so many in our collective community have been negatively impacted.
I myself am a nurturer as a psychotherapist and many of my clients and students are nurturers.
In my past, as a nurturer I suffered from burn out and energy depletion daily (and can still suffer from these things at times). I was either full on or full off. I would choose to go weeks without reading the news due because it felt too overwhelming for my body and energy system. I remember not being able to call my friends and family back because I felt too tired from others’ stories and emotional experiences. I suffered sleepless nights as a result of my thoughts getting stuck in repetitive loops.
We are in an unprecedented and momentous time in history.
Right now it is vital for nurturers to learn how to regulate their nervous systems and to remain connected to community and with the Earth. If you are a nurturer and you are burned out, you may be negatively impacting your own health and the people you care for and tend to.
Besides this, you deserve to live a meaningful life outside of the valuable work that you do. In school and in training, all of the learning is based on how to help others. However, you can also learn how to do this without discounting your own wellbeing.
The combination of community, nature connection, and energy replenishment is a sustainable and preventative medicine for nurturers. Nurturers need each other. We also need mother Earth to nurture us as we nurture others. It is detrimental that we learn how to tend to our own well being as we tend to others. Community, nature, and inner resourcing are vital to a nurturer’s overall health.
Community
The recent stay at home orders have lead to more social isolation; however we still need community. Study after study shows the positive impact of learning and interacting within community settings. Psychologist Susan Pinker states, “Face to face contact releases a whole cascade of neurotransmitters…and is enough to release oxytocin, which increases your level of trust, and it lowers your cortisol levels, so it lowers your stress.” During quarantine, the zoom group calls are very important to our sense of belonging even though we are not able to meet with one another in person. Nurturers need to be held after holding so many others throughout the day.
Nature
Quarantine during the coronavirus has forced many nurtures to do most of their work inside and on screens or work long hours in hospital settings. It is now more important than ever to balance your time on screen with your time outside. Your health is connected to your relationship with nature. In Eva M. Selhub MD and Alan C. Logan ND’s Your Brain on Nature, they write: In Your Brain on Nature, Selhub MD and Logan ND describe the different impacts that indoors compared to outdoors has on the human body. They write:
Negative ions are charged molecules that we cannot feel, see, smell, or taste. The level of these molecules that we inhale is dependent on the environment that surrounds us. Negative ions are found in abundance in forests and near bodies of moving water. Negative ions in the air, molecules carrying an extra negative charge due to natures’s splitting action, are yet another unseen and under-appreciated aspect of outdoor natural settings. Negatively charged air ions, which are prevalent in natural settings, can become quickly depleted within polluted external environments, as well as in enclosed and air-conditioned rooms. Negative ions are also lowered by electronic devices found in homes and offices, such as computer screens, photocopy machines, and televisions. For example, the air in copy centers contains almost five times more positive ions than outdoor air on the same day.
Nurturers are often more sensitive to their environments. It is crucial that we encourage each other to spend long amounts of time outside. Also, studies have proven that human beings are innately connected to nature. This relational imprint is within our genetic code. It is no wonder that, “City dwellers have a 20 percent higher risk of anxiety disorders and a 40 percent higher risk of mood disorders as compared to people in rural areas.”
Inner Resourcing
It is more important than ever for nurturers to learn new resources for self care. Nurturers’ clients, patients, students, and children now have a new set of struggles including health issues, unresolved individual, collective, and ancestral trauma, as well the negative impacts of climate change. Our capacity as nurturers must grow in order to adjust to the current social and ecological environment. Simply learning how to wash your hands and wear protective gear, (nurses) the significance of countertransference (therapists), and creating concrete lesson plans and instructions (teachers) is no longer sufficient for self care.
Learning how to ground and connect to your body and the Earth is an energy replenishment tool that can support the work that nurturers do. In the book, Earthing, Clinton Ober states, “We humans have a bio-electrical connection with the earth. One that, with simple ground contact, neutralizes charge in the body and naturally protects the nervous system and the endogenous fields of the body from extraneous electrical interference.”
“Earthing” or “Grounding” is an example of a basic tool that can support overall health and well being. When you learn how to ground you are more present and engaged with the people you love and nurture. You are also deepening your relationship with yourself which is one of the most important relationships of them all while connecting to the Earth.
Community, Earth connection, and new inner resources are integral to the health of nurturers. Nurturers are being called to expand their emotional capacity for their families and greater community, and it is important that we offer new tools and support systems to hold the people who love and care for so many during challenging time.
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