Burnout in Helping Professions (massage and bodywork)

The recent AMTA Journal has an article on burnout that I was interviewed for back in the spring.

I was pleased that it mentioned my websites but was disappointed in the article overall.

I wish I had written the article myself.

So here it is (this will be a work in progress - all comments and feedback appreciated!):

Massage therapy and other helping professionals are prone to burnout. Burnout is not an illness that you can catch nor is it easily recognizable. It is a process that often begins early in a helping professionals career because most come to the profession with preconceived notions that they want to help others. This in itself is loaded with projections and often begins the process of burnout before one even gets into massage school.

Burnout is the result of not taking care of one’s self and one’s personal needs. When we try to help others before we are cared for ourselves, the result is burnout. As professionals who are known for giving to others, it is important to look at why you would want to give so much to others. Does it allow you to focus on others pain while continuing to hide your own?

Preventing burnout is more than just getting regular massages or taking vacations. It is about really looking at and becoming aware of your deeper needs behind your “call to help” and getting those needs met in other places in your life besides your practice.

Burnout happens when you give too much of yourself and finally realize that you have nothing left to give and you are forced or choose to get out of the business.

Some common signs of things that can lead to burnout are:

• feeling fatigued after working on clients
• wanting to “Fix” clients: thinking you can work with every client
• taking clients at any hour of day or night regardless of the schedule you have set for yourself
• always feeling like you have to do more with clients - taking more time with them than their alloted appointment time
• thinking that massage is the cure for every and all ailments and diseases
• feeling resentful giving massage for a discounted rate
• not charging what you need to make to have a decent living
• not taking the steps you need to build a practice or find a job and take care of yourself financially
• saying things like “it isn’t about the money”

I have written about burnout in other sections of my websites:

Massage Practice Builder

www.thebodyworker.com

The answer to preventing burnout and becoming more aware of your own needs and how to get them met is Peer Supervision (see www.peersupervision.com)

Posted in Building Your Practice, Ethics, Peer Supervision | No Comments »

Massage Research

Research in and about the massage profession is becoming more available.

The Touch Research Institute (TRI) is the most popular source of research along

with the Massage Therapy Foundation.

TRI is funded by Johnson & Johnson Pediatric Institutes, National Institutes of Health, March of Dimes, Biotone and other companies

But how effective or accurate can massage research really be (or any research for that matter?) How can you control a technique and find people with the same exact fiber of muscle that is in spasm or injured to prove anything anyways.

I think we may be too caught up in trying to prove what it is that we do with massage and bodywork to somehow impress the medical profession or whoever or to make the public think we are more credible. I think the only way to achieve credibility is to be more credible.

And after all of the research why can we not cure cancer yet? and look what happened to poor Pluto after all of these years¦

Posted in Massage Research, News | 2 Comments »

10 Easy things to do to make a Website that works

1. Choose a domain name that says where you are and what you do.

Massageseattle.net, merryville-massage.com.

Use hypens to get the name you want.
2. Have your name, address and phone number on every page.

3. When creating pages use file names that say massage in your town.

Like massageseattle.net/seattle-massage-services.html (seattle-massage-services.html is the file name.

4. Use the keyword tags using the name of the file name exactly like it is. (keywords can have additional words but the file name must be the same keyword.

5. The description tags must be something that attracts people as it is often is what the search engines will list in the results.

6. The headline of the page must be the same as the file name (and the first keyword and the description)

7. Use the file name again through out the page and make the word into a link to another page on your site that may explain that concept further.

8. Submit your site to the free directories to get back links to your site.

The Strongest Link

Info Vilesilencer

9. Submit your site to the search engines. Submit each page everytime you make updates to it, but don’t submit it more than once a day to Msn.
Google

Yahoo

MSN Live Search

Read all you can about Search Engines and how they work at searchenginewatch.com

10. Write Content, Content and more content. You will need 40 pages or more. Write a separate page on every service you offer thoroughly explaining each service and what massage does. Write about how the body work and how massage works. Write about your philosophy on healing and health. Write about all the conditions that you work with and what you know about them. Write about the things that you basically tell someone on the phone when they call asking about what massage can do for them.

The purpose of writing so much content is to attract the search engines and to build trust with your readers. They aren’t looking for you they are looking for a solution to their problem.

Read these free ebooks from Sitebuildit! To learn about writing for a website.

Make Your Site Sell Make Your Content Presell

The Netwriting Masters Course     The Service Sellers Master Class

You can try to do all of the above yourself or let Sitebuildit do it for you. First it will help you brainstorm the best name for your site using statistics and keywords to determine what the best keywords are for your business. The SBI package comes with a page builder that helps you build each page and then analyzes each page and tells you what to do to improve your search engine rankings. It will also tell you the rankings each page has in the search engines and will tell you what search engines found you using what keywords so you can build more effective pages using keywords.

Posted in Building Your Practice, Starting Your Practice, Websites for Massage therapists | No Comments »

Handling Projection

“Projection occurs when a person has a thought or feeling that she is not comfortable with and then “projects” it onto others seeing it as their issue.”

Cherie Sohnen Moe - The Ethics of Touch

Projections are parts of ourselves that we are unconscious of that we can see more clearly in the presence of others. We tend to project these unmet needs on others until we can find a way to heal that part of ourself. The problem is that when clients project their thoughts and feelings onto the massage therapist the therapist must be aware enough and have clear enough boundaries as to not let the issue affect their response. When you react with wanting to fix a problem of the clients - including the pain they come into you with that they want fixed - or if you try to give clients advice about what to do it is really more about you than the client. Giving advice and fixing is really what you would do for yourself (and often fail to do for yourself as a massage therapist.)
Projections are a major part of every relationship and are more prevalent in the massage profession because of the nature of touch. Touch brings up buried feelings and emotions that many may have forgotten about or never even knew about from a long time ago.

The way to handle projections (called transference) from a client is to be able to remain solid in one’s self rather than getting hooked into the projection.

Can you allow the person to have their feelings no matter what it brings up for you and acknowledge that someone is in pain or feeling whatever it is that people are feeling.

Can you just acknowledge that someone is in pain without having to fix it or give your advice about it?

Some Examples:
A massage therapist is going through menopause and struggling with all of the many symptoms that one goes through with that. A client comes in and says she is not sleeping well. The therapist assumes it must be menopause too for this client and recommends some of the books she is reading or some of the things she is pursuing.

A client comes in after losing a sibling to cancer and is in a state of grieving. The client begins making specific requests for specific deep tissue work. The massage therapist starts to think that their massage is not good enough and feels threatened. The therapist also thinks that she is doing deep tissue work and the pressure shouldn’t go any deeper or she physically can’t go any deeper. Instead of attuning to the clients needs, they are ignored and excuses are made such as “I don’t think you need to have such deep work”. The client leaves dissatisfied and complains to the desk person but never tells the therapist directly to their face. The massage therapist could also have been up front and told the client that she doesn’t do such deep work and give the choice of ending the session right there (in which the therapist would lose money but would be more in line with her values about doing deep work)

A client with nagging back pain who can’t focus effectively on their work or their family finds relief from getting a massage. They actually feel elated that the pain is reduced and relaxed. The client feels eternally grateful for this work and thinks that it is the massage therapist doing all the work and that they now owe them something. (This is disowning the feeling. It is they who are feeling great! The massage just stimulated the feelings.)

The way to handle projections from the client and become more aware of your own projections is to start questioning your thoughts and beliefs. There are so many unconscious thoughts that run through our heads at any given moment that we aren’t even aware of them. They are the thoughts that keep you from having the practice of your dreams or the relationship of your dreams. To learn more about what you are thinking, just take a look at what you have in your life currently.

“The Work” of Byron Katie also explores this issue. In her book “Loving what is” she says when you are in someone else’s business (wanting to give people advice) you are thinking untrue thoughts. The effect of being in someone else’s business is separation - which is the opposite of what we are trying to do in massage - become more connected with ourselves and others. She says “To think that I know what’s best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance”. When you are busy in someone else’s life you are not present to your own.

“When you do The Work, you see who you are by seeing who you think other people are. Eventually you come to see that everything outside you is a reflection of your own thinking. You are the storyteller, the projector of all stories and the world is a projected image of your thoughts.”

The way to handle projections onto you is to hold on to yourself. Instead of reacting and wanting to give your advice or whatever your response is, just hold it and mirror it back to the person using reflective listening or getting the person back into the awareness of their body by using touch or other techniques such as “Focusing”.

When someone is projecting something onto you it is like a projection screen. But when you don’t buy into their feelings and thoughts you take the projection screen down.

This is a really difficult and complicated process. there is much more to understanding projections and learning to hold on to yourself. It can be best explored in Peer Supervision Groups or in individual peer supervision sessions.

To learn more about projections ( transference and counter-transference) see the resources section.

Therapeutic Relationship

Recommended Reading Lists

Ethics

Posted in Building Your Practice, Ethics, Peer Supervision, The Code of the Caretaker | No Comments »

SOAP Charting

One of the jobs I hate as a massage therapist is SOAP charting. I have taken a class in it and have read a few books on it and I still never really know what to say.

The reason why SOAP charting is so important is because it is the only way to communicate with the medical profession. They will understand massage better when they can see the improvement that massage brings each session.

Diana Thompson is the “Queen” of SOAP charting with her book “Hands Heal” and her classes on soap charting.

I have some basic information on my website:

SOAP charting for Massage Therapists

What should SOAP charts say?

Functional reporting.

One of the things that Diana said in her class on charting is that we need to be charting for every client even if they are not going through their insurance. She said that since we are considered “health care providers” here in WA state that it makes it be required for our profession.

SOAP charting can also be helpful in your learning process and understanding the process that each client goes through. As a profession we also need to be writing up more case studies about our work so that everyone - medical professionals and general population can also see what massage can do. Charting is at the center of case studies.

I hope to be having a section on the website soon that will allow people to start posting their case studies. If anyone has any to post now, please send them to me!

Other resources:

WinCity Soap charting software - also has some articles and lists Diana Thompsons classes. I haven’t tried the software. Has anyone?

Some simple samples

Posted in Insurance Billing | No Comments »