Rekindling from Burnout

Episode Transcript

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Before we start, a little content warning that this episode describes moments of suffering witnessed by library staff, including a person overdosing. 

[Music] 

Lawrence Fiorelli I became a librarian because I believe the work we do, connecting people to the resources they need is social justice work. We get to know patrons who come in every day what their needs are and what hardships they may be facing. But many of us are unprepared for the ways in which we'll be asked to bear witness to the distress of others over the course of an average day. Someone who asked for help with the computer is grieving a spouse, a patron loses consciousness in the restroom after a substance abuse relapse. A teenager who comes to the library every day after school arrives crying. A patron will come to the desk and simply ask, Can you help me? And I say, I hope so, what do you need?

Krissa Corbett Cavouras That’s Lawrence Fiorelli, an adult Librarian at BPL, reciting a winning pitch for the library’s annual Incubator grant competition, which brings innovative programming to the institution. and the project won funding that year. The idea that Lawrence and a team of librarians were pitching to the competition’s judges was that library workers need a holistic approach to reference work: better tools to address the needs and even traumas of patrons and staff alike. And Adwoa, you’re part of the program, right?

Adwoa Adusei Yeah, I feel lucky to be a part of the project. There are currently nine of us in total, and we’ve used the grant to bring different trainings and awareness to this idea of trauma-informed librarianship over the last year. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras I have never actually been behind a reference desk with patrons at a public library, but from what I hear from librarians, one of the joys of that experience is sort of what Lawrence was talking about, that no day is ever the same because no question is ever the same.

Adwoa Adusei That’s definitely accurate. We get all sorts of questions at the reference desk. That’s what we’re here for, it’s part of the appeal even! But sometimes we can’t help as much as we might want to, and that can be stressful to both the patron and to the staff member. It’s something that our group talks about, too. We got together a few weeks ago to talk about burnout in the profession, both pre- and post- pandemic. Here’s Alicia Pritchard, who talked about being unable to help a patron at her branch recently.

Alicia Pritchard A parent came in to use the computer. And, you know, during a pandemic, you have to turn them away in a kind way, you know, as a librarian, you your profession is to help and when you can't help, you feel kind of defeated, kind of useless in a way. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Another librarian in the group, Kat Savage, described a situation pre-COVID in which the resource in question was more pressing than computer access.  

Kat Savage A patron I was working with at the time, a patron who was experiencing homelessness, and we, you know, we did everything that we could do, which was connecting to Breaking Ground, of providing contacts to various options that this person may have. 

Adwoa Adusei Kat mentioned Breaking Ground there — that’s an organization that the library partnered with to connect people to affordable housing and other social services.

Kat Savage And it was, it was a point where this individual was living out of their car, and yet they they were a regular and we would see them at the library all the time. They would ask us about what more we could do, what more we could connect them to. And I remember very clearly because I bike around a lot, I remember very clearly seeing his his vehicle, which, of course, you get to know outside in the Dunkin Donuts parking lot one night biking home, and just sobbing because I knew this person was in the cold. They weren't running their car. And, this is a person I knew I would see again. And that -- it's really hard to see a human that you know in this situation. It’s really hard.

Adwoa Adusei That kind of stress, of working with and trying to assist people at their most desperate moments, it stays with you, like Kat said: you’re liable to take it home with you. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And it can lead to burnout, right? Burnout from any kind of job -- public school teaching, nursing, social work -- but also librarian burnout. One study in 2019 found that about 80 percent of library workers reported feeling burnout, or emotional exhaustion among professionals who do “people work” of some kind, at least once in their careers.

Adwoa Adusei And that’s why our group got together at BPL, to combat the stress of the professions, and support each other. We called the project: Rekindling from Burnout.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Today on Borrowed, we’re talking about how to rekindle and recover. I’m Krissa Corbett Cavouras,

Adwoa Adusei And I’m Adwoa Adusei. You’re listening to Borrowed, stories that start at the library.

[Music]

Alicia Pritchard I had to open up the restroom door and actually see the gentlemen on the floor with his eyes rolling in the back of his, you know, head. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras That’s Alicia Pritchard again, describing an episode she witnessed at her former branch Bedford Library, in Bed-Stuy, where a patron over-dosed in the library bathroom.

Alicia Pritchard You know, I'm a human being. So it's like, what can I do to help? What what is going on here? And having a patron there with the Narcan nasal spray, that was helpful, but when it didn't work, I was very thankful that myself as well as my staff had the Narcan training, and we had a nasal spray at our desk. I felt like I saved a life. I literally -- this person was unconscious, non-responsive, and because of the nasal spray, we were able to revive him and of course call 911.

Adwoa Adusei Across the country, hundreds of libraries stock Narcan, an anti-overdose medication, and have library workers who are trained to use it. Many of our librarians at BPL take a voluntary training to be prepared. And just a note that here in Brooklyn, although overdosing happens in our libraries, it is not common. And, in a big city, where ambulances often arrive quickly, library workers are trained to call 911 first before administering Narcan medication themselves.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras But while that seems like that’s where the story ends, you know, we were in this crisis situation, and then it was resolved ... there’s this reverberations for the people who are responsible for responding to that kind of event.

Alicia Pritchard Just seeing, you know, someone's life could have been possibly gone in a matter of minutes was very, very, very traumatic to the point where, after it happened, I had to ask my supervisor to take the rest of the week off because I really internalized it. You know, as a human being you’re empathetic about certain situations. And, yeah, it was very -- you internalize things, even though you think you don't, you really do after seeing something traumatic like that.

[Music]

Adwoa Adusei What Alicia is talking about here is something called second-hand trauma or vicarious trauma. If you work with the public — whether it’s as a social worker, a security officer, a janitor, or any other job where you come into contact with all kinds of people, and often people looking for help — then you might have experienced something like this.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And, chances are, there aren’t many structured ways to talk about this kind of trauma. And, it’s not always something so life-threatening as an overdose. It can be any number of things. 

Cassandra Hickman As librarians, like, we are, we are caretakers at work.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras That’s Cassie Hickman, a librarian at New Lots Library in East New York, Brooklyn, and one of the co-founders of Rekindling from Burnout.

Cassandra Hickman And teens, children who, you know, come every day after school and stay there until we close... like we are their people, we’re adults who are helping raise these children.

Adeeba Afshan Rana Oftentimes educators have these conversations in which they're like, well, but I'm technically a first responder for this child. And I feel the same way for our teens. 

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Adeeba Afshan Rana is a librarian at Arlington Library in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn.

Adeeba Afshan Rana Sometimes it's really hard to leave what you have heard at work. You know, like when you get home and you're so tired suddenly and you don't know why.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras This reminds me of something called “vocational awe.” It’s something that I will say we are guilty of here on Borrowed — you know, depicting libraries as sacred places and upholding library workers as superheroes. Librarian Fobazi Ettarh described the harmful impacts of “vocational awe.” Ahe writes: “In the face of grand missions of literacy and freedom, advocating for your full lunch break feels petty. … Awe is easily weaponized against the worker, allowing anyone to deploy a vocational purity test in which the worker can be accused of not being devout or passionate enough to serve without complaint.”

Adwoa Adusei The danger of being perceived as a superhero is that you stop feeling like a human being who makes mistakes, has feelings, and can get overwhelmed. Adeeba talked about that, too.

Adeeba Afshan Rana There are lots of ways in which we imagine that we're superheroes. And so, I feel like it took me just some time to understand that, like, oh, I need to be building in space and time for processing. And I often think about what Audre Lorde had to say about like what it means to survive and what it means to thrive. And so for me, those ideas are really tied into like just what it means to be alive and breathing in this world as a woman of color. And so, applying them to library life, though, does get hard.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Right. if you’ve been told you’re a superhero, and that you’re saving lives, you might power through situations that are traumatic. And, you might not be allowing yourself time to process what you're witnessing or what you are being asked to do, and that can lead to burnout.

Adwoa Adusei Definitely — and the Rekindling from Burnout group is focused on talking about the stresses on library workers by opening up that conversation to all staff. And, just a note here that although we’ve been talking to librarians in this episode, this kind of second-hand trauma and overwhelm can happen to anyone who works in a public library, or a library in general, our technology specialists, clerks, special officers, and custodial staff, to name a few. They encounter patrons in moments of crisis just as frequently as librarians, but are less likely to be acknowledged for the important role they play in keeping our libraries running and serving our communities. Burnout can apply to folks with any job title. We’ll include links in our show notes to resources on burnout and secondary trauma. Here’s Cassie Hickman again.

Cassandra Hickman After my third year working for the library, I was just feeling like my creativity was going away. I was having a hard time getting inspired to come into work. I felt like I had to be working all the time, like even when I wasn't at work, because I could never do enough. And, all of these things got me to this point where I was like, I don't even know ... I don't know if I can keep doing this. And it was actually my friend who's a social worker who handed me Laura van Dernoot Lipsky’s Trauma Stewardship book, and she said, I think you should read this, this is really helpful. And it was. It kind of put into words all of these things that I was feeling that I didn't realize had a name and had a root.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras That actually leads us to the next part of the episode — the book Cassie mentioned, Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others, was one of the reasons you all founded the group, and you got to sit down with the author and ask her a few questions about it, right Adwoa?

Adwoa Adusei Yes! Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, the author of Trauma Stewardship, is also the Director of the Trauma Stewardship Institute, which has conducted hundreds of workshops on vicarious trauma. I started out by asking her about something that is at the top of many of our minds these days (not just librarians!) … that’s emotional exhaustion and burnout during the pandemic.

Laura van Dernoot Lipsky This last year, it feels ineffable. I mean, it's so surreal how much is bearing down on people right now. One of the things that we pay attention to with trauma is we look at the magnitude of what you're going through. We look at the volume, and we also look at the relentless nature. So, if waves work as a metaphor for you, sometimes you can go through things in your life and it’s wave after wave after wave, but then there's a break in between the sets, you know, and you can kind of gather yourself. And then another set of waves come. And right now, I mean, it is such intense waves, right, and it seems to be no break in between the sets, and it is absolutely relentless to say nothing of just how toxic the water is. And so I think that is what I'm really seeing with folks, is a level of exhaustion that is is unparalleled.

I really try to spend a lot of time communicating with folks to what degree they’re not alone. Meaning, they’re not alone in all the ways that they might be feeling right now and how completely at a loss they might feel. And that seems to be, I would say, one of the things that seems to be very, very helpful for folks. Because we know that isolation, you know, as you see this so much as a librarian, how devastating isolation can be.

Adwoa Adusei Thank you. Yeah, never navigating the overwhelm, I think, from a librarian's point of view, has been really difficult at this time, working with communities virtually or those who don't have access to to the Internet, how do you bridge those sorts of divides …

Laura van Dernoot Lipsky I think that one of the ways I feel so much for librarians, as you're saying, is that -- not to compare challenges or pain at all -- as hard as it can be in a number of fields that we generally identify with trauma, frequently when we go into those fields, we are very well aware of what we might be exposed to. And I will say that in my years of working with librarians throughout the United States, you all are one of the communities who I’ve really very much felt for because I know so many of you came in thinking you were doing something very, very different than what being a librarian means right now. Like, I signed up for this over here, like helping people find, you know, The Great Gatsby and like, helping kids find The Giving Tree. I didn't sign up for, like, why, what am I doing in the bathroom over here trying to help people who are totally maxed out in this other way? Right? 

And and I think that's a really important structural and systemic failure that we need to look at. And I think that in and of itself is challenging. And then I also think it can be challenging because of so much pain that you see and so much hardship you see and so much suffering you see and so much trauma that you see and then experience through vicarious trauma, and yet you might feel so isolated because folks don't recognize, you know, when you think of first responders, when you think of folks who are generally traumatized in their field, as you said, you're not usually thinking of librarians. And that can be incredibly isolating.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras That was Laura van Dernoot Lipsky, author of Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others. We’ll put a link to her book and other resources on navigating second-hand trauma in our show notes.

Adwoa Adusei And, the ideas that Laura wrote about in her book have really gained momentum at BPL and beyond. Cassie Hickman read out some stats from programs we’ve run for staff over the last year, which includes mindfulness sessions, book clubs, and talks at local library conferences.

Cassandra Hickman All together, we've had 450 people attend twenty-one sessions. So, it's working. I think we're we're reaching a lot of people, and it's really exciting. Thank you all. 

Adwoa Adusei We're all pumping our fists and clapping our hands. I forget this is a podcast, so [laughs] I’m clapping. 

[Music]

Adwoa Adusei It wouldn’t be a borrowed episode with BookMatch! Rekindling member Abby Garnett has a list of books to manage stress and burnout from work. But, before we get to her, we asked Laura van Dernoot Lipsky for some book recommendations for surviving the overwhelm. She recommends anything that takes you out of your stress a bit — something light, or funny, or wise.

Laura van Dernoot Lipsky For me, it's very comforting to return to writings by Thich Naht Hahn and Desmond Tutu, and folks who have come before us, where it just helps me exhale a little bit and have some larger context. So, I try to be very intentional about like, OK, right now, even though my instinct might be like, what's going on right now and getting more kind of news-focused, trying to actually pull in some things that can mitigate some of the toxicity or actually metabolize, either through laughter or through learning something.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras If any of Laura’s suggestions sound good, then you might be interested in these titles suggested by Rekindling member, Abby Garnett. 

Abby Garnett I really wanted to build this list around works that resonate for me in addressing self-care and community care. So, the first book that I chose is The Body is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor. And Sonya Renee Taylor is an activist, a writer and a poet, and an educator. And this book really unpacks her idea of radical self-love. And, it’s part poetry, it’s part manifesto, it’s part self-help book, and it centers the experiences of people of color and fat folks, and it’s just very powerful, very personal, and very inspiring. 

So the second book that I chose is Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, who is a poet, performer, and a disability justice activist. And, this book is so beautiful and so eye-opening. It describes the author’s lived experiences as part of communities of care that were created by disabled folks, particularly in queer and BIPOC communities, to really support one another and get the access that they needed. It’s very inspiring and will make you want to create these communities of care for yourself and try to think about how you can bring that mindset into your own life.

And as a bonus, I’d like to recommend another title that’s upcoming, which is The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein. So I, as a person, find it very soothing and it’s part of my self-care to learn about the universe and outer space and to stargaze. And I was really excited about this book because, number one, it’s about theoretical physics and things like dark matter which just really blow my mind and I love to read about, but also Prescod-Weinstein talks a lot about being a person of color, specifically a woman of color, in theoretical physics is very difficult. So I just wanted to shout it out even though it’s upcoming. It’s just a very exciting work and I hope ... I hope it does very well.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras And, stay tuned after the credits for a beautiful poem. We wanted to put some of Rekindling from Burnout’s stress coping strategies into practice with a meditative reading.

[Music]

Adwoa Adusei Borrowed is produced by Virginia Marshall and written by Virginia Marshall and me, with help from Fritzi Bodenheimer, Jennifer Proffitt, Meryl Friedman, and Robin Lester Kenton. Our music composer is Billy Libby.  

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Borrowed is brought to you by Brooklyn Public Library and is hosted by me Krissa Corbett Cavouras, and Adwoa Adusei. You can find a transcript of this episode at our website, B-K-L-Y-N Library [dot] org [slash] podcasts. 

Adwoa Adusei Rekindling from Burnout was supported by BKLYN Incubator, an avenue for experimentation and programming responsive to community needs at the library. BKLYN Incubator has for the past five years received funding from The Charles H. Revson Foundation and Robin K. and Jay L. Lewis.

Krissa Corbett Cavouras Borrowed will be back in a few weeks. Until then, remember to breathe.

[Music]

Adwoa Adusei And finally, here’s an excerpt from a poem we really love, read by librarian Adeeba Afshan Rana.

[Adeeba reads "Invitation" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil]