When you sign up for human rights work, you sign up for being depleted, burned out, increased anxiety and depression.
It is how our work environments operate. It’s a colonized approach that impacts our health and well-being.
This is part three of a blog series focused on all of us in clearly understanding the root problems that keep us from experiencing:
- Being treated as humans and not dehumanized.
- Practiced equity
Why? So that all of us can experience both.
Without Your Health You Can’t Fight for Human Rights.
I ignored my endometriosis symptoms for years.
I remember being on the shower floor in my shared apartment in Bangladesh in 2006. I cried out to my friend (and roommate) to boil water. We didn’t have hot water, and it was the only way I could think of to get some relief from the pain wiping me out.
When working in India, I kept returning to the doctor with back pain that, a few years later, had me going to the emergency room in Canada each month for 3 months, eventually getting surgery, and being bedridden for a total of 8 months.
While all that was happening, I continued to work contracts on intercultural and religious dialogue and women, peace, and security, and another job in a different field to keep me fed and housed while I recovered from surgery and major burnout from my work overseas.
And then there was also the racism, misogyny, sexism, bullying, harassment, and gaslighting I continued to experience in these jobs – never mind in my life.
I couldn’t name all that I was experiencing.
What was worse is that I gaslit myself.
Hospitalization?
Crawling to a bathtub – when I had one – to relieve endometriosis pain?
Recovering from trauma of the real threat of physical violence, sexual assault and death?
The gaslighter in me was like: “It’s fine!”
If you don’t believe I did this to myself, ask my friends.
At the time, I remember thinking, “They just don’t get it. These things come with the job. You suck it up, and you deal with it.”
Looking back at my younger self, I think, “Oh, sweet summer child.”
Not condescendingly, but with compassion and the perspective of learning from mistakes.
Thankfully and eventually, I realized that I had two choices.
Choice 1: I could do what I was normalized to do as part of the job:
- Be underpaid to do human rights work.
- Work in unsafe conditions.
- Be hypervigilant to survive.
- Do without.
- Burnout.
- Repeat.
OR,
Choice 2: I could pause, reflect, and learn.
I chose the second option.
What I learned was that if my health is neglected to the point that I can no longer function, I can’t advocate for human rights.
What would likely happen if I chose option one is multiple health problems (which I was already experiencing) – and a painful and/or lonely death.
I gotta tell you, investing in my health has been difficult.
I’ve had to unlearn self-sacrifice and learn to centre myself and my well-being above all else.
Watching a new generation enter this work, I see that many of them are much wiser than I am.
They would never sacrifice their well-being for the colonized delivery of humanitarian aid and development that burns out almost everyone unless you’ve chosen the value of making money over the value of accountability for the well-being of every single human.
A nod of respect to you, new generation!
How to Stay Healthy While Making A Difference.
I’ve learned that long pauses for reflection, to learn and grow, are absolutely necessary.
Whenever I’ve chosen to keep acting instead of pausing to reflect and then acting, I’ve always done harm, either to myself or others.
Reflection and learning make it possible to take the next best-informed action.
I’ve also learned that healing will take as long as it takes.
And if I choose to work again before I’ve healed, I set myself back.
Not only can I not function in life, but I can’t be there for others, and I risk hurting people I love and losing them because they will not take on my stress that’s been induced by my choice to work in a colonized system that depletes me.
Dear reader, I’ve learned that fighting for human rights isn’t worth losing my health and well-being.
If you feel depleted at work and want to change that so you can keep going, focus on your health.
Not sure where to start? Use the links below to help you get started.
So there you have it. Stay tuned for the final post in this series.
Take Action: Learn about The Clarity Approach – A short online course to enhance self-awareness, clarity, and eliminating imposter syndrome. Then, sign-up!
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