Emotional Self-Awareness, Self-Care, and Occupational Stress in Mental Health Professionals

Introduction

This chapter is focused on examining the relationship between emotional self-awareness, engagement in personal and professional self-care practices, and occupational stress among workers in mental health professions. The issues of poor decision-making, compassion fatigue, and exhaustion caused by chronic stress have been a significant topic of research for decades, yet the vulnerability of the workers in these professions continues to rise. Findings of recent research studies confirm that mental health professionals are increasingly susceptible to physical and mental health problems, burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary posttraumatic stress due to frequent exposure to occupational stress caused by critical client situations, overwhelming caseloads, lack of support and resources, inadequate training, and lack of personal and professional self-care (Livne & Rashkovits, 2018). To make an intentional choice to engage in personal and professional self-care practices, helping professionals must first recognize and understand their own emotional responses to distressing events and develop a desire to master emotional self-regulation (Castilho et al., 2017; Goudarzian et al., 2019; Rupert et al., 2015). Unfortunately, many workers are not exposed to adequate training on the dangers of chronic stress, tend to overlook even obvious signs of distress and are unaware of the emotional toll their profession can take on their well-being. Others tend to minimize it or use avoidance as a coping mechanism that can result in serious impairments to their physical, cognitive, and mental health over time (Trigueros et al., 2019).

Current research shows that emotional self-awareness as one of the aspects of emotional intelligence is a significant predictor of subjective well-being n helping professionals. Specifically, individuals with higher emotional self-awareness tend to have a better ability of recognizing and evaluating emotions in themselves and others (Kong at el., 2015; Trigueros et al., 2019). The latest research on the neuroplasticity of the brain clearly demonstrates the ability to create new neurological pathways in the ways people think, make decisions, and self-regulate through learning and exposure to new experiences (Lumma et al., 2018). Emotional well-being and life satisfaction are often reflected in any decisions, including those regarding one’s involvement in work stress management and health behaviors (Miller et al., 2018). Restorative and protective elements of self-care involving self-awareness of one’s emotional experiences in response to high amounts of stress and engagement in positive personal and professional coping strategies, such as mindfulness, sleep hygiene, exercise, work/life balance, and professional training have been found to be helpful to workers in this profession (Beauchemin, 2018), Research shows that helping professionals who become skilled in using emotionally charged information to make effective daily decisions concerning their own lives as well as the lives of others, tend to actively seek engagement in personal and professional self-care and experience higher levels of life satisfaction and well-being (Salloum et al., 2015; Sansó et al., 2020). In addition, studies show that workers who participate in regular trainings and receive support and encouragement to engage in personal and professional self-care tend to provide higher quality care to their clients (Simon, 2016).