Burnout has been an ongoing discussion in our field over the past five years. As companies have grown rapidly, they’ve implemented several different services models. Some have worked well. Others have not.
Certainly, putting the right service model together can be difficult. However, some of these approaches to providing ABA therapy seem to be egregiously engineered to inhibit clinical progress and encourage staff burnout. I won’t get into what makes a quality service model today. But, what I want to do over the next couple of posts is explore BCBA burnout a little more.
Like I said, it’s a popular topic. It’s a real thing that happens to a lot of BCBAs. But like every topic, there’s nuance. Burnout isn’t just hard because its burnout. Its hard because we don’t always know what causes burnout. In fact, being a BCBA at XYZ ABA company may burn you out—that’s for sure. I hear it often. But what is it at that job that makes a clinician feel like they’re going off the deep end? And, how do we know burnout is caused by a job at that company—and not something else?
I think there are two kinds of burnout for BCBAs. In fact, this probably happens in a lot of fields. The first is the kind we’re most aware of. It’s the burnout that comes when a BCBA has a job that is too demanding—whether in regard to their work load lack of ethics—and over time this stress grinds the BCBA down to vocational nothingness. That’s the kind that we’re usually thinking of when we say "burnout” in ABA. It likely has a lot more to do with how the company and the way the role is set up, and less to do with us. The demands that the company puts in place are too exhaustive, too complex, too confusing, and too overwhelming. Clinicians, should they try to meet the expectations of their position, are vulnerable to the overbearing stress these expectations place on them. This has caused its fair share of problems. But that’s for next week.
Before I can address that kind of burnout, I have to address a different kind of burnout first.
It’s the inevitable stress that comes from simply being a BCBA. A stress that transpires from areas of the job that would be there even if the BCBA, the role, and company were perfect. I don’t think we can fairly assess whether a company’s unreasonable expectations are the thing that is burning us out until we’re sure that it isn’t ourselves. And if we don’t have this understanding, we’re damned to set implicit and inadequate expectations for the job, the employer, and ourselves.
So, for this week, I intend to highlight several burnout areas for BCBAs that are I think are universal. These are areas that—should we not address them—will grind away and burn us out…across employers…across positions…and across fields. These are areas where we burn us out.
Disclaimer: Its necessary to note that most BCBAs aren’t naturally good in these areas. Actually, most humans aren’t. These are skills that develop over time. If you read through these and note a couple that are deficits, don’t panic or become discouraged. Instead, now you know where to grow.
We’re burning ourselves out if…we aren’t managing our time and distractions well. Working with kids is loud, distracting, and chaotic by itself. Couple these variables with a BCBA that cannot manage a schedule, can’t say “no”, works until midnight, spends too much time in their email inbox, and doesn’t prioritize the right tasks over other tasks, and you have a recipe for disaster. These are skills that transfer across fields, positions, and employers. And they aren’t easy. But I can assure you, the best BCBAs I know are managing their time and distractions well.
We’re burning ourselves out if……we aren’t being/living healthy. Take a good hard look at your lifestyle across the board. Life can be pretty hard sometimes. Some of the curveballs we end up hitting are ones that literally come out of nowhere. Nothing that we can do there. However, the health and quality of our personal life could act as a setting event for burnout. Clinicians who engage in a variety of at risk behavior in their off time will usually end up seeing it all come to a head during work hours. At risk behavior can come in a variety of forms—too much social media, too much screen time, drinking too much, staying up too late, eating too much of the wrong stuff, too much of the wrong romantic pursuits, and a whole lot more of the wrong friendships. Flip that and adopt a lifestyle that minimizes junk and adds activities that generate quality, health, and vitality and things look a lot different—not just at work.
BCBAs who organize their personal time in a healthy fashion may be able to tolerate a job that can be chaotic and unpredictable at times. But BCBAs who have unstable personal lives often rely on their jobs to provide a structure and stability that it simply can’t. They may implicitly depend on their job to keep structure and health in their own life. Not good.
We’re burning ourselves out if……we expect perfect progress. We all want progress to come in leaps and bounds. But, unfortunately, leaps and bounds aren’t always an option. ABA is great because we have the freedom to engage a variety of variables to influence progress. And if we could truly engage all of those variables, we could do a lot of good. But sometimes we can’t. Sometimes our learners don’t make the progress we’d like to see as quickly as we’d like to see it. Sometimes we think we had that problem behavior extinguished. Sometimes we think we had that skill taught. Sometimes we leave work feeling pretty down and defeated. As BCBAs, we have to remember that our goal is to move the needle in the right direction. Somedays it will move in millimeters. Other days it moves miles. And somedays it will move backward. Each day is a game of inches. Isn’t it funny? Almost EVERY behavioral graph that trends upward still has days/data points that show a decrease. It’s always two steps forward and one step back. Yet, for whatever reason, we see improvement and think that life is down hill from there.
Early on in my career, I used to have learners who exhibited high magnitude problem behaviors frequently. Then the behavior plan seemed to take shape and begin to work—sometimes to the point that we’d finally see a day where problem behavior wouldn’t occur. I would be ecstatic. But, of course, the following day, the problem behavior would return. I would be crushed.
BCBAs who allow their emotions to be completely dependent on the ups and downs of a learner’s daily data are asking for a roller coaster ride. Roller coasters are fun for about 5 minutes. After that your stomach turns and you pass out. BCBAs who push themselves to deliver on clinical progress while affording themselves healthy doses of realistic expectations, patience, and flexibility tend to be a lot happier.
We’re burning ourselves out if……we aren’t advocating for ourselves/our clients. It’s hard not to be a yes man or yes woman. But supervisors and managers expect negotiation. Part of the reason your bosses end up in leadership roles is that they can diplomatically advocate for themselves and their people. Many large caseloads are a result of poor standards by the company. But, the other comes as a result of clinicians simply saying “yes” every time they are asked to take on another kiddo. It’s good to be a team player, but it’s also helps to nurture your ability to advocate for yourself. If your employer is asking you to do something that is time consuming and unethical, as a professional you have to get used to the idea that you need to say “no”. That doesn’t mean you’re a brat. BCBAs who say “no” when asked to take on another kiddo, implement a procedure that might be unethical, or cut a corner when asked to do so can fight off burnout. Why? Because—over time—it gets really hard to do a job that is impossible and/or incongruent with your values and abilities.
We’re burning ourselves out if…we expect perfect professionalism from others. People are going to be disrespectful (in any job). Sometimes it is the people we work with and sometimes it’s caregivers or other professionals. However, these issues aren’t unique to ABA or the BCBA role. BCBAs who expect others to respect their feelings will end up sorely disappointed. It’s not that they shouldn’t want this. In an ideal world everybody knows and respects each other’s boundaries. But, frankly, it doesn’t always work out that way. As a new BCBA, this came as a shock to me and I struggled with it. However, I would always recall a phrase that my father had scrawled on the blackboard in his office. It said, “I cannot rely on the actions and responses of others for my own personal happiness”. This statement aged well. Now 30 years later, this same excerpt remains written on that blackboard in his office. A testament to its truth and a testament to the fact that it generalizes across fields (he was not a behavior analyst).
BCBAs who expect direct support staff, caregivers, SLPs, teachers, and everyone else to never have a disagreement with them or never have a bad day…will burnout. On the other hand, BCBAs who expect to see a little conflict every once in awhile won’t find themselves crushed or scandalized when things get awkward or disagreeable—nor will they embroil themselves in toxic workplace gossip.
We’re burning ourselves out if…we won’t step away. There’s that BCBA that picks up every phone call, responds to every text and email, and works on treatment plans on weekends and evenings. BCBAs overwork for a variety of reasons.
Some BCBAs overwork because they feel guilty about letting their teams and families down. They work long hours trying to please everyone or obsessing about problem behavior that they can’t seem to get a hold of…and they burn out. That’s most of us!
Some BCBAs overwork because they’re addicted to the dopaminergic feeling of productivity, accomplishment, and resistance. They work long hours because there’s something about lifting heavy weight that makes them feel good. But it gets to the point where they realize that they’ve simply been filling time with work activities to prove to themselves that they’ve been working hard. They get bored and start looking for other challenges. They start training for a triathlon, open their own scented candle business (on the side)…and burn out (pun intended).
Some BCBAs overwork because they like to be/want to be in the middle of everything or want to be top dog. They work long hours and say “yes” to everything because they want to maintain that position. As such, they won’t delegate their work and become increasingly insecure when projects and responsibilities are passed on to others. People begin to notice this insecurity getting the best of them. They lose their status…and burn out.
Fun fact: At one point I think I was all of these people…and I, too, burnt out.
BCBAs who work to find the fine line between going the extra mile and overworking themselves do well. They understand that oxygen and rhythm are necessary for doing the job. They know that they—themselves—are their most important resource. They know that leisure and personal time are just as important to the job as whatever their next task is. BCBAs, on the other hand, who let their emotions pull them into workaholism, will burn out. Sit down with your boss and talk to them about that happy medium.
I could go on. There are other curveballs that burn a BCBA out—regardless of role and organization. But these were a few that came to my mind first. Note that I am speaking for only that that I have seen. This is anecdotal. And, again, this is a list of the ways we—as BCBAs—burn ourselves out. Stay tuned for next week when I write about how our jobs might be burning us out.
What piece of advice would you pass along to a new BCBA to prevent them from burning out?