Maybe Stop Living Like You’re in Hatchet

The Gen Xr’s among us will hopefully have read Hatchet. If not, here’s the quick Cliffs Notes:

“A boy ends up alone in the wilderness with limited resources and has to figure out how to survive. He’s stranded with only his clothes and a hatchet and forced to find food, fight off Canadian bugs and Canadian weather”

So, if we squint real hard, and depending on the week, this may sound less like middle-school fiction and more like a social services staffing model.

Helping Professionals are often forced to get very good at survival.

We improvise.

We make do.

We stretch minimal resources.

We skip lunch to answer one more email, we duct tap to cover one more gap, and somehow keep moving.

Sometimes resilience looks a like:

“Well, this is clearly not ideal, but I guess we’re doing it anyway.”

And to be clear, that skill matters.

Our work is unpredictable. People are in crisis. Systems are messy. Resources are limited.

So being adaptable is part of the gig.

But, there’s a problem.

If you stay in survival mode long enough, mere survival starts to feel normal.

You stop asking whether the workload is sustainable because you’ve proven you can handle it.

You stop noticing the forever lost PTO days because you’ve become accustomed to 3 long weekends per year being the most time you ever take away from the office.

You stop questioning the cortisol spiking stress because, technically, you’re still functioning.

Congratulations.

You have survived another week. Month. Quarter. Year.

Well, bad news for you, survival and wellness aren’t the same thing.

There’s a difference between being resilient and becoming incredibly skilled at tolerating conditions that are soul crushing.

Self-care isn’t always adding something.

Sometimes it’s noticing what you’ve normalized.

Constant urgency.

Lack of recovery.

Automatic “Yes, I can take that on.”

The belief that because you can carry something, you should carry it.

You don’t need a better hatchet.

You may need to stop treating every week like an episode of Naked and Afraid.

Take the lunch.

Use the boundary.

Ask for help.

Let someone else solve a problem.

Go home when the workday ends (gasp).

Resilience should help us move through the difficult seasons.

It shouldn’t become a permanent housing arrangement.

Ask yourself:

Have I become so good at surviving that I’ve stopped asking whether I should have to?