The Cost of Caring

“...with some recent studies estimating up to 90% of school psychologists experience occasional feelings of burnout in their working lives,” (Schilling and Randolph). When operating in the field of social work, you are constantly challenged everyday as you work through people’s feelings and fragile emotions while also attempting to protect your own. You must be listening intently and engaged as they share their stories with you, while you try and separate your personal life from theirs. Many professionals in this field, especially in their beginning years, tend to struggle with creating healthy limits on where to stop setting unreasonable goals for themselves that will push them too far. Working in this field can also induce pressure on a person as a lot of social workers take their client’s successes and failures as their own. They may feel that even though it is not their life or their decisions, they must have had some sort of influence into their client’s current situations which can cause a major disappointment in themselves. Both of these factors play a heavy weight in social work professionals experiencing physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion due to extreme stress from their job, otherwise known as job burnout.

Making sure that their clients are comfortable and are aware that they are in a safe space to speak their feelings aloud is not an easy task to complete, but it is one that every professional in this field has to complete. Occasionally, a professional may have to share a story of their own in order to make a client feel comfortable but this is where something can go wrong if not went about properly. If the social worker can not identify when to stop sharing and draw a professional boundary in their relationship, it can easily go too far and cause them to get caught in it. It is extremely important for them to recognize when their lines are getting blurred between professional life and personal life. They must then do something about it so that it does not become a problem leading them to experience burnout from being too involved with any one client. Someone who has experienced it firsthand and learned throughout her career how to work around the occasional fading of limits between a professional and a client is Dr. Kathryn Shoemaker. Dr. Shoemaker has an undergraduate degree in psychology, a masters degree in social work, and she recently got her doctorate in social work. She has spent years in the field navigating when and where to draw boundary lines and how to leave her work behind and not pick up on it until the next day or her next session with each client once she is done for the day. Dr. Shoemaker talked about how she likes to separate her personal and professional life as she navigates working from home. “I really just try to do any kind of work that I have or clinical notes in my office so that when I leave that space, I kind of leave my work there,” (Shoemaker). She emphasized how she tries her absolute best to focus and give her all to each client during their individual sessions. However, she then likes to stop thinking about it soon after the session is over in order to preserve her brain and not take herself on a roller coaster of worrying about each client to the point of exhaustion for herself.

As stated before, many social work professionals tend to get caught up at least once in their career in job burnout because of them not noticing or not being able to acknowledge the fact that they are blurring the professional boundaries that should be placed between them and their client. If and when a social worker starts to blur the lines of professionalism, their job would actually get harder for them. This is because as people grow closer together, they are more likely to feel more emotion from the other person, which in turn means more compassion and empathy being drained from them. This can be a good thing, however, it can also lead to an emotional burnout on the professional. If they are always feeling so much for their clients, it will drain them eventually leading them to experience job burnout and harming their health, both physical and mental. “A greater burden due to high psychosocial job demands went along with higher levels of mental strain, which in turn were associated with ill health,” (Mayeryl). This quote is from an article that discusses the different psychosocial effects that can result from working as a professional in the social work field. It displays how when these professionals are not careful about how they maintain taking care of themselves and not getting wrapped up in everybody else’s issue it can cause them major pain. Although some professionals may see it as a sign of weakness to set these boundaries and think that it means they are not dedicated enough, it means quite the opposite. If anything, it shows how truly dedicated they are to their work and passion that they want to stay healthy so they can continue to work in this field and continue to do their job of helping people while they also take healthy care of themselves. So instead of it being seen as a weakness, it should be seen as a strength of having the skill to want to maintain your passion.

Another reason that social workers can get trapped in experiencing job burnout is that they tend to begin blaming themselves when something does not go to plan in a client’s life. A big reason for this is that many social workers began working in their profession for the sole purpose of wanting to help their clients be heard and be of service to their clients when they need advice on a current situation going on in their life. Their compassion and genuineness is what draws them in to a client and what causes their profession to latch onto their personal life. This would be where these social work professionals need to recognize that no matter how hard they try and how much effort they put into a client, they will never be able to control the outcome of everything in their life. They should have an understanding that even though they are a support system for their client and are supposed to help them, they should never take any relapse or failure to meet a goal from a client as a personal reflection of themselves and their worth as a social work professional. These professionals should avoid setting super unrealistic and unsustainable heights for themselves and should start with lower expectations. If they set small goals for themselves that they can easily reach they will gain more confidence and can increase goals as they see fit. However, if they set their goals and ambitions far too high and can not meet some of their first goals it will lead them to eventually experience frustration and a sense of helplessness which will lead them to start experiencing emotional and mental exhaustion at work which will reduce their satisfaction, enjoyment, and passion for their job.

To sum this all up, job burnout is an extremely significant topic and it is something that all social work field professionals should be aware of and look out for throughout their careers. They should be careful to not cross boundaries with their clients and mess with the line between having a professional conversation about their troubles and speaking as a friend, which would allow for these professionals to take over the emotions of their client. It is also incredibly important that these professionals do not take any failure or lack of decision making from their client to mean that something is wrong with their professional opinion. They should never let it get to the point where what happens in their client’s lives is directly affecting what is happening in their personal life, that is when it has most definitely gone too far. Overall, job burnout is a scary reality that all social workers face when they give their clients their empathy and compassion and it is important that they all look out for their personal life security and make sure they value it correctly.

Works Cited

Shoemaker, Kathryn. Personal Interview. 5 October 2025

Schilling, Ethan J., and Mickey Randolph. “Voices from the Field: Addressing Job Burnout in School Psychology Training Programs.” Contemporary School Psychology, vol. 25, no. 4, 2021, pp. 572–81, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-020-00283-z.

Mayerl, Hannes et al. “The Role of Personal and Job Resources in the Relationship between Psychosocial Job Demands, Mental Strain, and Health Problems.” Frontiers in psychology vol. 7 1214. 17 Aug. 2016, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01214