Published: June 2021, Issue 39


Keywords:
Vikki Reynolds, Burnout, Resistance, Activism, Viability, Justice-doing, Spiritual Pain, Collective Ethics, Solidarity.

Vikki Reynolds

Vikki Reynolds is a therapist supervisor / activist who works to liberate justice, resistance and solidarity from the fringes of our work to the core of our ethics. Vikki's treatment experience includes clinical supervision and treatment with refugees and torture survivors, mental health and substance abuse counselors, and collaboration with transgender and queer communities. Contact: www.vikkireynolds.ca

Abstract

In this text I critique the individualism and neutrality of burnout and propose a burnout resistance approach with collective viability based on the administration of justice. This presupposes an understanding of the collective ethics and spiritual pain we experience as community workers and healers when we are forced to work against our moral values. I describe the role of justice and solidarity in relation to our sustainability and some practices that can promote our collective sustainability, which include accepting the Earth Democracy, co-creating collective ethics, challenging of cynicism, focusing our attention on immeasurable outcomes and reciprocal practices. I connect, staying fully awake in my work with therapeutic and perhaps revolutionary love and contemplating the dynamic transformations that our work offers us. I present the possibilities of connecting with the socially divine and of transforming the framework of social injustice in which the served live and we work.