Fear of falling: impressions from working through a global pandemic and thoughts on burn-out

ABSTRACT

In this paper I explore the stages of shock, adjustment and grief involved in trying to offer psychotherapy to children and adolescents in the first wave of the UK Covid 19 pandemic. I discuss the loss of the live experience alongside the absence of my colleagues due to the transition to remote working. I touch on Freud’s paper ‘Mourning and melancholia’ and consider how losing the physical presence of patients and colleagues in time led to what the American psychologist Freudenberger termed‘ burn-out.’ I discuss Freudenberger’s concept and propose that although we did show signs and symptoms of burn-out it never became a chronic condition but was episodic in nature. I suggest that we have been living through a time when we have been confronted by personal and collective anxieties about death and dying. I touch on the idea of ‘resilience’ and my observation that it is founded on interdependence. I also suggest that we can be helped by our training, analysis and supervision and need to use these in conscious ways in order to look out for ourselves at a time when there are very real external fears and anxieties.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my manager Moira Shulman and colleagues at Sea View Sexual Trauma Project who motivated me to write this article. Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers and Maria Papadima for their thoughts on the article and meticulous editing. Thanks also to Francesca Calvocoressi, the Edinburgh Multi-disciplinary Writers Group, Alison Webster and Justin Goodrich for their gentle encouragement over time.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Catherine Webster

Catherine Webster is a Psychoanalytic Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist. She completed her training with the Scottish Institute of Human Relations in 2013. Prior to her psychotherapy training she first worked as a drama and movement therapist and play specialist in London and later trained to be a play therapist. She moved to Edinburgh and worked as a freelance play therapist in primary schools and as a trainer for Children in Scotland. She has worked with children and adolescents for over 30 years and has also worked in family centres in Los Angeles, USA and Canberra, Australia. She now works for NHS Fife at Sea View, a CAMHS specialist sexual trauma project and also for the Infant Mental Health Team.