Hi Dana

I don’t think people in general cope very well in harsh environments. It can certainly lead to a level of trauma. Is it possible for you to plan to leave that environment?

For me, planning to leave a harsh environment was helpful. It gave me hope that one day things would be easier.

On the other hand, sometimes it takes time. I’ve had various approaches for different situations.

If a person is behaving poorly, I reduce my anxiety by understanding that individual has maladaptive coping skills. This helps me see that behaviour is unrelated to me, so I don’t need to feel bad about how someone else is reacting. In the the past, people have done things that made me feel angry and disrespected. To process and manage these feelings I consider what is within my control? Sometimes people are unwilling or incapable of change. But I am responsible for how I perceive and feel about a situation. Considering, how do I want to emotionally respond to a situation? Can be helpful for me.

Your situation sounds very challenging. It is okay to say no sometimes, especially when you are tired. It is just as important to help yourself, as it is others. If you are giving all of the time, soon you will have nothing left. People don’t always like it when you develop boundaries and say “Sorry, not today. I need a break.”. But it’s okay for them not to like it. People can feel something about anything. It’s not your responsibility to manage everyone else’s emotions, just yourown.

I don’t know if any of this is relevant to your situation. But I wish you good luck in getting through this challenging period. If you have the funds and opportunity a therapist can be helpful.

Dear Dana:

“I  helped a lot to the point of exhaustion, mental and physical“- thank you for helping people, for helping a lot!

“I would like to consult the participants of the forum, that live in harsh places. Places, where you have to face terrible sights and situations every day, things that tear you apart, and still continue functioning. Do you manage to do it? And if so, how?… How do you manage to survive the mental and physical stress of living in a harsh environment without exhausting yourself or losing your mind?“-

– one group of extremely harsh places were the Nazi Concentration Camps during World War 2. Viktor Frankl wrote a book titled Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), in which he shared about his experiences as a prisoner in the concentration camps. In his book, he concludes that life never ceases to have a meaning, and that the meaning of life is found in every moment of living, that there is always a freedom of choice, even in severe suffering.

He also concluded that there are only two races of people: decent and indecent, that no society is free of either of them, and thus there were decent Nazi  guards and indecent prisoners, most notably the Kapo who would torture and abuse their fellow prisoners for personal gain.

Quotes from the book: “Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life”.

“Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how'”.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment”.

““For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment”.

“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning”.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves”.

“It is not freedom from conditions, but it is freedom to take a stand toward the conditions”.

“For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best”.

anita

Dear Dana:

You are welcome. Reading your recent post, the serenity prayer came to my mind: “god, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference”.

I don’t think that you can change becoming “too exhausted to help” and needing to rest in a cozy room so to regain energy lost. I therefore wish that you accept and be at peace with your natural need to rest when exhausted.

anita