From Burnout to Advocacy: A School Psychologist's Journey to Total Worker Health
I’ll never forget the day I realized I was completely burnt out from my role as a school psychologist. It was my tenth year in the profession, and my fourth at the second-largest high school in Colorado. I had a caseload of over 1,000 students, and I had just finished my fifth student suicide assessment that week- and it was only Wednesday.
As I glanced at a pile of special education plans awaiting review, my mind racing with pending evaluations and missed meetings, the stress became overwhelming. It seemed that with each passing day, the demands of my job multiplied exponentially. The urgency of the most recent suicide assessment only exacerbated the mounting pressure, yet instead of empathy, I found myself grappling with irritation and cynicism. Alarmed by these emotions, I slowly recognized I was experiencing burnout.
This pivotal moment triggered the realization that I could no longer sustain the relentless cycle of exhaustion and impossible demands. It was the catalyst for a profound career shift, igniting a passionate commitment within me to champion burnout prevention and holistic well-being in the workforce.
Transitioning from Individual to Group Support
Since that defining moment in 2021, I've undergone significant professional development, earning my certificate in functional medicine health coaching, achieving National Board Certification as a Health and Wellness Coach, and establishing a small wellness company.
While my background in school psychology emphasized data-driven decision-making, collaboration, and standardized assessments, my training in functional medicine highlighted the importance of holistic approaches, personalized care plans, and addressing underlying causes. The integration of these complementary perspectives has shaped my coaching approach, enabling me to support hundreds of individuals suffering from chronic stress, work-life conflict, and career burnout. Through my work as a Headspace behavioral health coach and in private practice, I've consistently received positive feedback and testimonials, reflecting the effectiveness of my approach in helping clients achieve their goals.
In an effort to extend my impact and drawing from my volunteer experiences as a Wellness Committee Chair and Wellness Ambassador, last year I began offering wellness workshops across various schools and corporations in the Denver area. These workshops aim to empower participants with strategies for stress management, resilience-building, and burnout prevention.
Creating a Safe Space: Trauma-Informed Approaches in Wellness Workshops
Grounded in trauma-informed principles, I foster a structured environment that facilitates collaboration, ensuring participants feel respected, acknowledged, and understood. I’ve found that by creating a psychologically safe learning experience, the door to proactive interaction is opened, which provides an opportunity for participants to learn some of the latest research on stress and resilience while also sharing their own best practices. These workshops are more akin to group coaching sessions than traditional corporate seminars.
Beyond Personal Resilience: Recognizing Burnout as a Systemic Issue
The feedback on my wellness workshops has been overwhelmingly positive, yet it’s the outliers that have highlighted the limitations of addressing burnout solely through the lens of personal resilience. A critique from a teacher in October resonated deeply: “We need to start reframing burnout as a systemic issue and refrain from telling teachers how to recognize when it's occurring and finding small ways to make it through to the next day.”
While my previous training emphasized individual empowerment and actions, this critique helped me recognize significant shortcomings in my approach and proved invaluable in highlighting the need for a more comprehensive solution. I delved into workplace wellness programs, engaging in extensive research, conversations with experts, and online courses to identify frameworks for cultivating an organizational culture that prioritizes the health and well-being of workers. During this period of discovery, I began providing a disclaimer to executive leaders and workshop participants, acknowledging that personal resilience is just one component of a broader solution.
Continuous Improvement: Bridging Gaps in Organizational Wellness
As Maya Angelou famously said, "Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” As I questioned my systems-level understanding of health and wellness, I became curious about the information I was missing. I completed the online 6-hour Total Worker Health course and gained valuable insights into the importance of changing working conditions before addressing employee behavior change. This course illuminated the fact that no matter how many stress management strategies people know, they will be ineffective if employees are burdened with excessive workloads, lack of autonomy, or toxic cultures. In these situations, wellness workshops become tone-deaf and counterproductive. Recognizing my blind spots and seeking new answers reinforced my commitment to promoting organizational well-being.
These new learnings led me to apply to the Total Worker Health certificate program at the Colorado School of Public Health. This program teaches professional’s how to develop and manage Total Worker Health (TWH) initiatives—workplace safety, wellness, and health promotion programs. Students learn to assess organizational culture, plan and evaluate health and safety programs, and become a better leader.
I am so pleased to share that I have gained acceptance into the Total Worker Health certificate program at the Colorado School of Public Health, and I am excited to begin my studies this fall!
As a future Total Worker Health professional, I will be better equipped to utilize health behavior, leadership, and organizational change approaches to cultivate resilient and thriving workplace cultures that prioritize holistic well-being. I am eager to deepen my understanding of Total Worker Health frameworks, evidence-based strategies, and organizational change theories to become a respected leader in the field.
Making an Impact: Commitment to Positive Change in Worker Well-being
Transforming from a burnt-out school psychologist to a passionate advocate for Total Worker Health has solidified my dedication to fostering well-being in the workplace. As Maya Angelou's wisdom reminds us, continuous improvement is essential, and I am committed to creating positive change and making a lasting impact on worker well-being.
