The Ism of Burnout – Keith L.

I'd like you to welcome Keith Lewis from Fayetteville, North Carolina. He didn't miss a word. It's all right there. My name is Keith and I'm an alcoholic. Now I feel better. feel better. I, one of those people who get extremely nervous when I get up here and people always say, well, that's your ego. Well, I don't care what causes it, you know. It's a lot like knowing what caused diarrhea, you know. Doesn't help much when you're on the flight or the flight. I also like this, I like the salmon alcoholic because i like the response i get i like that nice friendly high key um where i got sober was in washington dc and in fact there you know when i got sober they didn't do that uh everybody was just sort of pretty strong silence when you introduced yourself and and i was sober about six months and and I ended up over in paris france and prior to working in a field of alcoholism i was in uh gen h research and went over there to study with someone and while i was over there i went to the aa meeting in paris and and what they do is when they get somebody from out of town they grab them right up regardless of how crazy they are and have them lead a meeting because they know each other's stories by heart and uh while i was there i was asked the first meeting i went to i was asked to leave it was a discussion meeting and and uh when i sober about six months i was very much into trying to look cool i don't know if anybody else has ever had that experience But like I'm trying to now, you know. Well, what I did was I got myself a cup of coffee because everybody that I ever saw that looked cool had a cup or coffee or a drink of some kind in their hand. And I was sitting next to a woman who was from Montana who was hard of hearing and spoke very loud. And I introduced myself as Keith, the alcoholic. And the first time I ever heard it in my life, she screamed in my ear, Hi, Keith. and I drop the cool hot cup of coffee in my lap. It's awful hard to try to appear cool while you're jumping around, trying to aerate your lap. So whenever I hear that, I sort of get a warm feeling all over. I want to thank Ted for introducing me. Ted and I go back about five years, and Ted's one-third of a great family as far as I'm concerned. And you'll meet another third, Gail, his wife, tomorrow morning if you practice insomnia. I think it's really worth getting up to listen to her. But there's another third and that third's name is Dory and you may see her around and she's a great two-year-old. You know, she's two years old chronologically but she's much older than that and I found that kids make great philosophers. My degree is in philosophy and theology and I got it out of Georgetown University And I don't know if that has anything to do with my alcoholism, but I sure do appreciate kids. And I appreciate the fact that they're philosophers. And we've recently been on a retreat and we were having breakfast on that retreat and Gail and Ted and Dory were there. And Dory, after breakfast, said, hey Keith, hug me. So I hugged her and she said, now let's go to the playground. and I think what she was saying to me is there's a time for everything under the sun you know and I wanted to talk about those times uh and I think that when I'm talking about burnout today it's going to be a little difficult for me because what I'm going to tell you is a little bit of my story uh I'm a victim of burnout and still suffering from burnout and I want to share a little bit of that with you. I thought, I used to do some scientific presentations when I was in genetics and that was kind of easy because people either liked the data or they didn't like the data and they either agreed with the data they didn t agree with the date. And one thing was certain after the day was over nobody would ever read it again anyway. And so it was all right, you know, you d have one anxious moment or something like that but the data I want to be talking about about today is me and my perception of these things. And I don't entirely trust my perception, so I'm going to have some other people give their perceptions of what happened in this phenomenon. I wanted to say before I get rolling that I've got a couple philosophers in my own life. One's named Kelly and the other's named Kimberly and they're my daughters. I'm a separated father, so I think it's a phenomenon with us separated parents that the time we spend together is very precious and very special and really impacts on my life. And my one daughter, Kimberly, especially, is a real philosopher. As a case in point, about five or six years ago, a friend of mine and I were driving down through Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C., and Kimberly was in the back seat. And I was talking to this friend of mines, Gene, and I was only sober a couple of years. And you remember how everybody used to get in your way when you were sober a few years? And finally I said, I wish that dumb woman in front of us would move that car to hell over. you know, and Kimberly just very quietly said, Daddy, she probably doesn't know who you are. And I said, shut up, kid. But this past October, I had the pleasure of being involved in a workshop at Loyola University down in New Orleans and Father Bob Hanlon, who's around, he's the priest around here looks less like a priest than anybody else around here but you know, he invited me down to speak and Conway and Darcy and Ted and Gail and a variety of us got together there it was really very very nice Father John Powell was there and he's one of my heroes and he said something he said, you know you're really free when you can stand on a balcony nude and scream world, this is all there is and i was thinking about that since july and i was sort of espousing that philosophy to a friend of mine and i said you know this business of burnout um i'm told that i'm supposed to share my experience strength and hope with other people and uh that uh one of the promises that's given me on page 83 and 84 in a big book is that no matter how far down i go and i'll see how my experiences can benefit others and i said one day with god's help i'll be able to stand on a balcony completely nude and scream, well, this is all there is, you know. And Kimberly was there, and she very quietly said, Daddy, wouldn't it be easier if you wore shorts out on the balcony the first time? So... There I am in my shorts. Because I guess there are probably bits of me that are associated with this that aren't yet clear to me and things I don't yet know. But I'm just going to relate to you what I do have. I was running with my friend Nick Colangelo yesterday, and I said, you know, Nick, I don't know that much about what's going on here. All I know are my experiences, and that's all I can share, and that'S all I caN bring to you. And I want to bring to yoU some of my experiences with this phenomenon of burnout and some of what I perceive happened to me and some oF what I percieVE happened to the people around me. um hey I'm going to slam you with the obvious here I believe that we can make a statement about burnout that goes something like this burnout is a physical emotional and spiritual illness isn't that unique I mean that's really unique I that came screaming home to me about six months ago uh and I've heard a fair amount of things about burnout and there's sure a lot of people who know a lot more about burnout than I do oh you know there are a lot of tests around you can take to find out whether or not you're burned out. And I'm reminded of this story that Ted tells. He was a psychiatrist, and he took this test to find OUT whether or NOT he was an alcoholic, and there were like 20 questions on it, and he got 16 yeses. And he looked at it and said, This is ridiculous. You know, this test doesn't work at all. Even I got 16 yesses on this thing. And I did that with a test on burnout. You know? I remember taking that test, and I said, Are you anxious most of the time? Yes. Do you feel as though everybody's against you? Yes. Now, this is the craziest damn test I ever saw. If this were true, all of us would be burned out. And what I didn't realize was that my burnout carried with it a few symptoms like denial, egocentricity, another one. And I was talking to Conway about this last year about burnout, and Conway made a statement. He said, you know, every time I send my counselors to a workshop on burnout, they come back burned out. I don't want to be responsible for that, but I think a lot of people are walking around burned out I really feel that, and you're not going to be able to tell it from the outside Just like a lot people walk around this world suffering from alcoholism And we really can't tell it form the outside I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the things that happened to me on the inside And I want to talk about what happened to the people around me. Because we don't suffer from alcoholism in a vacuum, and we don'T suffer from burnout in a vaccum either. If you really look at what we're up against here, you know, we're dealing, those of us who are... How many people are here are alcoholism professionals? Would you raise your hands, please? There are a lot of people here who are dealing with this disease. And how many of you believe we're powerless over alcohol and our life has become unmanageable? That's crazy, isn't it? But we all need our head examined. It's like signing up to be a kamikaze pilot. You know, you think about it, you know? You agree for a salary, whatever it might be, and frequently for nothing, to spend your life day in and day out coming up against a disease over which you're absolutely powerless. Anybody doubt the second step? It's really phenomenal, isn't it? Yet that's what we do. I agree with Father Martin yesterday that once you begin doing it, you don't want to stop. That was true of drinking too. And I really believe that there's some correlation there. I'm powerless over your alcoholism too. I had to go to Al-Anon to find that out. But I'm perilous over your alcoholicism too and perilous over the alcoholism in the patients I work with. So I kind of look at working in the field of alcoholism as a combatant experience. And you need, I think, to prepare yourself for that experience, and I think you need to prepare yourself on a daily basis. And you needs to get your weapons together. I was in the Marine Corps, and they provided us with the best training available and the best weaponry available, and then sent us into combat. I think in our field we probably don't do that. We probably don' t provide people with absolutely the best weapons available. The reason I say that is I don't hear a whole heck of a lot of people talking about the spiritual defenses against alcoholism. And I believe that the only thing we have against this disease are spiritual defenses. I can tell you a lot other things that took place in my particular case of burnout. Maybe I'll go a little bit into that story, and then I'll try to draw from that. I was directing an alcoholism treatment center along what generally referred to as AA principles in a psychiatric hospital, and that's a little bit like waltzing in a minefield. You know what I mean? Because there are philosophies that appear on the surface to be diametrically opposed to one another and uh and and it's it's sort of like the experience of constantly swimming upstream um frequently people in psychiatric hospitals say why do you people on alcoholism units isolate yourself you know why is it that you you know you form your own little subculture you know i think a lot of why we do is out of protection but my job basically was to try to make this system work in a hospital or in an atmosphere that was sort of opposed to a lot of these principles. And I'm not telling you anything that you all don't know, whether you're psychiatrically oriented at all. I mean, a lot of the principles are the same, but a lot other principles are opposed to one another. So it sets up a certain amount of stress. And one thing we know is if we have stress, we need release. If we have a stressful situation, we need a way in which we can be released, relieved of that situation. In addition to that, there were a lot of people to train and a lot of people who didn't have much experience. And we know how difficult it is to find good experienced people in this field. And so you frequently end up having to train most of the people. And what can develop? I don't think it has to develop, but what can develop is a situation of isolation. I think it happens to far too many of us in the field. I think if you can describe burnout in its early phases as anything at all, I believe it's isolation. I believe you begin to assume the position that they don't understand my dilemma. You know, my alcoholism, I began to assume the same sort of a position. They don't understanding my dilemma and along with this isolation comes fear. Fear that if you give an inch you're going to be run over and so you become isolated and fearful now also you have people if you're in a position of being a director of any kind at all you have People who are looking for support so you're kind of being torn from both sides and be an ego problem like I do you know, you're a perfect set up for this. I remember trying to sit down and put together the personality that leads to burnout and it suddenly dawned on me that made about as much sense as looking for the alcoholic personality you know all i could measure were the results of burnout you know prior to burnout what i got to tell you is i was a pretty average guy you know an okay group worker a fair administrator uh nothing special you know good aa member who worked the steps and went to a lot of meetings I remember my treatment and gee, I was treated at a wonderful place. A place that is so special to me and it always remains special to me. And I had two counselors. You know both of my counselors got drunk later. And uh, I had a program director who really had a lot of problems later. I don't think he got drunk but he had a lotta problems. He had to leave the field or leave at least leave the treatment end of the field and i often thought about that and and i think we all know people who have gotten drunk in the field of alcoholism and one guy told me that it runs as high as 60 percent of all workers in the fuel get drunk i don't know if that's true or not uh i hope it isn't but those kind of things were always present for me And I know that I'm powerless over alcohol and that my life has become unmanageable. And I'm powerless over alcohol in me, in you. I'm powerful over the stuff that they're distilling over in Scotland right now. I'm just plain powerless. And so again, what I'm trying to describe here is a very vulnerable situation and a situation that pulled me along in a sense of isolation. I began to really get crazy, but I wasn't crazy to my own thinking. And the reason I wasn't crazy to my own thinking because all my alcoholic defenses came back. For those of you who suffer from this disease, just remember back. Remember how you used to divide your life up into little pigeonholes and how each event that took place might be crazy but how you could describe and explain away each event in its own turn? Remember that? And that the whole process of getting well was the process whereby you knocked down all these walls and separated all these compartments and you came to the conclusion that your life was really a zoo and that it took something outside of you and something far more powerful than you to be able to put it back together again. And that's what happened to me. I was isolating, and I was separating my life. People said to me, you know, you burned out because you weren't working the program. You know, my spiritual advisor and my sponsor both told me that I was doing beautifully in AA. he actually went away to treatment and I'll talk about that in a minute but on the way to the airport my spiritual advisor said to me are you sure you're doing the right thing I've never seen you better I talked to a neighbor of mine who's also in a fellowship I brought a little townhouse in the Washington area and there were three others for sale so I got to be able to buy them so we'd always have a meeting available and he said to him you know, you're great around you're out working in the yard I've never seen you calmer. I've ever seen you more peaceful. I used to be that way drinking a lot, because I really learned to put it together on the outside. I really earned to put it together. And when I'm real calm and I'm real peaceful, there's something going on, because I'm just not a calm, peaceful person. That's out of character for me. For me, that's a personality change. And what people were describing to me was a personality changed. and people at work and I'm going to have somebody in a few minutes I'm gonna have somebody get up and describe a little bit about what happened at work from his perspective because he was there and viewed this whole thing I began to get more and more and more and more suspicious and I began to keep more and more and more secrets and my behavior began to change I don't think anybody here knows anything about behavior changing do you? all I'm getting at of course is the reality that what was happening to me was alcoholism, okay? The disease of alcoholism. H. Morley, we call him H. Morley in Washington to protect his anonymity. But H. Morley always says it's not alcohol-wasm, it's alcoholism and what I began to suffer from was the ism. Was I drinking? No. Was I taking pills? No, no I wasn't. What I began to suffer from was the ism. And people at work were concerned about me. And they started to see some of my behavior and they began talking among themselves. Gee, he comes into a group and just takes the group over. He acts like he's the only one around here who knows anything about alcoholism. And he acts like the rest of us just walked in here this morning. And all sorts of behavioral problems began to pop up. All kinds of personality changes began to manifest themselves. Really, some really crazy behavior. Irrational. It made sense to me, but all my premises were wrong. You remember that from your alcoholism too. The conclusion might make perfect logical sense, butall the premises were wrong. Here's what was happening in my life. All my promises were wrong. I became the center of it all, and I needed to maintain that center, that center of attention. I began screaming for help. I didn't think I did that. Just like I didn' t think I cried for help during my act of alcoholism, but I began crying for help, and the people I cried to help for, cried to for help were my fellow professionals. I began to suspect that my friends in aaa wouldn't understand because a lot of people in aa i perceive anyway and other people have confirmed this kind of suspect two headers you know because there's a fine line between 12-step work and being a professional we all know that and i think one of our first big problems is to work that line out for ourselves and i mean some of the people in a fellowship might not understand that and and i became afraid that they wouldn't and this of course also were part of my fears some were grounded and some were groundless fears of course and many of these may have been grounded but the result was i began to be afraid so what i did was just talk about uh things that you talked i thought you're supposed to talk right now and i wasn't talking about me anymore are you going to talk about principles and i began quoting pages in a big book in the 12 and 12 and and uh dates in the uh to read in the 24-hour day book and in all their business but i stopped talking about me and and finally things at work deteriorated to a point uh i don't want to talk about what what people at work did i'm going to have bob do that things deteriorated where my the head nurse on the unit and medical director at the urging of of everybody else on the call me in and confronted me And you all know about confrontation. You know, Vernon Johnson developed a phenomenal method of confrontation where you have a list and you begin to read from the list of the behavior of the alcoholic. And he always said, you know, the attitude has got to be one of love because if it isn't an attitude of love, it won't be seen as a caring gesture. Well, Nancy McKenzie and our medical director, Dr. Mohan Advani, sat me down and unrolled a list. And I knew something was up. You know, they said, we want to talk to you. I said, great, let's go to my office. They said, no, let'S go to the group room. I said what are the offices right here? No, let' s go to group room So we went into the group room, and the two of them sat there. And Nancy said, there are some things I have to tell you, and you might hate me for this, but I love you, and it's worth it to me. And she had this damn list. I don't know what lists are, you know? I help people write lists. And she began to say these things to me, and I began to defend them because I had a defense for every one of them. I had reason for everyone of them, I already worked it out. That's the nature of the illness, isn't it? And she He said, I just want you to listen. And then you don't have to do anything. You can get out and walk out of here and you can do anything you want, but I just wanted you to hear me out. I just told her, I want you to listen to what she wants you to She began to read these things off to me and I began to listen and I begun to listen and I begin to number them in my mind and get my defenses all in line and then at the very end a very strange thing happened to me a thing that can only happen from heart to heart she began to cry and she said, you used to come back every day and tell me what you heard at the AA meeting the night before that might be helpful and she said no all you do is come back and tell me what you said and then she began to cry some more and she said i love you and i'm just afraid that you're going to get drunk and i finally heard her and all of a sudden it didn't matter anymore what the answers were or what the defenses were i didn't believe there was anything wrong with me But what I did know was that someone who loved me was very concerned about me. And our poor medical director didn't really know what to do. And I said, well you're right and I'm going to change all that. And Nancy said, no I don't think so, you know, that's not good enough. I want you to do something. That's why I will, I'm gonna change. And she said, no, I think it's past that. I think he's beyond your control. And I believed her. So I said, I'm going to call a man who I trust very much, Dr. Bob Stuckey. A lot of you know Bob. He and his wife Janice from New Jersey. And I went in to call. I said I want to go call him now. And Nancy said, yeah, I'll go with you. and i said don't you trust me and she just started to laugh and and i began to laugh and i don't trust me either why don't she come and uh i went in and i called him and it was kind of an amusing conversation it wasn't amusing but i called bob and i just said bob i'm in a lot of trouble and he said uh what's wrong and i says i don' know but i i just know i'm a lot in trouble because people who care a lot about me are very concerned. And he said, when can you come up? And I said, I can be there first thing tomorrow. And he says, do you want to fly or do you wants to drive? And I say, for God's sake Bob, I cannot make decisions like that. And he say, fly and I will meet you there. And so I got on an airplane and I flew up and he met me at the Newark airport and just hugged me and told me not to worry, it was going to be okay. And we talked and he and Janice and I talked the whole day and the one decision I made and I made it in conjunction with my sponsor before I left Washington and that was that I was going to turn my will and life over to his care and I was gonna do whatever it was I had to do whatever he suggested not what made sense to me but whatever he suggest for me to do and we spent almost 24 hours talking and I stayed at their house and what they arrived at and they told me that late that night they said what we want you to do is to go into treatment for your alcoholism. And I said, but I haven't had a drink. And they said, we know. What we want you to do is go into treatment for your alcoholicism. And I thought, okay, I'll do that. And they told me, here's where we want you to go. And they sent me down to Nick Colangelo, who you're going to hear from in a few minutes, who was the director at Westgate Hospital down in Denton, Texas. And I said why did you pick this place? And they said, well, we picked that place because it's covered by insurance. And I thought, I like your reasoning so far. And secondly, because it is kind of a new place and what they are into down there is love. And gee, I got scared when I heard that. But I somehow instinctively knew that that's what I had to get into. And so the next morning I went back to Washington. and as uh god works it out that next that morning i was supposed to the day after that i was supposed to speak at an a.m meeting in my home group and somebody had asked me to speak because i could be funny and uh and it was their 12th anniversary and they wanted it to be one that people would remember because it was funny and it's one that we're still talking about but it wasn't because it Was funny it was because I got honest with the people who years before I asked to save my life. And I again put out my hand and of course the hand of the AA was there. And for that, I went and got on an airplane and I flew down to Texas. That's an interesting story. While I was on the airplane, I shared this with Nick and his wife Trish, while I was in the airplane on the way down as luck would have it, I was seated right next to a woman from Italy who couldn't speak English which is all right but she was also psychotic which wasn't particularly all right. She kept jumping up and screaming something in Italian which evidently meant, are we to Phoenix yet? And she started grabbing my arm and shaking me. I couldn't decide whether to jump out of the airplane anyway. Finally, I said to the stewardess, I says, Miss, you have to do something about this lady. And the stewardsess said, You've got to put me someplace else. You've gotta put her in a baggage compartment. You've Gotta Do Something. And the Stewardess said You should be ashamed of yourself. You should not be ashamed. You should feel ashamed of your self. this poor woman's sick. I said, Lady, I'm going down to Texas because I'm crazy. My whole life has fallen apart. I'm not sure where in the world I'm gonna live and I'm also not sure whether I care which way it turns out. I said I'm gonna go down and be locked up like an animal and she said sir we have a seat back here just for you she took me back and put me in a seat and said why don't you buckle up anyway i got off the airplane and i i uh was met by nick and and i want to talk about this i was met by nick i never saw this guy before you know he appears and he's got a pipe and all sorts of things and he looked at me and he said how are And I said, fine. And then he said, have you had a drink? And I says, no, by the grace of God, I haven't had a drink. That I haven' t done yet. And so he took me back and I began 28 days of treatment for my alcoholism. And he said the word on you is that you are one of the hottest things around Washington. You speak at conferences, you do this, you do that and everything else. And I say, yeah, yeah. And I feel real hot right now. And he took me back. And then the depression hit. once I was safe, you know, once I was someplace where I could be taken care of if the depression hit. And I'd never been lower in my life. And I thought that being drunk and getting sober was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but overcoming this was tougher because I had all my faculties about me, and my ego was even worse shape, because I had made some gains in life. And I remember I was for about three or four days there, I was so depressed I couldn't get out of bed. And of course I had to, and I couldn'T get out of bed, and I had a roommate. And his name was, poor guy, his name was Jim. I'll never forget this. And he said to me, he said, we have to go to group. I said, I can't get out of bed. And he said I'll help you. And he helped me out of bed and he was helping me get dressed. And I was just holding back the tears and the self pity and everything that goes with that horrible, horrible depression. And, and he said to me, he said you'll be all right when you're here for a while. He said, you know, I haven't had a drink in six days. He said how long has it been for you? And I said, six years. And he said, oh, shit. Then he got depressed. But you know, all the right things were done for me. And they were right because what I was was I was loved and I was love back to health. And I didn't go down there and get help because someone convinced me that I needed it. I'm still really realizing how badly I needed It. I went down there because I was convinced that I was powerless over alcohol and my life would become unmanageable. That's where I went. What they told me didn't make any sense to me. I still didn't believe half of what they told Me before I went away. Dr. Stuckey recommended I get in touch with some really key people in my life and asked them to describe, not to debate, just describe to me and write down that behavior. And I did that, and I collected all this firsthand data, not believing half of it, being convinced that they were wrong. But I did it. I didn't judge it, and then Nick and the people down there helped me sort it out. Also, after about two weeks, I was already convinced that I was fixed. I probably didn't need as much time as the rest of these people. And I put that theory forth to Nick, and he said, I'll talk to you tomorrow. And that evening, I got in touch with him and said, think i was wrong i think i better stay here and i did and i stayed through the finish and and got my second lease on life as a result of treatment uh i've been blessed since then to to be able to deal with uh with people who are having similar problems and i'm no expert on burnout i just know what happened to me and and i've done some and i don't know many of the principles involved in helping those of us who get into trouble but let me tell you some of the things that that i think we shouldn't do okay and this is based on the way i was treated um i went to my fellow professionals i was on one of the state boards uh uh for the you know state association of alcoholism counselors one of his states and uh and i was missed three consecutive meetings and that was really kind of crazy and kind of demanding and kind of bizarre and they kicked me off the board and the president called me and explained it or put me off the board for your own good. I understand that now, but, you know, I didn't understand that then. You know, I was just hurt. I didn' t understand that things were bizarre. I thought I was j ust too busy. And I turned to other people and I cried out for help and I tried to help for an organization of professionals who meet to help with problems. And I went to this organization and I said, I really need your help. I didn''t go to the organization. I wentto one of the people in the organization I said, I really need your help. And he said, well, I'll recommend you for membership and then we'll decide whether or not you can come in. And this is a self-help organization. And I remember I sat by my phone for two days waiting for that call, not knowing what was wrong, but crying for help. And he called back and said, well, since you're a program director, we see your job as a little more administrative than clinical and we're really a group of clinicians. Now, you probably ought to start a group of pre-administrators. I've done a lot of clinical work, and I do more clinical work than administrative work. I just do enough administrative work to keep everybody off my butt because what I love is the clinical part. And I remember saying, okay, thanks, Tom, I'll keep that in mind. But it was like telling me to go 12-step myself. I was incapable of doing it. And then there's something else that happened to me, and maybe this is my perception, and it's happened to be since then. And it's one of the reasons it was difficult for me to get up there and talk. And that is, I felt very judged by my fellow professionals because I had difficulty. And I thought back to comments made, maybe comments I've made about people who drank. And I said things like, well, they got their priorities screwed up. How do we say things like that about people Who drink? And you know, I want to tell you, I slipped. I didn't drink. I have a friend in North Carolina, Dick Corson. He makes a great statement. And he said, you know, he said I've never had a drink, but I've had 100 slips. And that's what happened to me. I slipped. I just didn't have a drink. The reason I didn't had a trick was no fault of mine. The reason why I didn' t have a trick because I had about 1800 AA meetings under my belt. And no matter what else went wrong, I still went to an AA meeting every day. That's what kept me from drinking. There is no, through no credit to myself that I didn''t drink. And then I felt extremely judged. I felt very much, as I related this to other professionals and the professionals who have contacted me to talk. I don't know what to give them, but they accept my experience and they contacted me for a talk and they said, I feel like the people around me are blaming me. And I related to that because I felt really blamed. I felt vey, vey judged. Is it real or not? I don' t know. You have to ask yourselves whether or not you judge the people who are professionals who hae problems. I know we must. I get calls from people who say, from another city, they'll say, look there's a counselor down here who we think is drinking. Now we haven't smelled anything but we think she's drinking because she's acting a little crazy what would you recommend we do? And I said ask her. Well we don't want to hurt her feelings. Well, what's your name? I'll call her. No, no, no. We don't want to... Or somebody is drinking. Oh, who is it? Maybe... Oh, no! I'm going to keep it a secret. Where can we send them away? Now, I ask you and ask me, What the hell are we doing? What's this all about? What on earth are we doing to our fellow professionals? We don' t allow us to get sick. In order to not drink, do you have to leave the profession? i don't know if it's best to leave or not in burnout i didn't i thought about it and nick recommended to me i not do it he said go back for 90 days he also had me make a list and to begin making amends to everybody in my life the people who work for me and everything else to write them a letter before i left the treatment center to begin to make amends and then to go back and to continue that amends process and he said that'll take about 90 days and then you decide whether or not you want to do it and uh uh so i did that i had a man working for me who very clearly was in the midst of burnout and and i discouraged him leaving and i said hang with it and we'll work this thing through together we can arrange your schedule we can do a variety of things we can and he opted to leave and he's doing fine he left the field for a while he he went through the basically the same process i went through he didn't want to go to treatment but He basically went through the same process I did. He turned his will and life over to the care of his sponsor, who told him precisely what to do. And the man did it. It didn't make any more sense to him than what I was doing made sense to me. I don't know what is the best way. This is what's worked for me and appears to be working. You'll read in literature that burnout recovery from burnout takes about a year and a half. And I think that's probably about true. it i i still don't have the energy i used to have uh i still have the drive and the things that i used to which may be a blessing uh friend gene always says death is nature's way of telling you to slow down maybe maybe burnout is this you know recovery's way or telling me to slow them you know like i said i don't want a lot of answers for this thing i just have some questions and i have some experiences um i hope one day that uh i think there are problems being treated with patients who are new um i'd like to see one day i'd like to see a place where those of us who labor in these particular vineyards can go uh i'd actually see a treatment center or whatever you want to call it that function on the same principles as our aa oriented recovery centers do for people in the field remember one of the problems i had in the hospital was i really needed those people and i knew i needed them to live the patients i knew i needed them and uh you remember you know the patient rebellions that always take place in places you know it was we were in the midst of a patient rebellion and god i was right in the middle and uh i was standing there saying they're like this and i was saying well yeah there's a reason for that and on and on then finally one of the patients looked at me and said you never were one of us you always were one o them and i would cease with this horrible fear and it turned out to be on certain levels i didn't have peers on levels i did have peers we're all struggling with the first step i think that's fundamental and primary but but I think it might be easier for us if we had a treatment center. Again, that's just a suspicion. I don't know that. I wanted to ask two people to come up and share with us for about five minutes each. One of them is a man who I've been spending a lot of time with and is one of my very, very special people, and he's the program director of the partial hospital program at the Psychiatric Institute in Washington, D.C., and a very dear friend of mine, an excellent golf instructor who thinks I have a world of potential, but someone who's also a very dear personal friend and who was available to me and present during this and has been available tome as a very dear friend since that and I spent a lot of time talking with Bob and Bob has helped me through a lot of the pain and everything associated with that and a lot of the things I'm still dealing with I'd like you to welcome my dear friend and real professional colleague Bob Brown hi my name is bob brown and i am an alcoholic and i didn't really think keith was going to do this until i heard him talking uh earlier and i guess you know at the time he's sharing with you i was the senior counselor in the inpatient program at PI, and I guess all I can share with you is that for those of you who know anything about the dynamics of the alcoholic family, as Keith related burnout to his active alcoholism with everything present but the drinking, I relate my behavior in the behavior of the rest of the counseling staff, at least, which is primarily what I was concerned with, with that of the mechanics that most of you are very familiar with in the alcoholic family. I think Nancy was the spouse as far as the nurses were concerned and the other nurses were the children of the family. I think I was the wife and I was also the spouse for the counseling stuff. with the other counselors serving the role as children. And my attitude toward Keith at this time, and to regress for just a moment, I owe everything I know to Keith and to some other people, but primarily to Keith. And he said he was a fair counselor, a fair therapist, and in my opinion, he's the greatest I've ever known, and I've worked with some pretty good people. But what he said was true, you know. And he would come in the group, and he and I have done hundreds of groups together, and we work extremely well together. And he'd come in, and without even waiting to get the floor, without even wanting to know what was going on, he would take over the group. And instead of seeing that this was in some way insanity on his part and that this wasn't him operating normally, I would feel put down, and I would pout, just like this Fawcett student, you know? And then I would get angry. and I became a lawyer and I would cover up for him you know and he would do bad work for a couple of days and then he would have a dynamite day when everything went well and where he was just playing the group like a piano and another counselor named Tom Allred who was there with me and he and I used to talk some to each other never to the rest of the staff or never to Keith and we would say well Keith will be sick tomorrow he won't be in And just like the alcoholic, you know, when you see him getting ready to go on a binge and then they're holding it all together and then you have that final spurt, you know, and they clean their desk out and boy, they're really looking good and the supervisor is saying, wow, he's really got it together and the next day he doesn't show up. He's drunk. You know? A great 50-yard dash man as a friend of mine says. That was what Keith was doing, but none of us could tie this into his illness. With the rest of the staff, I was doing just like the spouse does. The complaints Keith mentioned they were making, I would defend them. Then I would go home and be angry and be hurt and be resentful. I had all the delusion, and he had all of the delusions. One time I did try to talk to him about it. And I said, you know, you are really screwed up. And we had philosophical differences from time to time and still do, as a matter of fact. And we've been known to shout at each other until they would clear a hole into the building, you know? Until we peacefully resolved whatever was going on. And he took this to mean that I was saying this particular thing he was saying was not true. He just would not hear. and I could not make it clear that what I was saying was that you are really sick. And, you know, I agonized over that the way you spouses must have agonzed before you did an intervention or whatever you did, left your husbands or wives, before you didn't do anything. You did whatever you needed to do to get them into treatment. And I had to go to the medical director and I had to tell him all that I had been seeing. And that was the hardest thing I ever had to do because I really loved Keith. And even then, though, I didn't know that Keith was sick. You know, I thought for some reason he'd just become a total son of a bitch. I mean, that's just the way it was. You know how I suspected he was about 80% anyhow. That's about all I can share with you is that, you know, like with our alcoholism, you know Keith's one of the most honest human beings I have ever known. It's ever been my privilege to know. And what he was doing this time was not dishonest. You know, he was in delusion. You know he was as deluded as any practicing alcoholic I've ever known. And I also and the other members of the staff also were deluded. You know burnout is something that, it's scary to me, it' scary to m, really scary. Yeah, and the only thing I know that does anything with it is maybe if we love each other enough before it happens It won't happen. Thank you Thanks a lot Bob I'd like to ask one other person come up to talk for about five minutes and then that'll then I'll wrap it up in a In a minute or so this this next person is a person who is also very dear friend of mine I told him I wouldn't tell you that he's also brand new PhD which I'm very proud of so I won't uh i know how hard he's worked for that uh but but he did a lot of nice things for me and basically what he did for me was let me know that it was okay to be sick and he never said this but i suspect that uh he he was about 30 seconds ahead of me in deciding what needed to be done i don't think he had ever uh run into anything quite like this before and and he did the right things and he conferred with a lot a lot different people and spent a lot time just turning me over to aa people uh but he had me do a fourth and fifth step again which incidentally i had done in the midst of my burnout i had been a fourth or fifth step uh i was as honest as i could be i was just like a without a compass i was way off course everything i was doing was right but i was way off-course um but i think that fourth and third step helped keep me sober and it's tough to make spiritual progress when you're thrown up and alcohol always made me do that but this guy who became my counselor and remained my counselor for a long time and i still kind of consider him my counselor although i'm not going to pay him anymore um no i never did i was just kidding he had me do a few things one of the things he had to do was to fly back down there after six weeks for my aftercare and i went down and spent the weekend six weeks after uh i went back home and that was a real important move for me it was tough financially but because spending was one of the symptoms of this ism uh and i was in tough shape financially uh but but he did that for me and i appreciated that and and he also had me call him every week and it was originally six months and i guess we've talked pretty much weekly for the last year and a half now uh simply because i find i need that uh he pres he offered me something and that was a base outside of my normal realms activity i don't want to go on and he's just a guy i love a whole lot he's probably going to develop into a fine marathon runner one day then he will have arrived but But until then, he's still my very dear friend, Nick Colangelo. My name is Nick, and I'm a very grateful alcoholic. Anything I'm going to say, it would have been impossible for me to say a little over five years ago. And many of the things that I will say, I had very little understanding until meeting Keith Lewis. I am very grateful to a God that I've discovered for sending Keith Lewis into my life. Keith said that I was working 30 seconds ahead of him. There were moments that I wasn't sure who was working ahead of whom. I had heard that Keith was a superstar, and they were the words that were used to describe him. He was bright, he was intelligent, he did bang-up jobs at whatever he was given. And I was confused really why he was being sent down to inpatient treatment. After meeting and seeing him and doing some reflecting on my own life, once I got grounded, once I get out of my head, and I believe that's what happens in burnout, I believe we become learning machines and we lose that spiritual contact with both people and with God. And Keith taught me what that type of separation will do to a very special human being. I also believe that you don't have to be an alcoholic recovering for that to occur. I believe that happens in the working professions where we're under stress or we're dealing with other people's problems. Keith taught me to look back into the big book and treasure a little bit more the need to have a spiritual program to maintain a condition of sobriety Keith's largest problem was in thinking once he surrendered in the same process that I had to do to alcohol, to his ism And all the beautiful things that Father Joe Martin was speaking about last night, moving away from that base, began to occur for him. And I've been able to watch Keith grow away from his pain and confusion through a surrender process. I've watched him return to being a very loving, caring, sincere human being. Many of the things I read in that book that those of us who are in the program read about father martin said last night that we are love machines um i've just spent a couple days with some very special people who i would say were developing that love in their machines on a retreat before coming here and you know i heard conway during that retreat so if you want to understand god if you wanna get a feel for god or touch him just look into the eyes of the person sitting next to you one way or the other i believe that i also believe that burnout is exactly the opposite of that we stop looking at people we become self-centered egotistical we start believing our own press we forget about that power working outside of our life and by the time the unmanageability becomes apparent to us through either other people or our own our own groping though the pain is insurmountable and we can't get out of that place ourselves For those of us who work with staffs, are members of staffs you know my request for you would be don't let it go to where it went with Keith. I believe we have a responsibility to reach out to people that we care about and that means that we must be willing to take the risks of confronting them with love and letting them know what their behavior is doing to themselves and others. I have a faith that if that's done, everything works out the way it's supposed to. I also have a belief that when that is not done, that's when we see people return to drinking, that's When we see People destroy their lives through their behavior and we lose good people in this field. And I don't believe we can afford that. Thank you. Thank you, doctor. I'm just as proud as I can be. I want to thank both Bob and Nick for for for sharing with you and i uh again i don't know what to do about this i i got a feeling that that all we're talking about here are the principles by which we live and i think we're talking about 12 steps and i Think maybe we're Talking about a different consideration and and maybe an expansion on a compassionate that we have for our patients maybe we could even expand that to to apply for each and every one of us because i don t think there's one of us who haven't felt that valley of despair and that loneliness that go on i uh i remember say i would never be grateful that i was an alcoholic and that changed and i said i would never ever be grateful but this had happened to me and when i'm beginning to be grateful i uh met a god i used to count sheep and i talked to the shepherd um a lot of things happened to me as a result of this not because it was an intellectual idea nothing i learned in my theology courses or my philosophy courses just because sober i had the privilege of being laid there uh being forced out on the balcony with no clothes on screaming to the world this is all there is um i guess it would be easy to do that if you had a loving receptive caring audience that were of one heart and one mind and that's what you've been and i don't know how naked i got i feel a draft but i just want to thank you very much very very much for you're allowing us to share just one year and one drunk's life. Thank you very much.