Burn Like Stars – Refuge

Together they explore:

• All about Sheldon – What is it, what does it do, where is it and what it was set up. 
• How Sarah observes burn out at Sheldon
• Sarah describes her own experience of burn out or her face hitting the concrete
• They explore the present day factors leading to burn out.
• The consider what theologies are at work leading to burn out. 
• Sarah shares some great tips for what helps and how we can avoid being singed out right now.

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Sarah, welcome to the GoHealth podcast. How are you?

Sarah: Good, thank you. Yes, we didn’t have too much breeze down here last night in Devon, but yes, a little frisky.

Gillian: So Autumn is here. So can you tell us first, Sarah, what is Sheldon? What does it do? Where is it and what happens when I get there?

Sarah: So Sheldon is physically it’s a cluster of converted farm buildings, so it goes back to sort of a medieval farmstead on the edge of Dartmoor, ten miles from Exeter in beautiful Devon in the Teme valley. It’s not bad for public transport in terms of mainline railway and that sort of thing. And we live as a community here, so there’s a small community, a lay community who live here, make Sheldon our life and vocational work, and we are assisted by a team of staff and volunteers and we have about, I lose track, it’s about 35 beds here. And so at any one time there might be anything between sort of a dozen people and 40 or 50 people on site. One of the really nice things about it is just the way Sheldon just seems to absorb quite a lot of people. So at the moment we’re completely full and it’s incredibly quiet around the place, partly because they are on a silent retreat but, but so people come here for three main reasons or in three main categories of guest, if you like, that’s different from the reasons that they’re coming. So, so we have quite a number of self-contained individual units for private retreats and we run our own program of events. So there’s led retreats and R5, Read, retreat, rest, relax, recuperate weeks and then we have groups who come and use our premises.

Community

So last week we had the Exeter ordination retreat, that was for the deacons who went off to be priested at the end of the week, which we always love having. And there’s various other groups who have come here. So Women’s recovery Groups is a taichi group. There’s a couple of parish groups, so they tend to be at the weekends and we tend to be running our own events mid-week. So it’s a very, very mixed life.

Gillian: I’m curious about you said there’s a sort of a live in community. How how does that work and how do their lives get involved with the ministry that you’re that you’re engaged with there?

Sarah: Well, those of us who live here as community, we are the people who are doing the ministry that is, that is what we’re here for. So it’s not it’s not as if we’re sort of like one removed and the ministry is separate. So we’re not a life vowed community. But to those of us who have been here quite a long time, seem to have been here pretty well for life.

Origins

So we’ve very much developed and grown up with the organisation. So our founder was Carl Lee, who originally set up the charity and he’s now moved from being Warden to being the lay chaplain, as I’ve sort of stepped into the role of Warden.

Gillian: So why, why did Carl set it up? What need did he see within the world that the Sheldon originally tried to answer, and perhaps still answers today?

Sarah: Yes. So our focus is very specifically for supporting people in Christian ministry. So that’s people in ordained and or full time ministry, people who are married to people in an ordained or full time ministry and and people retired from. So so that’s the main focus. Quite a lot of what we do is open to everyone. But in practice, I know quite a high proportion of all of our guests are in ministry in one form or another.

And when he first came to Sheldon forty years ago, when it was much more of a sort of youth retreat and education centre, he just found that he was meeting many, many people who were in the position of leading. So they might be a clergy who had been leading a youth group for the week and come in to pay their bill on a Sunday afternoon and and he’s the sort of person who people tell their stories to. And he was just seeing repeatedly people who felt isolated, who felt lonely, who didn’t have anybody who understood what they were doing, what they were about, and were clearly quite isolated in ministry. And sometimes because there were the beds at Sheldon, people in senior positions would have somebody who they didn’t know what to do with, and which is to say, well, go and spend a few weeks at Sheldon. And so he started saying to senior people, you know, really, it’s time that actually there was something more specifically geared towards supporting clergy, particularly when they get sick, or burned out or have some sort of life crisis. And the response he sort of kept getting back was, well, no, thank you – don’t particularly want to touch that with a bargepole. Not that kind of was for us. Why don’t you do it? And so, so he did.

Gillian: And over those years, you’ve been around a long time. Briefly, has that need changed? It sounds like that’s what you’re still doing.

Sarah: So very, very much what we’re still doing. I mean, our core purpose has been very, very consistent throughout those years. I would say the environment in which we are working has changed so so over the last 30 years, the patterns of ministry have have expanded enormously in terms of the different shapes and patterns and the and who’s doing it and how they’re doing it. So so that seems much broader. And we’ve tended to just just try and develop in response to the needs that we see.

Burnout

Gillian: So yeah, your responding to the world, later I want to get into that. But first, can we just get into burn out a little bit? Can you talk a little bit about what burn out is, what the signs and symptoms are and how you’re seeing that emerge with people that are coming coming into Sheldon?

Sarah: It’s, it’s interesting because it’s not really a term that I personally would use very much in a specialist sort of way. I mean, when we first started sort of nervous breakdown was I was it was just people understood what you meant and and it feels quite an old fashioned term now exhaustion is a good term but it’s people think it just means a bit tired don’t they and actually to become down to your bones exhausted and unable to function.

I mean there’s really sort of colloquial terms like kiss the concrete, you know, In other words, you just flat on your face, which actually sometimes I really like. So burn out – all of these sort of things is just when you when you become unable to function in your normal way and there can be many components of that.

So that may be the mood aspect of it. So people might be quite depressed or quite anxious, just unable to function, unable to make decisions, unable to, unable to cope. And again, it’s like, what do we mean by unable to cope? Well, we all know when we’re in it things that normally, normally you do cope with are normally just okay and and you just get on with. They become overwhelming. And so so people are very often feeling overwhelmed by the scale of what’s in front of them and feel that that ability to respond, to think, to do, to get out of bed, to motivate, to be creative. Very often people’s thinking and patterns become very rigid and very stuck and actually the problem solving in complex situations requires a level of creativity in your mind. Those are the sort of things that the experience of being human coming to the end of your piece of rope if you like..

Gillian: The experience, your experience of being human. I love the term burnout out as well. In my head candles burning at both ends and people sort of going up in flames because often it’s the caring professions in particular give, give, give, give, give themselves and end up experiencing burn out. In your personal experience, is this something that you’ve had experience of, and if so, could you tell us a little bit about that experience and maybe what you learned from it?

Sarah: Well, I refer to it as my in-service training.

Gillian: I love that – yes.

Sarah: Yes, I mean, I kissed the concrete fairly, fairly thoroughly. It was about 25 years ago now, so I got it in early. And and it’s I always remember somebody, somebody very wise saying to me when I was yeah, just making a complete hash of the entire effort and and he said, he said those of us who have the temerity to think we can help others needs to know that it’s not easy, because if we believe it’s easy, then we can be dangerous.

And I remember that for so long because it is messy, you know, I mean, for goodness sake, I’d written this nice little book when I was, you know, in my early twenties, you know, and thought I knew everything about you know, living with stress, you know, church leaders. And interestingly, when I went back and I couldn’t read it for about five or ten years after I had the breakdown myself, and when I went back and read it, I thought, well, you know, I know that I didn’t know that at the time that I wrote it, certainly not in the way that I know it now. So I think there is those different levels of knowing, isn’t there? Is there’s the level of knowing at at a head level that’s a sort of an understanding and a second hand level. And there’s a, there’s a much deeper knowing when you’ve, when you’ve trodden the territory yourself.

I think, I hope it enables me to be more compassionate because we’re quite good at victim blaming in a way, aren’t we, of like, well, if you’re not well, it’s your fault. And if you haven’t done your self-care properly, it’s your fault and if you are not getting better quick enough it’s your fault somehow, you know, 

Gillian: Not being resilient enough.

Sarah: Not being resilient enough, you’re not doing it right and all of that sort of thing. And, and that’s that’s that’s quite painful to be on the receiving end of it. So. So yeah.

Gillian:  Yeah, absolutely. Hugely. Thank you for sharing your story. It just adds a depth of wisdom and care and compassion, as you said, to those coming to you as well with their own chaos of often, I guess, of the burnout experience. And if it’s okay, I’m going to stick with the language of burnout. I know you’ve..

Sarah: That’s fine, that’s fine.

Gillian:  You know, there’s different way to approach it, but it’s just simple for my my brain will stick with that. Sarah can I move on to talking particularly about Christians involved in lay and ordained ministry that are coming to you with what might appear to be burnout or emotional exhaustion or lack of empathy or or, however, showing itself? Have you seen changes in why Christians are coming to Sheldon with burnout, particularly in last five years with everything the world’s been through? Right? We’ve done Brexit, COVID, climate change. There’s so much going on, plus changing the church.

Sarah: So I do think that that the last few years have made almost just everything more difficult. Everything that was everything that was there at the baseline is exacerbated by multiple major existential things that are going on. And I think sort of going back to 2016 and the Brexit vote, I think that was the first time that we’d really been exposed in such a vivid way to, to the politics of division and that being weaponised against us as communities and and it becoming really impossible to have conversations about certain things because it was, you know, it was about the taking sides, it was about remember, remember that day when Michael Gove said, you know, we’ve had enough of experts and you just sort of think, well, you know, we spent our lives trying to develop expertise in so many fields and to, to trash and disrespect that and, and to think that, you know, one person’s opinion is good enough when it’s completely uninformed or inexperienced or without that wisdom, it puts us into a very it feels to me, a very unfamiliar environment.

Shared understanding

It feels like that that really sort of shook a lot of, a lot of the foundations of of of our collective, what is it called the social construct of reality or something like that I think it’s called. It’s that those that shared understanding of who we are and what we’re about started to be very undermined. And I’m sure I’m sure it didn’t start then, but it feels like that was that was quite a defining moment for us.

Gillian: And that’s what clergy were talking about when they came to you, this sort of shift, do you think?

Sarah: I’m not sure. You know, it’s hard to remember back. I don’t know whether I don’t know whether people were talking about it. I think I think what I’m what I’m thinking about as I as I speak with you is is trying to analyse and understand why these things have made it more difficult. And and I don’t know whether we articulate them very, very much, but that that that feeling of you had to pick sides and and end and that being a good person and being on the right side and being part of the right tribe and I mean, we’ve we’ve done that quite damagingly in church for some time, I think. But but it sort of just ramped up an extra notch and made it somehow more acceptable and more acceptable to…

Gillian: That’s interesting – so the rise and tribalism almost.

Sarah: I think so.

Gillian: Thinking of the church as a response to the world.

Sarah: Well, I think we just we we’re not separate from it in that sense. And when we undermine that social fabric, I think I think it’s very hard for us within our church communities to to somehow be separate from that. We have to work harder to to maintain belonging for everybody. And and I don’t think we’re doing that terribly well in church, actually, at the moment, really, and particularly for for people who are, you know, gay, lesbian, trans, particularly for people who are disabled, who are people, you know, we still we still regard misogyny is as acceptable in ways that are just quite extraordinary to me.

And so when when all of that becomes more normalised, it just makes everything else harder. And I think I think the churches had quite a poor pandemic, really, because the initial response was so shut down, infantilised, don’t, you know you’ve got to do exactly this and not do exactly that. And then the next wave, it was like, well, we’re not going to tell you anything. You know, it’s all down to you. And actually, you know, why haven’t we been able to talk about the basic principles of, you know, that everybody’s life matters? You know, how did we get to talking as though 50,000 excess deaths a year was just trivial? You know, how did we get there?

Gillian: So with this, you might call it it’s not your words, but as I’m listening to you, sort of clash in values between the senior leadership of large churches and those at the coalface, one of the symptoms might be how people in ministry approach how they do the ministry. So their theology of work. I often hear a theology of martyrdom, right?

So I’ve got to work, work, work. And how many funerals have you done? That’s nothing. I’ve done twice as many. And, you know, I’ve grown my church this much and I don’t sleep …you know, and that’s a theology of martyrdom. And it’s really in some ways, it’s brilliant because you can measure how hard you work and because you can measure how tired you are.

Or maybe it’s the old you’re blessed. You know, I’m so blessed to do this. God’s so good to me. And you see it quite a lot on social media. So blessed. I’m priest doing all this, which in some ways my shut down any ability to say, I’m having a rubbish day, I’m struggling because how do you square that with I’m so blessed?

So these theologies of ministry and you know that you know what I might label it, other people would call it seem to be a symptom of working in this difficult environment, but also might be, I don’t know, a way to work in a more healthy way if we get a better theology. I’m really curious about what theologies of work ministry you hear and whether Sheldon does it have like this is a better way to work or do you help people find a better theology because God loves them and wants us to flourish?

Sarah: Mmm – yeah, that’s fascinating. I tend to be a little bit nervous talking about a theological language because I’m not theologically trained myself, but sometimes one of my roles, if I’m speaking 1 to 1 with somebody, is, is, is to bring those sorts of things to the surface. You know, when, did you hear what you just said? You know, I wonder what, I wonder what sort of God that that means you believe in. Is that the sort of God that you believe in? Is that the God you believe in for other people? And, and and just not for yourself? So so I think I think that’s what formation for ministry should and needs to be about very often is about how you how you inhabit this quite, it is, it is a blessed and blessed space and it is a gifted space and it is a complex and difficult and interesting and challenging and rewarding. And besides that, it’s a it’s a so many things space and everybody everybody needs to find their own place within it. Dan Siegal does, does a nice thing about talking about the river of flexibility between the two banks of rigidity and chaos.

And when we get too chaotic and without enough banks, then, you know, our river just over spills. But equally, if were too rigid, then we can just have like, we can just have a straight down flood without without that sort of creative river like flow and finding, finding that within us and people use different metaphors. So, so sometimes, you know, the metaphor of the river is good for some people and sometimes people have a, have a garden overarching metaphor. Sometimes people have a musical, overarching metaphor that something that enables that – transcendent connection as to how how all of this fits together. And there are certainly theologies which are which are explicit, there are theologies which are implicit. And you only find out what you believe when you see how you behave almost.

Gillian:  Yes. What does this look like? You know, can you give some examples of say somebody has come with this situation, you know, and this is, this is how we help them. Could you tell us a few stories to help us get into this?

Sarah: So sometimes people just need space to rest first. I think that’s that’s one of the big advantages of, of seeing people in a residential setting that that that people often need to rest before they can even collect their thoughts and to have a couple of days to come down to ,to potter, to connect. There’s a lot there’s a lot to be said, I think it was Ernest Rossi talked about exercise, novelty and numinosum as being the preconditions for neurogenesis. So for the for the development of new neural connections, you need these these these ingredients. We’ve got three chapels at Sheffield, and they’re all very different in their character. Just so…we have a labyrinth so people can, it’s a very it’s a very interesting healing space, the labyrinth for walking. We have an art shed which is just stuffed with things to go and play with. We call it messy play for grown ups. So you know, you don’t have to have any any particular particular skill. And there’s lots and everything from sort of Lego to plasticine to crayons to in a proper artistic artistic materials and one of building up over the last couple of years has been having artist in residence here fairly regularly and just, just finding that thing that’s accessible for people. This there’s been so many times when people, people have been almost mute. They haven’t, they haven’t had any words. It’s been they just know that they need to sort of land at Sheldon and almost people have been speechless and and just again just that holding containing space that just enables people to unwind and then sort of ravel up these sort of layers and layers and layers that people are negotiating, surprisingly often people will say that’s the first time that I’ve told the whole story. You know, they might have sort of told a bit to the GP or a bit to the bit to the bishop or a bit to their spiritual director or whatever. But we do really try to to bring the whole person in a physical health and mental health and spiritual health and, and be supporting and integrating the whole, the whole thing.

Vigilance

People are very often in very high vigilance. Something has gone wrong. I think that the high vigilance of just being in a unknown and dangerous and risky situation with the pandemic has just raised all of our baseline anxiety levels. And our sort of our threat detector is just sort of always on the lookout for you know what, what bad thing is going to happen next – am I safe and creating an environment where there are sufficient signals of safety for the body and mind to enable the body and mind to to relax. And we have a reasonably controlled environment here at Sheldon up to a point. But when people are people are leaving, you know, where they going, you know, vicarages and manses, you know, they’re very often not very private places.

Gillian:  Sarah, can I ask so, people are arriving to you from situations of stress and sometimes really sadly and unfortunately, it’s the church itself that’s causing these problems, whether that’s abuse or bullying or some other way that the situation of of their Christian life is causing them to burn out. They believe they are called by God yet in this situation, they’ve been completely broken apart by the experience. Can you speak to that a little bit?

Sarah? One of the things that I’m quite often talking with people about is how the stress response works and what and one of the things is when the threat has come in almost under your radar from a quarter that you didn’t expect it, sometimes people have that experience of feeling that that their response is so out of proportion to what they can see as what they’re reacting to. And it feels very, it feels quite mad when when when you’re in that situation or either mad or pathetic and sometimes really picking apart the components of the stress response. David Rock does a good one, which is SCARF, which is a nice acronym. So Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness. And and sometimes I’ll tell people story back to them using those headlines and saying, you know, your Stone Age brain thinks that these are matters of life and death, these things that that are happening to you. So your 21st century sophisticated brain says, well, this is this is not much I can handle it. But if we look at it from from your from your stone age brian, it is, it is saying this is a matter of life and death. This is why your stress response has been so actively triggered. And sometimes sometimes that can be a way in for for helping people.

Moral Injury

But one of the things that I’d really like to to learn and understand more about is this whole field of evolving fields of moral injury, partly because, I think, I think we’re going through a national experience of that when, when our leaders don’t care whether we live or die, but also within it, within a church framework where it was, it was why we got so involved with the clergy discipline measure, because we could see that people were being harmed and and and injured by the very fabric of the church.

Gillian: Yes. Could you just define moral injury, just slower, just in case people haven’t heard of it before, because that’s quite a new term, I imagine for many people. Our moral health, a moral injury.

Sarah:  And and and I’m not going to be able to define it because I haven’t written down in front of me. 

Gillian: Just in general, or just say it again. Sorry. Because it’s so important.

Sarah:  So moral injury being when when you are harmed in a in a high in a high stakes environment and when when people in legitimate leadership positions have not fulfilled their proper duty of care towards you. And that is that is a whole additional layer, really, in terms of cynicism and demoralisation and  PTSD. This there’s a whole sort of complex of stuff around that. So I really think we need a lot of me personally as well as we as a church and as a society, we need to learn and understand an awful lot more about this.

Gillian: Yeah. Can I ask Sarah again, maybe a bit more personally, you over many years have been in Sheldon, receiving, helping to heal, sending back in, you know, umpteen people involved in ministry. So the stuff you must have heard. How do you I, I remember being in Sheldon and I was having a tough time with having had a very difficult experience in the parish and outside my window one, I was in one of your beautiful little sheds. There was flocks of people about to be ordained. And I think even such time, like, how do you not run out? I want to say, are you sure? Have you guys thought about this? Have you got a plan? Are you sure? Because you’re doing the rescuing and the with the help of God, people who are having a tough time. Last week you said you had ordinands and so on. You know, how do you as a Christian, keep on keeping on with being within the body of Christ’s Church?

Sarah: Oh, what a lovely question. I think, I think the people that we meet are so amazing. I mean, one of the reasons we wrote ‘Affirmation and Accountability’ 20 years ago was because we thought there was such pernicious narrative going around of like, you know, if we only in a did our selection process right and ordained the right people we wouldn’t be getting…you know, these the wrong people who have been ordained, you know, and actually so many of the people who come to us – they are the best, honestly they so are the best and and hearing people’s stories and their you know, I would say I learn as much every time I sit down for an hour with somebody,

I learn as much as I share, teach and give as well. So so I think that that immense privilege of being being allowed into people’s lives at, at these significant moments is. I mean, way back when my original training was was medicine and, and, and it has that sort of same as the privilege of being in a labour ward, you know, when somebody is giving birth, the privilege of accompanying somebody who’s dying, you know, these are liminal moments.

And and and there is a real sense of when people are stressed, distressed, breaking down, there’s that sense of also opportunity and remaking. And I don’t want to overegg that because it’s not pretty and it’s not comfortable. But you know, these are phases and seasons of life. And navigating those seasons of life is it goes on being amazing. It goes on being amazing.

Gillian: I thank God that you’re there for people when the season of life is a little bit tricky. I guess people can find out if you listen to this and want to find out more, you’ve got your website there. We’ll put all the details on the episode notes. But if someone, Sarah is listening today and just feeling, you know, we’ve got burnt out, which is in a deeply distressing period of life, a lot of people are just feeling a bit singed out. I’m not going to claim credit. It’s from somebody who’s on our Burn Like Stars course the moment who came up with this phrase, which I love, a bit singed, you know, a bit tattered around the edges, what can you give them or actually all of us – what positive what one thing can we do today if we’re feeling a bit singed out?

Allowing ourselves to be seen

Gillian:  I think there’s a huge amount to be said for allowing yourself to be seen and heard by somebody you trust. So that sort of goes a little bit back to you, such as what you were talking about, about, you know, how hard I’m working, how blessed I am that actually allowing ourselves to be seen and heard by somebody we trust is is incredibly important.

Gratitude, delight, seeing. So just taking time to be in the present moment and noticing. I don’t know about you, but I’m always worrying about what’s past, past what’s what’s in the future. Yeah, I’m actually actually in the in the present is is an important corrective and space to be there and things that are, things that are soft and warm and kind and green and beautiful. And they will matter. They will matter.

Gillian: Sarah, thank you so much. It’s been a joyful time to spend with you today to benefit from some of your wisdom and your stories and the seasonality kind of approach to life. I do thank God for your work and Sheldon, thank you for sharing your wisdom with us today on the GoHealth Podcast. And I ask that God bless you and your ministry and for everyone in the community there in the years to come.

Sarah: It’s lovely to chat and thank you for inviting us.

Gillian: Thank you. 

So we are picking up the conversation over in the GoHealth Community. And if you are not a member, this is the moment to join. You can join entirely for free up until the end of November and you can experience all of our brand new resourcing for burn out, the burnout season is called Burn Like Stars, and it’s our gift to you.

And really everyone is welcome. So thank you to Rosie Dawson, who produced this episode. And huge thanks to Wendy Lloyd from the GoHealth team for all her work on this series. And thank you to you for listening. I hope you will check out the next episode. I’m also excited about this. I’m excited about every episode, but the next one I am chatting with another really interesting person called Bruce Stanley, who has created an approach to self-care that’s all about crafting flourishing. It’s called day crafting, and it’s another wise voice that we can all lean into to help us to flourish faithfully. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to the podcast. It makes a huge difference to us.