Dr. Jen Clifden
Relationship Researcher | Educator | Burnout Preventionist
Serving Those Who Serve Others
I serve individuals called to relationship-based professions who seek to
UNDO BURNOUT so to bring more BALANCED BURNING into their role, including:
Education | Public Health | Healthcare | Counseling | Leadership
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17,000+
Hours of engagement
in The Light You Cast™
ON-DEMAND curriculum
"There's no doubt in my mind that we've had healthier educators working with our students, which really impacts the overall student experience, and also helps those employees."
- District Curriculum Director
Burning Balanced
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Only those who are burning burnout.
Burnout is a sophisticated, adaptive, and protective (not defective) response from your mind, body, and sense of self that something is out of balance.​ Burnout is also an indicator that your are burning with passion and purpose to be of service, both professionally and personally, where your capacity to care is your greatest asset.
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Herein lies the source of burnout: our capacity to care is both core to our ability to do our work AND at the core of our propensity to be wounded by our work.
Those called to human-service, care-based vocations like eduction, health care, leadership, public health, and counseling work day-in and day-out in systems/organizational settings where the needs often outpace the resources to meet those needs. Personally or professionally, when the needs are out of balance with the resources (either external or internal) to meet those needs one can quickly begin to feel overworked and undervalued. Too many needs, too little resources coupled with feeling undervalued and under appreciated can drive a depletive cycle that drains your energy and dis-ables your capacity to care - not only for others, but also for yourself.
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​Burnout is preventable. The cycle can be undone.​​
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Burnout manifests in any environment, professionally or personally, where the demands chronically exceed one's capacity to cope. We know that work-related burnout is a distinct workplace phenomenon that signals the need for a rapid prioritization of systems-oriented, organizational-level solutions. While we actively work to mend broken systems at the systems level, we must simultaneously prioritize workplace wellness efforts that promote and protect the health of the individual's who are called to serve within these care-based systems.
We regain balance and begin to heal both the organizational system and individuals within them by creating change that allocates time, space, and resources for individuals to heal, connect, deepen relationships, and be mentally, emotionally, and soul-fully well within their work and life. ​
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The Light You Cast™ in-person professional development experiences and signature online, ON-DEMAND training illuminate a pathway of science-backed perspectives, easy-to-follow exercises, and transformative tools and practices rooted in a salutogenic approach that teaches you how to skillfully strengthen and fortify your inner resources so you can manage stress in ways that fuel, instead of deplete, your energy. You will learn how to:
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Identify the stressors and situations that knock you out of balance while you explore what imbalance feels in your mind, body, and psyche/sense of self,
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Know how to quickly regain balance in your body (to soothe your nervous system), mind (to reduce anxiety), perspective (to assess the situation more clearly), and psyche (to feel more like yourself) in the midst of conflict, stress, uncertainty, and pressure,
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Create protective boundaries that allow you to maintain "composure in the compression" of stress which creates a supple (strong and flexible) sense of self that is immune to depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, compassion fatigue, and moral injury.
We do this by magnifying your innate strengths and resilience capacities for maintaining balance between being of service without losing yourself in the process and teaching you how to metabolize stress in such a way that redirects energy away from feeding burnout into fuel that strengthens your mental and emotional health while simultaneously nurturing and protecting your core caring assets that are key to maintaining relational health:
Compassion | Perspective | Unconditional Positive Regard | Enthusiasm
Where to Start
The Light You Cast™ curriculum is designed to suit the varying needs of individuals, teams/cohorts, and organizations & institutions. Are you an individual looking for immediate, self-paced support in healing from and preventing burnout? Explore our go-at-your-own-pace ON-DEMAND curriculum.
Are you an individual within an organization looking to prioritize support for employee mental health and emotional wellness? Start with a single talk or workshop, deepen impact with more immersive, targeted programs, and/or sustain & broaden organizational well-being with our signature online, ON-DEMAND SELF-PACED course that can be licensed to support your entire staff.
Self-Paced & Sustaining
ON-DEMAND, ONLINE
Introductory Options
(In-Person or Online)
Deeper, Multi-Session Work
(In-Person or Online)
The entire (8) module (4.5 hour)
The Light You Cast™ curriculum fully online and self-paced can be licensed for just you, a cohort or team, or your entire organization/staff either on its own or to deepen and extend any in-person offerings.
Includes single keynote, booster sessions, half-day, full day professional development sessions, and/or in-person yoga/mindful movement classes for your entire organization or staff.
Includes more targeted, multi-session systematic development trainings for specific groups, roles, and cohorts. Also includes a "train the trainer" course for site-sustained burnout prevention and mindfulness-based mental health cohorts of practice.
For me, healing from and preventing burnout and compassion fatigue is both professional and deeply personal...
As a former elementary reading interventionist and middle school reading teacher, I remember assuming that feeling burnt out meant I was a good teacher. I had little to no awareness about the phenomenon of burnout, so I just assumed that I was the only one who was incapable of coping. Worse yet, I blamed my high-sensitivity to other people's energy as the reason for my inability to cope. For a long time, I thought I was wired wrong and that was the reason I felt overwhelmed, anxious, and burnt out as a teacher.
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Then reality forced me to face the depths of burnout to an extent I was definitely not prepared for. I became a mother to three infants in the span of 17 months.
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Burnout and compassion fatigue set in hard, and it set in fast as a mom. I had never felt a caregiving force like I felt caring for my children, so before I even knew what hit me, I was mothering from stage three burnout and coping with postpartum depression (PPD) while attempting to care for three infants.
Burnout disabled my capacity to care for my three girls and myself.
It negatively impaired my ability to create healthy attachment bonds with my babies, and I fell into a self-neglect spiral that atrophied my relationship to myself.
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Every day, I felt less and less like myself. The less I felt like myself, the more I felt guilt, shame, anxiety, and fear about not being a good caregiver to my own children.
Then one sunny morning at 7am (with no sleep the night before because twin babies don't always sleep at exactly the same time), I broke. All I had the energy to think was...
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There is no way out of this. No one is coming to save me.
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