Dr. Jen Clifden
Educator | Relationship Researcher | Retention Specialist
Mama Jen
Healing from burnout and postpartum depression was a slow and deliberate process.
As I began the process of healing my relationship with myself, honoring my limits, energy, and emotions, I began to see almost immediate results in feeling a little lighter, less anxious, and more confident. I started an online community about mindful mothering to share what I was practicing to reconstitute my energy amidst the chronic demands and stress of being a mom. In community with other mothers, we discovered that simple, research-based, mind/body/self health practices, practiced daily, were highly effective in helping us to provide care for our families without losing ourselves (and our minds) in the process.
Over the years, as I got healthier and my girls began school, I decided to apply what I learned about healing from mothering burnout and postpartum depression to helping teachers, since I was also one of those, too. I created an 8 week curriculum designed to heal and prevent teacher burnout and compassion fatigue, and I studied it through a doctoral program at the University of Minnesota. The scientific impact data was astounding.
I discovered that burnout is not only related to the "workplace." It manifests in those who care deeply who also need and deserve compassionate care and mindbodysoul health support. I discovered that burnout was protective. Feeling burnout did not mean I was defective-- not in the least. It was the opposite. Burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury were sophisticated signals from my nervous system, body, and mind telling me exactly where my energy reserves needed care and restoration. As learned to listen to these symptoms, I trained myself to respond to them like I would my own children's needs. This was the turning point in healing and overall mental health.
As I developed a habit of turning toward myself with the same type of care I would my children when they needed caring, compassionate attention, I discovered that, without conscious awareness, I was beginning to create a nurturing environment that would help stave off those symptoms from manifesting in the first place. As I attended to my body and mind's sophisticated signals of what it needed, I created healthy relational boundaries that protected and nurtured the inner resources necessary to care for others. In effect, the more I consciously and unconsciously paid attention to and attended to my body's needs, my capacity to care for my daughter's grew exponentially. And since caring for my daughters was so important to me, the more I did it well, the more it fortified me. I learned through my doctoral work how this IS the positive cycle of burning balanced -- not out.
I also discovered something I never expected to find-- that the stress that was causing a deep sense of self-wounding and self-separation was the very same stress that could be metabolized to build and nurture self-strength, self-awareness, self-agency, and self-expression. One just needed the right conditions and the right strategies and practices to shift the pain of stress into power.
is the founder of Present Well-Being LLC and the creator of The Light You CastTM Curriculum (previously known as the Present Teacher Restoration Project).
Jen received her BA in Elementary Education from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) and her MA in Socio-Cultural Foundations and Educational Thought from Western Michigan University.
Jen received her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota College of Education + Human Development where she focused on discovering and exploring the salutogentic, asset-based origins of human-service professional mental, emotional, soul, and relationship health while they were in service to others.
Dr. Jen's research on preventative and healing practices to heal from and stave off burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injury in care-based professions is innovative and integrative.
Jen is currently the program administrator for the Minnesota Grow Your Own Teachers (MNGOT) program at the University of Minnesota's College of Education + Human Development. Jen also teaches courses on new teacher social-emotional health at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Jen
My research taught me three fundamental truths about our callings in relationship-based fields:
| TRUTH 1 |
Those who don't care, don't burn out.
| TRUTH 2 |
Our callings have called us to be of service to others, but not at the expense of losing ourselves in the process. Our callings have also called us to develop, nurture, and grow our greatest aspects of our very selves as we act in service to others.
| TRUTH 3 |
Stress can cause harm, and stress can be a powerful catalyst to healing our past pain and actualizing our core assets and capacities.
Jen is a 200 hour certified yoga teacher and has advanced training as a mindfulness teacher. She integrates restorative mindbodysoul practices in all her engagements with caregivers.
Dr. Clifden has experience teaching mindfulness trainings and courses for the Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota, Lifetime Fitness, the University of Minnesota College of Education + Human Development - Carlson School of Management, and Target Corporation. She has worked with over 30 school districts in Minnesota as well as the Minnesota Department of Health and local public health agencies to help raise burnout prevention and healing awareness to human-service professionals over the past 8 years.
Dr. Jen connects with individuals, teams, and leaders in systems of care on how to examine contextual factors that exacerbate toxic and traumatic stress responses while also equipping them with information, practices, knowledge, and support that allow them to re-claim their innate capacity to engage core social and emotional learning competencies that protect the self from experiencing mental dis-ease while strengthening self-liberatory practices that actualize healing and contribute to personal, community, and societal well-being.
Core to her training and teaching is raising awareness about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Complex PTSD and the ways that adult survivors of ACEs cope with the relationship stress triggers of care-based callings.
She lives in the Twin Cities area where she is enjoys spending time with her three teenage daughters before they head off to college and traveling as much as possible to the west coast of Ireland.
Research Expertise
As a trained phenomenologist, Dr. Jen researches and studies how human-beings connect to, engage with, and relate to themselves, their world, their work, and their relationships. She assists caregivers in "seeing what frames their seeing" and invites them to explore their invisible relationship patterns of engagement-- personally and professionally.
She guides caregivers on a path of self-discovery to explore how their ways of perceiving, behaving, and being can become more aligned with their integrity, personal truth, and soul's core character.
Jen uses design-based research to intersect theory, research, practice, and body-based healing methods to create evidence-based curriculum designed to scientifically and systematically stoke human-service caregiver mental health, relationship resilience, social and emotional intelligence, and soul well-being.
Dr. Clifden’s keynotes, trainings, courses, and yoga retreats focus on research-based preventative and restorative practices that treat and heal soul sickness – burnout, compassion fatigue, moral injury, and sacrifice syndrome -- while cultivating greater social and emotional intelligence, compassion, and empathy in one’s care-based work.
