WHO HEALS THE HEALERS?

You're a psychologist? You can probably spot depression in yourself a mile away — and put a stop to it, before it even begins.

- BY LAKSHANA N PALAT Assistant Features Editor

An Abu Dhabi-based psychologist (who prefers to remain anonymous), remembers a party where an acquaintance made this seemingly well-intentioned comment. What made her even more uneasy were the two people next to him, laughing. “There must be some point of being a psychologist, right?” one of them told her, chuckling. “You can fix yourself.”

The psychologist stayed silent. “I could have launched into a long lecture about how narrow-minded that was, but I didn’t want to. So I walked away, excusing myself,” she adds. “I had just had the most excruciating week. I was going through a divorce, and I almost had a cancer scare.”

She hadn't seen clients for two weeks at the time. “I needed to recover before helping others. I went to psychologists to understand and heal. And once I felt steady, I returned to work,” she says.

Psychologists know they’re not superheroes and aren’t immune to burnout, either. They are also exceed-ingly aware that they are helping others who are going through similar storms too, and cannot allow their own anxiet-ies spill over to them.

How do they manage? How do they stop themselves from burning out while giving light to others?

'My body gives me the clue'