As the school year comes to a close again, the final stretch more often than not feels more like trying to squeeze out every last bit of sanity you have left in you than the countdown before the summer.
For RBTs and school-based clinicians, the combination of end of school year responsibilities and mounting paperwork is anything but a recipe for a quick double-whammy physical and mental exhaustion.
In this post, it will go over why burnout isn’t just a personal hurdle; how it affects the quality of care and the safety of your sessions. It also explores 5 methods to help you manage burnout in the school and general setting. Which by the end of it, may hopefully help maintain your physical and professional boundaries, ensuring you finish the year with your clinical integrity and your sanity intact.
Why Burnout Management Matters?
In the field of ABA, our primary tool is our own behavior. Simply put, when we are burnt out, our ability to reinforce appropriately, maintain a high rate of pairing, and catch small communicative wins diminishes. So addressing burnout isn't just helpful to your personal well-being, it’s an ethical necessity to ensure our students receive the best possible version of their therapy team by having us maintaining our very best in tiptop condition.
The 5 Suggestions to Help Recover Your Energy
1. Reduce the Logging Burden
Heavy data entry is one of the biggest contributors to decision fatigue. So try to sit down with your BCBA if they aren’t too busy with finishing up IEPs themselves, and ask tosee if it’s possible to streamline your data collection workflow. If a student has mastered a target, ask and see if you can move to probe data or reduce frequency counts. By cutting down the time your eyes are glued to a tablet or clipboard means more quality engagement and less mental clutter.
2. Request a Supportive Observation
Don't just wait for a formal evaluation to see your supervisor. Try asking for a clinical check-in to help re-frame problematic behaviors displayed in tough cases. Having a BCBA validate that a program is difficult, or offer a small tweak to a behavior plan can help mitigate the "impostor syndrome" that often fuels burnout.
3. Lean Into Pairing
When exhaustion hits, instructional control is usually the first thing to slip. Pivot to pairing-heavy sessions instead of fighting an uphill battle with high-demand trials. By prioritizing rapport and following the student’s lead, you help rebuild the reinforcing value of the relationship and lower the stress levels for both of you, asking the exhaustion more bearable.
4. Sharpen Your Clinical Edge
Always doing the same routine to help improve the students improve via repetition then tracking that same type of data daily can easily make you feel like a streamlined robot arm optimized for peak efficiency, especially after repeating the same routine for the whole school year. Try using a few minutes of your admin time to help change up the pace by looking into a specific area of the field that actually interests you. Whether it’s a teaching strategy re-frame in a different context to help change up the paces or listening how others in the field are tackling similar issues differently from you, reconnecting with the science reminds you that you are not just a warm body in a room, but also a skilled clinician.
5. Utilize Peer Debriefing
To me, the work often feels isolating even though ABA is a social science. Make it a point to check in with a trusted fellow BT or supervisors. Simply by spending 10 minutes at lunch venting about the day’s hurdles helps process the high-intensity nature of behavior work. Especially when you realize your coworkers are experiencing the same problematic behaviors, the burden feels much lighter.
Lightning Round - Tips to help deal with general burnout:
- Move and Stretch: Use dynamic movements to stay limber; make sure to do proper stretches as to not sprain yourself, don’t forget floor play and physical prompting takes a genuine toll on the body, because your body doesn’t.
- Prioritize Nutrition: You are often on your feet or chasing runners, don't skip the water or the protein, last thing you want is to get knocked out by heat stroke.
- The Score Sheet: Focus on one tiny functional communication success (win) per day. Note what went right rather than focusing on the unfinished to-do list.
- Hard Boundaries: Once you clock out, work text and email stays closed. Create a post-shift ritual to signal to your brain that the day is done.
- Take it Outside: If the weather, the class, and the BIP allow, move your session outdoors more. A change of scenery helps reset the environment for both you and the student.
Remember, reaching the end of the school year is undeniably grueling, but it doesn't always have to result in total burnout. By streamlining your data, leaning on your supervisors, and prioritizing the therapeutic relationship over rigid demand placement, you can navigate the end of the school year successfully. Do know that you cannot pour from an empty cup. So take these steps as a starting point to reference on, as you slowly refill your energy gauge (enthusiasm), so that you can continue “Transform Lives Together.”
Author: Timothy Fung
