HP burn out

[Astara Seague]

is anyone else having problems with burn out..
I think after so many years I am getting tired..
how can you deal with it..
should you shut down the "coven"
sometimes I 'd rather take the easy way out
it is soo hard to deal with so many...and it keeps growing some how
but I get so tired..
I know they depend on me..
but..Gods...
when do they go out on their own
do I need to push them out of the nest?...
at times I really want to..

sometimes I feel like a adult baby sitter

[HetHert]

:hugz:

When the coven begins to drain you rather than nourish it's time to reassess what's going on.

Can you call a 3 or 6 month hiatus for yourself and allow other to lead the group? Is there a Priestess whom you could train up to help you for such a cause? Anyone who is ready to take up and experience the mantle? If not, perhaps just calling a hiatus for personal reflection is not without merit.

Sometimes we all need to get away and recoup. Take time out for yourself and reestablish your grounding and connection with the divine in your own right for your own purpose and really invest in you. Or even just to go "Be" anything so long as it's just for you on your terms.

I go back an forth frequently between leading, following, and solitary life.

[Glowy]

is anyone else having problems with burn out..
I think after so many years I am getting tired..
how can you deal with it..
should you shut down the "coven"
sometimes I 'd rather take the easy way out
it is soo hard to deal with so many...and it keeps growing some how
but I get so tired..
I know they depend on me..
but..Gods...
when do they go out on their own
do I need to push them out of the nest?...
at times I really want to..

sometimes I feel like a adult baby sitter


((hugs))

I imagine it is difficult, you are almost raising another family.
Is there someone you feel could lead and teach?
Could you take a step back as executive HP and mentor someone into your role, to deal with the more mundane aspects, and your role become mainly ceremonial w/o all the organizing of things?

There is no reason you should not take a break or a haitus.

[Astara Seague]

well I do have an apprentice..Im just not sure if she can handle it

I want to take a break but I feel so obligated

[HetHert]

well I do have an apprentice..Im just not sure if she can handle it

I want to take a break but I feel so obligated

Do you think she's prepared to help you in the capacity you require? What I mean is can she be taught more to be prepared to handle or is this a case of lack of experience over all? Are you prepared to guide her to more of a leadership role?

[Astara Seague]

Actuallay I should try..
she has been studying with me since 2002
she has alot of knowledge..she has been a helper to me and to our coven for awhile now

but.. I feel Im kind of letting the others down...
they drain me so much sometimes..
I am physically ill sometimes because of it..
maybe it is just me..maybe I am just too old to deal with it all

[Lunacie]

Actuallay I should try..
she has been studying with me since 2002
she has alot of knowledge..she has been a helper to me and to our coven for awhile now

but.. I feel Im kind of letting the others down...
they drain me so much sometimes..
I am physically ill sometimes because of it..
maybe it is just me..maybe I am just too old to deal with it all

Burn out has more to do with others expectations of you (and maybe your own expectations for yourself) than with how old you are. Sounds like it's time for a break - at least from full-time full-out responsibility. I agree that it's time (perhaps past time) to delegate and let others take on more responsibility. I know that can be hard, my own group simply refuses to get together if I don't organize it and can't be there. Gah. And there is one couple that together could do just as well as I'm doing, or even better. Maybe they just don't want the responsibility? Good luck delegating! :uhhuhuh:

[Astara Seague]

Burn out has more to do with others expectations of you (and maybe your own expectations for yourself) than with how old you are. Sounds like it's time for a break - at least from full-time full-out responsibility. I agree that it's time (perhaps past time) to delegate and let others take on more responsibility. I know that can be hard, my own group simply refuses to get together if I don't organize it and can't be there. Gah. And there is one couple that together could do just as well as I'm doing, or even better. Maybe they just don't want the responsibility? Good luck delegating! :uhhuhuh:

Gods
that is soo true

[Astara Seague]

I dont think very many people actually realize the responsibilty being a HP has
maybe I would have not even started the coven if I knew that:uhhuhuh:

[Astara Seague]

its so much easier to be solitary

[~Elise~]

I have soooooooooooooooooooo been where you are. What did I do...I took a break and let others do things. There are times where I have just absolutely hit the wall and could not do even one more little thing.

People stepped up when I said that and offered to do ritual, etc. If you tell them, honestly they'll step up. At least, it's been that way in my experience. When I flat out stated, y'all help or no rituals or classes for a least a month, they came forward and found that they enjoyed taking that larger step.

A burnt out HPs does no one any good. Take time to recharge and you'll find you come back better (and you won't have to do it all anymore either--you'll have helpers)

I KNEW what I was getting into, I'd read CovenCraft by AmberK. I think that should be required reading for all HP/HPs before taking on that role.

JMO, however and YMMV

Elise

[Terra Mater]

is anyone else having problems with burn out..
I think after so many years I am getting tired..
how can you deal with it..
should you shut down the "coven"
sometimes I 'd rather take the easy way out
it is soo hard to deal with so many...and it keeps growing some how
but I get so tired..
I know they depend on me..
but..Gods...
when do they go out on their own
do I need to push them out of the nest?...
at times I really want to..

sometimes I feel like a adult baby sitter

That was me about four years ago and I did push them out of the nest. Called the whole group together and informed them that I was stepping down as HP. If they wanted the coven to keep going it was their turn to run it. I had taught them all I could and needed to devote extra time to personal matters. It continued for about a year after I left, then disbanded.

Life happens.

[maskedone]

well i would support anything that you decided to do...

[Jenett]

Some ideas:

- Sit down and figure out exactly which bits are burning you out. Sometimes it's only some parts of the role, not everything. (For example, maybe what would realy help you would be not having to be responsible for getting everything set up and cleaned up for ritual, and cutting back some on the number of times you get together as a group. If that's the case, disbanding the group doesn't make sense, because those are pretty easy changes to consider.)

- Talk with the woman who's been helping you since 2002. Ask her for her ideas. Don't say "I want to dump this all in your lap", but "How do we make this better?" She may have some great ideas you haven't considered, or can suggest things that take the pressure off you, either temporarily or long-term.

- Once you two have talked, sit down with the rest of the group and share your ideas. Make it clear what you can't continue, and what you can be flexible on. So, for example, you might say "The grunt work of cleaning and setting up every time you come over for group work is really getting to me, and I'm feeling like I never have time for my own life because people are calling all the time. So, instead, to continue, we need to solve the first problem by sharing more of the set-up work. In the second case, I'm going to be available on Wednesdays for conversation, but otherwise, unless it's an absolute emergency (like going to the hospital), it should wait until the next scheduled gathering. "

Or whatever it is that's the issue. If the issue is that you just need some time off to recover, then maybe you say "X and I have talked, and she's going to take over for 3 months to give me a chance to recover a bit. During that time, you'll have ritual together, but you'll be expected to contribute to planning and making them happen more than we have right now. And we'll be doing one gathering a month outside of that, rather than Y number we're doing now."

Again, giving as much feedback into the process as you can helps - it'll help people feel like they *should* be involved and take on more, rather than just dictating from the top down.

Then, go take your free time and do good things with it. (Sleeping counts as 'good things' in my book.)

[Astara Seague]

all good ideas and thank you
it seems for some reason it happens to me about once a year..
I always get through it though..

[Jenett]

Out of curiousity, Astara - is it the same time most years? When that happens to me, I usually start looking at patterns.

I'm a school librarian, so there are some times in my work life that are especially busy. I know not to plan lots of extra group/religious stuff at those times, and to make sure I plan plenty of extra recovery time for myself.

Worth keeping an eye on, at least!

[Ivy Artemisia]

Astara- you weren't kidding when you said that many people don't realize the amount of responsibility the role of HPS entails. I'm dealing with something similar.

One of my main problems is that I tend to expect to have to do it all myself, when the members of my coven would be more than happy to help, I just need to ask. I also feel as though I should be able to handle it all- I tend to put some serious pressure on myself.

And so I DO delegate, but not until the week or so before an event when people ask if they can help. I need to be pro-active and ask THEM to help early in the planning process. I feel as though if *I* don't do it, it won't get done. And thats not true. It just won't get done in the way I'd like. But nothing is wrong with that. That's what I'm dealing with. Now that I yapped about my problems...

My suggestion is to explain your feelings and then break up your ritual structure and assign parts to different members, and give some guidance. Person A- your write and read the statement of intent- please include some of the lore of the sabbat and how it might tie into our center activity of wish magic. Person B- please handle the meditation- you may want to write a guided meditation. Person C- please pick up the cakes and ale- please make sure that they are Vegan- try trader joes. That's what I'm doing. If they aren't used to contributing very much, guidance will really help them- just try to assign parts according to their strengths.

I, too have thought about dissolving my group many times- we've been all the way down to two members before, and right now we are having some communication problems. I've had so many great experiences within my group in between these times, that now that I realize thats a permanent solution to a temporary problem (HPS burnout).

[Lunacie]

Astara- you weren't kidding when you said that many people don't realize the amount of responsibility the role of HPS entails. I'm dealing with something similar.

One of my main problems is that I tend to expect to have to do it all myself, when the members of my coven would be more than happy to help, I just need to ask. I also feel as though I should be able to handle it all- I tend to put some serious pressure on myself.

And so I DO delegate, but not until the week or so before an event when people ask if they can help. I need to be pro-active and ask THEM to help early in the planning process. I feel as though if *I* don't do it, it won't get done. And thats not true. It just won't get done in the way I'd like. But nothing is wrong with that. That's what I'm dealing with. Now that I yapped about my problems...

My suggestion is to explain your feelings and then break up your ritual structure and assign parts to different members, and give some guidance. Person A- your write and read the statement of intent- please include some of the lore of the sabbat and how it might tie into our center activity of wish magic. Person B- please handle the meditation- you may want to write a guided meditation. Person C- please pick up the cakes and ale- please make sure that they are Vegan- try trader joes. That's what I'm doing. If they aren't used to contributing very much, guidance will really help them- just try to assign parts according to their strengths.

I, too have thought about dissolving my group many times- we've been all the way down to two members before, and right now we are having some communication problems. I've had so many great experiences within my group in between these times, that now that I realize thats a permanent solution to a temporary problem (HPS burnout).

Very interesting. We've always taken turns handling the whole shebang so that it feels like it all melds together. It sounds like it works rather well for your group to divide the ritual pieces among the members. I'd like to give that a try and see how it goes.

[Jenett]

And so I DO delegate, but not until the week or so before an event when people ask if they can help. I need to be pro-active and ask THEM to help early in the planning process. I feel as though if *I* don't do it, it won't get done. And thats not true. It just won't get done in the way I'd like. But nothing is wrong with that. That's what I'm dealing with. Now that I yapped about my problems...

I love this discussion of different ways to delegate. It's definitely worth looking at all the possible options, and figuring out which work.

Personally, last minute requests (within 3-5 days of the ritual) drive me batty if they involve any significant amount of time and attention - I lead a busy life, and try to live efficiently, so I might already have done my errands for that week (so picking up something else means an extra stop) or may already be heavily scheduled between then and the event. A head's up that something's coming my way can be really helpful, even if someone doesn't have all the details of what's needed yet.

Like Lunacie, most of my experience with ritual planning is someone taking responsibility for the entire ritual. In the group I trained in, that rotated among the active initiates (though people could request specific months if they had something special in mind.)

Since our trad uses a consistent circle set-up and take-down, most of what people had to prepare was the explanation (anything people needed to know before coming - what to bring or think about), the welcome (the formal ritual statement explaining what we're going to be doing) and whatever the ritual working was (meditation, magical work, etc.)

My HPS strongly preferred that things get submitted a week in advance (or at least a discussion of what people had in mind) so that if there were any issues, they could be fixed ahead of time, which also helped (she had a head's up if she was going to need to pull something out of thin air, for example.)

She also kept an archive of past rituals that were worth doing again (and generally easy to arrange to do - didn't require lots of unusual supplies or anything), so that if a catastrophe happened and the planned stuff wasn't going to work, we didn't have to start from square one.

All of that helped reduce strain and stress.

[Ivy Artemisia]

Very interesting. We've always taken turns handling the whole shebang so that it feels like it all melds together. It sounds like it works rather well for your group to divide the ritual pieces among the members. I'd like to give that a try and see how it goes.

At times, in our group people will take the helm for the entire ritual- its part of our training (and of course, there are many times when its all me)... but when it's not- I've found that the other sisters really enjoy contributing more- not just the ideas and brainstorming, but the actual ritual. I find that it not only helps me, but also helps them- plus we are going to be rotating some ritual roles (our quarters, etc always are the same) next month. I've also found that distributing the roles and getting others involved prevents it from becoming the HPS show.

We actually started this for our open circles, and it was so successful that weve continued it. We're lucky in that most of our sisters have practiced in some way for at least 10 years, and we're a relatively young group- late twenties, early thirties right now.

Ive found that its all about the transitions, when divying the parts up. I tend to usually do the statement of purpose/intent and lead into whatever the ritual center is, and I almost always have all of the ritual parts beforehand, so I can write transitions that are smooth. Other than that, we have bells and things that precede parts of our circle. As our circle is Wiccan, we are structured and usually do things in the same order everytime, so it still feels meldy.




My HPS strongly preferred that things get submitted a week in advance (or at least a discussion of what people had in mind) so that if there were any issues, they could be fixed ahead of time, which also helped (she had a head's up if she was going to need to pull something out of thin air, for example.)

She also kept an archive of past rituals that were worth doing again (and generally easy to arrange to do - didn't require lots of unusual supplies or anything), so that if a catastrophe happened and the planned stuff wasn't going to work, we didn't have to start from square one.

All of that helped reduce strain and stress.


We are going to be working a month in advance from now on. I'm thinking this will completely alleviate the stress felt as we sometimes need to scramble last minutes. Also, we have an archive/Book of Shadows accessible to all initiates of all of our rituals we've done in the past five years, as well as an archive of God and Goddess evocations used in past circles. This has REALLY helped in us a pinch.

[Astara Seague]

Out of curiousity, Astara - is it the same time most years? When that happens to me, I usually start looking at patterns.

I'm a school librarian, so there are some times in my work life that are especially busy. I know not to plan lots of extra group/religious stuff at those times, and to make sure I plan plenty of extra recovery time for myself.

Worth keeping an eye on, at least!
yes actually come to think on it usually right after Midsummers..
that is rather interesting because Midsummers always seems to be the biggest thing next to Samhain that we have so its tons of work
it is also like the gateway to summer travels and so forth so our numbers dwindle down to one or two and then I feel like Im wasting my time having any events
thanks Jenett that makes alot of sense now