The Single Most Important Lesson I’ve Learned Working In the Humanitarian Sector
Not all lessons are created equal.
Some lessons we learn are small — little reminders of what truly matters peppered along our journey.
Other lessons are extraordinary — fundamentally changing the course of our entire lives.
Over the past twenty years of working in the humanitarian sector, this is the single most important lesson I’ve learned:
Working in a humanitarian organization is like working in any other bureaucracy where operating in survival mode is the norm, and the work stops for nothing.
This way of thinking — that work takes precedence over everything else — is so deeply ingrained in humanitarian culture that even when our body and mind are desperately trying to get our attention by sending us signals to slow down — to rest or to ask for help — we ignore them and push ourselves to keep going. Inherently we know operating in survival mode isn’t sustainable over the course of a career. That trying to compartmentalize stress, crisis, and trauma doesn’t work, and insisting that these factors don’t impact the way we show up at work simply isn’t true.
And yet, the nature of working in bureaucracies that operate in service of other human beings means that as humanitarians we will push ourselves to go and go and go until we simply can’t anymore. And what I know from personal experience is that climbing out of that place of burnout and exhaustion isn’t easy.
But neither is trying to change the nature of bureaucracy — and yet, here we are.
Yes we need policies in place that support our ability to take care of ourselves, and we need leaders who stand up in rooms — not to keep everything moving smoothly, but to address the policies that hold humanitarians hostage to the cycles of working, ignoring occupational traumas, and burning out.
The reality is our organizations aren’t going to save us. Accepting this fact frees us to make choices that let us flourish as we support our own health and heal our own trauma. We do this by practicing radical responsibility — a state of being where we show up with intentionality, awareness, and accountability for the way we personally show up and make ourselves part of the solution.
Because one thing I knew for sure — the work is never going to stop.
