Module 10: Engaged Buddhism · The Buddha’s Path
Caring for Yourself While Caring for Others (David Oromith)
David Oromith · 59 minutes · recorded January 26, 2025
This Insight Timer talk for carers opens with a short body based meditation on motivation. David sets out three levels of burnout, emotional exhaustion, loss of meaning, and depersonalization, with the antidote to each, then turns to universal compassion, naming despair as compassion's near enemy and describing the friend based thought experiment for self compassion. Carers share their own motivations and advice throughout, and this first part ends with a loving kindness meditation.
Caring for others, whether in a professional role or for the people you love, can be deeply rewarding, and it comes with its own particular difficulties. How do we keep giving our best to the people who need us without neglecting ourselves? And is turning attention to yourself not simply selfish? This talk, recorded for Insight Timer Live, looks at holding the demands of caring alongside the necessity of self-care. Drawing on Buddhist wisdom and on modern insight, it offers ways of keeping balance and resilience, of arousing self-compassion, and of finding moments of joy and gratitude in the middle of it. Along the way: avoiding burnout by tending your own wellbeing, reframing guilt or self-pity as kindness towards yourself, and using practice to bring some calm and clarity into an ordinary day. For a healthcare professional, a family carer, or anyone looking for ways to care for themselves amid everything else, the hope is that there is something practical here.
Depression and low mood Motivation and intention Stress and burnout Compassion (karuna) Loving kindness (metta)