Reflaction: Accurately estimating supply and demand

In this week’s podcast episode we talk about the importance of personalizing our self-care and how things like neurodiversity, our life circumstances and personal history, and our perception of a “successful therapist” can all play an important role. Equally important, however, is the recognition that personalizing our self-care also means regularly taking stock of ourselves and our life circumstances because the reality is that things change.

One great way to do this is to regularly take stock of our sources of supply and demands.

In her book The Resilience Plan, workplace mental health specialist and psychologist Dr. Marie-Helene Pelletier (or MH) explains, “Sources of supply often represent protective factors, actions that we implement that increase our energy and health” (p. 82). And while she acknowledges that things like physical activity, nutrition, spending time with people we enjoy, and sleep have the most empirical support, she also mentions things like setting boundaries, spending time in nature, artistic activities, having positive relationships, etc. Sources of demands can include both positive and negative demands for your time and energy in both your work and personal life.

Sounds simple, right?

Except that it isn’t because it turns out we’re prone to overestimating our supply and underestimating our demands. And, our ability to successfully navigate all sorts of demands in the past (ah, memories of graduate school, among other things) may be one of the reasons we’re not so great at accurately assessing our current situation.

It’s so easy to convince ourselves we can do it, even if our life circumstances have changed dramatically. Yep, one more reason why self-care is so tricky.

In reflecting back on some of the more “demanding” times of my personal and work life, I will wholeheartedly acknowledge I fell into the very trap MH describes in her book. My greatest self-care lessons came from underestimating demands that came along with things like beginning a new job, taking on a new work project, supporting a loved one through their cancer journey, and caring for my aging parents.

The demands not only affected my time and physical energy, but some of them also greatly affected my mental and emotional energy. I suspect that as mental health clinicians we may be particularly prone to underestimate the demands on our mental and emotional energy because, of course, those are the demands we deal with on a daily basis at work. Except it’s different when those same demands exist in both our workday and personal lives, or during a pandemic.

Armed with new insights and self-compassion, I’ve taken those self-care lessons and used the data to better to inform my self-assessment of sources of supply and demands. I’ve also shared my experiences with colleagues, in hopes that by connecting with others and sharing experiences we’ll all be in a better place to support one another in being more realistic about our sources of supply and demand.

My biggest lesson? It’s much better to overestimate our demands and underestimate our sources of supply because the reality is, it’s far easier to put demands back into our schedule than to take them out.

Where will your reflactions take you?