{"id":1359,"date":"2017-06-14T13:24:44","date_gmt":"2017-06-14T13:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/?p=1359"},"modified":"2025-07-26T17:00:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T21:00:31","slug":"sarakay-smullens-62","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/sarakay-smullens-62\/","title":{"rendered":"SaraKay Smullens \u201962"},"content":{"rendered":"

S<\/span>araKay Smullens remembers the first time she really saw the effects of burnout. Early in her career as a social worker, she counseled neglected children for the Philadelphia Society to Protect Children, where she worked with a \u201crainbow coalition\u201d of colleagues dedicated to helping their vulnerable charges.<\/p>\n

Returning to the job after a long absence, she found her former workplace decimated by lack of resources and support, but most of all by the departure of her former friends and mentors. When she asked them why they\u2019d left, they all gave similar answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all used that phrase: \u2018Burned the hell out,\u2019\u201d she says, \u201cand because I thought that was so dangerous, I started to do research into burnout, evidence-based reasons for burnout and evidence-based self-care to remove it and prevent it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That research turned into a project that stretches more than two decades, resulting in a recent book, Burnout and Self-Care in Social Work. Smullens sees the burnout phenomenon as similar to depression in its effects, but distinct in its causes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see it when people just refuse to discuss things and neglect themselves, and just are generally helpless and defeated with no real reason other than they\u2019re caring too much,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd they don\u2019t understand everything that they\u2019ve taken on and what to do about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an idea that seems to have struck a chord. Her book, published by the National Association of Social Workers and intended for a clinical audience, has found a readership outside the field.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the people buying it aren\u2019t mental health professionals,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re teachers, volunteers, philanthropists, moms, architects, botanists, or mental health professionals or social workers, because burnout is so pervasive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of Smullens\u2019 papers and records now reside in Goucher\u2019s Special Collections and Archives. She credits Goucher with nurturing in her an activist spirit, but in conversation she reveals that her activism started long before. At an early age, she remembers walking through Baltimore\u2019s Druid Hill Park with her caretaker, who was black, and her caretaker\u2019s daughter, when the daughter was stopped by a police officer for drinking at a \u201cWhites Only\u201d fountain.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know what I did?\u201d she asks. \u201cI bit him. I had never in my life bitten anybody, but it so offended me as a little girl that my darling friend and I could not drink from the same fountain.\u201d<\/p>\n

By the time she attended Goucher, Smullens took a less violent approach to desegregation. Along with her fellow commuter students, she approached Towson businesses to try to convince them to integrate. When that was unsuccessful, the group organized a boycott.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we threatened to boycott\u2014just very peacefully and quietly\u2014every institutions just opened,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve had such a lovely life, but other than the birth of my children and grandchildren and my marriage to Stan, that was the most wonderful thing I had ever worked on.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her papers, Smullens looks back at her own difficult times and those of others through a therapeutic lens. It is important to her, she says, \u201cnot to be afraid to talk about my own life, and not to feel ashamed by mistakes I made.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy training has helped me to know that it\u2019s really okay to tell the truth about your life because it\u2019s the truth. Maybe if you can tell the truth and somebody can read about it, they\u2019ll understand their options and feel more hopeful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more of SaraKay’s writing, and find out more about her book, at her website,\u00a0http:\/\/www.sarakaysmullens.com\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Social work and activism go hand in hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":1360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[54973],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[87492],"class_list":["post-1359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-spotlight"],"yoast_head":"\nSaraKay Smullens \u201962 | Goucher Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.goucher.edu\/magazine\/sarakay-smullens-62\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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