Burnout as soul loss: initiation into finding your inner light

Burnout as soul loss: initiation into finding your inner light

David Kopacz
12.15.24 | 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm | In Person and Online

Burnout has become a regular part of the contemporary work experience for many people. While there are many efforts to prevent burnout or to be resilient and bounce back from it, we can also view burnout as an invitation, a call to adventure and a kind of initiation, to retreat from the outer world and to reconnect with our inner sense of purpose, meaning, and aliveness (which we can also think of as reconnecting with soul).

David R. Kopacz, MD is a psychiatrist in primary care at the Seattle VA, with a national position teaching Whole Health to VA staff. He is an Assistant Professor at University of Washington and is board certified in psychiatry and integrative medicine. David has spoken around the world on self-care and well-being for veterans, staff, and health professional students. He is the author of Caring for Self & Others: Transforming Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Soul Loss; Re-humanizing Medicine; and a number of books with co-author Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow), including Becoming Medicine: Pathways of Initiation into a Living Spirituality.