Running on Empty: One day staff wellness training on burnout, compassion fatigue
and secondary trauma.
Background:
Compassion fatigue (CF) refers to the profound emotional and physical exhaustion that
helping professionals, caregivers and front line workers can develop over the course of
their career as helpers. It is a gradual erosion of all the things that keep us connected to
others in our caregiver role: our empathy, our hope, and of course our compassion - not
only for others but also for ourselves. When we are suffering from compassion fatigue,
we start seeing changes in our personal and professional lives: we can become
dispirited and increasingly bitter at work, we may contribute to a toxic work environment,
we are more prone to clinical errors, we may violate boundaries and lose a respectful
stance towards the people we serve. We may become short-tempered with our loved
ones and feel constant guilt or resentment at the never ending demands on our personal
time.
CF has been described as “the cost of caring" for others in emotional pain (Figley, 1982).
It can strike the most dedicated nurse, social worker, teacher, police officer, physician
and personal support worker alike. Ironically, helpers who are burned out, worn down,
fatigued and traumatized tend to work more and work harder. As a result they go further
and further down a path that can lead to serious physical and mental health difficulties,
such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, chronic pain, other stress-related
illnesses and even suicide.
Vicarious Traumatization (VT) is a term that was coined to describe the profound shift
that workers experience in their world view when they work with clients who have
experienced trauma. Helpers notice that their fundamental beliefs about the world are
altered and possibly damaged by being repeatedly exposed to traumatic material.
Vicarious Trauma occurs when the stories we hear from our clients transfer onto us in a
way where we too are traumatized by the images and details, even though we did not
experience them ourselves. We then find it difficult to rid ourselves of the images and
experiences they have shared with us. As Pearlman and Saakvitne explain, "it is not
something clients do to us; it is a human consequence of knowing, caring, and facing the
reality of trauma." (1996)
VT is a cumulative process: we are not referring to the most difficult story you have ever
heard, we are talking about the thousands of stories you don't even remember hearing.
Where do those stories go, at the end of your day? Have you ever found yourself
struggling with intrusive images or nightmares that did not belong to you, but rather
came from stories you had seen and heard at work? Have you found that your view of
the world has changed because of the work that you do?
Some of us become increasingly numb to the pain and suffering of our clients, others
feel profound sadness and anger at the unfairness of the world and many of us simply
get overwhelmed. We were not provided with many tools to deal with this aspect of our
work. The following workshop has been designed to provide concrete tools for helping
professionals, to allow them to face and better understand CF and VT in their
professional and personal lives.
Workshop Description:
We pay an emotional price for doing the work that we do: Some of us hear difficult
stories daily and are frequently exposed to traumatic details from the cases we are
working on. We are not always able to help everyone who comes to us for help - the
demand often outweighs what we can offer. What is the impact of this work on our own
emotional well-being, on our personal life?
Compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma are normal consequences of working in the
helping field. The best strategy is to develop excellent self care strategies, as well as an
early warning system that lets the helper know that they are moving into the caution
zone of Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma.
This is a highly interactive one day workshop, incorporating a combination of solo, small
group and whole group activities.
Topics covered will include:
Understanding compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma
Symptom checklist, targeting areas for strategic planning
Evaluating self-care, identifying triggers
Developing a personalized strategic plan for identifying and treating compassion fatigue
Past participants have reported feeling inspired to make meaningful changes in their
personal, professional and organizational lives in addition to learning practical strategies
for identifying and dealing with the costs of caring.
Curriculum covered in presentation:
1) Definitions of burnout, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic
stress and vicarious traumatization.
2) The Academy of Traumatology's Standards of Self Care
3) The difference between compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious
trauma and burnout.
4) Assessing Compassion Fatigue: Signs and Symptoms.
5) Using the ProQol Inventory.
6) Developing an early warning system for CF and VT.
7) Review of current research on Compassion Fatigue.
8) Consequences of Compassion Fatigue on work, the family and the self:
Understanding the impact of chronic stress (using Dr Gabor Maté's work "When the
body says No" on psychoneuroimmunology and the connection between chronic stress
and illness).
9) Strategies for transforming Compassion Fatigue: Four stage plan for self care and
developing resiliency skills (including work/life balance, self care at work and at home
and self awareness). Education on healthy eating, physical exercise, and relaxation
training.
10) The use of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) in mitigating Compassion
Fatigue.
11) The psychobiology of Vicarious Trauma: Using Babette Rothschild's work from "Help
for the Helper". How to protect ourselves when working with heavy trauma content.
12) Developing a self-care plan and making a commitment