Compassion Fatigue Solutions

If you live near Ottawa and are ever looking for a great locale for a meeting or retreat, I would highly recommend Strathmere (www.strathmere.com). Strathmere is a country retreat, with barns that were converted into beautiful meeting rooms and it has excellent food and outstanding service. I have been looking for the ideal setting for our CF retreats and I think this is it. The also offer overnight accommodation which would make the possibility of an overnight retreat very appealing. Something to think about down the road.

This week was the Fall offering of WHP's Walking the Walk workshop, and I had the pleasure of meeting a highly varied group of helpers. For those of you who participated in this workshop, I have enclosed below the self care strategies that you produced during the "bowl game." My only regret is not taking a photo of peewee the pumpkin, but she's standing guard at Strathmere, full of the rewards of the work that we gave her during our circle.

The best part of these workshops is the privilege of having a group of helpers spend a day together, sharing common experiences and offering validation and support to one another. We spend so much time working in isolation during our day to day work. In fact, in their ARP training program for compassion fatigue therapy, Baranowsky and Gentry list the following key elements as being key to keeping compassion fatigue at bay:

1) Resiliency Skills: “rebounding from life and work difficulties” - “strengthening areas of our lives to cushion the fall when the going gets rough”

2) Skills acquisition: "What symptoms are being caused by areas of work where I do not have adequate training?"

3) Self Care: “What symptoms are caused by the professional overextending themselves in their work or personal lives?” Strategies involve developing or improving soothing skills, boundaries.

4) Internal Conflicts: Unresolved personal issues, knowing what we need to do yet being unable to do it (eg physical exercise, proper eating etc)

5) Connection with others: “Developing a personal “therapeutic community” is mandatory in preventing CF." (Excerpted from Baranowsky and Gentry, ARP training manual (1999))