Compassion Fatigue Solutions

Why Nuts and Bolts? Well, first of all, N&B is my favourite insanely oversalted snack, but the real reason is that I feel I have several unrelated matters to mention today (or are they unrelated? they likely are very connected in some part of my brain...)


Bolt #1
During my morning run, I listen to CBC radio (normally in French and sometimes in English) and I often end up racing home to jot down ideas/interesting guests/book titles that I have heard on the morning shows before I forget about them, which will, sadly, happen rather quickly. This week, I heard a fascinating interview with philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo.

From the CBC The Current Show, January 17th 2008:
"On April 27, 2006, Ramin Jahanbegloo was getting ready to board a plane from Tehran to Brussels when Iranian authorities pulled him aside. The Iranian-born Canadian citizen and political philosopher was blindfolded and sent to the notorious Evin prison -- the same prison where Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi was tortured and killed. He was locked in solitary confinement and subjected to interrogations for the next 125 days. He didn't understand why he was being held. He had no idea if or when he would be released. And as a philosopher, he faced the daunting task of trying to come up with a constructive way of thinking about his situation just to maintain his sanity. Ramin Jahanbegloo is now back in Canada and teaching at the University of Toronto where he's a research fellow at the Centre for Ethics and a Massey College Scholar-at-Risk. He is the author of more than 20 books including Conversations with Isaiah Berlin and Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity.

From http://www.eurozine.com/authors/jahanbegloo.html:
"Ramin Jahanbegloo was born in Tehran, Iran, and received his PhD in philosophy from the Sorbonne. He is the author of 20 books, including Conversations with Isaiah Berlin (1991), Gandhi: aux sources de la non-violence (1998), and Iran: Between Tradition and Modernity (ed.) (2004). Also a citizen of Canada, Jahanbegloo taught in Toronto, Delhi, and Tehran; he has been responsible for bringing scores of prominent Western intellectuals to Iran, including Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Noam Chomsky, Toni Negri, and Edward Said."

What so moved me about this interview (and the podcast of the show would render it far more justice than I can) was Dr Jahanbegloo's description of how he decided to deal with his 125 days of captivity, isolation and daily interrogations by recalling his past readings of nonviolence literature (Ghandi, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King):

“I was in a very small cell for a very long period of time […] It was very difficult to tell the time […] It was quite tough. That’s why the first thing that I thought was that I had to fight for my mental sanity, more than my physical sanity. To take somehow my mind out of the cells. […] I wrote some aphorisms on life, death, violence, everything which came to my mind. […] There was a lot of reflection [… ] on the fact that human beings seem to need to humiliate each other to show their greatness. So there was a lot of reflection on that […] there are two reactions when you face the evil: you can become very bitter about it […] and the second is where you want to resist it. So I had this bitterness but at the same time I was thinking of an ethical resistance towards the inhuman and the evil I was living. So I got back to the idea of non violence, truth and the idea of whether there should be compassion and I went back to all my readings of the dalai lama, ghandi, martin luther king and all the nonviolent thinkers I had worked on. […] These are lessons which I learned from reading on Ghandi, meeting Dalai lama, and he always talks about compassion. […] I was trying to find my own nature and I was trying to redefine my own nature vs feeling only anger, fear and bitterness. I tried to spend most of the moments of my day not having bitterness and feelings of revenge.”

Bolt #2
I guess that interview does, in some way, connect with the other topic I have been reflecting on, which has to do with war, combat stress and the military as I am preparing a one day compassion fatigue/vicarious trauma workshop for a military base hospital.

A very large portion of my private practice involves working with military personnel and/or their spouses. Many of these clients have been to "hot zones" in the world in the recent past for 6, 9 and sometimes 18 months. Some of them have been on 5 or more tours of duty in the past 15 years. We often discuss the challenge of reintegrating into daily life, relationship challenges, parenting vs giving out orders. We also, of course, discuss the things they have seen in the hot zones.

For the non military partner, we discuss having to accept the return of your spouse when you have been running the house alone for 6 months, the nightmares and odd reactions he/she may have at times and many other challenges.

In addition, I am also one of the employee assistance counsellors that military helpers can turn to for support, debriefing and counselling. So I also get to meet with the nurses, social workers, doctors, chaplains, clerks etc. who assist these clients in reintegrating their Canadian lives.

If you enter the Canadian Forces' operational stress injury peer support organisation (OSISS) website: www.osiss.ca, you will see a stunning photograph of a soldier crouching down, holding his head in his hands. His wire-rimmed glasses are on the ground by his side. The photograph, on its own, is incredibly powerful and evocative. Then you read, when you search the net a bit, that this photograph was taken in Rwanda in 1994 by a lieutenant colonel who himself developed PTSD and turned his struggles into greater good and created the peer assistance program. If you wish, go have a look at the photograph and see what it evokes for you.

When I look at the photograph, wearing my helper hat, I feel deeply moved and concerned for this individual. As a compassion fatigue specialist, I also think "who will he tell his story to? and what will they do to cope with the story he must tell?"

That, in a nutshell, is the challenge of the work that we do as helpers.
I should also add that working with military personnel has been and continues to be some of the most rewarding clinical work I have ever done. The helper's conundrum is there, in a nutshell: the challenge is to take truly excellent care of ourselves in order to be able to continue providing the help that is needed with compassion and an open heart.

Bolt #3
If you are a little bit web-savvy, and would like to see Dr Figley present a one hour talk on CF (in Toronto in 2006) follow this link: www.glucksteinlaw.com
I particularly like the part where he discusses the survivor/victim concept. See what you think. We don't have nearly enough video material on Compassion Fatigue that is easily accessible and free. (although i haven't been on you-tube, maybe it's full of great stuff, I just don't really dare!)

Ok, that's my last salty shreddie/cheerio/pretzel for this week.

Bonne semaine à tous et toutes.