Compassion Fatigue Solutions

Photo: Aldas Baltutis (www.peakfreaks.com)

Ok, just to be clear, I personally will never ever attempt to climb Everest. I barely survived the panoramic elevator of the CN tower last year and couldn't watch when my kids stepped on the Tower's glass floor. The reference to Everest is related to something that I was privy to last weekend and has made me reflect on various self-care topics. More on this below.

I am working on a more academic blog entry that I will post later on next week if time allows, on my favourite compassion fatigue solution called Low Impact Disclosure. Stay tuned!

I have had a busy past few weeks, visiting folks in Waterloo Ontario (student counselling service), Toronto (children's rehab hospital) and London (work life balance workshop for homeless shelter workers and child protection workers and a variety of other helping professionals).

For the latter, I was asked to design a new full day workshop on work/life balance, which led me to some very interesting research on current data on workers and their challenges. I spend untold (hundreds) of hours trying to design something that would be meaningful and useful to helpers since, let's be honest, we all know what work/life balance is all about in theory. But the aim was to encourage participants to really identify key goals and challenges that were realistic and achievable. I received some very positive emails after the workshop, with participants saying that they had gone straight home and made some very concrete changes to their schedule to try and get a handle of how work creeps into their home lives. That's very rewarding to hear and I could not have asked for more encouraging feedback. If you are interested to know more about this workshop, email me: whp at cogeco.ca

I have a wonderful dilemma right now of needing to decide where to channel my CF Solutions energy in June: Finish the book? Finish the podcasts and ecourses? Interview helpers for the blog? Finish the Train the trainer workbook? (this course, which will be held in Kingston November 13-14 is 3/4 full already, fyi. Join the mailing list if you want to be sure to receive information on training).

Meanwhile, as I ponder these dilemmas of productivity, let's return to Everest.

One of my favourite relatives was visiting us from England a few weeks back. Jackie is a mental health counsellor who lives in the Lake District (and she runs a great procrastination workshop, if any of you are interested to know more about this, email me). Jackie lives in an area full of mountaineers, and we have been following the Everest climb of a friend of hers on www.myeverest.com

If you want to read an incredibly moving account of climbing Everest, go take a look at these folks who risk their lives for this expensive and rather crazy venture. What struck me reading a recent entry on the Everest blog had to do with the exhilaration that is clearly experienced when you actually make it to the top after weeks of acclimatization to the altitude, and every other risks and discomfort that accompanies such a long journey. Listening to the podcasts of climbers who just made the summit, hearing such pure emotion in their voice and an experience that they are trying to convey to their loved ones, made me somehow vaguely understand what drives them to this. Of course, this is also called a massive adrenaline rush, and can be come really addictive in and of itself. But it made me reflect on ways in which we, the non Everest climbers, can experience a miniature version of this elation in our daily life.

What's this drive all about? There is clearly a part of this quest, pushing the limits of human capacity that is almost pathological (to some) and very personality based. As an aside, I was very amused by my recent trip to an amusement park with my two children who both opted out of almost all rides as "too scary, too bumpy, too fast, too high". We ended up on the ladybug rollercoaster and the little pirate ship that goes splash splash. Clearly not breeding risk takers here.

But the other side of it, the passion is what intrigues me.

When was the last time you felt a rush of pure joy and excitement? What were you doing?

I can think of big and small versions of this feeling: big ones - crossing the finish line after my first half marathon (the nurse at the finish thought I was hyperventilating and sick but I was actually just plain crying with disbelief that I had completed this race). Another big one would be giving birth (well, no, being just done with giving birth was a huge rush, the actual process was not exactly exhilarating). A neighbour of mine just received her Master's degree after years of part time studying and juggling numerous personal demands. A friend of hers told me the graduation was incredibly moving.

I'm pretty sure you can all conjure something up like this in your own life.

But what would be smaller examples in day to day life? For me, examples would be getting to the top of Fort Henry Hill during a run and looking at the sun drenched thousand islands meeting Lake Ontario and smelling a type of sweet grass that grows up there. Having a challenging clinical day ahead but looking forward to going over to my best friend's house for a drink and a chat once the kids are in bed. Taking a loaf of bread out of the oven and inhaling deeply. Smelling the side of my son's head, just by the temple, when he's asleep.

A client of mine said to me yesterday: I would much rather work 2 days a week at a job I love and have just enough money to survive than work full time at a job I hate.

Somewhere along the continuum, without having to be a mad freestyle parachute jumper or an Everest climber, there is something that fuels us, that makes us get up in the morning and look forward to the day and the challenges it offers us.