Compassion Fatigue Solutions

...Yes, from the tasty snack, which means I have lots of different things to write about and also means that I ate way too much salty food last night, watching the Oscars. I feel like a block of salt today. ugh. What was I thinking?

First of all, thank you to all the participants who took part in last week's Compassion Fatigue Train the Trainer workshop. I met twenty wonderful people and I think we all enjoyed having the opportunity to slow down and get a chance to talk to each other for two days (and be incredibly well fed, to boot). You were all very much in my thoughts as I visualised each of you making your way back home, either close to Kingston or all the way East. Thank you for your willingness to share in the way that you did, to take risks and to offer us, in turn, the gift of the wisdom of your experiences.

It was a gorgeous sunny weekend in this part of the world. There was much premature celebration of Spring going on in Kingston with many people running outside in, brrr, shorts even though it was only about 5 degrees (we get a bit spring crazy, us Canadians don't we?). My brother - who is also one of my best friends, and his wonderful family were visiting and we took many long walks, talked and ate and and talked some more. There was also a surprise visit from my beloved, gorgeous, super smart, trilingual 23 year old sister Doudou. Doudou is a graduate student in Montreal studying international development. She has lived in Mali, Nicaragua and Kashmir (so far) and is currently planning on returning to Africa and India as soon as her thesis is done. She is very thoughtful and extremely well informed about international aid and the challenges facing developing countries. After three years of living abroad, she is also dealing with reverse culture shock, coming back into our profligate consumer culture.

In Kashmir, Doudou lived for many months with a family that had not one stitch of furniture in their home and very little to eat. Ditto in Nicaragua and in Mali. In Paris, she worked with the homeless for several months. Yesterday, as we were sitting and chatting, she told a story about this wonderful wise homeless man she used to work with and finished by saying "oh, and then one day, he was stabbed 19 times and died. That was really upsetting."

From these experiences, I see, through her eyes, that the world is never going to be quite the same again. There is a richness to what she is learning and a huge passion for the work that is still to come, but, as her older sister, I feel this protective urge to spare her the pain of what she is going to continue seeing. Of course, then, when she starts talking, I realise that she has already seen too much for me to prevent any vicarious trauma from occurring. It has already happened and it is a normal consequence of the work that she has been doing.

One thing that surprises and angers me is that in her preparatory training to deploy to these countries, she did not receive much, if any, VT training from the NGOs. I thought we were doing better than that in this day and age.

Hearing Doudou's stories, I also feel elated to see a young person who is truly a citizen of the world, and who brings a highly knowledgeable perspective to international work. I like to hold on to these encounters to combat the cynicism I sometimes hear from my slightly older friends who often launch into the old litany of "kids these days...." which they follow with a complaint about how entitled, materialistic, self-centered, what have you they perceive kids in their twenties to be. In fact, in my experience, many of the young people I speak to are not spoiled electronic brats who expect immediate gratification for everything. The people I am meeting across the country are really engaged and concerned about the society we live in, the environment, racism and poverty.

I think that sometimes, when we, the older generations, get tired and overwhelmed, we also get defensive and stop being open to the voices of people younger than us.

I, for one, am excited to hear what they have to say.

This wellness challenge is an initiative of heart institute of Montreal. For the next six weeks, you are invited to commit to eating 5 portions of fruit and vegetables per day and exercise for at least 30 minutes daily (these can be three separate 10 minute activities such as climbing the stairs, walking to the grocery store and going for a walk at lunch, or one thirty minute exercise session).

You can make this commitment on your own, with friends or, if you are reading this on or before March 1st, you can enroll in the challenge online

Relevez le défi 5/30! Une initiative de l'institut de cardiologie de Montréal. Pour les 6 prochaines semaines, optez de manger au moins 5 fruits ou légumes par jour et de faire 30 minutes d'activité physique. Vous pouvez vous inscrire sur le site ou relevez votre propre défi au bureau ou avec votre famille! Visitez leur site pour plus d'information.

(Tonight, when they come home, I'm going to challenge my kids and hubby to this and see if they can rise to the challenge. We'll see who wins - full disclosure is that I already do both of these things on most days so I am pretty sure I am going to win but let's see who gets the silver medal in our home!).


Photo from Image: Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Wow, what a wonderful trip.

A beautiful place and amazing people. I received an incredible welcome in Whitehorse and was treated like royalty...Imagine the re-entry shock when I got home: "ahem, my water bottle is empty...(cue to my family sitting on the couch watching the olympics, ignoring me) ahem...I need to be driven to the store, someone? No? Say what? Do it myself? Oh..."

Things I learned while I was away:

1) If you live in Whitehorse and your windshield gets cracked by flying gravel, don't bother replacing it. It will only get cracked again (percentage of cracked windshields of cars I was driven in: 99%, pretty strong data I would say.)

2) If you notice, just as you are about to check in for your return flight home, that you have mistakenly booked your flights for March 20th rather than February 20th and are flying through Vancouver, the busiest airport in Canada this weekend, just cross your fingers and pray that somehow the Air Canada guy (ACG) is in a good mood. Plan B, start crying loudly. Luckily, I was just about to start working on Plan B when some miracle happened and ACG got me a seat on all three connecting flights even though they were all overbooked. Thank you ACG.

Today, instead of travelling across the country to give a talk, I am going...across the street to St Mary's of the Lake (isn't that a beautiful name for a hospital? It always makes me think of Arthurian legends for some reason).

I will post something deep and meaningful related to Compassion Fatigue later on this week. For now, I am adjusting to being back home and trying to catch up on life.

Contest winner! I would like to congratulate Mezaun on winning a copy of The Compassion Fatigue Workbook. I will be sending it to you this week.

By Leo Babauta, author of the book "From Zen to Done"
Go see his website: www.zenhabits.net


“Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat.” ~ Lao Tzu

It’s a bias of our culture that stillness is regarded as lazy, as being stuck in inaction, as a negative.

It’s not. It’s an action, and a powerful one.

What’s more, it can change your day, and in doing so change your life.

You’re in the middle of a frazzled day, swamped by work and meetings and emails and interruptions, or hassled by kids and phone calls and errands and chores.

You pause. Stay still for a minute, and breathe. You close your eyes, and find a stillness within yourself. This stillness spreads to the rest of your body, and to your mind. It calms you, centers you, focuses you on what you’re doing right now, not on all you have to do and all that has happened.

The stillness becomes a transformative action.

Stillness can be a powerful answer to the noise of others. It can be a way to push back against the buzz of the world, to take control. It can remind you of what’s important.

How to Practice
Stillness, oddly, doesn’t come naturally to many people. So practice.

1. Start your day in stillness. Whether it’s sitting with a cup of coffee as the world awakes, or sitting on a pillow and focusing on your breath, stillness is a powerful way to start your day. It sets the tone for things to come. Even 5-10 minutes is great.

2. Take regular stillness breaks. Every hour, set an alarm on your computer or phone to go off. Think of it as a bell that rings, reminding you to be still for a minute. During this minute, focus first on your breathing, to bring yourself into the present. Let the worries of the world around you melt away — all that is left is your breath. And then let your focus expand beyond your breath to your other senses, one at a time.

3. When chaos roars, pause. In the middle of a crisis or a noisy day, stop. Be still. Take a deep breath, and focus on that breath coming in, and going out. Find your inner stillness and then let your next action come from that stillness. Focus on that next action only.

Let stillness become your most powerful action. It could change your life.

“Through return to simple living Comes control of desires. In control of desires Stillness is attained. In stillness the world is restored.” ~ Lao Tzu

This free webinar came across my google alerts this morning:

March 3, 2010 - Compassion Fatigue
LCDR Pamela Herbig - Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner, Clinical Nurse Specialist and Director, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences as Director of the PMH-NP program.

I don't know the organisers or the presenter, but Rocky Mountain Learning seems to be a really interesting agency who specialises in bringing training to folks through webinars and other distance learning modules.

As I gear up to leave my young kids for five days (nearly the longest ever), the idea of doing more and more web-based training is highly appealling to me, let alone the significant cost savings for all involved (no travel, no hotels, etc.)

So, if you're free on March 3, consider signing up for this training and let me know what you think, both of the content and the learning medium.

This week, I will be brief in the interest of taking care of my sore wrist (typing overuse, an occupational hazard). It will be fine but it needs a little break.

I am going to Whitehorse next week and am very excited about that. I apparently timed the trip perfectly to coincide with the arrival in Whitehorse of the mushers from Yukon Quest, a 1000 mile international dog sled race. How cool is that?

It brings back a lot of memories for me. When I was very small, we lived in a village in Northern Quebec called Povirnituq or POV, near Hudson's Bay, above the tree line. POV was a small village with wooden sidewalks, no sewers and lots of sled dogs. Apparently, at around age three, I used to be an early riser (still am) and used to get fully dressed (snowsuit and all) and go for walks in the village before my family awoke. I would get returned by someone or my parents would get a phone call saying I was having breakfast at so and so's house....I thought this was the most normal thing in the world to do. But the sled dogs had a huge place in the village and we used to see them huddled together during big snowstorms. We were taught to fear and respect them and stay well away from them. Anyhow, that was a little burst of the past coming into my head.

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GET A FREE Compassion Fatigue Workbook!
Here is my question for you this week - What are your pillar movies? You know, the films that have moved you deeply and left you feeling changed in some way? I want to focus on the inspirational films, not the harrowing ones (us helpers have enough of that in our day jobs). What are the movies that have inspired, nurtured you and left you feeling replenished? Post them in the comments and we'll compile a list. Please let us know what it was about the film that moved you so. I will randomly pick one comment upon my return from Whitehorse and that person will receive a free copy of The Compassion Fatigue Workbook.

mush mush

Are you a compassion fatigue/vicarious trauma educator and/or practitioner? Are you interested in sharing your ideas/new approaches to helping other helpers who are facing compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma? The Association of Traumatic Stress Specialists will be holding its annual conference September 29 – October 3, 2010 at the Delta Airport Hotel – Toronto, Canada.

Click here for more information.