Compassion Fatigue Solutions

September 30-October 2, 2010, Toronto.

In addition to 30 conference workshops to choose from, ATSS has arranged for opportunities to network and socialize with colleagues and friends. The President's Luncheon will give attendees an opportunity to learn more about ATSS and its future.

A sample of some of the presenters:

Creative Tools for Transforming Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma - Françoise Mathieu
Meditation, Mindfulness, and Right-Brain Healing in the Trauma Crucible - Dawn Bret
Voices of Experience - Priscilla de Villiers, Kent Laidlaw and Edward Leonard
CISM in the Correctional Service of Canada - Pamela Scott and Dorothy Reid
Question and Answer Session: Preventing and Healing Compassion Fatigue - Dr Angie Panos
Keynote address by Lt. Col. Stephane Grenier MSC, CD -Operational Stress Injury (OSI) - Special Advisor, Ottawa Canada
and many more.

For more information click here.

Summer is here and I am done with workshops for the season. Phew! Although I thoroughly enjoyed meeting wonderful folks all across the country, I am in need of a little R&R after a rather punishing pace since the Fall. I will only be blogging intermittently during the next couple of months as I am taking part of July and the entire month of August off. Being self-employed is not always all it's cracked up to be (no job security, no pension, no sick pay), but one real bonus is having control over your schedule.

Here are some upcoming events that may interest you:

The next Compassion Fatigue Train the Trainer sessions will be held in Ottawa November 4-5th and in Kingston November 16-17th. The pre-requisite course, Walking the Walk, will be offered on October 15th in Ottawa and November 15th in Kingston. For more information on the Ottawa course, please visit Safeguards. For more information on the Kingston event, please visit www.compassionfatigue.ca

Back by popular demand - a workshop just for Managers with Dr Pat Fisher: June 13-14th, 2011 in Kingston. This manager's workshop received rave reviews last May. Please visit my website for more information.

Save the date! The first annual Compassion Fatigue Conference will be held on June 15-16th 2011 in Kingston with Dr Gabor Maté and Laura van Dernoot Lipsky as keynote speakers. Please visit the conference website for more information.

Toronto's Leading Edge Seminars has just published their Fall schedule, and wow, what a great lineup! In particular, I draw your attention to John Briere's workshop on "Deconstructing Trauma: Memory Exposure, Mindfulness and Existential Awareness in Psychotherapy". As many of you know, John Briere has had a great influence on my clinical work and I heartily recommend you go hear him if you have not already done so.

Last week I was at the drugstore with my 10 year old son. I was paying for my things when an elderly man approached the counter. He appeared to be in his late eighties and had deep red bags under his eyes. He looked, in a word, absolutely terrible. With a shaking hand, he took a photo out of his pocket and showed it to us and to the women behind the cash. "This is my wife" he said "She died two days ago, we were married for 58 years. She was the love of my life. Now I can't sleep and the doctor wants me to take these pills" We all fell silent for a minute and then I had a little chat with him. He told me his children all lived out of town, and that he was completely alone. When I left the store with my son in tow, I felt regret that I did not do more. My head was already buzzing with all the community resources I know about, how to link him with the right ones, how we should have taken him out for tea, etc. I was dying to case manage this man into getting support right on the spot but I also had to go home and cook dinner and take care of my family.

This is the constant challenge we face as helpers. Pain and suffering is all around us, it's not just at work. Where do you draw the line? Do you take every elderly widower out for tea? Do you tell every person with a funny-looking mole to go get checked out? Do you rescue every kitty you see? So what we do is we try our best to figure out boundaries. Sometimes we over-correct and we become like Fort Knox, not letting a single person inside our walls. Sometimes we go too far in the other direction and become ambulance-chasers, rescuing every stray dog and baking for every little old lady on our street.

In my workshops, I am always advocating that we need to gain a better understanding of our own warning signs along the continuum of compassion fatigue. Using traffic lights as an analogy, the green zone is where you are when you are at your very best (I sometimes joke that you are only in the green zone when you've been in the field for two weeks or when you have just returned from a 5 month yoga retreat in Tahiti). The yellow zone is where most of us live most of the time. We have warning signs emerging but we often ignore them. The red zone is the danger zone. The extreme end of the red zone finds us on stress leave, clinically depressed or totally withdrawn from others and wracked with anxiety.

We will all visit the less extreme end of the red zone several times in our career - it is a normal consequence of doing a good job.

What suffers first is our emotional and physical health, our family and friends, our colleagues and eventually our clients do pay the price as we become less compassionate, irritable and may make clinical errors.

But back to my story. The reason I am telling you this little anecdote is that I would not have always had this warm compassionate reaction to this man. In fact, my reaction is actually a sign for me that I am well out of the red zone of compassion fatigue (for the time being!). You see, there have been times where I have felt so depleted by all my work demands and difficult stories that I would have hardened myself to this old man's story and not talked to him at all. Not nice, eh? Have you ever noticed that in yourself or am I the only hard crusty person out there? Conversely, for some of you, being in the red zone would mean you would have jumped into rescuing this man and neglected your family's needs for the evening.

Research shows that compassion fatigue hits hardest among those of us who are the most caring. As helpers, we have a homing device for need and pain in others and we have this from childhood onwards (for many reasons: family of origin issues, birth order, heredity, etc.) So often for helping professionals the main challenge in their personal life is setting limits and not being a helper/rescuer to everyone around. But eventually, compassion fatigue makes us detach from others: often our colleagues, family and friends suffer far before our clients and patients. Although I am not proud of it, I know that I always seem to save the best for work and give the remaining crumbs to my loved ones. In my clinical work, I feel present, warm and loving towards my clients, even the most challenging soldier who has never wanted to come to counselling and hates being there. But when I am in the red zone I avoid my neighbours, ducking into my house as quickly as possible to avoid a chat, feeling slightly guilty and irritated at the same time. I avoid the phone: "why is my lovely dad calling me to say hi? grrr"

Each of us will have different warning signs. The key to developing an early intervention plan is getting better acquainted with your own. (If you want more resources on this, consider reading my Compassion Fatigue Workbook).

The fact that I feel ready to give again is a great sign of "green zonedom." Now the trick is keeping it in check and not overcorrecting and becoming depleted again. Keeping the balance, my friends, is a lifetime's work. I'm ok with that.

It's been a very busy month. Veeeery busy. I had to travel weekly for work and nearly every weekend for family reasons. Now, 90% of the time, I am speedy gonzales, always on the go, thinking about projects, recipes I would like to make, future ideas of all sorts. Then, once in a while when I've been going full spin for weeks, I need a little time off to do absolutely nothing. As you likely know, doing nothing is really hard!

Anyhow, that's what I'm doing now, lying on the couch, about to watch the World Cup (England vs USA), reading the paper and eating healthy foods to make up for the weeks on the road (way too much salt in everything and never enough greens).

There is a lot I want to write about: meeting amazing foster parents in Manitoba, being given a green smoothie along the way, last week's Train the Trainer (wow. What a great great group of people), the upcoming Compassion Fatigue Conference in June 2011. But that will all have to wait until this energizer bunny reloads.

I have three more trips before the summer break (Nebraska being the further afield, Oshawa and Guelph) and then....

What do you think when you hear the word "syndrome"?

My first reaction when I hear that word is to think disease or disorder, that something really wrong and it is systemic within a person. Many genetic or chromosomal disorders are referred to as syndromes, often named after the scientist who first discovered the root cause of the anomaly (think of Down Syndrome, for example).

I am noticing that it is being used more and more in the websphere in conjunction with compassion fatigue (as in Compassion Fatigue Syndrome) and for some reason this really goes up my nose.

Compassion Fatigue (CF) is an occupational hazard -it is a normal consequence of doing our work well, it is not a disease or a disorder.

I feel that we helping professionals and caregivers already experience too much guilt and shame around CF without further pathologising it. Words are important, they have an impact on how we perceive ourselves. So can we stop using syndrome in association with compassion fatigue, please?

Your thoughts?

Three day coaching workshop in Ottawa: June 21st, 22nd and 23rd, 2010
with Hélène Beauchemin, Professionally certified Integral coach

A great training opportunity for:

● Anyone intrigued by the possibility of having a positive impact on others through coaching;
● Managers, Human Resource professionals and Organizational Development practitioners who are regularly called upon to solve problems that could be more effectively handled by developing others’ competence;
● Independent professionals, consultants and coaches interested in bringing greater skill to their one-on –one conversations with clients;
● Therapists and social workers interested in building coaching competence;
● People considering applying for either the New Ventures West or the Canadian based Convivium© (www.convivium.com) Professional Coaching Course.

Here is information about this training from the presenter and organiser, Hélène Beauchemin (aka my mom!)

Coaching To Excellence

This coming June 21st, 22nd and 23rd, I will be offering a three-day coaching workshop here in Ottawa. Whereas Coaching To Excellence was previously a two day affair, the new three day format is much more complete and leaves participants with more capacities and confidence in applying coaching approaches in their every day relationships.

In this workshop participants are introduced to the principles and methods of James Flaherty’s New Ventures West successful approach to coaching and to human development (see www.newventureswest.com). The program allows for coaching experience that is applicable to the participants’ work place or current coaching practice, and their broader lives. Through structured exercises, demonstrations and simulations, we will explore together what it takes to evoke long-term excellence in others.

What Outcomes Will the Course Produce?

Developing excellence as a coach takes time, study and practice. Nonetheless, this three-day workshop will allow you to:

● Understand the key stages in any coaching relationship and the skills needed to guide clients through them;
● Recognize when someone is open to coaching and how to enroll them in a coaching relationship;
● Observe and listen to others in a profound way by paying attention, to their unique language, emotional mood, and way of interpreting the world;
● Assess your own competence as a coach and identify the next steps in your development;
● Open new possibilities for effective action in your work and in your life.

What Happens in the Course?
The course provides both conceptual frameworks and hands-on opportunities to put these frameworks into practice. After becoming familiar with New Ventures’ West unique methodology of Coaching, you will work individually with other participants in “trying on” the roles of coach and client. Then, through structured exercises, case studies and simulations, you will discover what is needed to intervene effectively in typical situations faced by coaches, managers and professionals each day. Finally, you will have the opportunity to work on a real- life “problem” situation from your life. You will learn to coach others in a way that results not only in resolving these problem, but also in them developing the competence to resolve it themselves in the future without your involvement.

Additional Benefit and Cost
This class satisfies the prerequisite for the Professional Coaching Course offered either in English or in French by New Ventures West and/or their associates, Convivium©. (www.convivium.com). The cost is $1200.00 plus taxes. Participants also receive a copy of the latest edition the James Flaherty’s book “Coaching To Excellence”.

Indication of Interest
Would you like to join us? Do you have a friend or colleague who would benefit from this offering? If so, I would appreciate you forwarding my message to them, or alternatively, sending us their email address so we can write to them directly.

An indication of interest by June 1, 2010 would be appreciated. Please write either to myself, Hélène Beauchemin at helenekathleen@rogers.com, or contact my assistant Barbara Best at barbara@hkbp.ca. A registration form including location information will then be sent to you.

Thank you for your interest, I look forward to getting your reactions, comments or questions about this workshop that I am anxious to share with colleagues in Ottawa.

What participants had to say after attending a Coaching To Excellence workshop:
“Very informative, enough material for everyone – experienced or rookies!”
“You made James’ book come alive.”
“A fantastic introduction to coaching and a solid methodology.”

Hélène Beauchemin, President HKBP Inc.

This interview stopped me dead in my tracks. Take a listen: Pt 3: The Global Forest -
"The potentially powerful and altogether untapped healing properties of trees. We all know trees give us oxygen, food and fuel. But according to Diana Beresford-Kroeger, some of them -- the Hawthorn for example -- have powerful healing properties."