just found this online today...
FIVE PATHWAYS FOR HEALING OR PREVENTING COMPASSION FATIGUE:
1. Consider how you replenish your mind, body, heart and spirit
How do you nourish your mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health on a daily basis? As helpers, we are the tools of our trade – our energy, vitality, attitude, optimism and more all contribute to our success and capacity within our work. We have to be healthy to do our best work, and to do this work in ways that are sustainable and enriching over time. We must practice what we preach and ensure that our own restorative self-care is a top priority in order to prevent compassion fatigue.
How do YOU fill your own emotional cup?
2. Access and nurture support
Emotional support, peer support and supervision are all helpful when it comes to mitigating the risk of compassion fatigue. In fact, social support is one of the key predictors of whether or not a professional will suffer or stay well (Fisher, P. & Abrahamson, K., 2002). We need one another to stay strong, resilient and healthy as helpers. We are not meant to do this alone or in isolation. How we care for one another matters too!
Who are your sources of meaningful emotional support?
3. Stay connected to meaning
Research shows that the more we stay connected to the hope, joys, rewards and sense of purpose and meaning within our work as helping professionals, healers and change agents, the more we mitigate the risk for burnout and compassion fatigue.
What brings you joy as a helper?
What are your sources of “compassion satisfaction”?
4. Engage in reflective practice
Mindfulness, reflective practice and journaling (Monk, 2009) are all proven ways to mitigate the risk for compassion fatigue. The more self-aware, grounded, centered and present in the moment we are, the more attuned to our own needs we become. Listening within is at the heart of well-being and renewal for helpers.
How do you engage in reflective practice?
How do you increase your self-awareness?
5. Be kind to yourself
Treat yourself with the same care, compassion and concern that you treat others, including your clients and those you serve. We can be hard on ourselves as helpers. Yet self-compassion is the path to having true compassion for others.
In what ways are you kind and compassionate with yourself?
We do not have to reduce compassion or turn away from caring in order to prevent compassion fatigue. Rather, in the presence of deep self-compassion, in the form of self-care and personal renewal, all other caring can flow.
Compassion, defined as a deep caring for another and wanting to connect and help another, is a precious aspect of our human nature and a core value and ethical imperative within any helping profession. Ultimately, to stay well, when it comes to self-care and caring for others, we can ask ourselves: “What is the most compassionate thing to do here?”
I have grown to believe, and I recognize that it is a paradox of sorts, that compassion is in fact the balm that heals and prevents compassion fatigue. Compassion, in other words, is what heals us all.
http://blog.ctrinstitute.com/compassion-fatigue/
