In my last post, I described both compassion fatigue and burnout. In these next 2 posts, I will make suggestions as to how to prevent them.
How to build resilience:
- Increasing social support
- Detached compassion: have compassion, but within boundaries.
- Emotional hardiness: having emotional strength. Notice how other people do this can help.
- Developing your sense of humor, optimism and hope.
- Experience with overcoming stress: looking back in your life to see how you overcame difficult situations.
- Spirituality: generally very helpful, except those who have a rigid set of beliefs. Some flexibility is necessary…what happens when something doesn’t go as planned?
- Existential: willingness to find meaning in suffering.
We can also build resilience vicariously: having clients that have held up well under difficult circumstances can actually contribute to building our own resilience. It can inspire us and make us feel more empowered.
Addressing burnout
- Employers need to take action that supports employees. By initiating a dialogue, employers can find out what employees need to be supported.
- Benefits to agencies include increased health of employees and decreased absenteeism, less errors among staff.
- Employers need to foster teamwork.
- Clinical supervisors can include compassion fatigue as a topic for supervision. Supervisors should ask specifically how work is affecting counselors.
- Increasing peer support; both formal and informal. Perhaps establishing a mentoring program would be helpful.
- Improving office environment: making sure your office is calm, peaceful and appealing.
My next post will focus on specific tips for preventing compassion fatigue and burnout, namely, how to develop a good self-care plan.
Yours in the Joy of Knowledge,
Dr. Barbara LoFrisco
* Information in this post was obtained via personal communication with Martha Teater, via GoodTherapy.org teleconference, September 26, 2014
