Compassion for Caregivers

This month I wanted to focus on clinician wellness. Being in a helping profession we often encourage our clients to prioritize work-life balance, self-care, multiple sources of support, and kindness towards themselves when life becomes demanding or overwhelming. I am asking you to also look inwards at patterns you engage in that may hinder your well-being or add to stress and potentially burnout. Compassion fatigue is when someone focuses on other’s suffering and experience secondhand exhaustion, decreased motivation, irritability, sadness, or detachment. To reduce these symptoms or help to prevent them from occurring try to establish regular healthy habits (sleep, eating, connecting socially) as well as practicing grounding techniques such as mindfulness meditation, yoga, or walking outside. Additionally, setting healthy and clear boundaries socially at work and outside of work, creating a personality outside of being a caregiver and reminding yourself you are not your family or friend’s therapist or practitioner! Create space to decompress after challenging sessions, trying not to book back-to-back clients and carving out time for uninterrupted meals or time alone after work to shift from your work self to your personal self. Finally, reminding yourself that you are not in charge of fixing, your role is to guide clients towards insight and empower them to explore possibilities for change or resistance to it, not to fix client’s problems. You are not the only source of support for your clients and cannot expect yourself to give all of yourself. By practicing balance and being able to care for yourself you inherently become more able to support others. And sometimes the nudges we give to our clients are the very things we need to nudge ourselves to practice as well.