Vicarious Trauma & Compassion Fatigue

As helping professionals, we may not be fully prepared for the psychological, physical, spiritual, and emotional impact of our work with people impacted by trauma. Historically, attention to vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue has been relegated to a study module, a one-time discussion, an assigned reading, or agency supervision, rather than being an integrated component of our daily lives as helpers. This brief workshop will provide an opportunity to explore the benefits of developing a common language around vicarious traumatization, and explicitly integrating on-going discussions around compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization, and self-care into the fabric of trauma-informed practice.

Goals

• Identify how trauma work impacts physical, personal, relational, and spiritual life perspectives.
• Differentiate burnout from compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization, secondary traumatic stress, posttraumatic growth, and vicarious resilience.
• State five vulnerabilities for developing compassion fatigue.
• State five resiliencies for reducing compassion fatigue.
• Heighten awareness of the impact of helping (depleters) from personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal perspectives.
• Identify personal self-care strategies (replenishers) and heighten awareness of the extent to which current self-care strategies address the ways participants are depleted.
• Enhance and/or develop new self-care strategies that are practical, efficient, and intentional.