Compassion Fatigue: Caring for Ourselves while Caring for Others / Fostering Resilience in a Stressed Culture

Compassion Fatigue: Caring for Ourselves while Caring for Others:

Based on the book When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress (U.S. subtitle: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection)

Though compassion fatigue is an oft-used phrase, how accurate is it? Does one truly become fatigued by feeling, expressing, or manifesting compassion? This workshop will explore the deeper source of the well-known phenomenon of burnout, when people engaged in caring for others experience a depletion of their energies, a psychic and physical lassitude. That deeper source, it will be demonstrated, is to be found the personal history of the individual and his or her relationship to the work, not merely in the nature of the work itself. Practices will be taught to prevent what is known as compassion fatigue, and to restore our energies if we have been affected by it.

Fostering Resilience in a Stressed Culture:

Many more children than in the past are diagnosed these days with various learning and behaviour difficulties and many have problems learning from negative experiences. Schools are also having to deal with an increasing incidence of bullying which “zero tolerance” policies do not seem to be diminishing. Dr. Mat’és sessions, based on his best-selling books, will include generous time for interactive dialogue with participants and will focus on the causes and underlying dynamics of the challenges faced by today’s children—and therefore, by the adults tasked with nurturing and educating them. It will be shown that the most important feature of any approach to resilience needs to be the attachment relationship between children and the adults responsible for their care. Sometimes we seek to avoid conflict by keeping each other at an emotional arm’s length, creating yet another impediment to genuine connection.