Compassion Fatigue: Caring for Ourselves while Caring for Others (Online)

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.