compassion fatigue support

The Oakville Humane Society, hosted Pat’s workshop, March 29th, 2009. It was an informative, motivational, and healing experience. We, as animal care workers, help those who cannot speak for themselves and sometimes we forget to care for ourselves. Take this opportunity to join other animal care workers and learn how we can start to heal ourselves so we can continue our work and better help animals.” We have shared our testimonials.

A note from: Rachel Furness, Senior Adoption Counsellor, Oakville & District Humane Society, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

1. Are you pulled by a deep “sense of purpose” but still feel misunderstood, underpaid and/or undervalued for the work you do?
2. Do you put animal care/protection ahead of your own self care?
3. Do you experience “blurry” boundaries between work and home?
4. Do you find it hard to extend empathy to people surrendering animals?
5. Do traumatic memories of work or personal situations in the past hold you back from giving your best, in the present?
6. Are you pulled by a sense of responsibility to support your colleagues at work? Do you support your colleagues through stressful times and then go home feeling extremely drained?
7. When facing a number of crisis & victories, day after day, do you experience a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows? Do you keep your “feelings in” to avoid a feeling of chronic emotional bleeding or the state of “nothing left to give”?
8. Does experiencing chronic suffering of animals, toxic circumstances, and the sometimes abusive acts of owners leave you detached, numb, powerless, sad, and/or angry?
9. Do you find that your organization has little or no preventative strategies and supports in place to help you regain balance, emotional clarity, and sustain your energy again?
10. Do you put a low priority in establishing a self care plan to fully manage your challenges working in the animal care community?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of the questions above, you are likely a candidate for developing “burnout” and/or “compassion fatigue”, now, or in the near future.

Three global stress factors may be experienced by the ACW’s. These factors are experienced differently for each person: in degree, in duration, playing out consecutively or individually. Your personality, background, support at work, and many more factors come into play. The interplay of all these factors dramatically influences the quality of the caregiver’s workplace and relationships.

GOOD NEWS!!!

With knowledge, support, and tools for self care, you can manage these variables, allowing you to experience a long, enjoyable career in your animal health care profession!

Compassion Satisfaction: (CS) is the “good stress” you experience. It is about the pleasure you derive from being able to do your work well. For example, you may feel like it is a pleasure to help others. You may feel positively about your colleagues or your ability to contribute to the work setting or even the greater good of society.

Why people enter the profession, Wagner (2000)

• A love of animals (this is the predominant response given at every compassion fatigue workshop)
• Care and compassion for animals and people
• A purpose in life: a calling, heightened spirituality
• A desire to do something worthwhile with one’s life
• A sense of enjoyment from working with animals
• A desire to play and/or be with animals
• A desire to help/be part of the solution
• A concern for the welfare of animals
• A desire to give animals a better way of life
• A desire to alleviate suffering
• A desire to find good homes for animals
• It is important work.

Compassion Fatigue: (CF) is the cost of caring for others (animals and people) in emotional pain. Sometimes it is secondary exposure to extremely stressful events. Sometimes your work puts you directly into the path of trauma. (Here, the caregiver’s stress in found in his/her relationships with animals and people). A caregiver who is suffering with CF can still care and be involved, albeit in a compromised way. CS may lead to burnout.

Exercising genuine empathy and caring, over time can be mastered but one needs to invest in self knowledge and self care. Ironically, those of us who are strongly empathetic may be most at risk. We feel with those who hurt (animals, colleagues, animal owners). We don’t just witness in the abstract. For us, it is personal. We actually experience the pain vicariously. Consequently, it impacts us psychologically.

We all have experienced some of the symptoms below – Over time, the caregiver experiences a high level of these symptoms resulting in frustration and a lack of awareness as to where the negative symptoms originated. When the compassion fatigue is experienced, certain behaviors are repeated, over and over, with no favourable results – the caregiver feels trapped, angry, and guilty. Work productivity is reduced.

Examples of behaviours experienced with CF, (Figley 2005)

• Hyperarousal & disturbed sleep
• Irritability or outbursts of anger
• Hypervigilance: hard to relax
• Impulse to rescue any animal in need
• Emotional Exhaustion & Diminished empathy
• Avoidance: “not wanting to go there again” and the “desire to avoid thoughts, feelings, conversations associated with care and protection of the animals or past experiences
• Re-experiencing intrusive thoughts or dreams and emotional/physical distress in response to care and protection of the animals or past experiences.
• Sadness, apathy
• Low personal accomplishment
• Diminished self care
• Isolation

CF Self Test Inventory Results Administered to 1,000 shelter and animal-control workers: Source: HSUS 2003-2004, Figley, Charles R. & Roop, Robert G. (2006) page 48/49, adapted by B. Hudnall Stamm, 1997-2008. Profession Quality of Life: Compassion Satisfaction and Fatigue Scales, $-IV (ProQol)

Brownout/Burnout: (BO) is the result of the extreme stresses that arise as the caregiver interacts with the work environment. This happens over time. Highly motivated caretaking professionals, who are intensely involved in their profession, are at greater risk for burnout.(Maslach, L., Vachon, M. (2005)

Symptoms and Signs of Burnout:

• Overwhelming physical and emotional exhaustion
• Feeling of cynicism and detachment from the job
• A sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment
• Over-identification or over-involvement
• Irritability and hypervigilance
• Sleep problems, including nightmares
• Social withdrawal
• Professional and personal boundary violations
• Poor judgment
• Perfectionism and rigidity
• Questioning the meaning of life
• Questioning prior religious beliefs
• Interpersonal conflicts
• Avoidance of emotionally difficult clinical situations
• Addictive behaviour
• Numbness and detachment
• Difficulty in concentrating
• Frequent illness – headaches, gastrointestinal disturbances, immune system impairment

*Figley, Charles R. & Roop, Robert G. (2006) Compassion Fatigue in the Animal-Care Community, The Humane Society of the U.S. Washington, DC.

• Workers in shelters and animal control are at higher risk for Compassion Fatigue than any other caregivers, including vets.
• 68.1 percent are at high or extremely high risk for Compassion Fatigue
• 68 percent have good or better potential for Compassion Satisfaction
• 53.6 percent of the surveyed shelter works and animal-control professionals are at high or moderate risk of burnout.
• Caregivers believe in what they are doing. They are contributing to a good cause: a respect for life.