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It’s February 14th. Heart day, V-Day. Whatchamacallit day.

Yesterday, I stealthily baked heart-shaped cookies for my children and their friends right before my daughter came home from school. I aired out the kitchen so it wouldn’t smell so good, cleaned all the mixer bowls and hid the evidence. It was a fun and relaxing thing to do – something they did not expect at all, and seeing their happy and surprised faces this morning was well worth it. As I baked yesterday (and because I’m self-employed, I was able to do that at 2pm, not 10pm…) I reflected on the fact that some years, I would not have had time, the energy or the interest to bake for many different reasons: too busy at work, too tired from looking after little kids, interested in some other project…What was fun about making the cookies is that it wasn’t a should, it was a “Just because I feel like it” kind of thing. I may not do it again next year, it’s not a tradition or something I expect of myself (Martha Stewart – you do not have me!).

Is there room in your schedule for “Just because I feel like it” events once in a while, or is life so jammed-packed that there is no space left for spontaneity?

Now that we’re hitting the middle of February, it’s a good time to check-in with yourself and see how you are doing post-holiday. Whether we adopt formal New Year’s resolutions or not, most of us make or renew commitments with ourselves when we start back at work in January. Now that the holiday ornaments are back in the basement storage, and that our attention is turned towards Spring rather than Winter, where are you at with those New Year’s commitments to yourself?

The goal of taking stock is not to beat yourself up about what you haven’t done, but rather to take a compassionate and loving look at the past 6 weeks and see why/how things got off track, if they did. Maybe your goals were too lofty, and not realistically achievable? The gym is full of future marathon runners in January, but in March the gym returns to its usual suspects…

So, once you’ve eaten all the Valentine’s Day chocolate you can handle, I invite you to sit down for ten minutes, and start by taking a few deep calming breaths. Then,  jot down a few thoughts about your current goals: Where are you at with reaching them? 1% of the way? That’s worth celebrating too, not just the massive leaps. If things have been really hard for the past six weeks, why not write down a compassionate, loving statement about why you have not been able to stick to the plan. Finally, why not scale down the goal into much more manageable increments: a walk around the block, saving $5 a week by not buying a latte, having a kind thought about someone instead of gossiping, eating one more vegetable per day. Research shows that true lifestyle change (the ones that stick) is really about the little daily decisions, not the crazy cabbage soup cleanse you attempt and fail at, or the austerity budget you blow after a week because you feel so restricted.

I recently read the following statement on a healthy eating blog: “You are only one meal away from healthy eating.” The same can be true about any lifestyle change: you are only one walk away from being someone who exercises, one cup of tea away from being someone who doesn’t have a stiff drink after work as a matter of course. One meeting away from not being the office grouch.

Feel free to share your new commitments with us on the comments below!

Please be kind to yourself.

Caversham invites you to join in celebrating the release of Françoise Mathieu’s newly published work THE COMPASSION FATIGUE WORKBOOK: Creative Tools for Transforming Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Traumatization. Routledge Psychosocial Stress Series. Click here to download invitation.

at Caversham Booksellers, 98 Harbord St

Reception 7:00 to 9:00 pm,

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

RSVP to Caversham Booksellers:

(416) 944-0962

1-800-361-6120 or

events@cavershambooksellers.com

website: www.cavershambooksellers.com

“Françoise Mathieu’s writing is wonderful: she speaks from the heart, practitioner to practitioner, about the stressors and strains of human service work, particularly those that come from prolonged regular work with traumatized patients and clients. This is a book you help write by yourself and about yourself. That’s why it is the workbook for trauma work.” -

Charles R. Figley, Tulane University, Louisiana, USA, and author of Treating Compassion Fatigue

National Victims of Crime Awareness Week 2012

Included in the two days are 2 Keynote Speakers:

Over ten years ago, Robin Cameron and I met over coffee and talked about the pressing need for more resources on compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma. That conversation lasted for hours and at the end of that day, we had decided to do as much research as we could and design a compassion fatigue workshop that would speak to the needs of helpers around us. Walking the Walk, our one day compassion fatigue workshop, was the product of this meeting of the minds.

For the past decade, we have wanted to offer a coaching group for helpers but the time was never right (babies, a round the world trip, work, life got in the way). Well, now we are ready!

Robin and I are thrilled to be able to offer this unique experience: an eight week coaching group for 8 helping professionals in Kingston! This group starts on April 17th and will offer 5 in person sessions as well as email support and tons of additional resources for eight weeks.

Click here to read more

Click here to download information sheet about E-course

Click here to download institutional order form

Those of you who have been to my live workshops have heard this story before:

One day, a few years ago, my son who was about ten years old at the time, came to me looking rather concerned. He said: “Mom, have you ever noticed that we are never in the present moment?” And I said: “What do you mean, sweetheart?” (well, in French but I am translating this conversation for you ) and he replied: “Well, I am either grinding the past, thinking of things that made me angry, or that were unfair, or things I missed doing or I am looking forward to or worrying about the future. I am never in the present. Mom, my life is passing me by!”

My son’s comments made me reflect on many things: the hectic pace of our lives, the rare times when we sit and simply enjoy the present moment and the fact that he’s a wonderfully wise old soul.

Let me ask you: How often are you in the present moment?

Many of you are familiar with mindfulness meditation and mindfulness stress reduction (MBSR). Developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn over thirty years ago, MBSR is a holistic mind-body approach that emphasises the importance of practicing daily sitting meditation where we simply sit, focus on our breathing and stay in the present moment. I wrote a full-length article about MBSR and its effectiveness in helping us manage compassion fatigue in 2009. Click here to read it. If you are not familiar with mindfulness, I encourage you to take a few minutes to view Kabat-Zinn’s Youtube videos on the topic. To find them, simply enter “Stress Reduction Kabat-Zinn” in the Youtube search engine. You will see videos entitled “Stress reduction one of 6″ and so on.

Sitting and doing nothing other than focusing on our breathing is incredibly difficult at first: many people talk about being distracted by thousands of fleeting thoughts, ambient noises and sometimes boredom. This is completely normal. Jon Kabat-Zinn encourages us to simply refocus on our breath, and gently redirect our minds to the task at hand, without beating ourselves up about the distractions. The goal of mindfulness is not to reach a state where our mind is empty, the goal is simply to be here, right now, in the present moment, and, as Kabat-Zinn says, if you need to bring your mind back a thousand times, then bring it back a thousand times.

In his video, Kabat-Zinn explains the tremendous health benefits of learning to connect with the present moment:

“When I am teaching meditation, we use a tennis ball and just remind people that they can drop into the breath virtually at any time. So it’s not just like when you are doing some kind of formal meditation practice – that’s the least interesting part of meditation: The real interesting part of meditation is that your whole life becomes a meditation – that you’re here for all of it, and you are able to be with it with a little less reaction, a little less judgemental and, in that way, these hidden dimensions and opportunities and options appear to us and we can navigate with much greater wisdom and with much greater self-compassion in our own lives and deal with the full catastrophe of the stress, the pain and the illness that is inevitably going to come up because we’re human and we have bodies and we’re mortal and we are subject to huge forces that we have no control over.”

The incredible power of mindfulness is that once you practice it regularly, it becomes a tool that you carry with you  into all aspects of your life: you can reduce the stressful experience of being stuck in a traffic jam, in a heated meeting or working with an angry client by dropping into the breath.

Jon Kabat-Zinn acknowledges that learning to practice mindfulness is indeed difficult: “You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.” How about starting small and trying to sit without doing anything for the next few minutes? Simply take normal breaths, focusing on your in-breath and your out-breath and perhaps closing your eyes if that is easier. You can also visit this website for an easy introduction to being in the present moment: www.donothingfor2minutes.com

Here’s a link to Kabat-Zinn’s first stress reduction video: Stress Reduction 1 of 6

Update: (January 25, 2012)  How timely – I just came across two short instructional videos on various uses of mindfulness that may be of interest to you. They feature Dr Ron Siegel, author of “The Mindfulness Solution.” In one of them, Dr Siegel interviews a physician’s assistant who works in the Arctic. She describes how useful mindfulness has been for her both in her patient work and in keeping herself grounded and reducing her stress while doing challenging work. Another short video discusses times when mindfulness may be contraindicated and a final one discusses anxiety and mindfulness. These videos were produced by NICABM (The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioural Medicine). I subscribe to their newsletter and often find telecalls and webinars that I enjoy on their site. In order to view these, you need to sign up by sharing your email with NICABM but they guarantee that they will not share your email or spam you. Let me know what you think of the videos! Here is the link to register to view them. Just so you know, I have no affiliation with NICABM, nor do I profit financially from sharing these resources with you. Just thought you’d be interested, as I was.

Here is an interesting new blog post by Dr Robert Muller of York University which explore the ways in which professional interpreters (aka translators) can be deeply impacted by their work, particularly with trauma survivors and refugees. I remember being told the same thing by a sign language interpreter last year. She said (and I quote loosely) “you know when the signer is angry? Well I have to express that anger to the listener, I am the channel through which the anger, or whatever other emotion is being expressed, passes through. It can be very draining work from that perspective.”

Walking the Walk: Creative tools for transforming compassion fatigue with Françoise Mathieu, February 23, 2012 9:00-4:00. The Westin, downtown Halifax.

If you are a Halifax resident, please consider coming to this one day compassion fatigue workshop. This event is being sponsored by Connections Halifax.Early bird rate $120.00 (before Feb 14) and regular rate $150.00 To download a registration form, please click here. 

I didn’t give much thought to the fedex notice on my door on Monday. I was busy with the realities of returning to work after two blissful weeks in winter wonderland. Read more ›