After five years of consultation across the country, the Mental Health Commission of Canada has released its first Mental Health Blueprint. Click here to read more.
Take the pledge of support for mental health by clicking here
Finally, listen to last Sunday’s Cross Country Checkup on CBC for a very interesting discussion on the MH Commission’s mandate and findings.
I wanted to share with you a wonderful new resource – a series of cognitive training workshops offered by my friend Nancy Salay. Nancy is a lecturer at Queen’s University where she teaches and does research in the Philosophy department and the School of Computing. Her area of specialization is cognitive science.
Nancy has 15+ years of experience teaching cognitive skills, both at universities and in the private sector. She has long struggled with the problem of how to bridge the gap between theory and practice; Her new initiative, Do It Better is the result. Nancy is now offering hands-on workshops for teachers, health care workers and professionals in the corporate world.
Check our her three one day workshops:
Teachers: The Focused Classroom
For the third and final post of the April Money Matters series, I have enlisted the help of my friend and colleague Robin Cameron of Life Inspired. Robin and I co-created the Walking the Walk workshop a decade ago and she now works as a Solution Focused Coach. Many of her clients are helping professionals seeking support for compassion fatigue, burnout or career transitions. Robin is also great at helping clients start their own consulting or private practice business – in fact, she has always been my business muse: Robin is the first person I turn to for advice and guidance on anything related to marketing, strategy, setting a fee schedule (oh and picking a great pair of jeans and choosing the best reds to have with dinner – she is a woman of many talents!). So I asked her to join us today as we discuss the challenges and rewards of becoming self-employed and the best ways of talking money with clients. I also asked Robin to describe the coaching experience from her side of the table.
Hey Newfoundlanders! I will be offering the one day “Walking the Walk” compassion fatigue workshop in St John’s on May 7, 2012. Come and join us:
When: May 7, 2012 from 9am to 4pm
Where: Comfort Inn (Salons A&B), 106 Airport Road, St. John’s
Cost: $150, plus HST ($169.50), includes lunch
For more information or to register, call the Transition House Association of NL (THANL) at 739-6759 or email: info@thanl.org. Registration is required as space is limited. Payment must be made prior to or on the day of training by cheque only, please. Special room rates are available at the Comfort Inn if you mention you are attending this event.
Please note that my book “the compassion fatigue workbook” will be available for purchase on the workshop day.
Here is the audio recording of the Virtual Book Launch held on April 16 2012 of The Compassion Fatigue Workbook. The full webinar, with slides and audio is available by clicking here.
Thank you to those who attended the live webcast! I was very touched by your emails and your feedback.
Please remember that the book draw, referred to in the audio file was only for the live event and is now closed. If you wish to purchase a copy of The Compassion Fatigue Workbook, you can go to our Store and follow the links.
Thanks! I hope to offer more webinars in the future.
Update: The winner of the book draw is Rhonda Leblanc from Nova Scotia. Thank you to everyone who participated.
Live Broadcast:
Monday, April 16th, 2012 12:00noon-1:00pm EST
with author Françoise Mathieu, M.Ed., CCC.
Compassion Fatigue Specialist
Photo from Kingston book launch, February 2012
Since its publication in January 2012, we have held book launches for the Compassion Fatigue Workbook in Kingston, Toronto and will soon be coming to Ottawa. We are now thrilled to offer a virtual book launch that everyone can attend, no matter where you live!
Busy on that day? Listen to the webinar anytime after April 16th by clicking here. (Please note the contest to win a copy of the book is only valid during the live broadcast).
Where/When/How?
Where: From the comfort of your office or home
When: Monday April 16th, 2012 from 12noon to 1pm EST
How: There are three easy ways to listen to the book launch:
1) At your computer: (this is the best way to participate so you can see the slides while hearing the presenter)
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=27125310
2) Using a telephone only:
Phone Number: (203) 347-3041
Pin Code: 562147#
3) You can also listen in via skype:
Follow this link for more information:
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=27125310
Win a copy of the Compassion Fatigue Workbook!
***To win a free copy of the workbook, you need to send me an email (whp@cogeco.ca) within 2 hours of the end of the webcast, telling me the code word which I will reveal during the webinar. I will draw a name that evening and contact the winner right away. Contest will close at 3pm EST on April 16th, 2012. Only participants in the live call on April 16th are eligible.***
Hope you can join us!
The next Compassion Fatigue Train the Trainer retreat will be taking place November 13-14, 2012 in Kingston. Space is limited to 20 participants. Please note that you must have completed the one day Walking the Walk workshop prior to attending. Walking the Walk will be offered on November 12th, 2012 immediately preceding the Train the Trainer. To register for the Train the Trainer workshop, please click here.
Here is the amazing lineup for the June 12-13, 2012 Compassion Fatigue Conference which will be held in Kingston, Ontario. I am thrilled to be able to bring together such a talented and diverse group of presenters. Take a look below – your biggest challenge will be deciding which workshops to attend! Please don’t delay in signing up, though – last year, this was a sold out event. Click here for registration information.
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.
“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
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