Resources

By Françoise Mathieu, 2008

“Helpers who bear witness to many stories of abuse and violence notice that their own beliefs about the world are altered and possibly damaged by being repeatedly exposed to traumatic material.” (Pearlman et al, 1995)

After a difficult session….
Are you sliming your colleagues? Are you being slimed? Can you still be properly debriefed if you don’t give all the graphic details of the trauma story you have just heard from a client? Would you like to have a strategy to gently prevent your colleagues from telling you too much information about their trauma exposure?
When helpers hear and see difficult things in the course of their work, the most normal reaction in the world is to want to debrief with someone, to alleviate a little bit of the burden that they are carrying. It is healthy to turn to others for support and validation. The problem is that we are often not doing it properly. The problem is also that colleagues don’t always ask us for permission before debriefing their stories with us.

To read more: click here for pdf.

That’s what Quill and Quire had to say about Tilda Shalof’s two books: “A Nurse’s Story” and “The Making of a Nurse”

I devoured these two books in 48 hours. Could not put them down.

Tilda Shalof is an intensive care nurse who works in Toronto and has been in the field for over 20 years. She is also a gifted writer and storyteller. I found her books riveting for two reasons. The first is that I have always loved hospitals (go figure, I know that is rather unusual) and found her account of working in the ICU absolutely fascinating. She describes the dynamics between nurses, dealing with doctors and residents, patients and their families, particularly when things go wrong.

The second thing I found fascinating about these books was her description of the challenges of the work on nurses’ emotional and physical well being. In “The making of a nurse” she describes the phenomenon of somatic empathy perfectly: “[patients] needed to feel that I was steady and in control, but I couldn’t always offer them that security. I caught their emotions as if they were contagious. Sometimes, merely being in the presence of a patient, family member, or even another nurse, who was flustered, anxious, or angry would affect me, and I would respond in tandem.“ [...]

“I’m panicking,” she said in a tremulous voice. I looked around the room for a chair and luckily, just then, the technician caught her as she keeled over. Full-blown panic had finally done her in […] I exhaled, I hadn’t realized how shallow my breathing had become, how tight my chest was, how jittery I felt. I had caught a bad case of her panic” Tilda Shalof, (2007, p.130)

This is a concept that I discuss at length during my half day and full compassion fatigue workshops. Babette Rothschild explores several concrete strategies to deal with this somatic empathy in her book Help for the Helper (2006).

One caveat: A colleague of mine who has a great deal of experience in acute care nursing did warn that Tilda’s books may be retraumatizing for anyone who has worked in critical care or has experienced ICU first or second hand as her descriptions are quite detailed and very accurate. (thank you for that, Jan)

I’m off to Montreal this week, to present at the Jewish Rehabilitation Hospital, then Timmins next week for a one day presentation in the community. This has been a full and busy Fall with a lot of writing and workshop design and more to come. It’s a wonderful profession. Truly.

Yup, that’s my foot. I am going on holidays for 2.5 weeks starting July 23 so the office will be closed during this time. I look forward to the holiday, of course, but am also really excited about the upcoming interviews with helpers and the other projects that are currently brewing. Meanwhile, I would like to recommend a wonderful radio show that is also on podcast, (if you haven’t heard it yet) and a lovely movie totally unrelated to this work.

Radio show/podcast: White Coat, Black Art, on CBC radio

Movie: Once, an Irish musical. Lovely, funny, touching and trauma-free.

See you in August.

Françoise

Are you a helping professional with a story to tell? Have you struggled with, conquered, rollercoasted and danced with compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma during the course of your career? Do you have some insights and stories you would be willing to share? Maybe you have some strategies that have made a significant difference for you and have allowed you to remain healthy and well in this career?

I am writing a book on helpers and CF and am looking to interview nurses, social workers, teachers, doctors, lawyers and helpers of all kinds who would be willing to contribute to this project.

How it will work: you have the choice of remaining anonymous or being identified, as you wish. If you start the process saying you are comfortable with your name being used, you will still get to preview the material before it goes to press and can decide to amend/edit/remove any identifiers you are not comfortable with. You are in the driver’s seat.

You will have the option to be interviewed by phone (or in person if you live close enough to me) and I will record our conversation, or to fill in a questionnaire that I will send you via email, after which I may do a telephone interview to follow up on some key points. If you are completely comfortable with being public about this process, I may request for videotaping, but again you are in the driver’s seat and I will not use any material without your express written permission.

Curious? Potentially Interested? Have questions? Call me: 613-547-3247 or email: whp at cogeco.ca (you have to change the at to an @ – this is just a way to block spam robots).

“It’s amazing how long it takes to complete something you’re not working on.”
–R.D. Clyde (from Bill O’Hanlon’s newsletter June 16, 2008)

That quote is from an email that I recently received from Bill O’Hanlon, solution focused therapist/writer/workshop presenter extraordinaire. Bill has focused some of his vast energy in developing products and training for aspiring authors and workshop presenters (go to www.billohanlon.com and follow the various links) as well as offering excellent psychotherapy workshops.

The quote struck me as it made me think of all the projects, ideas, future dreams some clients share with me but never finish. I am sure you have experienced this too: sometimes, once you have heard about an idea more than 5 times (say, from a friend), and time has passed and nothing has progressed, you tend to lose a bit of enthusiasm at hearing about the idea. Yet, the holder of the idea seems no less deflated or discouraged: they savour thinking about all the various permutations of the project, delight in it, dream big, and then, some of them return to not moving on it.

I once worked with someone who never seemed to complete anything, although she was first in line to critique and complain about every organizational issue under the sun. I had a wonderfully wise work colleague who used to say of this mutual coworker: “but Françoise, what you don’t understand is that she feels as though complaining about the problem is indeed working on resolving the problem. It feels like progress to her and in facts takes quite a lot of energy out of her.”

Sometimes, I think that job burnout can be a bit like that: the bitch sessions behind closed doors after a staff meeting give us the illusion of progress towards resolving the problems at hand but in truth we are not truly making progress on fixing the root cause of the problem, are we?

Anyhow, all of those thoughts were sparked from that quote and were not what I meant to write about!

Asking and Receiving:

I have been working on marketing resources and ideas to offer my Train the Trainer participants in November. One of the writing projects that is nearly complete is a booklet on “Developing and Delivering a Workshop for Helpers: 10 Key Steps.” I will aim to finish this in the next few weeks and post it on my site (I will charge a small fee for it as it has taken a huge amount of time and energy to write). I guess this is meant to contradict the starting quote. This booklet has been collecting dust for about a year and now that it’s back in live mode, it is completing itself surprisingly quickly…

During my research I came across Bill O’Hanlon’s website: www.paidpublicspeaker.com
I saw that he was selling an ebook on becoming a paid public speaker. I was intrigued and wanted to know whether it would provide valuable material to my workshop attendees. But I don’t necessarily need the book myself, so I sent him an email asking for a preview copy…

4 hours and 40 minutes later, the ebook was there, in my inbox!

Thanks Bill. Isn’t that impressive and generous?

I will review the book for the blog in a few weeks. So far, it looks excellent but I prefer finishing my marketing booklet before reading it fully (I don’t want to cross-contaminate what I am writing, writers among you will relate I suspect).

This is a tip for all of you out there interested in developing a workshop and wanting to preview books for it. Ask. Explain what your purpose is. You may very well receive.

Women helpers (and men too, for that matter), if you haven’t read them yet, I would recommend that you add these to your summer reading list:

Nice girls don’t get the corner office and Nice girls don’t get rich, by Dr Lois Frankel and that you visit her website: www.drloisfrankel.com

Here is more information about her, from her website:

“Dr. Lois Frankel literally wrote the book on coaching people to succeed in businesses large and small around the globe. Nice Girls Don’t Get The Corner Office and Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich are international bestsellers translated into over twenty-five languages and featured on the TODAY Show, CNN and CNBC, in the New York Times, USA Today, and in PEOPLE and TIME Magazines. Business Week named Corner Office one of the top ten business books of the year when it was released. Based on early sales and press, See Jane Lead, a new book about why women make natural leaders for our time and how to harness your own leadership talent, is headed for similar popularity.

Combining her experience in human resources at a Fortune 10 oil company with a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Southern California, Dr. Frankel is a pioneer in the field of business coaching. Her book Stop Sabotaging Your Career (formerly titled Overcoming Your Strengths), based on her coaching experiences, is a must-read for both men and women. For the past two decades her unique formula has helped thousands of people to create winning strategies to achieve superior career success and business goals.”

Frankel’s books are clearly written, down to earth and inspiring.

Does that appeal or appall you?

My new favourite business maverick is Tim Ferriss, (review below of his NY times best selling book the Four Hour Work Week). In his latest blog post, he interviews the authors of a soon to be published book that studies the benefits of the ROWE (results only work environment):

Quote from Tim’s blog: “How did a Fortune 100 company increase productivity at headquarters 41% while decreasing voluntary turnover (corporate speak for quitting) as much as 90%? I’ve been fascinated by this unusual experiment since reading about it in 2005. The best part? It began with a 24-year old new hire named Cali Ressler, not a top-down decision from the CEO. Cali is now co-author of a new book with ROWE co-developer Jody Thompson, which details how it all happened — and how others can replicate (or at least emulate) its success”

[And here's a quote from Cali Ressler in the Ferriss interview]: “In a ROWE, each person is free to do whatever they want, whenever they want, as long as the work gets done. Currently, there are two authentic ROWEs—Fortune 100 retailer Best Buy Co, Inc. and J. A. Counter & Associates, a small brokerage firm in New Richmond, WI. At both organizations, the old rules that govern a traditional work environment—core hours, “face time,” pointless meetings, etc.—have been replaced by one rule: focus only on results.”

To read this fascinating two part article, visit www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Clearly, those of us who do direct client work can’t ascribe to this model (for client days at least) but it’s worth thinking about for other elements of the work that we do.

I am reminded of being in high school at exam writing time. It’s June, the room is swelteringly hot, the trees are swishing in the wind outside, I can see and smell the freshly cut grass, the flowers on the lawn, maybe even a nearby swimming pool splash and I am done writing the exam. Done as in I’ve revised every word, turned it back to front and upside down, and if I spend any more time on it, I will actually change my answers to the wrong ones just to beat boredom. Problem is, you see, only 40 minutes have passed and we are obliged to stay in the exam room for a set period of time (usually something excruciatingly long like 3 hours) and of course one is not allowed to bring in any extra material of any kind. I wish I had known about mindfulness meditation at the time, I would have because a true yogi by now! Anyhow, I almost always ended up spending two hours staring off into space and just being bored to tears, waiting for the time to end. Tick, tick, tick.

Have you ever had a clerical job like that, where, no matter whether or not you were done with your work, you had to sit at your desk until 5pm no matter what? I once actually fell asleep at my desk and only woke up because the phone rang and I was the receptionist. I had been asked to update all our client records (which my boss thought would keep me out of his hair for the summer) and it was actually a two day job. Then, was I ever bored for the rest of the summer. Of course this was before the internet, I would have likely been just fine with the web, maybe become a huge stock trader at age 16…I also used to read novels on my lap throughout high school and some very tedious university courses.

Ok, so I probably suffer from some sort of attentional deficit hyperactivity whatever you want to call it. But the reality is that people like me are made absolutely miserable by set schedules that have no rhyme or reason. Staying at work until 4:59:59 only makes sense when it makes sense.

See what you think of Ferriss’ post and write to me (if anyone reads these, it’s not exactly turned into a big public forum you guys, but that’s ok too). I don’t write comments on anyone else’s blogs either.

An extensive web search on the topic of WL balance has made me very proud of our Canadian resources. No need to massage US statistics for your next presentation, there is tons of Canadian data on the topic of overwork, work-related stress, WL balance and the lot.

The web search also shows that the UK and Australia were onto this topic way before us (way ahead – a whole decade ahead of us) which is interesting.

So, if you’d like to delve further in this topic, here are some good links that I have found:

Canadian Mental Health Association:
http://www.cmha.ca/bins/index.asp

Mental Health Works: Training and Resources on Mental Health Issues in the Workplace: http://www.mentalhealthworks.ca/

Centre for Families, Work and Well-Being – Guelph University
http://www.worklifecanada.ca/

Human Resources and Social Development Canada’s Work/Life Balance in Canadian Workplaces – A collection of resources about work/life balance from a variety of perspectives.

http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/lp/spila/wlb/01home.shtml

The Public Health Agency of Canada – PHAC has studied the issue of work/life balance and submitted it’s findings in the 2001 report.
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/

Free Workbook: Antidepressant Skills at Work:?Dealing with Mood Problems in the Workplace. By the Center for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction, B.C.
http://www.carmha.ca/antidepressant-skills/work/workbook/index.cfm

“Antidepressant Skills at Work is intended for: Working people with low mood, who may be at risk for developing depression. Working people who have developed a mild or major depression. Individuals who have been off work for a period of time, and are reentering the workplace. Partners, family members, friends or workplace colleagues who want to help an individual suffering from low mood or depression. Employers, supervisors or managers concerned about the well-being of their staff.”

Of course, if you are too busy to look all that up, you can read the following book instead:

Patrick Fanning: 50 best ways to simplify your life

and while you’re at it, go visit this blog I have just come across:

Zen Habits: A nice blog on simplifying your life. Tons of great ideas on improving your life/work balance and destressing. The author is a free lance writer who lives in Guam (yes, far far away) has 6 young children of his own! So either he has tons of credibility of his wife is an overworked saint who tolerates him.

http://zenhabits.net

I’m on vacation this week so this will be a brief entry to share a few thoughts about a book I picked up to read on hols.

It is called “The 4 hour work week” by Tim Ferriss and is on the NY Times #1 non fiction best seller’s list. I have to say I am a bit conflicted about the book but I read it from cover to cover and went to his blog several times so he’s clearly doing something right. The conflict is that I find this book at once fascinating and a bit unsettling. Ferriss will clearly do well in life as he’s a very high energy rule breaker who loves to debunk the way things work and explore how far you can push yourself (physically, intellectually and societally, how to push the limits of all sorts of rules) but I am not sure his ideas will work for everyone. This book is really destined for those of you who have an entrepreneurial spirit and want to strike it on your own or those of you who want to explore ways of working part time.

What I particularly enjoyed were his observations of the current entrepreneurial “rat race.” Ferriss’ take home message is the following: in the search for MORE (more money to buy more stuff, the corporate rat race, working 70 hours a week, being trapped in the cycle of work/overtime/more work/collapse for the weekend/start again), many of us have forgotten how to live simply and focus our energy on our health and quality of our life experiences.

See his blog entry of September 4th 2007:

New Research and a Dirty Truth: Read This Before Chasing the Dollar by Tim Ferriss

“74.64% of Americans would rather get Fridays off vs. a 20% raise”

He writes: “Basically, even permanent increases in income have little effect on perceived happiness, as we compare ourselves to those above us, no matter how much progress we make. Material goods give us a short-lived happiness sugar high, and we seem committed to making ourselves miserable. [...]

“Just remember: it is entirely possible — in fact, common — to be a success in business and a failure in life”

End quote (view the article in its entirety at www.fourhourworkweek.com)

I loved that last sentence. Do you know someone who is a success in business and a failure in life?

90 minute presentation by Françoise Mathieu, at the 2008 Ontario Harm Reduction Conference. Click here to view.