"IS IT JUST ME?"

Insights and Practical Tools for Addressing Compassion Fatigue

Friday, February 17, 2012

9:00 am – 4:30 pm

6 CEUs
This CEU meets the requirements for 6 CEU’s for Counselors with Supervisor Designation.
It also meets 3 CEU requirements for Ethics.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
The high cost of caring is a reality that is often not fully recognized or appreciated, especially among caregivers themselves. Counselors, pastors and health care professionals engaged in relieving the suffering of others often take on burdens too heavy to bear alone. Mental, emotional and spiritual “stress fractures” can develop suddenly or over time effecting our ethical choices as well as personal, professional and supervisory relationships. This workshop combines a relaxed educational environment with both clinical and faith based perspectives on assessment, prevention and treatment of compassion fatigue, secondary traumatization and burnout. Through lecture, discussion, video vignettes and experiential exercises, we will examine the effects of care giving on our personal and professional lives including the impact on ethical decision-making and the supervisor/supervisee relationship. Attention will be given to developmental career stages, self awareness and self care strategies including the role of self compassion. A limited number of participants affords a safe place for discussion, reflection and professional development around a topic that impacts the “best and brightest” among us!

CEU OBJECTIVES, participants will:
1. Differentiate burnout, secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue
2. Identify early warning signs and red flags in the compassionate caregiver including ethical “potholes” on path of career development
3. Explain critical factors from latest brain research
4. Provide tools for self-assessment
5. Describe prevention as well as recovery plans, including faith based approaches
6. Discover and practice self care strategies, including shifting from sympathetic to parasympathetic nervous system
7. Illustrate supervisor/supervisee dynamics impacted by compassion fatigue and identify mutually supportive strategies for helpful professional development
8. Provide opportunity for professional interaction of relevant experiences and tools for reducing caregiver stress

CAROL KLEKOTA, M.A., LPCC-S
Carol Klekota is licensed in the State of Ohio as a Professional Clinical Counselor and Supervisor and provides continuing education for counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, medical professionals and clergy. With over 20 years of counseling experience, she has a special interest in issues related to trauma, grief and loss as well as the integration of faith and practice. Certified as a Compassion Fatigue Specialist, she offers the Accelerated Recovery Program to addresses the effects of vicarious trauma in the lives of professional, family and pastoral caregivers. Over the years, she has conducted workshops, seminars and retreats for businesses and church groups on a variety of clinical as well as spiritual topics including anxiety, compassion fatigue, burnout, and healing after significant loss.