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Compassion Fatigue. It’s Real, Y’all.

Compassion Fatigue. It’s Real, Y’all.

This past week, I got hit –  and I mean, hit hard – by compassion fatigue. I didn’t recognize the signs at first but here they are, in no particular order:

  • I wasn’t sleeping well.
  • I was thinking about my clients round the clock.
  • I was leaving as late as I could from home and arriving justintime for my appointments.
  • My daily runs were going by the wayside because my planned running time became consumed with adding more client appointments and in-between session phone calls with clients and their families.
  • I was declining lunch and coffee dates with my friends and spending a lot of my days alone, reading and preparing for my late afternoon and night sessions.
  • Some friends were having personal crisis situations and calling/texting me around the clock.
  • Oh, and did I mention that this month has been my biggest month of success, if you measure  it strictly in monetary terms?

This candle was burning at both ends, hot and bright. It doesn’t take a genius to see where this was heading.

I was keeping it together in sessions, but out of them? I was crying during my daughter’s marching band performances. I was crying when, after a few late nights at the office, the custodians at my building who were cleaning would stop by and ask me for a piece of candy out of my dish. I was crying when I walked my dog and I saw a dad throwing a football with his daughter in my neighborhood.

Historically, when other therapists or anyone in the helping profession would talk about compassion fatigue, I gotta admit, I half-listened, and maybe even rolled my smug eyes. I sat through my mandatory agency trainings and read the statistics and listened to other people talk about their experiences but honestly?  I secretly (and naively) thought that compassion fatigue was simply something that, well…..was never, ever gonna happen to me.  Why? Because I got this!!! I can do it!! I’m different then everyone else. I’m a machine.

This month, and this last week in particular, work was extremely intense. I performed an intervention. I placed two clients in treatment. Three clients from yesteryear contacted me asking me to restart therapy. Two people told me that I single-handedly saved their life. It all was taking a toll. Big. Time.

So now I get it. Compassion Fatigue. It’s real, y’all.

Mother Theresa insisted that her nuns take one year off every 4-5 years to allow them to heal from the effects of their helping-focused work. I was barely eating a proper lunch or dinner most days.

This week, I redirected myself. I bought some new candles for my office. I reached out to friends and scheduled get-togethers. I took my daughter shopping and bought her some new clothes. I made a conscious decision to stop reading about work at home and instead, read  for pleasure. I made time to run, and signed up for a few upcoming races to ensure I continue to train. I’ve blocked off a few upcoming days in November for leisure and family and travel – and for just ME.

No one is a machine. Machines don’t cry, people do.

Why Your Therapist Needs Therapy

Why Your Therapist Needs Therapy

I rarely self-reveal to my clients during session, but a question I’ll always answer is this one:

Do you see a therapist?

Yes. Hells yes I do.

I’m always more than baffled when I talk with a counseling colleague and I discover they are not seeing a therapist. If you are an active, practicing therapist, be it in private practice or an agency setting, I feel like it’s a must.

In graduate school, the idea was presented by a professor that all therapists should be in therapy.  Of course, being a busy grad student with two small children my first thought was……yeah, right. Ain’t nobody got time (or money!) for that. I thought of therapy as only something for the rich or elite – a luxury rather than a necessity. I had never been in therapy before. Pretty ironic for someone who was planning on dedicating the rest of her life being a therapist, right?

My first exposure to personal therapy was a mandatory group class. We were required to participate, once a week, in a group session. I was skeptical at best and quite resistant to the entire process. What I discovered in group therapy (once I got over my bad, close-minded self) was how my parent’s divorce when I was 14 affected me, plus how I had not resolved one issue related to my mother’s unexpected and sudden death when I was 32..

After that, I ran…..not walked……into individual therapy. And I’ve been there ever since.

Like many professions, being a therapist is stressful. My clients come to me with trauma, grief, suicide ideation and everything in-between. I don’t always want to bring that stress home and try to release it in other ways. Therapy helps me figure out ways to do that, how to process, how to not transfer or counter-transfer, and helps me reset myself when I feel this area of my life gets off track. Sometimes I utilize my own therapy appointments to staff difficult cases. Being a sole practitioner, I don’t have a business partner in the next office to bounce problems or challenges off of, and my very-seasoned therapist is awesome at this. More often than not, my own therapy appointment is spent discussing family challenges, personal struggles or whatever it is that is happening in my life.

Admittedly, it took time to find the right therapist for me, but I’ve been seeing the same one now for 4 years and have no plans on stopping. I kick up my appointment frequency when things are going awry, and I stretch it out when things are humming alone quite nicely. But I’ll never, ever stop going. Therapy is a lifeline for me. It’s not a luxury – it’s a necessity for my own mental health. I couldn’t imagine my life without it.

So therapists, listen up: there is a reason why Dr. Yalom wrote the book “The Gift of Therapy.”  Therapy is a gift, one you give your clients everyday but one that you need to give yourself. Honor yourself – and your own mental health- with this most-important gift.