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Karen Thomson Regional Program Planner DHQ Self-Care for the Helping Professional
Karen Thomson
Regional Program Planner
DHQ
Self-Care for the Helping Professional
Objectives of Training
Identify characteristics of a helping professional
Define what is self-care
Your lifestyle and stress
Strategies for self-care
Commitment to self-care
Characteristics of a helping professional
Characteristics of Helpers Personal Characteristics of Effective Helpers
Awareness of self and values.
Awareness of cultural experiences.
Ability to analyze one’s own feelings.
Ability to be a model and influence.
Ability to be altruistic and compassionate.
Ownership of a strong sense of ethics.
Ability to be responsible for one’s own actions.
Ability to serve as a catalyst for empowerment.
Five Levels of Functioning in a helping relationship
Level One - No empathy is taking place
Level Two - A little empathy is taking place
Level Three - A minimum amount of empathy is
taking place
Level Four - An adequate amount of empathy is
taking place
Level Five - A high level of empathy is taking place
Characteristics of Helpers On The Levels Of Functioning
If the helper’s level of functioning is high on these traits regarding important facilitative conditions, then constructive changes are more likely to take place.
A low level of functioning on these constructs means constructive changes are less likely to take place and can actually have destructive consequences.
If the helper is on the same level as the helpee then no change is likely to take place.
Characteristics of Helpers Helping and the Helper-Lifestyle
Helper traits are genuine and are not “tricks” or “techniques” that the helper turns on or off. Helper traits can be learned.
Helpers continuously evaluate their own life in relationship to goals, plans and personal values. Helpers can develop their innate traits in order to become even more compassionate and caring.
Helpers seek revitalizing opportunities to prevent burnout.
What is self care
Self-Care Defined
Self care includes any intentional actions you take to care for your physical, mental and emotional
health.
Good self care is a challenge for many people
It can also be an important part of the healing process.
Self care is unique for everyone.
Self-care is an essential social work survival skill.
Self-care refers to activities and practices that we can engage in on a regular basis to reduce stress
and maintain and enhance our short- and longer-term health and well-being.
Self-care is necessary for your effectiveness and success in honoring your professional and personal
commitments.
Challenges to Self-Care
Physical self-care is an area that people often overlook
Another challenge can be in finding time for fun leisure
activities
Emotional self-care will mean different things for different
people.
Practicing self-care will help you:
Identify and manage the general challenges that all hard-working professionals face, such as the potential for stress and burnout or interpersonal difficulties.
Be aware of your own personal vulnerabilities, such as the potential for retraumatization (if you have a trauma history), vicarious or secondary traumatization (if you work with individuals who report their own traumatic experiences), and compassion fatigue (which you can develop from a combination of burnout and vicarious traumatization).
Achieve more balance in your life, by maintaining and enhancing the attention you pay to the different domains of your life in a way that makes sense to you.
Goals of Self-Care
Self-care is not simply about limiting or addressing
professional stressors.
It is also about enhancing your overall well-being.
Lifestyle and Stress
Is your lifestyle causing you stress?
The way you live your life can have a big impact on your
health, well-being, and how well or poorly you handle stress.
The following are lifestyle behaviors that affect stress levels.
Please check the boxes that apply to you. Doing an honest
assessment of how well or poorly you take car of yourself can
help you manage your stress in the future.
When you are under stress, do you:
Smoke/use tobacco
Drink a lot of coffee (more than 2 to 3 cups per day)
Drink alcohol (more than recommended levels of 1 to 2 per day)
Overuse over-the-counter medications
Overeat or under eat
Spend too much money (e.g., do you have a lot of credit card debt and have trouble making payments?)
Abuse/overuse tranquilizers or other over-the-counter medications
Watch too much television (more-than 3 to 4 hours per day)
Have angry outbursts
Take illegal drugs
Withdraw from people
Ignore or deny stress symptoms
Engage in self-destructive
Relationships
These are negative self-care behaviors
…or do you….
Engage in physical activity at least three times a week for 30 minutes each day
Get six to eight hours of sleep every night
Maintain good eating habits
Make time to relax
Maintain a sense of humor
Play
Maintain healthy rituals and routines
Be optimistic. Engage in positive thinking
Spend time with family
Spend time with friends
Make plans for the future
Figure out ways to manage stress
Reward yourself for your
Accomplishments
These are positive self-care behaviors.
Self-Care Assessment The items in this assessment can also give you some ideas for additional things
you may want to do in the future to help prevent stress and burnout and to maintain and enhance your well-being. Make a note of the items that you would like to add (or add more of) to your self-care practice. In considering this, try to be sure that each domain of self-care is well represented. If you think of things that are not included in this list, just add them at the end.
The following worksheet for assessing self-care is not exhaustive, merely suggestive.
Feel free to add areas of self-care that are relevant for you and rate yourself on how often and how well you are taking care of yourself these days.
When you are finished, look for patterns in your responses. Are you more active in some areas of self-care but ignore others?
Are there items on the list that make you think, ”I would never do that"? Listen to your inner responses, your internal dialogue about self-care and making yourself a priority. Take particular note of anything you would like to include more in your life.
Rating Your Answers
Rate the following areas according to how well you think
you are doing:
3 = I do this well (e.g., frequently)
2 = I do this OK (e.g., occasionally)
1 = I barely or rarely do this
0 = I never do this
? = This never occurred to me
Physical Self-Care ____ Eat regularly (e.g. breakfast, lunch, and dinner)
____ Eat healthily
____ Exercise
____ Get regular medical care for prevention
____ Get medical care when needed
____ Take time off when sick
____ Get massages
____ Dance, swim, walk, run, play sports, sing, or do some other fun physical activity
____ Get enough sleep
____ Take vacations
____ Other:
Psychological Self-Care
____ Take day trips or mini-vacations
____ Make time away from telephones, email, and the Internet
____ Make time for self-reflection
____ Notice my inner experience - listen to my thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, feelings
____ Write in a journal
____ Read literature that is unrelated to work
____ Attend to minimizing stress in my life
____ Engage my intelligence in a new area, e.g., go to an art show, sports event, theatre
____ Be curious
____ Say no to extra responsibilities sometimes
____ Other:
Emotional Self-Care
____ Spend time with others whose company I enjoy
____ Stay in contact with important people in my life
____ Give myself affirmations, praise myself
____ Re-read favorite books, re-view favorite movies
____ Identify comforting activities, objects, people, places and seek them out
____ Allow myself to cry
____ Find things that make me laugh
____ Express my emotions in actions, letters, donations, marches, protests
____ Other:
Spiritual Self-Care ____ Make time for reflection
____ Spend time in nature
____ Find a spiritual connection or community
____ Be open to inspiration
____ Cherish my optimism and hope
____ Be aware of non-material aspects of life
____ Try at times not to be in charge or the expert
____ Be open to not knowing
____ Identify what is meaningful to me and notice its place in my life
____ Meditate
____ Pray
____ Sing
____ Have experiences of awe
____ Contribute to causes in which I believe
____ Read inspirational literature or listen to inspirational talks, music
____ Other:
Relationship Self-Care
____ Schedule regular dates with my partner or spouse
____ Schedule regular activities with my children
____ Make time to see friends
____ Call, check on, or see my relatives
____ Spend time with my companion animals
____ Stay in contact with faraway friends
____ Make time to reply to personal emails and letters; send holiday cards
____ Allow others to do things for me
____ Enlarge my social circle
____ Ask for help when I need it
____ Share a fear, hope, or secret with someone I trust
____ Other:
Workplace or Professional Self-Care
____ Take a break during the workday (e.g., lunch)
____ Take time to chat with co-workers
____ Make quiet time to complete tasks
____ Identify projects or tasks that are exciting and rewarding
____ Set limits with clients and colleagues
____ Balance my caseload so that no one day or part of a day is “too much”
____ Arrange work space so it is comfortable and comforting
____ Get regular supervision or consultation
____ Negotiate for my needs (benefits, pay raise)
____ Have a peer support group
____ (If relevant) Develop a non-trauma area of professional interest
____ Other:
Overall Balance
____ Strive for balance within my work-life and work day
____ Strive for balance among work, family, relationships, play, and rest
Other Areas of Self-Care that are Relevant to You
____
____
____
Adapted from Saakvitne, Pearlman, & Staff of TSI/CAAP (1996).
Transforming the pain: A workbook on vicarious traumatization. Norton.
Strategies for self care
My Maintenance Self-Care Worksheet
Review the Self-Care Assessment that you just completed, which includes what you are doing now for self-care. On this maintenance self-care worksheet, list those activities that you engage in regularly (like every day or week) under “current practice” within each domain. Identify new strategies that you would like to begin to incorporate as part of your ongoing maintenance self-care— pay particular attention to domains that you have not been addressing in the past. On the last page identify barriers that might interfere with ongoing self-care, how you will address them, and any negative coping strategies you would like to target for change and how you will change them.
My Maintenance Self-Care Worksheet
Physical (Body) Current practice New practice
Psychological (Mind) Current practice New practice
Emotional
Current practice New practice
Spiritual
Current practice New practice
My Maintenance Self-Care Worksheet
Relationships
Current practice New practice
Workplace/Professional
Current practice New practice
Other
Current practice New practice
My Maintenance Self-Care Worksheet
Barriers to maintaining my self-care strategies:
How I will address these barriers and remind myself to practice self-care:
Negative coping strategies I would like to use less or not at all:
What I will do instead:
Emergency Self-Care Worksheet Why do I need to do this? It is very hard to think of what to do for yourself when things get tough. It is best to have a plan ready for when you need it.
What should be in it? You need to consider 3 general areas: what to do, what to think, and what to avoid.
1. Make a list of what you can do when you are upset that will be good for you.
a. What will help me relax?
For example,
Breathing, Muscle relaxation, Music
Reading for fun, watching a movie
Exercising, Taking a walk
b. What do I like to do when I’m in a good mood?
List all the things you like to do so you remember what they are when you need to think of something to do.
c. What can I do that will help me throughout the day?
For example,
Avoid too much caffeine if feeling anxious
Remember to breathe
Watch my thoughts
Stay in the moment
d. Other: What else do YOU need to do that is specific to YOU?
2. Make a list of people you can contact if you need support or distraction.
For example, your best friend, other friends, sibling, parent, grandparent, other relative, therapist, priest/minister/rabbi/imam, etc.
a. Divide the list of people into categories by asking yourself the following questions:
Who can I call if I am feeling depressed or anxious?
Who can I call if I am lonely?
Who will come over to be with me if I need company?
Who will listen?
Who will encourage me to get out of the house and do something fun?
Who will remind me to follow my self-care plan?
Other:
3. Next, make a list of positive things to say to yourself when you are giving yourself a hard time.
Examples of negative self-talk:
“I got a B- on the paper; that proves that I shouldn’t be in graduate school.” CHANGE to: “That is a good grade. I will work on getting a better one.”
“I do not understand research methods, I am so dumb.” CHANGE to: “A lot of students are having a problem with this course. Maybe we should start a study group to help each other.”
“I can’t get all this work done. I should just drop out.” CHANGE to: “I will develop a schedule so that I can get this all done.” “I can check with other students for ideas.” “I can get some feedback from the professors that might help me do the assignments.”
You get it. Try to think about what you would say to a client with the same struggles and apply it to yourself.
4. Next, make a list of who and what to avoid when you are having a hard time.
Examples of people to avoid:
My boy(girl)friend broke up with me. I will not call my sister as she always hated him. She’ll be happy he’s gone.
I didn’t get my assignment in on time and I’m worried about my grade. I will not call my dad. He is a stickler for doing things in advance so that they are never late. He’ll just give me a hard time.
I am discouraged about my grades. I won’t call my best friend because she’ll just tell me not to worry about it and to quit school if it’s such a hassle.
Not everyone can be supportive or helpful with every situation. Go to the ones who can be supportive about the specific issue you are dealing with.
Examples of things to avoid:
I should not stay in the house all day.
I should not stay in bed all day.
I should open the shades and let the light in.
I should not listen to sad music.
Other:
Again, you get it.
5. Write this plan on a 3x5” card. Keep it in your purse/wallet (and on your phone if you can). Look at it often. Add any good ideas to it whenever you can. USE IT!
(Prepared by Elaine S. Rinfrette, PhD, LCSW-R)
Make a commitment to yourself Remember: Just like the flight attendant says, you need to put on
your own oxygen mask first before you can be of help to others.
If you find making a commitment to be a challenge, then take some time to explore your reservations.
Do you have a tendency to put the needs of others first?
The truth is that your self-care is not only essential to your well-being, but it is also a necessary element for you to be effective and successful in honoring your professional and personal commitments.
So, take a moment, think it over, and then make your personal commitment to your own self-care.
You deserve it!
Emotional Intelligence
What is Emotional Intelligence? Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the capacity for understanding
our own feelings and the feelings of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing our emotions effectively in our relationships.
Emotional intelligence is sometimes referred to as “people smarts.” It is not generally included in the type of intelligence evaluation included in the traditional concept of IQ, which mainly focuses conceptual abilities, but it is a very important personal attribute.
Emotional IQ has 5 components
Self awareness
Managing emotions
Motivating ourselves
Empathy
Resolving conflicts/handling relationships
Emotional Intelligence Exercise
Note:
The purpose of the following quiz is to provide you with an
introduction to Emotional Intelligence (EQ).
The results you get from this quiz are NOT a comprehensive
picture of your EQ.
1. You are on an airplane that suddenly hits extremely bad turbulence and begins rocking from side to side. What do you do?
A. Continue to read your book or magazine, or watch the movie, trying to pay little attention to the turbulence.
B. Become vigilant for an emergency, carefully monitoring the stewardesses and reading the emergency instructions card.
C. A little of both a and b.
D. Not sure - never noticed.
1. Not D, 10 pts. for ABC
2. You are in a meeting when a colleague takes credit for work that you have done.
What do you do?
A. Immediately and publicly confront the colleague over the ownership of your work.
B. After the meeting, take the colleague aside and tell her that you would appreciate in the future that she credits you when speaking about your work.
C. Nothing, it's not a good idea to embarrass colleagues in public.
D. After the colleague speaks, publicly thank her for referencing your work and give the group more specific detail about what you were trying to accomplish.
2. B – 5 pts. D – 10 pts.
3. You are a customer service representative and have just gotten an extremely angry client on the phone.
What do you do?
A. Hang-up. It doesn't pay to take abuse from anyone.
B. Listen to the client and rephrase what you gather he is feeling.
C. Explain to the client that he is being unfair, that you are only trying to do your job, and you would appreciate it if he wouldn't get in the way of this.
D. Tell the client you understand how frustrating this must be for him, and offer options to help him get his problem resolved.
3. B – 5 pts. D – 10 pts.
4. You are a college student who had hoped to get an A in a course that was important for your future career aspirations. You have just found out you got a C- on the midterm. What do you do?
A. Sketch out a specific plan for ways to improve your grade and resolve to
follow through.
B. Decide you do not have what it takes to make it in that career.
C. Tell yourself it really doesn't matter how much you do in the course,
concentrate instead on other classes where your grades are higher.
D. Go see the professor and try to talk her into giving you a better grade.
4. A – 10 pts. C – 5 pts.
5. You are a manager in an organization that is trying to encourage respect for racial and ethnic diversity. You overhear someone telling a racist joke. What do you do?
A. Ignore it - the best way to deal with these things is not to react.
B. Call the person into your office and explain that their behavior is
inappropriate and is grounds for disciplinary action if repeated.
C. Speak up on the spot, saying that such jokes are inappropriate and will not be tolerated in your organization.
D. Suggest to the person telling the joke he go through a diversity training
program.
5. B – 5 pts. C – 10 pts. D – 5 pts.
6. You are an insurance salesman calling on prospective clients. You
have left the last 15 clients empty-handed. What do you do?
A. Call it a day and go home early to miss rush-hour traffic.
B. Try something new in the next call, and keep plugging away
C. .List your strengths and weaknesses to identify what may be undermining your ability to sell.
D. Sharpen up your resume.
6. B – 10 pts. C – 5 pts.
7. You are trying to calm down a colleague who has worked herself into a fury because the driver of another car has cut dangerously close in front of her.
What do you do?
A. Tell her to forget about it-she's OK now and it is no big deal.
B. Put on one of her favorite tapes and try to distract her.
C. Join her in criticizing the other driver.
D. Tell her about a time something like this happened to you, and how angry you felt, until you though of the situation from the other person’s perspective.
7. C – 5 pts. D – 10 pts.
8. A discussion between you and your partner has escalated into a shouting match. You are both upset and in the heat of the argument, start making personal attacks which neither of you really mean.
Whatis the best thing to do?
A. Agree to take a 20-minute break before continuing the discussion.
B. Go silent, regardless of what your partner says.
C. Say you are sorry, and ask your partner to apologize too.
D. Stop for a moment, collect your thoughts, then restate your side of the case as precisely as possible.
8. A – 10 pts.
9. You have been given the task of managing a team that has been unable to come up with a creative solution to a work problem. What is the first thing that you do?
A. Draw up an agenda, call a meeting and allot a specific period of time to
discuss each item.
B. Organize an off-site meeting aimed specifically at encouraging the team to
get to know each other better.
C. Begin by asking each person individually for ideas about how to solve the
problem.
D. Start out with a brainstorming session, encouraging each person to say
whatever comes to mind, no matter how wild.
9. B – 10 pts. D 5 pts.
10. You have recently been assigned a young manager in your team, and have noticed that he appears to be unable to make the simplest of
decisions without seeking advice from you. What do you do?
A. Accept that he "does not have what it take to succeed around here" and
find others in your team to take on his tasks.
B. Get an HR manager to talk to him about where he sees his future in the
organization.
C. Purposely give him lots of complex decisions to make so that he will
become more confident in the role.
D. Engineer an ongoing series of challenging but manageable experiences for
him, and make yourself available to act as his mentor.
10. B – 5 pts. D – 10 pts.
Score
100 -- Maximum Score
75
50 -- Average Score
25
0 -- Minimum Score
Thank you and Questions….
http://socialwork.buffalo.edu/resources/self-care-starter-
kit/introduction-to-self-care.html
