Blog Archives - Americas Coaching Supervision Network

Compassion Fatigue

Damian — Sun, 19 Sep 2021 19:34:59 +0000

Compassion Fatigue

By Dr. Damian Goldvarg

Providing mental health services or working on maximizing personal and professional potential can be very rewarding, but it can also be emotionally and physically demanding. Over time, burnout can develop due to the unremitting psychological stress of being exposed to emotionally draining situations and the inability to get appropriate rest.

I started working with HIV/AIDS patients and professionals at AIDS Project Los Angeles in 1992. I was curious about the most effective strategies for helping them with their ongoing emotional challenges. So, in 1997, I published a doctoral dissertation on “Burnout Prevention in Healthcare Providers.”

Burnout and spirituality were the themes of my literature review. I hypothesized that spirituality and mindfulness strategies could be beneficial to healthcare providers. I devised a survey to assess self-perceived spirituality and correlated it with the Maslach Burnout Inventory (“MBI”), which measures feelings of being emotionally overworked and exhausted by one’s job.

Unfortunately, I was unable to prove my hypothesis. Health care practitioners who considered themselves spiritual and engaged in spiritual practices such as meditation, prayer, and rituals were still extremely burnt out at work. This did not stop me from giving seminars on burnout prevention worldwide and sharing some mindfulness and resilience practices.

COVID-19 presented me and several of my colleagues with a similar experience of being exhausted by our work and having difficulty staying focused. Paying attention to the language used by clients, coaches, and supervisors, I kept hearing people talk about compassion fatigue, which has a very similar meaning to what I discussed in my literature review on burnout.

The difference between the two concepts is that burnout is characterized by emotional fatigue and withdrawal due to excessive workload and institutional stress, whereas compassion fatigue is triggered by personal and professional experiences in all the groups we belong and affects all aspects of our lives.

What Is Compassion Fatigue?

Compassion fatigue, also known as “secondary traumatization,” is characterized by emotional and physical exhaustion, leading to a diminished ability to empathize or feel compassion for others. It is frequently referred to as the “negative cost of caring.” This experience goes beyond work, the caring could be for family members or friends.

What are the Symptoms of Compassion Fatigue?

People who experience compassion fatigue may exhibit a variety of symptoms, including:

Hyperarousal and sleep reactivity
Reduced cognitive ability
Impaired behavior and judgment
Isolation and moral decline
Loss of self-esteem and emotional control
Anger and irritability
Loss of hope
Aches and pains
Absenteeism in the workplace

How to Manage Compassion Fatigue?

Personal self-care: Take good care of your body, mind, and soul. Take a break from work, get enough sleep, eat well, practice breathing exercises and mindfulness, work out and participate in other recreational activities to manage your stress.

Social self-care: Find social and emotional support—in other words, talk to someone. Nurture your relationships and set clear professional boundaries.

Professional help: You can seek professional counseling to help overcome unpleasant thoughts and emotions and/or focus on healthy coping mechanisms through coaching and supervision.

Compassion fatigue can cause feelings of guilt for lack of empathy. Understanding how this happens to us and how we can control our thoughts and emotions in these trying times is essential to maintain healthy relationships and deliver the best services to our clients.

Resources:

Compassion Fatigue Self-test

https://nwdrugtaskforce.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Compassion-Fatigue-Handout-6.pdf

Boundaries

https://www.thecompassioncodeacademy.com/the-compassion-code-academy-blog/boundaries-for-an-empath-how-to-be-compassionate-without-taking-on-the-weight-of-the-world

Definitions and TED Talk

https://compassionfatigue.org/index.html

Health providers

https://www.newsweek.com/everybody-has-died-delta-surges-covid-nurses-battle-compassion-fatigue-1623370

The post Compassion Fatigue appeared first on Americas Coaching Supervision Network.

Why every coach needs Supervision by Jason Sackett

Damian — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 06:08:32 +0000

Three days before I embarked on a five-day, 50-hour training in coaching supervision, a friend and fellow coach questioned my plans, stating that to him, the value proposition seemed dubious. Having paid in advance, I attended the training anyway, and discovered that coaching supervision is so valuable that every coach who is serious about their work will seek it.

Coaching Supervision Defined
Not to be confused with coaching (partnering with clients to develop awareness toward achieving a desired outcome) or mentor coaching (observing a coach’s work and providing feedback to help develop that coach’s practice of the ICF Core Competencies), coaching supervision (CS), according to the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC), involves supporting a coach “to engage in reflective dialogue and collaborative learning for the development and benefit of the coach, their clients and their organizations.” CS involves developing a coach’s competence, providing a supportive space for coaches to process experiences with clients, and enhancing the quality, standards and ethics of a coach’s professional practice. As positive as this sounds, many coaches still do not understand CS or feel active resistance to using it. Why?

Overcoming supervision resistance
Three common reasons for disavowing coaching supervision are time, cost, and lack of need. Let’s immediately toss the time excuse. On average, CS is a one hour per month activity. Everyone can make time for that.Cost can be a legitimate barrier, since an hour of CS typically costs one hour of coaching fees, and without a decent number of clients, some coaches may not feel this investment is worthwhile. However, my accountant informs me this cost is tax deductible, and my supervisor reminds me that raising my coaching effectiveness helps me attract and retain more clients, creating positive ROI.When coaches suggest they don’t need supervision, I am bewildered. I like a confident, brilliant, and experienced coach as much as the next person, but if that same coach believes he is too wise and talented to benefit from supervision, then I start doubting his judgment.

Clinicians use supervision—why not coaches?
Few licensed mental health professionals would utter aloud, “I’m past the need for supervision.” Although not required to receive supervision once licensed, clinicians are drilled throughout their training and early careers that they can never stop learning, honing their craft, or expanding their awareness. Therefore, their professional culture builds the expectation of continued supervision—not counseling, but bona fide, professional supervision—regardless of cost or experience. What makes coaches different? Is our work not complex, interpersonally challenging, and demanding of self-awareness? If the coaching profession wants to be viewed as more valid and credible, then we need to follow the example of the mental health profession and assimilate career-long supervision into our professional culture.

Embracing the value of supervision
Now that you know you have time for coaching supervision, that it represents a wise investment, and that no one is too advanced to benefit from it, let’s consider some of its unique advantages.

First, CS leads to improved quality of service and professional satisfaction. Although empirical research on the efficacy of CS is scarce at this early stage, its effectiveness is self-evident. Without exception, every coach has blind spots. We need another set of eyes to help us see those blind spots, much like our clients rely on our coaching interventions to increase awareness and performance, only more so. As coaches, we have to take into account everything in our client’s world, as well as consider the impact of our coaching interventions, our relationship with that client, and the beliefs, values, and personality we bring to the interaction. Supervision helps coaches keep all of these systems in sight, work with greater awareness, increase confidence, and achieve better results. Supervisors also provide essential (and comforting) backup for ensuring a coach’s ethical practice. Don’t take my word for it. You will have to experience coaching supervision first-hand to fully appreciate how empowering and satisfying it is.

Besides the personal satisfaction and quality improvement benefits, supervision is starting to become a consumer-driven demand. Yes, you read that correctly: clients and corporate sponsors are starting to give preference to supervised coaches when they choose their providers or award contracts. North American clients and corporations are just catching on to the value of supervision. However, if you coach or plan to coach in Europe, clients will likely presume you will be supervised, as CS has been common there for some time, and their professional associations (especially EMCC, the second-largest worldwide) actually require their credentialed coaches to receive supervision. As more coaches and consumers recognize its value, it will only be a matter of time before coaching supervision becomes a global best practices standard.

Finally, receiving CS counts toward ICF Continuing Coach Education (CCE) requirements, in Core Competencies, hour for hour. Therefore, a monthly, one-hour supervision meeting over three years satisfies 10 of the 40 CCU’s required to renew an ICF credential.

If you are feeling more convinced that every coach needs supervision, that you will value the service, and that supervision will inevitably become part of the coaching professional culture and standard of practice, then you probably see a wide-open opportunity, especially in North America. If you are looking for a way to gain a competitive advantage in a sea of ambitious coaches, retaining coaching supervision is there for the taking.

The post Why every coach needs Supervision by Jason Sackett appeared first on Americas Coaching Supervision Network.