Caring for the Caregiver

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Caring for the Caregiver

• ONTARIO MULTIFAITH COUNCIL CONFERENCE
• GLENDON COLLEGE, TORONTO
• JUNE 24, 2008

Presenters Michael AbdurRashid
Taylor Spiritual and Religious Care
Services Center for Addiction and Mental Health,
Toronto, Ontario
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Caring for the Caregiver

• Goal
• To help participants regain their center and
  seeks to provide participants with tools to care
  for themselves in the midst of distressing life
  events.

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Caring for the Caregiver

• Objectives
• To learn about Compassion Fatigue
• To understand the risks of Compassion Fatigue and
  its impact on our functioning
• To learn about tools to help us regain our centre
• To make a plan towards better self care

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Caring for the Caregiver

• Compassion Fatigue
• A compromise in personal and professional
  functioning that comes as a result of exposure to
  clients who have had first hand experience of
  extremely distressing life events
• ProActive Trauma Management

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Caring for the Caregiver
Compassion Fatigue
Burnout
Secondary Traumatic Stress (Vicarious Trauma)
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Caring for the Caregiver

• Some Signs of Compassion Fatigue
• Lost sense of self
• Emotional Burnout
• Conflicts between Role and Soul
• Survival Orientation
• Image management
• Perfectionism
• A finger in every pie
• Placator role
• Hired gun role
• Martyr

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Caring for the Caregiver

• Some Roots of Compassion Fatigue
• Institutional
• Occupational
• Personal
• Existential

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Caring for the Caregiver

• Managing Compassion Fatigue
• Identify symptoms
• Isolate Causes
• Eliminate/modify the roots of the causes
• Do things differently

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Caring for the Caregiver

• Getting to Centre a holistic Approach

Spiritual
Emotional
(Value Clarification and commitment, study,
meditation, prayer)
(Service, Empathy, Synergy, Intrinsic Security)
Physical
Educational
(Exercise, Nutrition, Stress Management)
(Reading, Visualization, Planning, Writing)
4 Quadrants of Self Care
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Caring for the Caregiver
Spiritual
Emotional
I am here
It will look like
I want to be
Physical
Educational
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Caring for the Caregiver

• Planning for the Future

Pathways to Healing Anna Baranowsky
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Caring for the Caregiver

• Rewards of Getting to Centre

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Caring for the Caregiver

• The Future
• Making Resolutions
• Following up
• Marking Achievements

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Caring for the Caregiver
Thank You
michael_taylor_at_camh.net