BossWoman eNews – September 2005
Combining prosperous work lives and balanced personal lives
Welcome to the September 2005 edition of Susan Robison's free
e-mail newsletter for women business owners, executives, and
professionals.
Our goal is to bring you news, insights, and information about
leading a balanced and prosperous life while making a
difference. If you are on this list you have been a client, an
advocate, or attended a workshop. Pass this newsletter on to
others who might be interested. This e-mail list is not sold
or exchanged. Details on subscribing (and unsubscribing) are
at the end.
In this issue, you'll find:
- Compassion Fatigue
- BossWoman coaching
- Up and coming workshops
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1. Compassion Fatigue
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Have you been feeling so badly for the survivors of Hurricane
Katrina that you feel overwhelmed or numb? You are not alone.
These are common feelings when you have compassion fatigue,
the burn out that comes from sustained empathy for the
suffering of others when you are not suffering yourself. You
might feel sad, overwhelmed, even shut down or angry. You
might feel like you want to escape from thinking about the
devastation to the communities in the Gulf coast states
hardest hit by the hurricane and then you might feel guilty
for wanting to escape when you are not even directly
affected by the damage and displacement.
Let me help you with that guilt. Your compassion proves
what a caring person you are. If you didn’t have such a huge
capacity to observe suffering and feel empathy for your
fellow humans, you wouldn’t be concerned about the people
whose stories are unfolding in the media. Unfortunately,
though, excessive suffering on your part can diminish your
capacity to maintain your own responsibilities including the
responsibility to respond to this tragedy in ways that might
be helpful. Here are some things you can do to remain
effective in your own life and to help out those in need.
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Pace Yourself
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Consider limiting media exposure to your capacity to handle
the emotions evoked. Many people learned in the days
following the terrorist attacks in September 2001 that the
unrelenting media coverage wore them out. When you feel
overloaded, take a break. Watch or listen to other media.
Take a walk. Hug your child. Pet your cat. Focus on your
tasks, duties, and normal life, occasionally returning to
thoughts about the situation. It does not mean you are
heartless; it means you have a heart. Pacing yourself
allows you to keep contributing to the general well being
of yourself and those around you. Trauma counselors and
human service workers learn in their training how to
connect with their clients without becoming the clients.
They take breaks and practice good self-care or else they
run the risk of suffering from burnout or leaving the
field prematurely when they still have much to give. So,
too, you need to replenish the well before it runs dry.
You can only be an instrument of healing when the
instrument is effective. (For ideas on how to be the
“container” for other people’s stress without becoming
stressed yourself, see the July issue of the BossWoman
newsletter).
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Take Action
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By taking action, you will feel less helpless and guilty
about the suffering of those strangers whose plight you
learn about in the media. There are several ways to
translate your compassion into action.
- If you do know someone directly affected by the
displacement or have the capacity, offer temporary
residence to the evacuees.
- If you live in cities to which evacuees have been
displaced, consider volunteering in some capacity
including some of these ways:
- Collecting basic hygiene products or clothes to deliver
to the shelter.
- Helping with phones to locate separated members of the
families.
- Offering jobs to the evacuees.
- If you are removed from the path of the hurricane,
consider making a monetary contribution. Pick a reputable
charity such as the American Red Cross.
If you do not live near the Gulf or in a community to
which evacuees have been moved, consider helping out on
an unrelated project in your own community. This might
not make common sense but it does make psychological
sense. When people feel helpless about an event far
away such as the Tsunami or the London bombings,
engaging in helping behavior on an unrelated cause
fights that helpless feeling. Research from the Heart
Math Institute in California shows that altruistic acts
lower stress in the action taker. While you cannot
contribute to all causes and charities and tragedies,
you can concentrate your efforts on ones that fit your
own values and opportunities. For example, this time of
year in areas where schools are starting up, volunteers
are needed to help out with sports programs, religious
education, and scouts. There is always a need to help
at nursing homes and assisted living facilities. As
your compassion for the displaced infirmed of the
hurricane wells up in you, if you cannot help them
directly, focus that compassion on the needy in your
own community.
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Keep Perspective
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Being compassionate means being aware of our
vulnerability to suffering and of our connection to
others’ suffering. When we suffer from compassion
fatigue, we may want to run and hide as though that
would be a way to protect ourselves and our loved ones
from harm. But you cannot hide. I know of no part of
the world that is removed from the possibility of
natural disasters whether they are floods, mud slides,
ice storms, tornadoes, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc. When
something happens to our fellow humans, it touches our
hearts. You can imagine how awful it would be to
experience the physical threat, the loss of loved ones,
and the disruption of normal life. Sometimes we feel
lucky it isn’t our turn and then we feel guilty about
that feeling. It is alright to feel relief that it is
not your area of the world. That is a natural and
appropriate response as long as you remind yourself
that a natural disaster from weather could also involve
your own community.
Furthermore, electronic devices and methods of rapid
communication have shrunk our world so that most of us
know someone touched by recent disasters and terrorist
attacks. We are all part of the same family of humankind.
I knew three acquaintances who were in the London tube
when the bombings took place. Two got off one stop before
one of the bombing locations and the other rode through
there just before the attacks.
The solution to our fear is to keep living life in ways
that have integrity and to reach out to those who are
less fortunate than us at the moment. It is alright to
feel grateful for what you have and to recognize the
preciousness of life so that you do not take anything
or anyone for granted. Next time it could be your turn
and you might need the compassion of others.
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Accept the Compassion Challenge
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One of the effects of compassion fatigue is that we can
become cynical and hard hearted in order to protect
ourselves from the pain of trying to take in what is
happening. The downside of that protective response
is that we also become hardened to the pain of ourselves
and our loved ones. When we lose the capacity to tune in
to our own pain, we shut down self-awareness and no
longer pay attention to our physical and mental health.
Setting limits on exposure allows us to identify with
the survivors of the tragedy without getting overwhelmed.
We can only reach out to others to the degree that we
are aware of the pain we would feel in the same situation.
The ancient Greeks recognizing this package deal when
that called compassion after two words meaning being able
to “suffer with” our fellow humans. The other challenge
of compassion is finding ways to “to suffer with” those
who are different than ourselves in age, gender, ethnic
background, social class, religion, etc. It is harder to
feel compassion for those to whom we cannot relate. When
we perceive a great difference between ourselves and, say,
those who were looting in New Orleans, we lose the ability
to apply our compassion to their suffering.
Psychologists, such as Lawrence Kohlberg and Carol
Gilligan who studied moral development, asked subjects
under what circumstances a person might be justified in
stealing to help a family member needing food or medicine.
The researchers found that subjects with a high level of
moral complexity could imagine how circumstances of
desperation could lead a normally moral person to commit
such obvious antisocial acts. Subjects with lower levels
of moral development had more difficult relating to
situations that they had never experienced themselves.
Compassion fatigue causes us to distance ourselves from
“those people” who are different from us and who must be
at fault for doing “stupid” things like refusing to leave
their homes. When we lose our ability to feel compassion,
it lays the foundation for hatred and prejudice. We
depersonalize “those people.”
We forget to ask ourselves under what circumstances we
might refuse to leave our homes. When one of the
Washington D.C. radio stations did a “person on the
street” survey about whether home owners stay behind
with their pets in an evacuation, most pet owners said
they would not leave their pets. If you are a pet owner,
you can probably relate to concern for your pet left
behind in a flood. Suddenly, “those people” are no longer
so “stupid.” They are caring pet owners like you in a
terrible situation. Once you perceive them to become like
you, you are able to relate to them. The challenge of
compassion is to see all human beings as having at least
some similarity to yourself. Then you will be able to
extend yourself in ways that do not cause burnout. The
key is to set limits on your viewing and helping without
becoming cynical and burnt out.
You can continue to grow in your own ability to feel
appropriate compassion with healthy limits if you keep
your tender heart open. It may get a little bruised but
it will serve you and all of humankind better in the
long run.
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Conclusion
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Take care of yourself. Help where you can.
Susan Robison
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2. BossWoman coaching
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About the publisher: Susan Robison, Ph.D. is a
professional coach, speaker, author and seminar
leader. She loves to coach women who want
improvement in:
- work-life balance,
- career transitions,
- building your business or practice,
- time management,
- increasing productivity.
If you are feeling stuck on the way to your ideal
life, give Susan a call for a complementary
half-hour coaching session.
She provides keynotes and seminars to business
and organizations on the topics of:
- leadership strategies for women,
- relationships,
- work-life balance,
- change.
She offers her audiences a follow-up coaching
session because she knows that workshops don’t
work.
Contact Susan for your coaching, speaking, or
seminar needs at Susan@BossWoman.org or at
410-465-5892.
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3. Up and coming workshops
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I am currently booking workshops for the fall and
winter. Contact me if your group needs a speaker on
the topics listed above.
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© Copyright 2005 Susan Robison. All rights reserved.
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