It’s ironic that we as Recreation Therapists who provide so much joy in other people’s life, sometimes forget to take care of ourselves. In those cases, we risk being hit with compassion fatigue. If you’ve never heard of it, it is often characterized by physical and emotional exhaustion and a profound decrease in the ability to empathize. Sometimes people may not know that it is affecting them until months later as one co-worker once described to me. He told me that he knew he was often feeling tired, but not until he took a vacation did he realize he was feeling “burnout”. Later he came to the realization that it was not burnout, but it was compassion fatigue. Others may report feeling dissociation, anger, anxiety, sleep disturbances, nightmares, to feeling powerless or physical symptoms such as nausea, headaches, general constriction, body temperature changes, dizziness, fainting spells, and impaired hearing. In other words, “Caring too much can hurt”.
The main issue with compassion fatigue is that sometimes we don’t detect it until it’s too late. This is why, First, we all need to become educated on Compassion Fatigue and its dangers. Next, as Recreation Therapist we need to provide some Recreation Therapy into our own lives. Even if you are not an RT, but are in a related helping profession field, you may be having similar effects. We’ve discussed ways you can improve your ability to deal with stress in a previous post. Many of those same coping skills pertain to ways we can deal with compassion fatigue.
Finally, we need to use the almighty “coping skill”. We so often use those words in inpatient mental health that if you work there you should know what it is. For that reason, we need to take our own advice regarding coping skills and our wellbeing and find some time for ourselves. For example, there are times when I take a few minutes in my car to relax and allow myself to just live in the moment. Other times, I exercise or play games.
The biggest thing we should remember to do every day is to consistently give ourselves daily doses of recreation. Click To TweetContrary to what some may think, I try to blend some aspects of work together with my personal life because I enjoy the work I do so much that it does not feel like work. This blend is inconsistent with work-life balance because work-life balance focuses on keeping work separate from life. In my opinion, I think life is best lived when you can find joy in every activity you participate in (including work). However, if it is necessary to separate both, then, by all means, do what you have to do. I do caution though, we should never accept lack of time as an excuse to not recreate. Instead, we need to look at the glass half full and find an opportunity to focus on ourselves.
The biggest thing we should remember to do every day is to consistently give ourselves daily doses of recreation. I like to compare recreation to car maintenance. Generally, I complete an oil change on my car so it can run longer and better. Similarly, recreation and leisure are like an oil change for yourself. The more we can incorporate in adequate amounts, the better we can expect our quality of life to be. Find a few minutes and recreate!
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