456. Combating Burnout and Compassion Fatigue (Replay) - Eleanor Wells and Ashley Cauley

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Overview

Meet Eleanor and Ashley. One's a nurse and personal coach and the other is an organizational psychologist and educator. Put them together - WOW - they may just be the most powerful mental health team in our sector (and they've got loads of resources to help too.)🤝❤️👊 They're talking to us about how to assess, treat, and prevent burnout, and breakdown what it means to have psychological safety. If you're looking for some guidance to help your team or yourself - tune in.

Today’s Guest

Eleanor Wells, RN, BSN, ACC, CCFP
Ashley Cauley, MSIOP
Co-Founders, Cohort4Care

“What we really want people to realize and remember is self care is not selfish, but it also does not happen by yourself.”

— Eleanor Wells, CEO, Cohort4Care

Episode Transcript

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Episode highlights

Eleanor and Ashley’s stories and journeys to where they are today (1:46)
Current stats around burnout and compassion fatigue (4:00)
The difference between compassion fatigue and burnout (6:30)
Combating compassion fatigue and burnout: where to start (11:00)
Cohort4Care’s GRIPP Model: How to assess, treat, prevent compassion, fatigue and burnout (13:00)
Creating cultures where people can have good well-being (22:00)
Fostering psychological safety in our organizations (26:00)
Powerful moments of philanthropy in Eleanor and Ashley’s lives (37:00)
Eleanor and Ashley’s One Good Thing: Self-care is not selfish. (41:00)

Powerful quotes

“So I did a lot of volunteering and work with nonprofits, really my whole life, and have had such a wonderful opportunity to be on the front line, whether it's a volunteer or a board member or even as an employee, with lots of ministry and nonprofit organizations and really tapped into what this burnout and compassion fatigue was.” -Eleanor

“When we first started talking about doing Cohort4Care and discussing the need for a coaching consulting group that can work with organizations with compassion, fatigue and burnout. It was really coming from a place of experience or we had either experienced this firsthand or witnessed this our entire lives.” -Ashley

“We've all experienced this firsthand, we've witnessed this firsthand, we understand the pain, from compassion, fatigue, and burnout.” -Ashley

“We see that compassion fatigue can lead to greater effect on those that are in what we call “caring professions”, and that's going to be people in the nonprofit sector, educators, people in ministry, social workers, people in the medical field.” -Ashley

“When I came across this young woman and met her. I found a woman who had lost her passion. She was tired. She was cynical. She was angry. Her co-workers really didn't even like to be around her anymore. She lost her sense of humor. She even was suffering with some physical ailments and had developed an autoimmune disease.” -Eleanor

“Burnout comes from work conditions, things like overworked, underpaid, understaffed, don't feel qualified to do the job.” -Eleanor

“You may not personally be experiencing the trauma, you're seeing it and you're witnessing it. But your body doesn't know that. It doesn't know this isn't my trauma.” -Eleanor

“when you really think about it, who works in nonprofits, it's people who care, who want to be involved, who see a problem, who want to fix it, who want to treat it, who want to be a part of it. So it's so easy for those type of individuals to take on the stories of what they're hearing. It's that's what makes them good at what they do because they're so interrelated.” -Eleanor

“The first step, when you realize you're suffering from this is you must reach out. Fortunately, because there is so much discussion around this right now, I truly do feel that organizations are making an effort to have a place to have opportunity for people I've been hearing of organizations that are offering free counseling someone to listen, and unfortunately, a lot of people aren't actually taking advantage.” -Ashley

“We can't heal hidden pain, we can only heal open pain. So yes, we start with a grieving process.” -Ashley

“So many times what we're seeing and reading about and compassion fatigue and burnout is just get a self-care plan and do so you know, go get a massage and you'll be fine you know, get a manicure once a week, you'll be okay. And that's just not the truth. I mean, it's that's part of it. But that's not all of it.” -Eleanor

“We need to create cultures where people have the ability to have good well-being.” -Eleanor

“We have to back up and realize that the definition of psychological safety is really being able to bring in who you are to your workplace, without fear of backlash, without fear of suffering, any negative consequences, because you brought who you were, you spoke up, you ask questions, you were innovative, you took a risk, you don't feel as though you were unsafe to do those things.” -Ashley

“We have got to get to the heart of the matter first, even though it is difficult and painful. So this, this actionable step really strikes the heart of that grief. And it is what I call learning how to sit quietly with pain, which is very difficult for us to do, especially those in the caring professions.” -Ashley

“We must learn to listen for compassion, not to fix it.” -Ashley

“My dad had the real gift of giving and I watched him my whole life. Be the one that would if someone had a need, he was going to be the one that made it. And he did it very quietly. Most people didn't know what he was doing. But he was that's just who he was. And the ripple effect of that in our family has just been powerful.” -Eleanor

“What we really want people to realize and remember is self-care is not selfish, but it also does not happen by yourself.” -Eleanor