The Therapist Experience: Talking about Compassion Fatigue, Burnout, and Vicarious Trauma

The Therapist Experience: Talking about Compassion Fatigue, Burnout, and Vicarious Trauma is a peer support group that meets on Thursdays from 12-1:30, starting April 20 and ending June 8.

Katherine Manners and Lisa Tieszen, the group facilitators, talk with NEAFAST Executive Director Jeremiah Gibson about the group.

It will provide space for therapists to explore the toll that they (and their clients) have experienced over the past several years. In addition to hearing life stories, often traumatic, and bearing witness to the pain and suffering of clients, therapists have been inundated with requests and overwhelmed with the need during this unprecedented time in recent history.

Though there’s barely been time to attend to the negative impacts of this overwhelming need (exhaustion, moral distress, hopelessness, etc.), we have paid even less attention to the positive impacts and satisfaction of knowing we are contributing to individual and family recovery, and to the wellbeing of our broader community by meeting those needs.

Recognizing and amplifying these positive pieces play a critical role in sustaining therapists. These sessions will emphasize both negative and positive effects, along with conversation, support and development of sustaining strategies.