Continuing Education Courses:
AffectPlus
Survivors find peer support
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Frank Ochberg, M.D. on PTSD (now in DVD) | ||
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Frank Ochberg, M.D. on PTT: The Counting Method (now in DVD) | ||
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PTSD In Children: Move In the Rhythm of the Child (now in DVD) | ||
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When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers | ||
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When Helping Hurts: Preventing & Treating Compassion Fatigue | ||
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Recovering From Traumatic Events: The Healing Process Professional Version (cc only on video) | ||
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Living with PTSD: Lessons for Partners, Friends and Supporters (video cc) | ||
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Explaining PTSD is part of Treating PTSD: Lessons for Mental Health Professionals | ||
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Survival From Domestic Violence: Stories of Hope and Healing | ||
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Resiliency After Violent Death: Lessons for Caregivers | ||
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Surviving Trauma & Tragedy: Lessons For Future Physicians & Mental Health Professionals - Winner of the 2007 Freddie Award in Psychiatry | ||
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Audio CD: Sage Advice for Trauma Survivors and Caregivers with Dr. Frank Ochberg | ||
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Audio CD: Sage Advice for Therapists New to Treating PTSD Clients with Dr. Frank Ochberg | ||
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PTSD & Veterans: A Conversation with Dr. Frank Ochberg | ||
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You may need the updated Player for all of the videos to work! Download the free version here-->
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers with Dr. Charles Figley was produced for trauma workers, relief workers and those exposed to trauma due to their professions or work as volunteers. This program outlines the symptoms of Secondary Traumatization and Compassion Fatigue. Six noted therapists discuss ways of recognizing these conditions in yourself and others, and the means of treatment and prevention.
All participants in this video donated their time.
The following areas are covered in the video:
DEFINITIONS AND EFFECTS
Compassion Fatigue
Compassion Stress Secondary Traumatization Burn-Out Countertransference Work-Related StressorsSYMPTOMS
Professional
Physical Emotional Psychological Interpersonal Behavioral SpiritualVULNERABILITY
Who's vulnerable and why?
EXAMPLES OF COMPASSIONAL FATIGUE
RECOVERY, PREVENTION AND COPING TECHNIQUES
Organizational Prevention Techniques
Self Care Peer Support© 1998
The US Army uses this program as part of their Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program.
50 minute version: $50.00 (VHS or DVD)
17 minute workshop version useful for individuals
and for training and classroom: $30.00 (VHS or DVD copyright 2006)
Order Video.
Video Clip 1: What is Compassion Fatigue
Video Clip 2: Direct & Secondary Exposure
Reviews
4b. When Helping Hurts: Preventing and Treating Compassion Fatigue
Compassion Fatigue is a hazard to the helping professionals that deal with traumatic events. This film heightens awareness of the symptoms and risks of Compassion Fatigue. New information about prevention, resilience and treatment is presented. Specific strategies on awareness, lifestyle balance and connecting with others are given to assist trauma workers. Experts Frank Ochberg, M.D., Charles Figley, Ph.D., John Wilson, Ph.D., Carl Bell, M.D., Atle Dyregrov, Ph.D. and Angie Panos, Ph.D. offer their own stories and advice on dealing with Compassion Fatigue.
RT:17 Minutes and appropriate for workshops, trainings, and classroom.
Order Video.
Video Clip 1: What is Compassion Fatigue
download
Video Clip 2: CF Exists in All the Professions
download
Reviews
Videotape Review
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
Dear Joyce Boaz,
Thank you so very much for your time and encouragement during our phone
conversation this afternoon. As I told you, those of us "in the
trenches" really appreciate all you are doing to support us as we try to
assist those in crisis and trauma.
As a Chaplain for the Police, Fire, and Emergency Services in my
community (all on a volunteer basis), I earn my living as a hospice
Chaplain and trainer. The people I serve are often unaware of the
effects trauma can have on ANY human being and feel so very alone. Your
videos, website, and materials help them to see that what they are going
through, however painful, is normal. That knowledge alone, supports and
encourages them to keep working thorugh their pain.
I am grateful that you and everyone else at Gift From Within give
so generously of yourselves. Know that you and your work are in my prayers.
Blessings and peace,
Judith Joseph, Chaplain
Bereavement and Trauma
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
Dear Gift From Within:
I use all of your videos for our police officers. I am the clinical director and administrator for the Metropolitan Police Employee Assistance Program....a position I have held for nearly fifteen years. There are approximately 3800 officers on the Department. They are exposed on a daily basis to every possible trauma that you can imagine that takes place in a large urban city. They have "seen it all."
However, nothing could have prepared them for the attacks of September eleventh. The officers of our crime scene examination section were dispatched to the Pentagon to assist Arlington County in the aftermath immediately following the crash. The horrific nature of this attack on the bastion of our military strength was unspeakable.
When they returned from the site, we conducted debriefings and showed the video, "When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers." The response was incredible. The video actually gave them permission to feel emotion, to acknowledge the pain and still "be" the police.
I also provide training and debriefings to several other law enforcement agencies and have used the videos with the same result. Law enforcement officers are very isolated by virtue of the traumatic exposure that they experience. Our officers are very receptive to all the videos. They are especially impressed with Frank Ochberg's sincerity. It's pretty hard to fool a cop. Thanks for making these tapes available.
Dr. Beverly Anderson
Clinical Director & Administrator, Metropolitan Police Employee Assistance Program, Washington, DC
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
review by Norm Rooker, Paramedic firefighter
As rescuers, it is almost a cliche about how we are great at helping the public and terrible in helping ourselves an each other. Over the course of my 28 years as an EMT and paramedic, I've lost six coworkers to suicide and witnessed countless others go through rough times, Vicki and myself included. I'm a firm believer in the Critical Incident Stress Debriefing system when (key phrase here) it is properly administered.
I'm happy to share with you a relatively new video entitled When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers. This 50-minute video is a sensitive yet no-nonsense look at burnout or compassion fatigue, recognizing the symptoms in ourselves and others and strangers for what to do about it on both the personal and organizational levels--that's quite a lot.
It is accomplished through a variety of first-person interviews with both therapists and trauma workers. A trauma worker is defined as anyone dealing directly or indirectly with the effects of traumatic events. This moves past the standard definition of front-line EMS, SAR, law enforcement, firefighters, doctors and nurses to a lot of support personnel, such as administration, clerks and therapists. The way, When Helping Hurts presents this, well, it just makes sense.
The video defines compassion fatigue and how the symptoms manifest. It goes on to recognizing the symptoms, successful strategies in dealing with them and even how to address the problem in individuals who aren't aware or admitting they may be exhibiting compassion fatigue.
All of this is done through a variety of emergency responses, ranging from a fatal fire in my city that resulted in the death of one member and the permanent disabling of another to the Oklahoma City bombing events in Bosnia and Rwanda and more day-to-day stressors like working in a pediatric intensive care unit.
This is a great resource on a tough topic. I strongly recommend When Helping Hurts for every organization's resource library. It is about as "must see" as a video can get for both front-line troops and support personnel and administrators. It is also great for family members with the caveat that there are some graphic images presented.
Norm Rooker is paramedic firefighter for the San Francisco Fire Dept. and has been active in EMS since 1973. He is a heavy rescue instructor for the California State Fire Marshal's Office, An EMT-T, and is a member of his department's surf and cliff rescue teams and technical rescue committee.
Jan. 2002 issue of EMS Magazine & Advanced Rescue Technology Magazine.
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
I did review the material you sent me and I found it very helpful and poignant. During my workshop presentations around the country, the topic of caring for the caregivers always comes up and your video adds just the right message to help viewers understand that while this work is exceedingly gratifying to those of us involved, it is not easy work! It does require that participants take good care of themselves so that they can take good care of those in crisis. I would have no difficulty recommending this resource to anyone doing crisis response work. Thanks so much for sharing this with us.
Dr. Ted Feinberg
Assistant Executive Director
National Association of School Psychologists
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
I would like to recommend this film as a useful teaching tool, both to students in training for various types of health care positions and for presentations to staff and community groups. I have been trained as a registered nurse, a marriage and family counselor and a clinical psychologist. Working in private practice and academic settings for the past twenty years. Your work is important in deepening awareness in the much needed areas of secondary trauma and fatigue in trauma work.
Patricia Moore, .M.F.C. PsyD.......
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
"I am the Director of Health Services for Jefferson County Schools. In that position I co-coordinate Crisis response and thus was on the scene on 4/20/99 at Columbine HS and coordinated a massive crisis response to the school staff, student and parents. As you can imagine--we had hundred victims and numerous helpers. I hooked up with Frank several months later and he told us about the video and sent us a copy. We then ordered several more. It provided excellent information during the emotional recovery time after the violent shooting at our school. Our crisis responders worked long hours at such an intense level and we found the video a helpful tool in validating our feelings and giving us support. We continue to use it, two years later."
Betty Fitzpatrick, R.N. M.S., Director, Health Services, Jefferson County Schools
Videotape Review
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
"When Helping Hurts clearly demonstrates the essence of compassion fatigue: there is a cost to caring. Members of the helping professions---from firefighters to aid workers to mental health professionals--risk their psyches and their somas when they confront the suffering of others. This brief video, made by a compassionate filmmaker, takes us to the frontline of working with people traumatized by natural and man made disasters. One minute we are in Oklahoma City, the next in Bosnia, the next in the local ER. There is no sentimentality or voyeurism here. We experience almost firsthand how direct contact with people, rendered powerless by overwhelming force, experience the same damaging consequences as the victims themselves. But lest the viewer be rendered helpless, When Helping Hurts, points the way to prevention and treatment of compassion fatigue. I wish I had copies of this video to use during my work in Bosnia and Africa. It is now an essential part of my first aid kit."
Geoffry D. White, Ph.D. Recipient of the California Psychological Association 1998 Humanitarian Award 1995 and 1996 Recipient of the EMDR Humanitarian Services Award for Disaster Relief in Croatia and Sarajevo
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
"When Helping Hurts clearly demonstrates the essence of compassion fatigue: there is a cost to caring. Members of the helping professions---from firefighters to aid workers to mental health professionals--risk their psyches and their somas when they confront the suffering of others. This brief video, made by a compassionate filmmaker, takes us to the frontline of working with people traumatized by natural and man made disasters. One minute we are in Oklahoma City, the next in Bosnia, the next in the local ER. There is no sentimentality or voyeurism here. We experience almost firsthand how direct contact with people, rendered powerless by overwhelming force, experience the same damaging consequences as the victims themselves. But lest the viewer be rendered helpless, When Helping Hurts, points the way to prevention and treatment of compassion fatigue. I wish I had copies of this video to use during my work in Bosnia and Africa. It is now an essential part of my first aid kit."
Geoffry D. White, Ph.D. Recipient of the California Psychological Association 1998 Humanitarian Award 1995 and 1996 Recipient of the EMDR Humanitarian Services Award for Disaster Relief in Croatia and Sarajevo
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
"The video, When Helping Hurts, clearly struck a responsive chord with those in attendance. It made clear that the feelings experienced by many of them while on disaster assignments are normal and understandable. And, it offered valuable advice about recognizing the symptoms of secondary trauma and responding appropriately. I think that the video or other orientation on this subject should be part of Red Cross training for all DSHR volunteers. Thank you for helping us improve our understanding of this important subject. "
Jon P. Bachelder, Executive Director, American Red Cross of West Central Michigan.
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
"I've been working as a firefighter and paramedic for over thirty years. At the Academy, I've been teaching police officers and sheriffs. It gives me great satisfaction.
When disaster and tragedy strikes we need to ask the question, who takes care of professional emergency workers? We are vulnerable because of the compassion we give to those we care for.
Gift From Within's video, When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers is the best tape on the market to help us all deal with our hidden pain.
We need to set the highest standards of prevention, self care, and peer support during these disastrous deplorable events in our lives, and this quality tape will improve our understanding and quality of all Emergency care workers.
My highest admiration for the producers of this marvelous video tape."
FrankMcMahan, Instructor,CCSF
City College, San Francisco
4.When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
B. Hudnall Stamm, Ph.D., C.T.S. VA National Center for PTSD & Psychiatry, Dartmouth Medical School www.dartmouth.edu/~bhstamm/index.htm
Joseph M. Rudolph, M.A. Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University
Edward M. Varra, M.A. Albany Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Albany, NY
This 50 minute tape, a product of the organization "A Gift From Within" features Frank Ochberg, M.D., Charles Figley, Ph.D., John Wilson, Ph.D., Mary Beth Williams, LCSW, Ph.D., Angie Panow, Ph.D., CEAP, and Atle Dyregrov, Ph.D. The tape was designed as a way to help educate professionals and volunteers working with trauma about the potential effects of Secondary Traumatic Stress. The tape begins with a discussion of the breadth of professionals and volunteers involved in dealing with the direct and indirect effects of high magnitude, highly stressful events. Examples of potentially affected persons include health care personnel as well as journalists, teachers, and clergy. The discussion highlights the complexity of working with trauma and how subtly and dramatically it can affect us in our personal and professional lives.
The second segment of the tape highlights symptoms that can be associated with Secondary Traumatic Stress including loss of humor, isolation, fatigue/exhaustion, nightmares, intrusive recollections, and demoralization. The speakers use personal stories to illustrate their points and to serve as a poignant reminder that the work we do, while rewarding, can be very challenging and is best conducted from within personal and professional support systems.
Following symptoms, the tape discusses the development of Compassion Stress/Secondary Traumatic Stress. Through personal accounts and clinical observation, prominent factors such as the size of the incident, type of injuries sustained, as well as who (adults or children) and how many people were injured or killed. Other features of the events are also mentioned including social, organizational and personal responsibilities associated with our roles as a helpers; professional expectations in times of crisis; and emotional coping strategies that can develop to deal with overwhelming events. In the final section, the speakers remind us that balancing what we do for others with what we do for ourselves can help us keep our internal/emotional resources charged. Most of the discussion focused on caring for ourselves as much as we care for our patients and communities. The issues addressed include setting professional boundaries, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep, eating well, having a social life separate from work, and being able to take time off. It was interesting that the panel did not assume these things would be easy and extolled the value of having ongoing support from a peer community as opposed to relying solely on periodic debriefings.
One of the difficult aspects of training in trauma is the possibility of causing distress in the trainees with the teaching material (McCammon, 1995). It is important to strike a balance between exposure to the grotesque in an attempt to convey the seriousness of trauma work and appropriately avoiding adding to the stressor load by triggering previous exposure with cues from training materials. While clearly showing explicit footage, the editing of this film seemed sensitive to this balance. Some well known footage from disasters was used, as well as tape from emergency room settings, but the pace of the cuts was brisk, reflecting nicely the urgency of a crisis while not lingering on the hideousness of the situations. Additionally, the footage that was chosen focused on the affect of the involved persons rather than on the details of various injuries; clearly appropriate for a video about our reactions to working in highly stressful events. It is important to note, however, that the tape is stimulating and could serve as a powerful trigger for some people.
This tape should be a good vehicle for discussion among helpers. Many helpers, either for personal reasons or because of the expectations of their institutions, or even of the larger society, struggle with distress or even shame at "not being strong enough to take it." One of the clear messages of this tape is that it is normal to be affected by our work in trauma. This permission, spoken with authority by the panelist, should make it easier for people to self-identify difficulties and seek help from colleagues. While it is appropriate and necessary to speak with authority, as these panelists do, it would have been useful to have more differentiation between what we know about Secondary Traumatic Stress through clinical observation and what we know through research. Perhaps the panelists also felt this way. At the end of the tape, Figley comments that he believes that research is the future of this emergent area of concern.
McCammon, S. L. (1995). Painful Pedagogy: Teaching About Trauma in Academic and Training Settings. In Stamm, B.H. (Ed.). Secondary Traumatic Stress: Self-Care Issues for Clinicians, Researchers, and Educators, p. 105-120.
4. When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers
Compassion Stress and Self-Insight: The Trauma Therapist's Turn on the Couch by Erwin Randolph Parson, Ph.D. and Jane Marie Parson, M.S.W.
"When Helping Hurts: Sustaining Trauma Workers" is the only video of its kind that addresses the very critical subject of trauma-induced distress in therapists, highlight the need for self-care, and introduces systematic guidelines for resolution. Some people are very aware that working day in and day out with trauma victims is risky business at times proving hazardous to the practitioner's mental and physical health. This video was produced for trauma workers in America and around the world-for psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists, nurses, chaplains, priests, journalists, firefighters, emergency on-site accident personnel, international disaster and relief workers, and others in direct human contact with the overwhelmed in mind.
Featuring six key trauma experts, the video heralds a new era of genuine openness among a group of individuals known for their fundamental reluctance to make disclosures about their personal lives. These experts tell their own stories about the professional hazards of caring and how their work has continually exposed them to the dangers of powerful internalizations of violence and tragedy. Honest self-inventory about the effects of stress on their thinking, general emotional well-being, interpersonal functioning, and intimate relating, was modeled admirably by the therapists. They speak from where it counts, from the heart, from the deep reservoirs of traumatic anguish within their own humanity, communicating openness, and humility. The video makes this point crystal-clear: Compassionate caring carries a price.
Therapists' vulnerability to trauma-based internalizations is a very real occupational hazard. For when therapists expose themselves to "frontline encounters" with victim/patients who are traumatically stressed, stretched to their psychological limits, and bursting at the seams of the self with traumatic disintegrative anxiety, they may suffer significant professional- and life-disrupting symptoms that require recognition and management. Some therapists may be even more vulnerable to compassion fatigue due to previous traumatization and identifications.
In order to organize the principles of detection, prevention, and intervention in the area of therapy-induced PTSD, stress, depressive affects, panic reactions, and traumatic dreaming, speakers in the video use Dr. Figley's new concept, "Compassion Fatigue" and related concepts like compassion stress, secondary traumatization, burn-out, countertransference, and work-related stress.
The featured experts in the video include such trauma field giants with over two decades of experience as Charles R. Figley, Ph.D., Frank Ochberg, MD and John Wilson, Ph.D, and Angie Panos, Ph.D, Mary Beth Williams, Ph.D, and Atle Dyregrov, Ph.D. Collectively, they identify a set of symptoms they and other helpers experience (in working with children, veterans, women, fire victims, and victims of war and political violence), and offer a framework for traumatherapist self-care and growth.
The occupation-induced stress responses that therapists encounter in their work has been of interest to me beginning with my volunteer consultations at the New York area Vietnam Veterans Counseling and Outreach Centers ("Vet Centers") 21 years ago. At that time I became aware of the risk factors associated with intense self-engagements in human services with severely traumatized veterans. Seventeen years ago, as the new