Caring for Self While Caring for Others 2015 to 2016

Welcome to our fourth year of Caring For Self While Caring For Others.

This year, I decided to step back and invite a new face into the series.  In a few weeks, Petrea Hansen-Adamidis, will be presenting on art therapy, with a focus on self-care.  I will be continuing to present this series, assisted by Irina Dumitrache, who will offer demos of different mind/body practices for self-care.  Irina will also be co-presenting the last talk on integrating a healthy nutritional plan into our self-care strategy.  Irina is currently enrolled in training at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, and I’ve been watching some of her training videos.  It’s exciting to see a whole new frontier of wellness opening up before us.

If there is interest in more self-care presentations, please let me know.  I have lots more material, and the ability to repeat old talks.  I actually only made it through half my material for the first talk (How Burnout Looks to us in 2015) in October.  Sadly, there seems to be more and more to say about burnout in the helping professions, as our world goes through some very uncomfortable political changes and growing pains.

After your feedback last year, I have corresponded with Michael Kaufmann at the Ontario Medical Association Physician Health Program (PHP).  After last year’s guest talk given by Dr. Joy Albuquerque, some of you requested a talk on the physician in distress, for some guidelines for what we do and where we turn to for help when we feel we are at the brink.  These requests felt filled with an immediacy of emotional need.  So that’s the talk I asked for when I first initiated dialogue in September.  Dr. Kaufmann said he would discuss this with the PHP staff and get back to me.  I will let you know when he does.

I’m told that attendance is down for all the Ontario Medical Association presentations this year.  I hope you won’t pass up on these talks.  It is tempting to hunker down and minimize during hard times, but nothing is more precious than our own health and self-care.

I’m looking forward to seeing familiar faces this year.

October 7, 2015

How Burnout Looks At Us In 2015

Despite being inundated with evidence that the prevalence and severity of burnout is increasing in physicians and other human service workers, this condition remains poorly understood. There are as many myths as facts, and misconceptions abound.  Often burnout is confused with (and treated as) depression, when – in fact – these conditions are very different. As health care workers, we have an obligation to care for ourselves in order to be the best we can be for our patients. As Charles Figley, a pioneer in the field of compassion fatigue reminds us in the title of his book on physician wellness and stress resilience, we need first do no self-harm in order to best serve. How do we achieve this goal?  How do we begin to approach the tenacious condition of burnout that now threatens to erode away our happiness, our effectiveness and our sense of meaning?

In this presentation, participants will learn:

• To appreciate that many of the standard interventions recommended as treatment for burnout (diet, exercise, spending time with family, mindfulness meditation) have been shown to have minimal impact on outcomes.
• To better understand the impact of burnout (and secondary trauma) on subcortical brain structures and the HPA-G axis
• To gain a sense of which interventions do work best in addressing burnout
• To appreciate burnout as a systemic issue that requires systemic solutions
• To create a self-care plan informed by current understanding of Burnout and Secondary Trauma
• To practice a self-care tool aimed at regulating the autonomic nervous system

Suggested Reading: http://www.scottdmiller.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Burnout-Reconsidered.pdf

November 18, 2015

Beyond Doodling, using art for self expression and self-care

Petrea Hansen-Adamidis, DTATI, RCAT

As psychotherapists and healers, we give our energy to those that seek our help in many ways that can drain us over time.  We listen to their stories, their narratives, ponder their experiences and hold the many tumultuous feelings that present themselves in sessions. We do our best to to keep this separate from our personal lives, but the truth is this is not always easy to practice.  Learn how art making can allow you to express yourself, release tensions and stress and debrief difficult sessions with clients.  Art making for self care can enrich your practice as a therapist and growth as an individual through deepening your connection to own feelings.

Petrea Hansen-Adamidis DTATI, RCAT, is a Registered Art Therapist with the Canadian Art Therapy Association working in the field of art therapy for over 20 years. She has worked for the past 13 years as an Expressive Arts Therapist at The Hincks-Dellcrest Centre on both the Birth to Six team and within the Specialized Therapy Unit.  A graduate of the Toronto Art Therapy Institute (TATI 1995), Petrea serves children, adolescents, parent child dyads, and families, specializing in trauma assessments and treatment. Petrea supervises art therapy practicum students and is an instructor for the Toronto Art Therapy Institute.

Learning objectives:

•         Learn ways to debrief using art after difficult sessions

•         Experience self care using simple art exercises

•         Develop a sustainable self-care practice using art expression

February 17, 2016

Expanding the Burnout and Stress Management Toolkit.

Recent literature stresses the importance of acquiring a set of short and long term skills as a means of addressing trauma and/or unremitting stress. These tools are frequently learned and then quickly forgotten. For instance, the efficacy of learning mindfulness meditation without making it part of a larger lifestyle is now being questioned. What tools work best and when? What is the range of tools available to us? What is the neurophysiologic “target” of these tools? How can we incorporate these tools into our lives in the most effective and lasting manner? How do we utilize these tools as a pathway to building resilience and new meaning in our lives?

Learning objectives:

•         To integrate a variety of stress management tools into their daily lives

•         To acquire a personalized set of both short-term and long-term stress management tools

•         New techniques to calm a dysregulated autonomic nervous system

•         Why some tools are best suited to health care workers including psychotherapists

There will be an opportunity to practice some new tools in a supportive and relaxed environment.

Suggested Reading: http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/how-fight-stress-and-burnout-when-you-cantgo-expensive-spa

March 16, 2016

Integrating a Healthy Nutritional Plan into Self-care Strategy

In this presentation, we will look at practical ways to integrate sound nutritional elements into an overall holistic lifestyle strategy. Rather than exploring diet in isolation, we will explore the interplay of the factors that nourish us every day; discover primary and secondary foods. There will be adequate time to reflect on our current approaches to diet and nutrition, and where the greatest opportunity for impactful transformation can be accessed. Is self-care a luxury? Or is it essential to our health and well-being? We will also get playful with a demonstration of home preparation of fermented foods, in our opinion the best source of probiotics.

In this presentation, participants will learn:

•         To integrate diet and nutrition with other key domains of self-care: work, relationships, exercise and spirituality

•         Myths and truths of dieting; why diets do not work

•         10 tips for self-care every day

•         Easy to follow guidelines for healthy eating

Harry will again be assisted by Irina Dumitrache. Irina has graduated from two yoga teacher training programs, at the Yoga Sanctuary in Toronto and at the Yoga Therapy Toronto. She is currently enrolled in the health coaching program through the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in New York City. Irina brings her avid interest in wellness and wellbeing to her teaching of self-care tools and her encouragement of healthy and balanced lifestyles.