Webinar: The Helper’s Journey - Empathy, Compassion, and the Challenge of Caring in a Challenging Time
April 20, 2021, 12:00 PM-1:30 PM Eastern
Working with people confronting grief, loss, trauma, illness and tragedy in all its forms is an intensely personal endeavor, bringing us into contact with the deepest parts of ourselves, and exposing us to the well-documented risks of burnout, moral distress, and compassion fatigue. This applies to all helpers within the TAPS community—professional clinicians, volunteers, and family caregivers as well. The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic are elevating these risks, making even greater attention to care for the caregiver essential. Fortunately, a growing body of research and clinical wisdom now also tells us we can exert significant control over stress and its effects on us, and that we can often even wrest personal and professional growth from it. These positive outcomes are linked to an array of coping strategies and skills for strengthening emotional resilience, optimizing self-care, and increasing clinical effectiveness emerging from the fields of positive psychology, neurobiology, and psychotherapy.
In this workshop we will explore some of these key strategies and skills, including balanced empathy, mindfulness, cognitive-affective stress management techniques, self-compassion, strengthened social support, and a deepened sense of purpose and mission in the work. With these building blocks of resilience in place, we can counter exhaustion with vigor, moral distress with moral courage, and our suffering as helpers with its restorative meaning; we can transform and transcend stress, fulfill our purpose in the work, and live a life aligned with cherished values. This program and learning is meant to provide an opportunity to reflect on how you can find balance on the helping journey—balance between the demands you face and the resources you have to meet them, between giving to others and giving to yourself.
This webinar is presented by the TAPS Institute for Hope and Healing®.
Presenter
Dale G. Larson, PhD
Dr. Larson is a Professor of Counseling Psychology at Santa Clara University, where he directs graduate studies in Health Psychology. A clinician and researcher, he is a Fulbright Scholar, a Fellow in the American Psychological Association, and member of the International Work Group on Death Dying and Bereavement. His recent book, The Helper's Journey: Empathy, Compassion, and the Challenge of Caring, received a Book of the Year award in the hospice and palliative care category from the American Journal of Nursing. He was Senior Editor and a contributing author for Finding Our Way: Living with Dying in America, the Robert Wood Johnson funded national newspaper series that reached 7 million Americans. His scholarly publications on grief and loss, grief counseling, stress and stress management in health professionals, and self-concealment and secrets are widely cited, both in the scientific literature and in the popular media. Dr. Larson is a frequent keynote speaker at national and international conferences and received the Association for Death Education and Counseling Death Educator Award in 2016, and was honored as honored as an Innovator of Hospice and Palliative Care by the National Hospice Foundation in 2018.
Program Details
This webinar is free and open to the public.
Continuing education (1.5 hours) is available for a variety of boards through the TAPS Institute for Hope and Healing® for $25 per certificate. More information is available on the program information and board approvals list (PDF). Instructions for obtaining your certificate will be provided at the end of the webinar.
About the TAPS Institute for Hope and Healing®
The TAPS Institute for Hope and Healing® is positioned to be the national and worldwide leader in training and education for bereavement professionals, bereaved individuals, and grieving military, veteran and civilian families. The Institute serves as a resource and training center, providing a hub for high-quality collaboration among professionals working in the field of grief and loss.
The Institute is where practical information on coping with loss are accessible for all who seek current strategies, the most effective tools, and best practices for supporting those who are grieving and those who serve the grieving.
The Institute provides workshops, seminars, panel discussions, and more to educate caregivers, mental health professionals, clergy, funeral directors, casualty officers, the bereaved themselves, and so many others on the best ways to travel the grief journey.
TAPS Institute for Hope and Healing® is located at TAPS Headquarters, 3033 Wilson Blvd., Third Floor, Arlington, VA 22201
Email us at Institute@taps.org or give us a call at 800-959-8277 (TAPS) with any questions.