People often compartmentalize the symptoms that they are experiencing into physical, mental, or emotional. What we often miss is the interrelations of these symptoms with one another. Wendy Hummel leads the discussion to provide a blueprint for resilience where she provides education and tools to better understand and manage burnout and compassion fatigue symptoms.
Wendy Hummel has over two decades of experience in law enforcement. She retired from the Wichita Police Department where she last served as a detective working on persons crimes investigations. She is currently the Health and Wellness Coordinator for the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office where she shares her knowledge and skills in mindfulness and resiliency to help fellow responders navigate the pressures and demands of the job.
Points she tackled in this session are:
- Wendy’s story of how her law enforcement career led to mental, emotional, and physical health issues.
- The allegory of the carrot, the egg, and the coffee bean which alludes to the different ways people respond to adversity and the concept of post-traumatic growth.
- What compassion is and the continuum between compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue.
- What compassion fatigue specifically is and the professions that are typically subjected to it.
- The concept of burnout, the process by which it occurs, the factors that contribute to it, and how it manifests.
- Secondary trauma: What it is, differentiating it from burnout and vicarious trauma, its symptoms, and the variation in the triggers and severity of how people experience it.
- Resilience: Its components, and the need to build it physically, socially, emotionally, and mentally.
- How burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary trauma activate the nervous system and eventually impact other bodily systems.
- Toxic load: What it is, how it manifests physically emotionally, and mentally, and the symptoms that indicate its presence.
- The body’s ability to communicate what it needs and what is potentially wrong with it through body intelligence (BQ) and our responsibility to be aware of it, educate ourselves on it, and commit to intelligent action to take care of our bodies.
- Movement as medicine and its benefits in encouraging brain growth, alleviating depression, reducing inflammation, and boosting immunity.
- A study that provided evidence on how exercise reduces the severity of depression for its subjects.
- Recommendations on the type and amount of exercise to engage in and integrating it into a busy lifestyle.
- Looking into the processes that transpire within the human body to better understand what causes incremental weight gain and metabolic syndrome.
- The concept of negativity bias, how humans are inherently geared towards negativity in order to survive, and the value in hunting the good and a gratitude practice to counteract this.
- Bill Buckner’s story: The quintessential example of how negativity bias manifests into real-life outcomes.
- Mindfulness and meditation: Differentiating the two, how they relate to each other, and their benefits.
- The concept of self-compassion that can be worked on through a mindfulness practice.
- The importance of understanding the cycle and processes that leads stress to chronic disease.
- Recognizing what feeling good looks like so we may intentionally work towards it by employing strategies that we did not do before.
- Understanding that the path to post-traumatic growth starts with awareness, educating oneself, and finally taking action to move past the trauma.
Questions raised by the webinar participants are about :
- Differentiating stress and traumatic stress.
- Whether we should all strive to be the coffee bean at all times.
- Traversing a career path that is no longer fulfilling.
- Engaging in disclosure and venting without fueling the negativity more.
- First steps to combat compassion fatigue in the veterinary medicine profession.
- Accessing the ProQOL and other self-assessment tools and privacy considerations on its results.
- The role of personal boundaries in the balance between compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue.
- Dealing with lethargy and inability to get started with exercise.
- The term last responders.
- Unpacking the root cause of stress and/or burnout.
Other Webinars with this Presenter
- Feb 15: Coach or Critic: Implement Strategies to Overcome Negativity Bias and Limiting Beliefs
- April 7: Blueprint for Resilience: How to Reverse Engineer Burnout and Compassion Fatigue (this webinar)
- May 26: Resilience Tools and Ideas for People Who Have Stories: A Resilience Panel Discussion
- June 9: Creating a Culture of Wellness: Increase Retention, Morale and Employee Health by Infusing Wellness into Your Agency
Resources Mentioned During Webinar:
Audience Comments
- “Wendy did a great job explaining the complexities of compassion fatigue but also leaving the audience with the hope that it can change. ..” — Kashia
- “One of the best talks I’ve listened to for a while. I am likely to reach out to Wendy personally. Thank you for having her as a speaker.” — Kim
- “Wendy gave us a sense of hope.” 🙂 — Mary
- “Different ways to combat fatigue and burnout. This training was very eye opening and extremely helpful to the work that I do.” — Moika
- “I appreciated the visceral stress (mind-body connection information). My team is so very stressed as a result of the pandemic and balancing everything.” — Nichole
- “This is one of the BEST trainings I’ve enrolled in. The information provided is beneficial to both, my personal and professional life.” — Sylvia
- “The speaker is very knowledgeable about the issue. very interactive and provided great information and examples.” — Jennifer
- “Invaluable information! Thank you for sharing!” — Kara
- “Wendy is always an amazing presenter! Good reminders and suggestions on how to make improvements and to start small.” — Aubrey
- “…The instructor was very amicable and knowledgeable. The information was relatable and pertinent. Much appreciated.” — Christi
- “I liked how the webinar gave us a broad stroke about secondary trauma, compassion fatigue, etc but then spent most of the time focusing on ways to prevent and alleviate it.” — Leolia
- “Wendy’s seminar was outstanding. It really put together in one place a lot of information about the causes of burnout, the complex mental and physical consequences of stress, and the potential remedies and proactive steps we can all take. Very interesting and useful presentation.” — Patrick
