“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Becoming more trauma-informed and resilience-oriented in our professional practice actually starts with a very personal journey. Our ability to practice compassion with others at home, at work, or in the community is directly impacted by our ability to practice self-compassion. However, many of us view self-compassion as “selfish” and ignore our own needs until our body and/or mind tells us we can go no further. Over the past two years, we have witnessed this playing out publicly in many sectors of the community – particularly with public health and other healthcare professionals.

In order to begin addressing the ongoing impacts of the compassion fatigue and burnout being experienced in healthcare settings, the WSU Community Engagement Institute was asked to develop a series of interactive webinars focused on enhancing Professional Self-Care skills for staff within Local Health Departments in Kansas. Recordings of these sessions and the corresponding handouts are now available for anyone to view on-demand through the Kansas Public Health Collaborative and are relevant no matter where you work. Each session is one-hour long and includes questions for viewers to consider as they think about their attitudes and practices related to self-compassion and care as well as strategies to strengthen compassion resilience now and for the future.

Here’s what’s included:

Session 1: Stress, Burnout, Resilience, OH MY!

This session includes a discussion on the compassion fatigue cycle, the impacts of stress on how we communicate and offers strategies for managing stress in the moment to improve your well-being and strengthen connections with those you live and work with.

Session 2: Practicing Self-Compassion

When we are under stress, often the last person we take care of is ourselves. In this session, we discuss what self-compassion is – and what it isn’t. We also explore how our upbringing impacts how we think about self-care and the messages we send to others about the importance of taking time to fill our own cups.

Session 3: The Compass Wellness Model

Most of us “know” that practicing self-care is important to healthy personal and professional relationships, but just can’t seem to find the time for “traditional” strategies (who has time to read?!). The Compass Wellness Model offers a framework for thinking about self-care differently and identifying everyday activities that fill our “well”.

Session 4: Reconnecting with Purpose

Working in public health comes with many rewards – and stresses – and the pandemic has cast a particularly bright light on these, causing many to question their purpose and their ability to make a difference. In this session, we will look at the system drivers of compassion fatigue and identify strategies to help us get reconnected to our work.

Session 5: Saying “No” to say “Yes” at Work

Saying “yes” to the things we value, sometimes means saying “no”. In this session, we discuss managing expectations of ourselves and others in the workplace and the importance of establishing and maintaining boundaries to build positive work cultures.

Many of us wish to see more compassion and grace in the world. Building your personal skills for self-compassion is a great way to start. We hope that you find this series helpful for your journey and we are committed to continue providing you with resources to help you along the way. If you have resources that you love, please share them with us. You can post them to this site or send them to TISCTeam@wichita.edu and we’ll post them for you. Let’s be the change in 2022.