good afternoon everyone my name is Leilani fabazzo and I'll be your webinar Host this evening I want to welcome and thank you for joining us for the reclaiming your spark identifying and managing emotional triggers webinar we're so excited to have Carrie Knutson today join us to share her knowledge tips and tricks I'd like to give a brief introduction before we pass over to here to get started so Carrie is a professional speaker school counselor Storyteller mother closet rap artist itchy foot traveler and chronic extrovert she is an expert in the field of emotional intelligence also known as EQ and human development her company her company Knudson speaks takes psychology off the couch and brings it to the people she does this through presentations where she demystifies Concepts in Psychology and turns them into clear tangible and relevant takeaways that people can use to help transform their personal and professional lives Carrie also wrote directed and stars in a one woman storytelling show ain't never met a stranger stories from the passenger seat which is all about our human connections trials tip relations and hilarious happenings that make up life we're so excited to have Carrie here with us today so now without further Ado I'll pass it over to Carrie thank you Bonnie appreciate it hi everybody from all over the place the scroll the chat box is going so fast I was trying to read where everyone was from so welcome everywhere everyone everywhere I'm so happy to have you on this training today um I hope that we use our next hour to really engage in the topic around compassion fatigue burnout and stress and how we get to resilience and I know that on the face of it sounds like a like a kind of a sad topic talking about that but the goal is to think how we identify what is compassion fatigue burn out and stress and um triggers that triggers into those things and then how we build our resilience and so I my background is I'm a therapist by training and a few years ago I thought why don't I take psychology off the couch and bring it to people and help them access really good ideas in Psychology in ways that can be useful without any psycho jargon or psychobabble and make it applicable to their daily lives so that's why I'm in front of you today but don't worry we will not talk about your mothers or anything else we'll use this time to talk about um a compassion fatigue burnout and stress I did drop the handout numerous times in the chat box you'll see a link if you're a handout person that is a link to the handout and um that way you can have it for future reference if you like it and um it's it's available for you there and we'll also send it out again at the end of the training um along with the link so let me share my screen real quick okay just a second all right so we're going to talk about Real Life Strategies to increase resilience in the face of compassion fatigue burnout and stress and in the in the work that I do as a therapist I find that a lot of people don't know the difference between compassion fatigue or not and stress or why certain things are affecting them certainly so today I'd like to give you some really clear ideas about how to identify these three kind of areas and and then what we can do about them and so the first thing I want to say is that a lot of times I want to say if you ever thought any of these kind of thoughts to yourself you don't have to put anything in the chat box or when did anyone in your family just think this is rhetorical but have you ever thought to yourself anything like this you know what the stress of this job won't get to me because I'm a trade professional I have training you know so the stress won't get to me or maybe you said to yourself you know I'm just mentally tough how I show up in life I'm tough um or maybe you've said to yourself I have an unlimited reserve of empathy compassion and a strength that I can call in any time there's a crisis it's just like a well that keeps on coming or maybe you said you know what the symptoms of compassion fatigue stress and burnout will disappear if I ignore them ignoring them is a strategy and perhaps you've even said you know what it is impossible to care for myself by caring for others I just can't do it I'll figure that out later and all of these things sound really good especially when I say them kind of emphatically they sound true and really what we all of these things fall under one big category of what we call clinically denial and we call it denial because those things aren't actually true they're not actually okay with for us to manage things and you actually need to be thinking in a different way about what your needs are and about what affects you and that compassion fatigue and stress are real and that we're human beings and so when we think about being in denial it's kind of a protective device but it's not really a useful device so what I'd like to think about there's a quote that I love that says not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it's faced and James Baldwin is a prolific beautiful writer um who anything you pick up by him is amazing but I really really love this quote because I feel like it speaks to the need for sure we can't change everything but do we need to try to face it absolutely do we need to talk about it definitely and that's why I'm so glad you're on this webinar tonight because it's a chance to an opportunity to learn and to grow and talk about something that's really important when when also we think about the work we do in our lives the work we do with animals how we're connected to them the work you do is intense and you can't deny that just because you can do it doesn't mean it's not intense and a lot of times when people say I wonder if any of you have heard this oh I can never do your job or I can never do that it'd be so hard and you think well I can do it and I like to do it but it doesn't mean it's not hard and so you have to understand the work you're doing is actually intense not everyone can do what you can do and in our society we tend to say like to people oh what's your superpower put your cape on and you're a superhero and I think this does a disservice to people on a number of levels because you're actually not a superhero and that's just the truth of it you are a person doing a job providing a service at the end of the day you're a person doing a job and providing a service you can be amazing at what you do and you can love what you do and you can be passionate about what you do and you will always be human what does it mean to be human well it means this you're going to have real emotions which are going to come up at times when you might not expect them and you're going to need to process them also you're going to be a real human miss me that's going to be messy it's not always going to be linear and it's you're going to feel a mix of emotions at the same time and your humanness means that you're not always strong or you can't always manage things it's your humanness and also there's real limitations to what you can do you actually have limits and acknowledging that for some people they feel like it's weakness I just think it's truth and honesty we all have limits and to recognize that is so important because what happens to most of us is we recognize Collective experiences and Trauma that people might have as a group and we think about these Collective experiences we have while at the same time ignoring our individual experiences and Trauma and we tend to minimize what happens to us as individuals in the face of more Collective things going on and again that's a disservice to us because we need to process what's going on with us we're human we're experiencing things and we need to process our emotions and there's what when you think about how people tend to operate there's a termite use called comparative suffering when what we say is like let's say I am upset because I had a rough interaction at work with a client and something you know hard happened and I'm just you know having a like kind of like it was a rough day at work and then I'm talking to a friend of mine and she says I'm so sad because my mom has cancer and then I think to myself well oh my gosh my my day at work that what does that do compared to your mom having cancer that's horrible right so then you still feel sad about your day at work but then all of a sudden it doesn't seem as important as someone else's mom having cancer so then you minimize that and comparative suffering isn't beneficial at all because what it does is it minimizes the legitimacy of our feelings we still have those feelings we still have those experiences and you can compare suffering as like a lose-win game it just is and so encourage you to think about that when we hold things back or we don't express ourselves or we don't say why something was hard it's usually because we're engaging in comparative suffering whose suffering gets the most credit or the most attention and we tend to minimize our own and I want to let you know there is no hierarchy of suffering if you're suffering if it's hard for you it's enough that it's hard for you you don't have to judge yourself against anyone and there's a beautiful quote that says comparison is the thief of Joy I just like to say comparison is a thief comparison is the thief of your own experience of who you are in the moment of what you need it's just a thief and it's a no win game so I'd encourage you to think about there is no hierarchy of suffering however you feel whatever you've experienced it's enough if if you're suffering it's enough and what I feel that a lot of people tend to do too is think if I suffer enough then somehow I'll get a prize at the end or it'll be worth it but really you were not born to suffer and your suffering doesn't lead to better outcomes for anyone that you want to serve animals and people included your suffering does not lead to better outcomes for anyone including you because what suffering does is it what's it called it's a short-term game plan suffering leads to burnout and stress and compassion fatigue and after a while you can't do the thing that you wanted to do anyway and so you're and you're not meant to suffer nobody hopes that when you were a child it's like well all we all we can hope is that you just bake it and suffer through life and work on paying your mortgage and try to find happiness where you can no one said that too they're like we hope you have a great fantastic life and contribute in amazing ways you're not supposed to suffer and when we we I love this quote so much as an antecedent to that what have they thought about this the proper function of man is to live not to exist and you know the difference when you're living and just existing and you know what activities you're doing you know how you feel you know your energy level when you're really alive versus existing and just getting through things and just suffering through so I want you to think about juxtaposia what does it mean to feel alive versus exist and part of being alive and being able to enjoy life with all its hardships and with all the things we have to struggle through is how do we build resilience how do we cultivate it how do we step into situations and then come out the other side not broken but better how did we do that so what is resilience well resilience is the capacity to recover from difficulties and the good thing about it is when I think about it it's a skill you can learn and develop it's not something that you either have or you don't have and I like to say just to keep it easy resilience is my capacity my capacity not someone else's I'm not going to compare myself but it's my capacity to recover from difficulties in my own time in my own way with what I need and what people tend to do is confuse the idea of capacity with capability so I like to say this capacity if you think about it is how much a container can hold so if you think okay how much can a cup holder a jug hold we we see that as capacity and with people though what I tend to see is like if I had a if I had a glass here and I poured poured some water in it and it went to the top and I'd say this glass is working great good job class but then let's say I kept pouring water until it overflowed and overflowed and overflowed and let's say I say this glass is broken this Glass isn't working what's wrong with this glass and I blamed the glass because it's reached its capacity not me for overfilling it and what we do as human beings is we confuse our capacity and our capability and we tend to get all filled up we're at capacity and then we get over the top we think oh I'm broken something's wrong with me and that's not true it's probably just that you've reached Your Capacity when we're at or under our capacity we're fully capable but so many times we dealt more on and more and more and we wonder what's wrong with us instead of identifying we actually have limits because we're human we're not robots and we don't have superpowers we're human and we have we have limits so it's important to think about that what are your limits and what's realistic and getting out of denial and what I would like you to think about just so you can take away some things from this this seminar as we do it I'd like you to reflect just take out a piece of paper and draw um four squares and just off the top of your head I'm going to ask you four questions and I'd like you to be able to just without too much thought just think for a minute what do I do in these categories and if you if you're struggling with it or you don't have an answer hopefully by the end of this seminar you'll have some ideas to put in these four categories because I think that every person has within them gold pure gold which is the ideas they have that would help them things that they know they could do that would make life better and so instead of coming up with a bunch of ideas I want you to think from you yourself and I call this mining for gold like what do you know that is true for you so I just want you to jot down again don't don't overthink this but jot down what are things I do for stress relief that work for me what are some things I do for stress relief that actually work for me what are things I say to myself that help calm or Focus me or affirm my experience what are the things I say to myself what are activities that make me feel like I'm living not just existing what are you doing when you know you're alive and then finally what are thoughts or actions that help you manage change what kinds of thoughts ideas or actions actually help you manage change and help you when things are are hard and I'm just going to give you a minute just just reflect on these four questions and and write down some answers on a sheet of paper and if you're writing go ahead and keep writing and keep that paper off to the side as we go through this because maybe during this talk you'll think oh I can add something to one of these squares Oh I thought of something and then you'll have an actual referral source that works for you of things that work for you so that's just a quick exercise to get your brain thinking about what do I know that works for me what I know that's true for me what we're going to transition into now is I want to ask you some questions again I want you to reflect on them but I don't want you to do this I don't want you to make it clinical or be like oh my gosh what's my diagnosis or what do I have um and I'll say this because when I was in school to become a therapist we would study different disorders and you know week by week go through the DSM manual and every time we studied something new I felt for sure by the end of the week that I had that thing so if we were studying obsessive-compulsive disorder I would see traits in myself and be like oh my gosh maybe I have that or were you discussing anxiety like I'm sure they have that or depressive disorder like I definitely have that so sometimes when we look at things that we tend to put ourselves in our microscope the questions I'm asking you and the things I'm sharing are meant to be like on a more General level and so don't go off the deep in and try to diagnose yourself in the session like this um just see this as helpful information resist the urge to diagnose yourself so but I want to ask you if you've ever if you've thought these thoughts recently do you find that you can't stand to see the same thing over and over again like it's really getting to you the same kind of situations the same kind of problems is it harder for you to manage those feelings my next question is this my computer's gonna work are you quick to judge do you find yourself seeing a situation like I know how this is going to go or a person or a situation that you judge the person and it does it happen pretty quick too often feel anger towards people you work with or people you serve do you find that anger is a Primary Emotion when you get frustrated are you starting to take things personally like things that once would roll off your back be like this is just the function of the job are you is it starting to get you at a personal level and then are you feeling constantly stressed at your job many of us feel stressed it's it's points during our job for sure but is this a constant stress something that's unrelenting or just feel ever present and do you bring that stress into your personal life you take what's going on at work and bring it home and then the stress gets even bigger there if you answered yesterday's or if you feel these this way um you may have compassion fatigue burnout or stress and most of us like understands these topics and the concepts and they are together but what do you want to use in this visual is they're they're separate I think of them as being along Continuum and but this is I like this visual to describe what these three things are so I feel like in a structure like this that's bound to fall eventually if you or a person that has compassion fatigue you feel like you're under it all having to hold everything up ever the world is on your shoulders you have so much responsibility you can't let anything go and it's a it's a really heavy burden if you're more in the burnout phase you might just be like I'm too exhausted to handle this but the whole thing just fall down I can't even handle it and if you're in the stress phase you might be in the middle trying to balance it trying to keep it okay but it's it's hard so these things are connected but they're separate so the goal the next part is to say on the Continuum I'm going to start with compassion fatigue which which not as many people experience to burn out which more people experience to stress which all of us experience so you can see along this Continuum how these work together but also how they're separate so I'm going to start with compassion fatigue over here sometimes in the literature people call it say vicarious trauma or secondary trauma and these terms again get thrown around so much they they kind of get lumped together even though they mean different things but the idea is that you're seeing something or experiencing something that's not directly happening to you but it's impacting you in a way that it might as well be happening too so this idea of compassion fatigue I like to have visuals to help people think about things so when I when I think about the visual is I'm going to show it to you a minute but I'm gonna this is the short definition it's been described as the cost of caring and Charles Figley is a wonderful researcher specifically on the topic of compassion fatigue and his work is amazing and I included a longer quote from him about it in your handout but it's basically I came into this field to do good work I care about the work that I do but it's costing me my mental health my sleep my joy of life my ability to be in relationships with certain people my ability to manage things it's costing you something and the visual that I want to share with oh I keep thinking about my visual but it's not quite there yet so compassion fatigues is a set of symptoms it's not a disease so it's not like someone would say oh you've got stage four compassion fatigue and that's it you can recover from compassion fatigue and it's simply a set of set of symptoms together that were labeled as a compassionate but it's not a disease and symptoms are normal displays of chronic stress so you don't go to bed fine one night and wake up with compassion fatigue the next day it's been a steady journey to compassion fatigue and the symptoms are again just like normal displays of stress that has become chronic in your life here's my visual that I believe I'm sorry um to visualize compassion fatigue I found this picture that I really love it to utilize this and you can let me know what you think um so see this Pony and see this goat the goat has no business saying on the pony's back the pony can handle the goat for a while but it can't really go about its normal daily Pony functions with the goat but yet there the goat is ever present always there a burden that is not the ponies to carry and that's what compassion fatigue looks like when we take on the burdens of others that aren't ours to carry and then it impacts our ability to function to fully function and the the pony can probably get around but he can't fully function free as as the pony is supposed to be right so compassion fatigue to me this is the visual for compassion fatigue and when you think about symptoms when we see like a set of symptoms we look for things like people that have constant Stress and Anxiety and it's ever present all the time and also an Impulse to rescue anyone in need or any animal in need that impulse today I have to save everyone now or all the animals have to do that like the impulse is there to to rescue and then hyper arousal means you're always thinking about the thing that you're working on so how how can I solve this how can I fix this how can I do more why aren't other people doing more and it's a constant kind of what I call recording in your mind that you're always thinking about it a decrease in experience is a pleasure mostly because you're so focused on the work that you're doing or trying to help or whatever it is that you can't really experience pleasure and then isolation because no one really understands you or gets you and so then you tend to people who are in capacity tend to isolate because only they can understand what they're going through and then a lack of self-care and that can be from poor eating to poor sleeping to not um being able to engage in other functions of your life and when you think about compassion fatigue it's really hard because you don't sometimes know that you're in it until other people are like are you okay or what's wrong with you or you don't seem like yourself and compassion fatigue is hard because it's it's the cost of caring because you really are doing jobs that you love and you're involved in your mission and projects that that you feel are so valuable and but at some point it's costing you and I'm just going to give you a quick example as a therapist I worked um in an inpatient facility with children who had been sexually abused and were trying to do um some reunification with families and stuff with courts and it was very complicated and I kept thinking about the stats one in three children one in five children were babies in their lifetime one in three girls one in five boys one in nine people as a perpetrator usually someone the child knows and all those stats just kept going in my head so I'd be at a recreational activity going to see like a softball game and I would be Counting kids and they're like one two three one two three four five one two and then I look at adults in a bit who's the perpetrator in the group like I would be in an environment where I didn't need to be thinking like that I would be thinking about those things all the time and it really affected my ability to leave work at work and enjoy other things because I was so ever present to that to those stats and to working with those kids and I even had to think about my own training and I like shouldn't have if I'm thinking that way because I have training but yet I'm a human so how do I manage that so compassion fatigue it's important to think about that it can happen to anyone and it's not because you're weak or because there's something wrong with you it's because you keep care it's just gone to the extent that it's taking its toll on you so when you think about going up the Continuum compassion fatigue is over here then we go up to burnout not as many people have experienced compassion fatigue but a lot of people have experienced burnout and burnout is this idea of just like a hamster where you're just going all the time you can't stop and you're exhausted and one of the Hallmarks of burnout is just being physically and emotionally tired of from the work like you can't do it again and what we say that burnout is is a depletion of mental physical or emotional energy it could be any one of those that show up it's a depletion of that and it's a cumulative process again so it doesn't one night you don't go to sleep fine and wake up with burnout the next day it happens over time you can see it happening and it's marked by exhaustion and withdrawal and those are the primary indicators that someone is in Burnout and it's really though a normal response burnout is an absolutely normal response to giving too much effort without getting what you need to balance and restore yourself that's your body's saying like I can't do this I can't continue to push and push and push the rock uphill without a break at some point and I like to think about this idea like sometimes if I'm in a workout class and I pick up my five pound weights I'm like oh look at me with my five pound weights sure at the beginning of the class those weights are fine but as the class goes on I'm like five pounds is getting really heavy as the class goes on the waves are getting heavier and heavier and they're just the same five pounds but it's the amount of time I've been holding them and my arms are weak so after about time they're like I'm done so burnout is just giving too much effort without stopping without taking a break without restoring whatever you need so you have energy for the journey and symptoms of burnout 10 again the Hallmark is exhaustion physically emotion are mentally tired tired of the work tired of the situation just being exhausted and having a loss of purpose why am I doing this anymore I don't know why and feeling helpless or trapped about like I don't know what other things I would do I don't know how to change my life I can't and so feeling that kind of hopelessness also withdrawing from family friends or activities or Hobbies not because you don't necessarily want to you don't have the energy you just can't you know push to do those things anymore and then low morale again like I don't know why I'm here this will never change see this again like just having a hard time with morale and when you think about burnout the reason I put like a brick wall up here is because sometimes it's like hitting your head against the wall it's not going to change and you're tired of it and you're just like oh I'm exhausted so burnout is the net one of the next on the Continuum compassion fatigue burnout and then we have stress and everybody if you've been alive for more than probably five minutes knows about stress right when you think about stress in our society we kind of like you're supposed to be kind of stressed out like when you say how are you doing people can say okay fine good or busy busy is a way that we used to talk I'm busy or if I want to one-up feel like I'm crazy busy like who's the busiest it's somehow a validity like how stressed out you are is like makes you valid how many things that you checked off your list so I want to try something here it's a interactive thing called slido and I want you to think about what things contribute to your stress and I'm gonna have you you can scan your phone and take a picture of the QR code or you can go to slido.com and enter this number and it should say what things contribute to your stress and this is anonymous um but it just pops up answers so I'm curious I've used 738 people what kinds of things contribute to your stress and I'll go ahead and move over to the slido app so we can see the answers coming up I'll give you one more minute to get your phones out and then this QR code will appear as well as the number will appear in the next screen so don't worry if you're still getting your phone out or you can enter on your computer let me just switch this here we go so you should be able to see a bunch of words coming up on the screen and the reason I like to use this is it's interesting the more people type in the same word the bigger the word gets so you can tell with your group um what are you know what are most people thinking and also you can save the data for later and they have it you can ask multiple choice you can do word codes you can do open text and it's a really fun tool just to get Anonymous feedback which I tend to think is more uh people tend to be more honest their answers are anonymous I hope too when you look up here you might as you're reading these think like yes yes me too yes yes oh my gosh because but but a lot of times the human brain tends to think oh I'm very unique in my situation nobody else feels this way or everyone else has got it together or somehow I'm not doing this right and someone else has the secret but really if you look at this this is The Human Condition these things contribute to our stress as human beings and this is these are nothing things that stress all of us out and I have a favorite quote that I like to say yes you are very unique for sure but you're not that special and this kind of shows it right look at all these things that we're feeling and when we think about what causes stress sometimes we assume that um like you know money would definitely be a Hot Topic and look it is for us too but when you think about what else causes a stress when you think about angry clients politics turnover lack of sleep being an action maybe physical or emotional pain noise sometimes that's what we do in our comparative suffering well if it's not money or work then it doesn't count like if I'm worried about gossip and you're worried about money I guess you win and that's the thing when we think about comparative suffering if these things contribute to your stress these are real for you and it's enough it's enough that these things are real for you so I'm gonna go ahead and let you keep typing in here I'm going to flip back over to my screen but these will come up and I'll share this screen again okay so what I want to talk about with stress is okay there you go now I'm back on it so what I want to talk about with stress and when we think about stresses I want to give you a new way to think about stress stress isn't inherently bad it's your body's reaction to a challenge or demand and it's not always bad so here's my last animal reference for the night and hope you appreciate them or not but the idea of putting an animal like having this this elephant getting on a ball as like a trick is is stressful and when you think about is that good or bad stress or what is that like it shouldn't how long should they open to it is it good for the open do this in the first place like these things cause stress right and we can all experience it what is what does that look like you think about stress so but stress sometimes gets a totally bad rap so I want to talk to you a little bit about the kinds there's three kinds of stress responses and I want to talk about the first one that's actually positive positive stress helps us get things done like for example positive stress helped most of us get on this webinar tonight you had to stop what you're normally doing find the link get on change what you're doing and now you're focused and you're here and now the stress is over like positive stress is the deadlines getting things done it kind of can push us to do things we might not normally get done in a timely way and what I like to think about with positive stress is it just looks like this to our brains that you anticipate an event is going to happen the event happens and then you come back down to your resting rate that you come back down to your normative place and so the thing happened it's over and it comes back down and sometimes we have positive stress that like this happens quickly sometimes it's over a little bit of time but positive stress is the ability once the event happens to come back down and I have to say that um sometimes I have what's called anticipatory stress about things like I wonder what's going to happen and will it work and will it be okay and recently I had anticipatory stress about getting a root canal I knew I was gonna have to have a shot in my mouth and I was freaking out from the minute I made the appointment so pretty much when I showed up and um I was like making myself anxious about getting a shot in my mouth and um but I was also preparing myself and um they had been doing whatever in my mouth and I was like okay I'm ready for the shot I'm ready I'm prepared I'm ready give it to me and they're like we already gave it to you and I was like they put so much numbing cream I didn't really experience the shot and I'm like how much stress did I waste on something that never even happened right so they do have positive stress those like things you think about things that stretch about things that normally happen in our bodies and once that thing is done we come back down we're able to come back down to a normative or resting place the next kind of stress response is what we call tolerable and that is when you anticipate something's going to happen the thing happens and before you can come back down something else happens before you come back down something else before you come back down something else but eventually you're able to come back down to that resting rate and it might take a little bit of time but you can tolerate it another kind of tolerable stress is when we call concurrent stress there's something happening that will not end anytime soon like financial problems or someone that you love is sick and you know it's going to take some time with along with your daily life and so those things are happening at the same time so it takes longer but we call that tolerable stress the kind of stress that's really dangerous for for people is toxic stress oops sorry toxic stress looks like this do you anticipate something's going to happen the event happens and the next thing and the next thing and the next thing and you pretty much live up here and you've forgotten that this is your normative arresting place and you've now normalized this as your resting space so then you're just stressed out on a higher level and toxic stress is so Insidious because you've normalized this way of being and a lot of times we're in such denial that we're there it takes another person saying there's hey are you okay or our bodies tend to start to shut down or their bodies let us know this is too much like toxic stress is responsible for a lot of different physical ailments and so it's important to think about stress in these ways and also not to judge yourself I have been in all of these stress responses and I have training and I study this stuff and I'm still human and so when you think about not judging yourself but being curious what led me to get to that place what helps me come down from stress how does that how do how how do I acknowledge when this happens not deny it and we think about what stress responses typically look like when we get stressed out it's that constant working against deadlines it's always what's next and someone even had put that in the slido like constantly working work that never ends and never being able to be like okay I can take a breath for a minute I can regroup also involvement in dysfunctional relationships tend to cause a lot of stress and we tend to think about relationships as in our personal lives but a lot of times at work we spend more time with people at work than we do at home and dysfunctional relationships in our work environment or with clients can create a lot of stress for people also a chronic need to prove yourself I always have to be right I always have to be on have to be perfect this has to be 100 all the time that's exhausting and creates a lot of stress and then the inability to say no which for so many people is difficult just uttering the words no I can't or that won't work for me it's hard for a lot of us to say no and that causes stress and then lack of support from others not just getting it but usually a lot of people have a hard time asking for help asking for what they need telling other people what kind of support would be helpful because it's considered weak if we couldn't do it on our own and so this is a big thing that causes stress lack of support from others getting it and giving it and then real life like pick any of these things stress right any of these things and then also when we think about how we do our jobs now there used to be a time where you would go to work come home and you didn't have something in your pocket ringing and you didn't have emails to answers you'd be done with work and now we're constantly on answering emails and getting on slack and doing whatever thing that all times of day or night like when does our job end and our life begin and sometimes it's very conflated and also how we live our lives now we have constant access to news feeds and information and videos and updates and all the tweets and all the Facebook post and on the Instagram that you could want but how we live our lives now go faster do more that causes stress and so we have to consider this when we're thinking about why we might be in a stress response these things are really valid and again we're not superheroes and we're not so unique that we don't get affected by these things we're human beings Being Human they're very unique but you're not that special and you're very very much human so one other thing I want to talk about a little bit with stress is that stress can be a huge trigger and when we talk about triggers it's any kind of thing that makes you feel a certain way it makes you respond in a certain way and stress and triggers tend to go hand in hand when you are more stressed out you tend to be triggered by things so I'm going to give you like a triggers again or a big bucket for a lot of things that can be used in different ways I'm going to give you a couple examples of what this could look like so you can see for yourself how how people might get triggered and this is a kind of a banana sign example but it's a true one and he's like what's happening and he's like look the dishes are saying it the dishes are saying it and I'm like he's like the dishes aren't really talking and I'm like but I feel like you're not respecting he's like I think the dishes are saying hey these aren't yours to do I have a different timeline for doing them they're going to get done I just got busy and I don't have the same priorities as you like I don't think the dishes said that right but it's an opportunity to notice in ourselves like some people that wouldn't trigger them for me it triggers anger and we think about triggers we usually feel them in our bodies first it could be um the smell of something the sight of something it could be an emotion that we see that we get from a movie and then it makes us think about something that happened to us so lots of things can trigger us into into a stress response there's also things that are external that can trigger us and it could be any of these things it could be anything like major life changes can trigger new tasks at work relationship difficulties again these are things outside yourself financial problems being too busy or having family issues those can be things that are outside and then at the same time internally things that can trigger Us in distress response are just unrealistic expectations of ourselves inability to accept uncertainty pessimism negative self-talk and perfectionism and perfectionism is huge for most people they have to be perfect and what I like to say to that is perfect is the enemy of good some things are just good enough right you don't have to be perfect to be really really good and not everything is calling for Perfection but sometimes we we trigger ourselves into stress response because we perceive we have to be perfect also there's the work of the the gotten an Institute which does a lot of work on emotional responses and relationships and sometimes feelings can trigger us and so when people feel powerless for example in a situation like something happened in a meeting where someone said well this is how we're going to do it and they didn't consult you that feeling can trigger to be like nobody likes me this job isn't for me and no one respects how I work and and you can make a whole story based on how you felt and some for some of us feeling something is unfair isn't as big of a trigger as feeling if someone blames us so we have to know ourselves to know what kinds of things trigger us but feelings can be a trigger for stress big time and I call these The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse when we feel judged when we feel jealous when we feel shame and when we feel guilt these are a lot of emotions that tend to trigger a stress response um in in human beings because we don't like the Judgment um the jealousy is is not a good emotion to stick with again that's the comparison game and comparison is the thief of everything not just Joy shaming someone and feeling guilty those things when you when you shame someone the internal dialogue tends to trigger a stress response when we feel guilty that we didn't do something these are things that human beings tend to to keep and hold on to and are really big feelings also what I want to leave for you in your handout when we're done with this is some time to reflect on some of the things we've learned so I've included some questions around this that just as you get to know yourself it might be helpful to write jot some of these things down and just and ask some simple questions so like what kinds of things tend to trigger you so for me like dishes people being late um when my kids borrow borrow stuff and don't put it back and then I'd have all sorts of things or my husband um when he when he doesn't pick up his phone when I say I'm gonna call you at this time like those kind of things can trigger me things do the things that trigger you tend to be more external internal so it's good to say is it stuff I'm carrying here or is it stuff in my environment and then what types of feelings tend to trigger you so that you can be aware when you're in those environments how you might be triggered so these are some questions I left in the handout and again just in some quiet time or reflecting time it can be good to think about for me what does it look like for me when I get triggered and usually if people say I don't know how to answer that I say well think about where you feel something in your body when something is not right when you get upset or hurt right where does it show up in your body first because that sometimes helps to know you're even having a trigger you get tense to your stomach hurt do you feel flush do you make some kind of phase do you what do your breathing get more shallow what what how does your body tend to respond that that can be good Clues those can be good clues for you and I want to offer you an idea to think about triggers too and I love this quote it's by a man named Victor Frankel he was a psychiatrist who was in the Nazi concentration camps and wrote a book called Man's Search for meaning he survived and wrote that book to talk about what human beings are capable of both the worst and the best of humanity and one thing that he said that was so powerful was this between stimulus and response there is a space so between the thing that happened and your response to it there is a space in that space is our power to choose our response if we're being thoughtful if we're being open if we're not in denial if we're realizing our humanness in that space is our power to choose our response and in our response lies our growth and our freedom and I love that middle line so much in that space is our power to choose our response we get to choose we have choice and it's important to remember that especially when we're dealing with compassion between burnout and stress okay and I know I'm kind of racing through things because I want to make sure we cover this I'm just checking my time I wanted to make sure that I give you some really ideas for building resilience so when you think about how do I build resilience now that I know what compassion fatigue burnout and stress look like it and I know what the markers for those are and I know how they're on a Continuum and I know what triggers are how do I deal with it what are some ideas for that so I hope to leave you some ideas for building resilience so that once you know about these things then you can overcome them handle them manage them heal from them whatever word you want to use the goal is that you don't stay stuck there that you move into living not just existing so I want to offer you some ideas for building resilience one of the first things that people tend to do when they're dealing with any kind of overwhelm is to get isolated and think I'm the only one who's experiencing this and and to to kind of think like no I can't talk to anyone or I can't share this this is ridiculous but one of the best things that we can do when we're dealing with compassion fatigue burnout and stresses to connect with others in meaningful ways other people that can support us can understand us people that like speak our language and anyone on this call speaks the language of fear free and what's so cool about that is in this community talking to each other connecting with other people that feel the same way can be very gratifying um in terms of healing also showing vulnerability which means saying I'm having a hard time or I'm not a superhero I'm just a human being being human I have I'm struggling like admitting that and being vulnerable enough to say the truth of what's going on with you is so powerful and coming out from behind the facades of who we think we have to be or our titles or our age or whatever it is that keeps us connecting in honest ways with people and it's hard to be to say well just be vulnerable you know and ask questions and because it can be scary and like reach out to people well who should I reach out to I understand it's scary to do that and we have to think about is every interaction when we are vulnerable is a risk and there are some environments where it's not safe for us to take a risk and so instead of just categorically saying you know this is a safe space um I never say that to you because I'm like you decide if it's a safe space you get to decide like not my magic words don't make it a safe space my actions do and time does and you decide if it's a safe space and if you just if you want to take that risk I think what you have to do then is what you call across the line of your comfort zone to make a decision to to talk to someone to engage with someone about what's going on with you and cross the line of your comfort zone we all know when we're getting to our comfort zone because I kind of we feel it like oh I'm about to do something I haven't done before and usually what happens when we do something that's outside of our comfort zone the first feeling that comes up is fear and fear is a cover emotion for so many other emotions what happens when we see fear we might actually be feeling anxious or overwhelmed or nervous but it doesn't mean we shouldn't do that thing but we see fear and we get scared instead of saying fear is a sign like oh I'm about to do something that's different for me okay thank you fear for letting me know that this is gonna be different there's a difference between if you're about to cross the line of your comfort zone and fear comes up that's one thing if danger comes up it's another you know the difference between fear and danger if danger comes up you go right back into your comfort zone and if it's just fear then you just think what am I doing in this moment what am I being told in this moment that would help me here's an indicator that I'm about to step over the line in my comfort zone doesn't mean I shouldn't necessarily do the thing connect with a person tell my truth make the change it's just that I'm doing something different and I like to think about this so I love this quote so much put up everything you want is on the other side of your fear what if it's on the other side everything you hope to do the changes you want to make the person you want to become is on the other side of that stepping out of your comfort zone to really Embrace what you need to do to make those changes and when we're another thing to think about using our mind is this idea of we all have skills abilities assets and strengths we tend to forget them when we have compassion fatigue burnout and stress we tend to forget hey I might not be doing great in these areas but I'm doing pretty good in these areas all right and I have this master but I also have this we tend to be really dualistic and are thinking yes no right wrong good bad it's all bad or it's all good instead of saying look this might be difficult but I also have these strengths or I'm handling it this way like being more compassionate and recognizing your skills abilities assets and strengths can be very helpful to your brain thinking like Oh I thought I got some skills and in a world that gives going forward all the time it is so busy another helpful tool can be this and this is a beautiful quote one never notices what has been done one can only see what remains to be done and this is such a powerful quote because usually when we're looking at a situation we don't see how far we've come we don't see how much progress we've made we don't tend to look back to to look ahead I call it step back to step forward sometimes we have to see all that we've accomplished to get some energy for the journey ahead instead of saying there's just more there's always more I'll never get there so I think really setting your brain in that space of I'm going to notice what has been done and I'm going to celebrate that and I'm going to enjoy that and I'm going to let myself be in that space so that I can I'm just burning myself out thinking I have to go go go all the time also sometimes we forget we have to remember that we have been over under and through things before we there'll be stories in your life where you're like oh I succeeded in that oh I remember when I overcame that oh this is how I got through that we have to remember that you have been over under and through lots of different changes and and things that have happened and struggles and hard things sometimes we forget when we're in a new one that we actually have skills and abilities that will help us get through also setting boundaries can be so valuable saying the word no I'm not interested in that right now that won't work for me I'm not prioritizing that right now any way you say that sending a boundary is so important and really boundaries are simply the limits and rules you have for yourself so when will I go to bed what kind of food do I want to eat how much social media do I want to consume and at what time boundaries that you set for yourself what topics I want to speak about um who I want to engage with or not like all the things that we think about the rules and limits we have for ourselves that keep us safe and that keep us mentally feeling like we're in a we're in a safe space and that we can own our preferences and opinions and thoughts and and how to do it in a way that protects our emotions and and doesn't overextend ourselves at the point of suffering or the point of giving too much or being exhausted or burning out also thinking about what value helped by so sometimes we aligning with your core values can be really helpful and then when your behavior is online with your values that's when you flourish when you're doing things aligning with your values and this is what I always say to myself which is ridiculous I know but I say a bad day as a therapist is better than a good day at Staples it's because I don't have anything against tables but I just don't want to be selling Office products for a corporation that's like the last thing I want to be doing so I'd rather experience a hard day as therapists and like live in that space than have a good day there so I think about my behaviors my values the work I get to do and the way I get to do it even on the hard days I feel so lucky that I get to be in that space and and thinking about sometimes when your values are not aligned with your behaviors or the work that you do that's when you can have a lot of stress and what I'd like to ask you on on the side I'm going to have a different open-ended question now what inspires you to keep going especially on the hard days when you think about the work you do why you're a part of this community what inspires you and I'm going to click back over to slido again hold on let me see if I can get there I'm gonna go to different states there we go hold on that's my account oh you can join there I got to the next place but I got to get to slido again so that's that question Chef Papa should be open-ended and it's the same QR code and the same thing and I have to get to that um hold on okay I have to start it so sorry for my technical my moment of tech here I can start it now here we go now it should be able to go what inspires you to keep going especially on the hard days and I expect to see a lot of pet answers up here all right and that's when you think dude what do we do in our jobs what do we do it for right and again what I like about this is it ranks that people say more than what it ranks like the numbers up there because there's so many people on this call will have a lot up there and it's good to see we're not alone in in what inspires us it's great to see that you've found this community at fear free that helps inspire you it's great to think you can talk to these people when it is hard it's great to think of this community as a resource for you to share to share your honest thoughts Mary do you mind sharing the um QR code again some folks it should be wait am I screen sharing it's not up on the screen right now no oh no thanks sir because I'm seeing it sorry hold on I'm seeing all your answers pop up I'm so glad you told me let me see what's wrong with what I'm doing hold on thank you for saying that here it is I'm sorry everybody I'm so sorry thanks for saying that I didn't realize that I wasn't on that screen with you all can you see it now yes looks perfect now okay good thank you for catching me I would have been looking at me for a long time and this is so beautiful to see all these answers I love them so much it makes me feel I'm impressed and I'm hopeful for the future when I say things like this because it it it's motivating and it's wonderful to think that this is the community what I'll do is as soon as this is over I'll come back to this page and scroll through if anyone wants to see um more of what people put um and I'll see if I can also send these answers as part of the link if I'll figure out if I can do that so you can see what other people what other people put there's so many of you on this call again I'll toggle back for this at the very end I want to honor your time and just finish this up real quick foreign so when you when you think when we learn all this information one of the main things I think people will say to themselves Well Carrie this was great you know thanks for this but you don't know my story you don't know who am I to deal with my compassion to take or my burnout and stress or be vulnerable or talk to people or get support who am I you know to actually live and not just suffer that is the worst question you could ask but who am I to is not the right question the right question is who are you not to you're somebody you have so much to give those answers that came up were so beautiful the world needs what you have to offer who are you not to and you can't share your gifts when you're living in compassion between burnout and stress that's not what we're supposed to be your suffering does not lead to better outcomes for you or anyone that you're trying to serve so the real thing is who are you not to and what I like to think about this my last animal reference I didn't realize how many animals I use on my talks until I start talking to fear free um my logo is a peacock for Knutson speaks for a reason um and it's because of this I think peacocks are beautiful and amazing and incredible creatures and just beautiful animals in every aspect right and when um my daughters were little they saw one at the zoo but is roaming freely and they hadn't seen a peacock just out and about and um when the peacock was near us it did this it went and my kids were like they got so like they didn't expect it and it made me think this is how people are we walk around with our feathers kind of down and we think like I'm pretty amazing and cool but I've got so much stress and compassion taking burnout and issues and tiredness and all the things that cause me stress I can't get big and the goal when you think about what your life is supposed to be about how could you be a person that's really living that's getting big not from ego like look at me I'm so great but from service how you're choosing to serve and you can't do the work you put on this world Earth to do if you're suffering and it's like just how do I get big from service not from ego and how do I take care of myself so that I have the strength and confidence and fortitude to be able to get big and so that's what I want you to think about how can I get big from service how can I keep myself strong how can I be thoughtful about what I need how can I get support when I need it so that I can actually be in a resilient space to manage stress and then the challenges that I'm going to face because we are going to face them and there's a great quote that says you can either go through change or you can grow through change and I think how are we growing in our lives how are we managing things how are we getting big from service and that's what I want to leave you with this idea of like you if you're dealing with compassion video brownish dress how does it limit your ability to do the things that you want to do that's why it's so important to take care of yourself identify your triggers get support in whatever ways that work for you and even coming to the seminar tonight I hope is helpful and some ways to start thinking about it if you want to connect with me after this I'm at Knutson speak on different social medias and I also have a podcast called get big out loud where I talk about ideas on applied psychology and how they can be used in real life so I have a podcast on my 34th episode I also have a QR code I will take you to my website it's also on the handout if you want to see more of what I'm about and then if you're ever in Denver I have a one-woman show that I do a couple times a year and it's around comedy and storytelling and it's a really fun show to see so if you're on my website when I do the show that information will come up as well and I encourage you to think about ways you can get big I encourage you to use things from today that will actually help you and I want to again say thank you so much for taking an hour of your of your life to come spend it with me learning about something that I hope will be valuable to you and I'll stop the share now and I'll leave it or take it over to you honey thank you so much Carrie your knowledge and expertise was so appreciated I saw so many folks in the chat you know supporting each other and just thanking you so much for all of the information you shared today um so we're running a little bit late on time which is not a problem we had some great information so we unfortunately won't be able to answer um any questions today but we will be sharing the recording with all of you so that recording will be shared via email within the next five business days and then it'll be available for viewing for two weeks after that so on behalf of fear free I want to say a huge thank you to Carrie and everyone who joined us today as I mentioned the recording will be available so look out for your emails and also look out for our follow-up email for an exclusive discount on your fear free memberships for a registration or renewal be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our newsletter for invitations to Future presentations our next webinar will be on September 12th and focus on preserving the human animal Bond you can register to attend on fearfreepets.com we hope you have a great evening and look forward to seeing you next time thank you again thanks everybody foreign