Overview

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.

However, 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 ten 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 day of support 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.

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this workshop participants will be able to:

• Identify the key features of burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral distress, and how the COVID pandemic is impacting these in health providers
• Identify, describe, and distinguish clinician experiences of empathy, sympathy, compassion, and personal distress and how they function in clinical work
• Identify 12 resilience-enhancing strategies for helping professionals working with people facing grief, loss, trauma, and life-threatening illness

Presenter: Dale Larson, PhD

Dale G. Larson (B.A., University of Chicago, Ph.D, U.C. Berkeley) is Professor of Counseling Psychology and Director of the Graduate Health Psychology Program at Santa Clara University. A clinician and researcher, he is a Fulbright Scholar, a Fellow in the American Psychological Association, and was Senior Editor and a contributing author for Finding Our Way: Living with Dying in America, the national newspaper series that reached 7 million Americans. His publications on end-of-life issues, stress in professional caregivers, grief and grief counseling, and self-concealment are widely cited, both in the scientific literature and in the popular media. He is the author of The Helper's Journey: Empathy, Compassion and the Challenge of Caring (2020), a winner of a Book of the Year Award in the American Journal of Nursing Award Program. Dr. Larson was the International Educator for the Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement in 2017 and in 2016 received ADEC’s Death Educator Award.

Who should attend?

• Any member of a helping profession
• Graduate student in an accredited health or mental health program

Ticket Information

Professional Registration Fee: $175.00

Student Registration Fee: $87.50

Registration to this event is offered on a first-come, first-serve basis. Our workshops have sold out in the past so register early and take advantage of our early bird rate on professional registrations. All registration sales are online only.

CE Information

The Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia School of Social Work is recognized by the New York State Education Department's State Board for Mental Health Practitioners as an approved provider of continuing education for NYS licensed social workers (provider #0021) and licensed mental health counselors (#MHC-0104). This program is approved for 6.5 continuing education contact hours.

The Center for Complicated Grief at Columbia School of Social Work is approved by the American Psychological Association to sponsor continuing education for psychologists. The Center for Complicated Grief maintains responsibility for this program and its content.

Refund and Transfer Policy

Fees will be refunded less a processing fee including EventBrite fees, if written notification by the Center for Complicated Grief (training@complicatedgrief.columbia.edu) is received by one week prior to the workshop date. After this time, registrations will not be refunded.

If written notification is received by the Center for Complicated Grief (training@complicatedgrief.columbia.edu) 24 hours prior to the workshop date, we can provide transfer credit less a processing fee to another one of our workshops, these do not include CSSW OPE. There will be no exceptions to this policy.

Special Accommodations and Grievance Policy

For information on special accommodations or our grievance policy, click here.