Compassion Resilience Toolkit For Health and Human Services

What Are We Talking About?

Section 2
Introduction

In the first section we underscored that compassionate action requires intent and skill. This section of the toolkit provides further definitions that are foundational to all else found throughout the toolkit. We will be introduced to the wellness model we will use in the toolkit and the concept of compassion fatigue. Activities will help us explore our beliefs about self-care and self-compassion.

Applications

Key Activity

Fatigue and Resilience in the Wellness Compass – Reflection

Wellness Practice

STRENGTH and MIND: Want More Energy? Consider Gratitude!
Practicing being grateful, among many other benefits, increases your energy. It turns out that our minds are wired to focus on the negative as a survival strategy. The three good things practice helps rewire your brain to notice the good in your life. You can start now by thinking of three things for which you are grateful and what role you had in them. Research shows writing them down has a longer positive effect on your wellbeing.
Then choose a time of day, every day, to set your mind on gratitude. Give it time, enjoy exploring gratefulness. Hopefully you too will find added positive energy for the important work you do.

If you want to take this concept further, see what the Greater Good Science Center suggests.

Circle Agenda

Staff Circle Agenda, Section Two

Core Content Visual

Self-Compassion – Use this Visual and Display in Staff Break Areas
Posting this visual in common staff areas will serve as a reminder of content covered to staff and perhaps serve as a future conversation started for deeper reflection among staff members.

Supplementary Activities/Handouts

What Were Your Childhood Messages About Self-Care?
This is an activity you could facilitate with your teams in addition to or in place of the circle agenda to explore personal messages about self-care.

Self-Compassion Scale
This activity supports content covered in the Core Content Visual and document to distribute listed in the Information Section of the toolkit. The Self-Compassion Scale is also referenced in Section 11.

Establishing New Self-Care Habits

For Easy Printing

You can find all documents in this section included in this pdf for easy printing. 
The documents included are numbered individually, not as one document.

Links

Links Specifically for Leadership

Conversations about Compassion
This conversation guide outlines five different conversations related to compassion and gives the resources needed to facilitate these in small groups. In section one you were asked to facilitate a discussion with the leadership team about the instinct humans have to be compassionate. For this section, facilitate a conversation with the leadership team and/or other small group or team within your school on the third topic, self-compassion. As a substitute, you can use the Kristin Neff article for the basis of your group discussion.

Leadership Considerations specific to Self-compassion – Youtube
With self-compassion comes a lot of practice. This leader explains how they discuss and promote self-compassion to and throughout their team.

Additional Resources

Self-compassion article, Dr. Kristin Neff
This article give more information on self-compassion according to Dr. Kristin Neff.

For the animal lovers among us, this blog provides a wonderful overview of compassion resilience in the context of those who work in animal rescue.

My Mental Health Ritual: Self-Compassion and Setting Boundaries – Talkspace

This article looks at the important relationship between boundaries and self-compassion.