Supporting the Wounded Educator

A Trauma-Sensitive Approach to Self-Care

Dardi Hendershott, Joe Hendershott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367429287
• eBook ISBN: 9781000030358
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Personal Success

Educators today are facing challenges and demands like never before. The tensions between an educator's calling and the reality of the profession can create a growing sense of compassion fatigue, burnout, and job dissatisfaction. In light of this context, this book brings firsthand knowledge alongside research to encourage, equip, and empower teachers and other K-12 educators to find relief and hope. Taking a trauma-sensitive approach, this important resource will help you navigate the pressures of being an educator, whether you entered into your profession carrying wounds with you, have felt wounded from your work environment, or you are simply someone trying to support others. Packed with doable strategies and suggestions for personal and professional self-care, this book will help you discover a personal journey towards holistic health, job satisfaction, and most importantly, hope!

Secondary Trauma: The Struggle Is Real

We were licensed foster parents for several years. One day, Dardi left with our foster daughter to attend a scheduled parent visitation at the child services agency only to return many hours later with not one, but three little girls in tow. While sitting in the waiting room, she was approached by a social worker asking if we would be willing to accept a temporary, emergency placement of two little girls diagnosed with neglect and failure to thrive. Dardi, being Dardi, agreed. When the court appointment finally came well after dark, the children were transported from the hospital emergency room to where my wife was waiting with the van. The social worker quickly transferred two car seats, one containing a six-month-old and the other a two-year-old, from the county car into my wife's vehicle so she could get everyone on their way. Each child was tucked into their respective car seat under a blanket, and Dardi recalls giving each baby a quick kiss on the forehead before buckling in for the drive home. When she finally arrived home and unloaded the babies, what she saw underneath those blankets will forever be imprinted on her heart and mind. There are no words to describe their physical condition or the blank look in their eyes. To this day, she cannot speak about it without a catch in her throat and tears in her eyes.

This is what secondary (sometimes referred to as vicarious) trauma looks like, and for most educators, the details might be different, but the tragic stories and circumstances are on repeat with new names and new faces every single school year. As children enter our school buildings carrying with them their adverse experiences and wounds, we cannot help but be impacted by them. At the same time, these very children whose stories break our hearts can also be the source of frustration as we try to find creative pathways around the often negative attitudes and behaviors rooted in their stories. Our relationships with these wounded students can feel like a never-ending emotional obstacle course.

Over the years, we've come across a multitude of definitions for secondary trauma, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout. Early on, most definitions were geared toward professionals in the medical and mental health fields as well as social workers. The realization has finally come that we must acknowledge the validity of these experiences within the scope of education. For the purposes of this book, we have narrowed down the definitions that seem most applicable within the context of educational environments.

According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (n.d.), secondary trauma is defined as:

…the emotional duress that results when an individual hears about the firsthand trauma experiences of another. Each year more than 10 million children in the United States endure the trauma of abuse, violence, natural disasters, and other adverse events. These experiences can give rise to significant emotional and behavioral problems that can profoundly disrupt the children's lives and bring them in contact with child-serving professionals. For therapists, child welfare workers, case managers, and other helping professionals involved in the care of traumatized children and their families, the essential act of listening to trauma stories may take an emotional toll that compromises professional functioning and diminishes quality of life. Individual and supervisory awareness of the effects of this indirect trauma exposure is a basic part of protecting the health of the worker and ensuring that children consistently receive the best possible care from those who are committed to helping them.

The very nature of an educator is to be influential and involved in the lives of their students, but what they don't typically tell you in your studies and preparation for being an educator is that the street of influence goes both ways. The return on our investment into young lives and minds is not always neat and tidy. Remen (1996) states, “The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet.” If we are lucky, we get to see bits of success in the form of “light bulb” moments, growing confidence and esteem, the ever popular “good data,” and so forth, but sometimes that return is in the form of a knowing and seeing that we didn't necessarily sign up for. Wounded children have lots of broken pieces. How many of you have picked up and carried a broken piece or twenty along the way for your students? We thought so. This is secondary trauma.

Compassion Fatigue

Unresolved secondary trauma can manifest itself as compassion fatigue. Merriam-Webster online defines compassion fatigue as “the physical and mental exhaustion and emotional withdrawal experienced by those who care for sick or traumatized people over an extended period of time.” Simply stated by Dr. Charles R. Figley (1995), it is the “cost of caring” for others in emotional pain. Simply stated by Joe Hendershott, we're all in trouble, right? That's our reality folks: We are educators, we care, and the cost is high. Everywhere we speak, we pose two questions: How many of you are compassionate? How many of you are tired? In response to both questions, the majority of hands go up. Those broken pieces we pick up and carry can accumulate over time and become a load too heavy to bear, which leads us down the road of compassion fatigue. Figley further states, “We have not been directly exposed to the trauma scene, but we hear the story told with such intensity, or we hear similar stories so often, or we have the gift and curse of extreme empathy and we suffer. We feel the feelings of our clients. We experience their fears. We dream their dreams. Eventually, we lose a certain spark of optimism, humor and hope. We tire. We aren't sick, but we aren't ourselves” (1995).

Several years ago at a conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Joe decided to bring up compassion fatigue in one of his sessions. At the conclusion of the session, a woman who had been in education for thirty-six years approached him crying. She said the minute he started talking about compassion fatigue, she identified her struggle. She had confided in some people in her professional and friendship circles that she was feeling off and just didn't know what was wrong with her, but she became frustrated because everyone said she was burnt out. She said, “How can I be burnt out? I still have more to give. I still want to work, I still want to make a difference.” We'll talk more about burnout in a bit, but therein lies a big difference. When individuals are experiencing compassion fatigue, they are indeed tired, but they tend to keep forging ahead, determined to keep doing what they do. Sadly, a person with compassion fatigue may still be performing, but the feelings of purpose, satisfaction, accomplishment, and joy are on the absence list. We don't want that, so let's start by looking at some possible indicators of compassion fatigue. Mind you, this is not an exclusive list, and PLEASE—we cannot emphasize this enough—if you are experiencing any of these or other symptoms that may not be listed to an extreme that leaves you feeling debilitated, seek help from a professional. There is absolutely no shame in consulting with an expert to overcome anything that is keeping you from living and experiencing life at its fullest.

Some of the indicators that might point to compassion fatigue:

• Physically or mentally/emotionally tired
• Overwhelmed by students' needs
• Overwhelmed by ordinary tasks
• Withdrawing or isolating
• Irritability over “small stuff”
• Pessimistic or cynical outlook regarding self, others, and/or situations
• Feelings of helplessness and hopelessness
• Blaming and/or complaining becomes the substance of most conversations
• Disrupted sleep
• Abusing drugs, alcohol, or food
• Difficulty concentrating
• A sense of dread or anxiety
• Increased absences or chronically late to work
• Inability to maintain balance of empathy and objectivity
• Expressions of low self-esteem and low self-worth

There are obvious reasons that we need to recognize and combat compassion fatigue on a personal level. None of us wants to live in a state of being that leaves us feeling depleted and without a hope and enthusiasm for our chosen profession. However, there's also a bigger picture reason we need to address compassion fatigue: indifference. Compassion fatigue left unaddressed can lead to indifference, and the more we've read and the more we've studied, we believe indifference is at the root of many societal ills, including the acts of violence that we are hearing about all too often in our schools and communities. Indeed, indifference may be the result of a sort of coping mechanism in the face of compassion fatigue, but if we desire that the young minds and hearts we influence on a daily basis have compassion and empathy, it is critical that we guard our own selves from reaching a tipping point that leads us to a place of being indifferent to our jobs and students, let alone our personal relationships. McDonald (2007) states:

What is indifference? Where hope and hopelessness are full of emotion, indifference lacks it. Where hope and hopelessness often demand some kind of human action, indifference stifles it. Where hope and hopelessness are heartfelt, indifference has no heart. Where hope and hopelessness epitomize our deepest humanity, indifference diminishes it. Its qualities are carelessness, thoughtlessness, mindlessness, feelinglessness, and perhaps even, humanlessness. It is this diminished human state that creates the potential for personal and global catastrophe because indifferent people stand by idle and do nothing often with a callous and cowardice. Therefore, I suggest that one's state of indifference is an ignorant intersection of vacuity and numbness which reveals itself most conspicuously as apathy.

You might be thinking, “Whoa, guys, that's a bit extreme, isn't it?” No, it really isn't. We cannot tell you the number of times that people have told us they feel like they are growing numb to everything and everyone and just going through the motions. This is detrimental beyond words to humanity on the whole, but even more to the heart of an educator. Marlow states, “I discovered that compassion fatigue is a real thing. Emotions, so strong at first, can easily shift into apathy. The subsequent guilt is paralyzing; it can prevent us from ever doing anything and freeze us into inaction. No wonder some people live for themselves, unaware of or unengaged with those who desperately need help. When global problems overwhelm, the human tendency is to do nothing” (2016). Indifference robs an educator of the very essence of who they are and why they chose to teach and mentor young people: To make a difference, to possibly be the difference in their students' li...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Meet the Authors
• 1 Secondary Trauma: The Struggle Is Real
• 2 The Wounded Educator
•  Pause
• 3 Creating a Vision for Change
• 4 Personal Strategies for Self-Care
• 5 Community Connection: Professional Strategies for Self-Care
• Concluding Thoughts
• Appendix