Topic Tuesday // Staying safe while supporting others // April 18, 7pm AEST

@Phoenix_Rising the problem is, unless it is a professional or someone who has had reason to know any of the "self care" stuff... that person may not even have known exactly what they were diving into.

I know this because I did it. I only learnt because the issue forc*ed me to research, and that only happened because I myself became almost catatonic as a result of it.

Sometimes it seems we just have to learn things because we suddenly realise we need to learn things we didn't even know we needed to learn.

Now work that one out! 😛

sometimes self care measures seem to be so... inadequate.

@Odette, @Shaz51, I think I've had compassion fatigue as well as burnout too. But with the compassion fatigue, it seems to just require me to take time out and come back later. As you said, @NikNik, it seems to take less time with compassion fatigue to be able to find new energy after it. Burnout seems like it has taken away some part of my life force every time it's happened. And it seems very hard for me to recover from.

Hello @Former-Member

So for the last hour, I thought we could look at boundaries & also a frame work for self care planning.

Again, the following istext heavy. Don't rush, we will be looking at boundaries until 8:30pm (AEST).

Boundaries are involved with how we treat others, how they treat us, and how we treat ourselves. Here are several reasons that it is important to develop and maintain healthy personal boundaries:

• Helps us to know ourselves and what is important and meaningful for each of us as individuals.
• Teaches us to have respect for ourselves and others.
• Teaches us to be responsible for our behavior when interacting with others.
• Helps us to be assertive about our personal needs.
• Helps reduce the chance of being in a situation that could be harmful to us.
• Helps us to be more accepting of others by recognizing their personal boundaries.

How to establish boundaries.

Here are some questions to ask yourself

Q1. What I will and won’t engage in (what do I find triggering, frustrating, makes me angry?)

Q2. When do I offer support? How I can be in control of when I offer support? (structured time on the Forums, allocate time to call this person when you’re in a good state of mind, allocate time to not being with the person who I'm supporting)

Q3. What type of support can I offer? What can I offer that won’t compromise my own wellbeing?

You may have different answers to this on a week to week / month to month / person to person basis. I think the most important one is Q1 - as this is unlikely to shift significantly, though it may be added to.

Does anyone want to share their answers to the above questions?

Are there any questions there that people think are important?

How can we deal with long term burnout and compassion fatuige? It feels like it is eating a hole deeper into me every day.