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Compassion Fatigue & The Therapist

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There is a new phrase emerging in the psychotherapy community. It's "Compassion Fatigue". What does this mean? Why is it happening? What does it say about the nature of the "help" many therapists, who are succumbing to it, are actually affording their clients, if any? What can and needs to be done about it?

In order to answer many of these questions I will draw on my own personal experience of having been a psychiatrist/psychotherapist for almost 20 years and for having been directly affected by "compassion fatigue".

Much of my training was in traditional psychotherapeutic modalities i.e. analytical psychotherapy, interpersonal therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, as well as more alternative forms of therapy such as analytical hypnotherapy, imagery work and EMDR. My journey, as I think is the journey of most therapists, has been to find the most effective modality for my clients. The list I gave above is some indication of the time and energy I spent trying to achieve this end.

What was the net result of my efforts however? Well, in truth, over my 20 odd years in practice I found my emotional and physical energy becoming progressively drained. So much so that I developed what some might call Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. What I came to recognize it as however was a state of "Spiritual Life Energy Depletion" (SLED for short).

My case of SLED is what I believe many therapists are now calling Compassion Fatigue. So what is SLED?

Well it's just what it implies, a depletion of my spiritual life energy. Another way of saying that is that I was less and less present in my physical body because my "life energy" had been used up. Now since I am my life energy and my life energy is me that's equivalent to saying that "I was used up".

Hence the clients who were coming into to my office were (knowingly or unknowingly) essentially using up my life energy to sustain themselves. In the meanwhile I was being drained, being used up, or more dramatically I was dying! That's what it means for one's life energy to be drained or used up.

After I realized that this is not where I wanted to be I had to do some serious soul searching to understand what I had gotten myself into. I was of the mind that helping others was supposed to help one feel uplifted, joyful, content, fulfilled, energized, alive and loving life. Well clearly this wasn't happening to me. In my view, it probably is an illusion that many therapists are still futilely searching for. In the process they too are being "used up"! Therefore we now have "Compassion Fatigue".

On reflection I had the following insights:

1. I had to find a way out of this negative energy vortex that was killing me.

2. I had to reassess my definition of what it meant to "help" others.

3. I had to find a new direction which was aligned with a more honest definition of what it meant to truly "help others". One that was positive for both client and facilitator (I now no longer use the term therapist in relation to this new approach because it reflects a construct from the old tradional approach which I no longer entertain).

So I made the only decision (which some have said was courageous, but in my view was the only one I could make) and that was to leave behind everything I had spent most of my life working towards, my career.

On reflecting on the nature of "helping others" in a genuine way I developed a new approach which I call the Mind Resonance Process(TM) (MRP). MRP is an approach to helping others which diverges from the notion underlying my traditional training (i.e. that the way to help is to sustain your clients with your life energy, even if most therapists don't even realize that this is what they are doing) and which supports both client and facilitator in what is essentially true about each of them.

This goes something like this:

Both facilitator and client are Divine Beings. The only thing that keeps them from recognizing this and living this are the conditioned beliefs that they carry about themselves and others. MRP is a tool that assists clients in releasing such conditioned beliefs thereby allowing them to remember and re-experience their true Divine Nature.

As one undergoes the MRP experience they reconnect to their own Life Energy in such a way that they no longer feel a need to "suck" life energy from the "therapist' or others, for that matter, in order to go on functioning and living.

Another way of seeing what is going on here is that rather than individuals buying into the notion that life energy is limited (and therefore can only be secured from someone else) that instead it is avaliable in abundance and is accessible directly through an experience of one's Divine Self. One just needs to find it there within them. This is the power of MRP.

The net result for both facilitator and client post MRP is that both experience a rise in their energy level, a greater feeling of aliveness, a feeling of lightness, a greater feeling a inner peace and calmness, greater emotional resilience, greater feelings of love and compassion, more inspired and able to reclaim control over every aspect of their lives and so much more.

In my view this experience, which I have repeatedly with clients is what I had always been looking for, for my self and others.

If you are a therapist suffering from something akin to Compassion Fatigue or an individual looking for a new experience of being helped kindly visit the web link below for an introductory consultation with MRP.

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