Self-care can help prevent burnout and compassion fatigue, but not all forms of “self-care” are restorative and helpful.
In fact, sometimes the responsibility of self-care can become an additional burden in difficult times. It can lead us to choose performative activities that don’t address the harmful stress we’re experiencing and become one more thing we have to do.

Is it an act of self-care to get up off the couch and go for a walk, or to find a blanket and stay on the couch? Either of these actions could be self-care, so how do we know which would be most restorative for us on any given day? Is self-care always an activity? We might book a massage, and then feel stress driving in traffic, finding parking, and sitting in the waiting room, when it may have been more restorative for us to stay home and take a nap or call a friend.

In this workshop hosted by the BC Council for Families, participants will learn how to personalize self-care practices, and to distinguish between restorative and performative self-care. We’ll learn to identify ‘stress cycles’ in our personal and professional lives, and examine the link between these cycles and burnout. With reference to self-compassion and boundary practice, we’ll do a deep dive into the real work of caring for ourselves when our job is to care for others.

Workshop Highlights

Identifying and understanding restorative self-care, burnout and the stress cycle
Assessing our current self-care across various dimensions of health
Supporting yourself and others in sustainable practice
Practice examples and scenarios