Self-Care
Secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and vicarious trauma are true hazards of the work that we do. Therefore, it is critically important to provide education, activities, and resources to the school and community mental health professionals in order to prevent and/or mitigate signs and symptoms. Project Fleur-de-lis has commited to making self care a priority and thus has woven it into all aspects of our team and programming.
Project Fleur-de-lis has done this in a variety of ways: (1) use our email list server to distribute helpful resources, websites and trainings; (2) utilize social media to share additional resources and connections; (3) choose annual self-care themes and distribute resources and reminders at our ongoing continuing education presentations to model and to remind school mental health professionals to take care of themselves every single day; (4) incorporating self care discussions and activities into our team meetings, our evidence-based consultation meetings and all of our trainings.
“Taking care of ourselves is often the first thing to be put on the back burner when life gets busy, but it should be a top priority. We cannot take care of others well when we are not in the right physical or mental state. By building self-care into our language and routine, we create a culture where self-care is part of our foundation and we can hold each other to high standards of well being.”