STORIES THAT RECONNECT in Rome
Ilaria Olimpico, our fellow social arts facilitator, will return to Rome to facilitate STORIES THAT RECONNECT: FROM INDIVIDUAL BURN OUT TO COLLECTIVE TRANSFORMATION a workshop dedicated to WOMEN working in the social, healthcare, and educational fields, with the intention to bring a particular perspective on burnout and compassion fatigue.
Ilaria Writes
When I wrote my final paper for the journey that led me to become a Focusing Trainer, I identified a trajectory of combining Focusing and Social Arts towards an action research to address the phenomenon of the so-called compassion fatigue:
“I have two action research hypotheses that guide me in the perspectives of using Focusing. The first hypothesis is: the well-being of people whose work is centered on relationships has reverberations throughout the system and becomes collective well-being. To promote it, it is essential to have tools to cultivate self-empathy and empathy. In my profession, I have worked with social workers, mediators, and cultural mediators, noticing how often they are subjected to conditions close to “burnout,” which would be more accurately defined as “compassion fatigue.” It is something that unites all people who perform caregiving work or work centered on relationships. Myself, facilitating workshops with women and men seeking asylum, I have experienced this sense of “compassion fatigue.” Empathetic listening to stories of wounds and injustice leaves people feeling drained, consumed, angry, and powerless.”
“I feel that introducing self-empathy tools is not enough to address compassion fatigue and burnout, but it is necessary to de-individualize feelings of fatigue, powerlessness, and pain, reconfigure them in the social and cultural context, and bring them back into the dimension of collective transformation.”
Vikki Reynolds has given words and shape to what I felt:
“The problem of burnout is not in our heads and hearts, but in the real world where there is a lack of justice. The people I work alongside do not lead me to burn out or hurt me, rather they transform me, stimulate me, and inspire me. What damages me are the injustices… suffered by my clients and my frustrating inability to personally change the unjust social structures they encounter and live in” (Reynolds, 2009).
In some way, for me, it is about bringing back the feminist phrase from the seventies: “The personal is political” in the context of burnout.
The workshop in Rome will be in Italian, and will be the first deep exploration but I can see there will be more opportunities to share this work also with an international community.
STORIES THAT RECONNECT
from individual burnout to collective transformation
Social Arts and Focusing Workshop
for WOMEN working in social, educational, healthcare fields
Saturday, June 1, 2024,
09:30 – 13:30 (UTC+02:00)
Rome
This workshop is dedicated to women who care, women who care about relationships and community, as individuals and professionals, in social, healthcare, and educational fields.
Through Social Arts and Focusing, we will explore how to:
- Celebrate our gifts, starting from gratitude
- Be present with what we feel with empathy
- Recognize the pain of injustices and violence in the world
- Co-create a safe space for sharing and possibility
- Emerge sustainable practices of support and collective transformation
