CE-CERT: Components for Enhancing Career Experience and Reducing Trauma

3712 Wichita St,Fort Worth TX 76119

23 June, 2022

Description

Compassion Fatigue. Burnout. Vicarious Trauma. Secondary Trauma. Terms that both overlap, and that are different in some ways. But all of these concepts have one thing in common: they describe the emotional toll that is exacted upon workers in the human services who deal intensively and empathically with persons who are in engaged in an emotional personal struggle. It is a privilege to work in a profession in which caring about those who suffer is the main tool of our work. But caring also takes a toll. Being close to ground zero when people struggle affects the emotional life of those of us who care. CE-CERT (Components for Enhancing Career Experience and Reducing Trauma) is a suite of skills to support emotional well-being in workers who are exposed to the effects of secondary trauma. But--as in Star Trek, “survival is insufficient.” Ultimately, the goal of CE-CERT is not merely to survive this work: Rather, the goal is to have a vocation that is uniquely and deeply satisfying.