Workshops

Mental health professionals are natural-born givers who make sense of the world through their feelings. But what happens when they give and give, particularly in times of crisis, and try to take care of themselves after they’ve taken care of everyone else? The result is burnout, a classic darkening of mood and motivation related to their work that also negatively impacts their personal lives.
This presentation will help mental health professionals differentiate between burnout and its companion syndromes so they can understand the role of internalized administrative expectations and working conditions in putting a practitioner at risk for ethics violations and/or career abandonment. Fortunately, these outcomes are optional, though self-care tips and tricks are seldom enough to defend against them.
What’s needed instead is a global/holistic solution that helps the person of the therapist revive creative mental processes so they can generate adaptive, rather than habitual, responses to their experiences. Attendees thus will be introduced to a conceptual model that supports integrative choices for moving beyond self-care and developing resilience in the face of burnout. Using this model as a framework, attendees will begin to examine their own self-care strategies so they can celebrate strengths and address challenges in their quest to live—and practice—optimally.

About Megan VanMeter

Megan VanMeter is a board-certified registered art therapist with clinical licenses in Arizona (licensed professional counselor), Indiana (licensed mental health counselor), and Texas (licensed professional counselor with the art therapy specialty designation and board-approved supervisor status). Of these, she is most proud of her Texas license! Megan is especially interested in burnout prevention, intervention, and postvention for helping professionals and has a virtual private practice where she provides art therapy to support these special people. Her experiences in behavioral health, correctional, educational, medical, and social services settings exposed her to the wide world of burnout and led her to question the training process of helpers, which doesn’t address knowledge and skills in the area of burning bright throughout one’s career.
She has served the art therapy profession through board and committee work at local, regional, and national levels. A scholar at heart, Megan enjoys doing research, giving presentations, and writing about an integrative, pantheoretical model developed by her graduate professors in the ‘70s and embraced by current art therapists for its relevance to contemporary advances in neuroscience. One day her writings will finally be published! In the meantime, she uses this model to ground her practice and guide her efforts to educate others about burnout.

Objectives:

• define the differences between burnout, compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization, and secondary traumatic stress.
• describe the ethical ramifications of burnout and its impact on professional practice.
• identify personal strengths and challenges in self-care strategies for defending against burnout.
• name a pantheoretical model that supports integrative choices for moving beyond self-care and developing resilience in the face of burnout.
• explain how integration, resilience, and creativity relate to living—and practicing—optimally

Tickets Available Here

Limited student scholarships available

1.25 CEU Credits provided for live attendance