Alternative ways to look at Vicarious Trauma & Worker Burnout: The Zone of Fabulousness
Channel: Vikki Reynolds Phd.
Date: 2020-07-02

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**CAUTION- This video includes a description of SEXUAL ABUSE**
Resisting burnout with justice-doing reflects an activist position for staying alive in our work. Vicarious trauma can focus on ways our clients’ pain infect us with hopelessness, yet often our clients inform, transform, educate, provoke and educate us. The harms in our work most often stem from structures that are oppressive and don’t allow for the resources needed to respond to human suffering. When we are able to enact our ethics, even when it is heartbreaking, sustainability becomes possible. However, working against our ethics leads to spiritual pain or ethical pain, which is a better way to understand the harms workers experience. If we can enact collective care, as opposed to only self-care, sustainability becomes possible, and we can act in solidarity to shoulder each other up as workers in the dark spaces of our work.

Resources: 

Reynolds, V. (2019).  The Zone of Fabulousness: Resisting vicarious trauma with connection, collective care and justice-doing in ways that centre the people we work alongside. Context. August 2019, Association for Family and Systemic Therapy, UK, 36-39. https://vikkireynoldsdotca.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/2019-context-uk-zone-of-fabulousness-reynolds.pdf

Reynolds, V. (2011). Resisting burnout with justice-doing. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work. (4) 27-45. https://vikkireynoldsdotca.files.wordpress.com/2017/12/reynolds2011resistingburnoutwithjustice-doingdulwich.pdf

Reynolds, V. (2019) Justice-Doing at The Intersections of Power: Community Work, Therapy and Supervision. Dulwich: Adelaide Australia https://www.amazon.com.au/Justice-Doing-Intersections-Power-Vikki-Reynolds/dp/0648154521

Workshop Exercises:

Zone of Fabulousness Workbook https://vikkireynoldsdotca.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/zof_digital.pdf

Zone of Fabulousness Workbook – for printing as a booklet https://vikkireynoldsdotca.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/zof_booklet-printable.pdf