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Broadcast Conference
Summary No. 3
December 9, 2004
PREVENTING COUNSELOR BURN-OUT
Managing Stress the Healthy Way
Protecting Your Priorities
Multiplying Your Efforts With Advisory Committees
Topic: Managing Stress the Healthy Way
Presenter: Sherry Iverson, St. Luke's Regional Medical Center, Boise, Idaho
Email: iversons@slrmc.org
Tel: 208-381-3033
Summary:
Sherry explained that the main reason people go to physicians is due to stress-related illnesses – noting that 150 symptoms are caused by stress. To illustrate how stress affects our personal lives, Sherry compared life today with life 200 years ago. She asked: what was life like 200 years ago? How would your body respond? You might live in a tent or cabin, wake up by your senses, and slowly bring them up to speed. If you went out to the river to fetch water and encountered a bear, you would immediately respond to him as a stressor. In that instant your body changes: your heart rate increases, eye sight becomes excellent, smell and hearing are heightened, and your blood pressure would go up – all these bodily responses help you move quickly away from danger. Afterwards, you breathe a sigh of relief and your body goes through a normal process of calming down.
In the modern world, the bears we fight are not real bears. We probably woke up to an alarm clock, jumped out of bed, made coffee, ate breakfast and performed a number of tasks within a short time. We jumped into our cars and drove through traffic. Our stress response was probably triggered 5-6 times before we ever got to work. Work is stressful and we return home after work to even more stressors. Our body has no time to calm down. It was not meant to operate in such a constant high adrenalin state.
Although you can’t get rid of stress, you can manage how you respond to it. Sherry suggested two ways to manage stress:
On a daily basis, spend twenty (20) minutes in a relaxing activity that allows your body to return to a non-stress state. It might be reading, gardening, playing the piano, walking, etc. It’s important to do it every day!
Throughout the day do what you can do to break up the stress: walk around the block, drink a glass of water, or sing a song.
Sherry described a client with high blood pressure who was referred to her. Sherry discovered that this woman liked horses. She “prescribed” 20 minutes of horse-brushing every day. The woman returned home and reluctantly began to brush her horse. By Day #5, her family was bringing the brush to her. By Day #10, she wanted to ride her horse again. Her blood pressure dropped. Sherry’s final advice to listeners was to “find the horse in your life!”
Topic: Protecting Your Priorities
Presenter: Lisa Horan, Educational Consultant, Lewiston, Idaho
Email: encourager@cableone.net
Tel: 208-743-4825
Summary:
Lisa described counselors as people who look for strengths in others, offer a listening ear and transform lives; but sometimes they have difficulty saying “no.” As work loads increase, effectiveness goes down. To remain effective, it's important to set priorities and know who you are.
Lisa described an activity to help counselors or their students and clients set priorities:
First take a sheet of paper (or sticky notes) and write down 10 priorities;
Next, give up three of those priorities (this is difficult to do);
Give up three more priorities (even more difficult to do!);
Give up one more;
That leaves the top three things you cannot give up.
Focus your activities on those priorities and let go of the rest.
Another activity Lisa uses to illustrate the frustrations of multiple demands:
Form a circle with 5-6 individuals
Instruct the participants to throw the bean bag (or some other object) around the circle, insuring that everyone participates. Participants must throw to the same person and catch from the same person each time. Do this repeatedly until everyone gets into the flow and it becomes easy.
Add another bean bag – keep two flying in the same pattern.
Add another – keep all three flying in the same pattern
Continue adding until there are 5 or 6 bean bags flying around the group.
(Usually by now there is complete chaos.)
Stop and process the experience
One bean bag = easy, fun, quickly becomes boring
Lisa likened this activity to how we manage multiple tasks in our lives. Once we are trying to balance more than five items, we produce busy-ness but not much fruit.
Lisa’s advice:
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Know yourself. When do I have the greatest impact? What do I need to do to bring the greatest good? Prioritizing will help identify the top activities that make the greatest impact.
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Be fearless. Work in a team and ask how we together can make the greatest impact. It doesn’t help to do lots ineffectively; better to do less effectively.
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Make each day a masterpiece day. Focus on today and what you can do to make it the best.
Topic: Multiplying Your Efforts with Advisory Committees
Presenter: Donna Sipe, Counselor, Wood River High School, Hailey, Idaho
Email: dsipe@blaineschools.org
Tel: 208-578-5020
Summary:
Donna began by sharing an observation that counseling has changed over the years. Counselors are doing more administrative tasks and are becoming the “catch-all” for everything in the school. Four or five years ago, counselors and staff at Blaine County School District got together and formulated their own comprehensive counseling program. They used models from Idaho, Arizona and the national level. They evaluated their program, listed duties and analyzed jobs (which were different in each school). Then they re-aligned jobs functions to be consistent with a successful comprehensive counseling program.
Next, they established an advisory committee, made up of representatives from elementary, middle and high schools. It included teachers, counselors, community representatives, parents, social workers, etc. There were 20-30 people on the committee and the meetings were huge. They provided a great deal of input but it was very general.
Recently, they established a high school advisory group which is much smaller. The committee meets two-three times/year and looks at what is needed for the school and the community. For example, at Wood River High School, increasing enrollments and increasing numbers of minority students present new challenges to be addressed. The committee also reviews program goals and competencies. They make specific recommendations to the Counseling Department, as well as school administrators. The committee also presents positive public information about the counseling program; they educate people on what counselors do in the schools.
There is also a strong and active Parent-Teacher Organization at Wood River High School. Parents do many volunteer services for counselors such as registration, office work, scheduling, helping in the computer lab, and hosting evening meetings.
Wood River has a parent-to-parent group where parents advise other parents on issues such as financial aid. They also have a student-to-student program where graduates come in and talk to seniors about applying for and attending college.
Donna commended her administrators, staff, and volunteers, affirming that a successful counseling program depends upon a strong and successful team!
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