KAREN WALL LMFT

Remembering the joy in what we do is important and vital. There are many multimedia resources out there that teach self-care, resilience, stress management, and so forth. So, why would I want to be another one on the list?? There is a serious need for more resources that specifically targeting those of you working in jobs and careers, especially healthcare, who face an everyday struggle with keeping alive the original "zest" that drew you to that job or profession in the first place. That is not to say that what I present here is limited to JUST healthcare workers, but applicable to anything you are doing that requires you to keep yourself from losing interest, burning out, and in the most extreme cases, feeling hopeless and ending your life. Here is why I feel my work is unique and applicable on a global scale:

In 2014, while working at a VA facility as the Mental Health Nurse Educator, I came across a book that had just hit the bookstores titled “10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works- A True Story”. A long-time fan of Good Morning America, I was drawn to the subject matter and am a fan of the author, Dan Harris, who was one of the hosts for the GMA Weekend Edition. Now, I don’t read a lot of hard copy books these days because I don’t have the attention span nor wakefulness to stay with it, so I am a devotee to audio books; however, I picked up this book and started to skim the introduction and the next thing I knew I had read the entire book, cover-to-cover in about 4 hours! I gave my copy to one of our psychologists to give to a veteran on the unit and she came back and asked me if I had more copies because the book was being passed around the unit and everyone wanted it! Twenty copies later, it was like having an inpatient self-help book club in our midst! This was an internal message to me that I had to do more with this and immediately went onto Twitter and tweeted Dan Harris to tell him how much I enjoyed his book and the impact it instantly had on me. He was excited to know that I was planning to “do something” with what I had read and what I had been doing as a psych nurse for over 20 years. To have the author tell me to “go for it” meant everything to me and sent me on my way to what you are holding in your hands! I began doing the groundwork after having a very bright lightbulb go off in my head that gave me the idea for this acronym, which got me thinking about what the letters could represent- voila! Fast forward to 2015…..I had moved to another position in the organization working with older veterans living with dementia and neurocognitive diseases in the Community Living Centers (formerly known as nursing home units). I was approached by nursing leadership to provide training and support to staff on one units with especially challenging family members interfering with care and verbally and emotionally abusing staff. In response, I developed a class to teach resilience. Through my research and memories of personal experiences, I developed and introduced the acronym B.R.E.A.T.H.E. to discuss seven components of resilience that I felt were integral to preventing burnout and job-dissatisfaction, a very common yet under-addressed problem in the workforce. Staff members participated in an interactive discussion of each principle followed by practice of a simple breathing technique. was used because part of the instruction was to teach the students breathe work as an integrated practice into the presentation. The breathing technique used for this instance was based on an easy-to-use, scientifically-supported mobile app developed by the Center for Telehealth and Technology (T2) and the National Center for PTSD. After each section of discussion of a principle, the class was led in a round of breathing. This provided the opportunity for the attendees to practice the technique and commit it to muscle memory, as well as spend a moment to absorb the information they had just received. At the end of the class, the attendees were led through a final breathing exercise and provided with encouraging thoughts and plans for follow up by myself if they so desired. Staff who received the training reported an increased sense of awareness of their internal reactions to challenging family members, and were able to use the principles to redirect themselves and return to focusing on care of the resident. They felt empowered to direct the family member to their supervisor. represents seven principles of self-resilience:

B: BE present
R: REMEMBER your smile
E: ENGAGE your heart
A: ACKNOWLEDGE yourself for ANSWERING the call
T: TAKE time for yourself
H: HEAL from within
E: EMBRACE the moment