Mindfulness as a Moderator of Clinician History of Trauma on Compassion Satisfaction

Abstract

Compassion satisfaction is an understudied phenomenon in the counseling literature. The impact of a clinician's history of trauma on compassion satisfaction and potential protective factors that may enhance feelings of compassion satisfaction is equally understudied. This study aimed to address models of mindfulness as a protective factor for the associations between a clinician's history of trauma and their experience with compassion satisfaction. The sample consisted of licensed clinicians (N ¼ 113) reporting on their past history of trauma, dispositional mindfulness, and compassion satisfaction. Results indicated that mindfulness moderated the association between a clinician's history of trauma and compassion satisfaction. Findings also show mindfulness to be significant in supporting a clinician's experience with compassion satisfaction, overall. Therefore, mindfulness should be further considered as an important safeguard for clinicians to consider in order to continue to enjoy their work. Implications are considered for clinicians, counseling training programs, and agency employers.

Shared trauma, resilience, and growth: A roadmap toward transcultural conceptualization.

“…Since then, the literature on shared resilience or growth specific to care providers experiencing collective stress alongside their communities has not expanded, to our knowledge. However, while Martin-Cuellar (Martin-Cuellar, 2017) found that aggregated past or recent trauma of a clinician did not have a relation to compassion fatigue, recent trauma was positively related to compassion satisfaction. This was proposed to be a result of clinician ability to process or reflect on their trauma in more current emotional states.…”

“…Baum (Baum, 2014) wrote on unique characteristics of shared trauma, including lapses of empathy, immersion in the professional role, role expansion, and changes in the place and time of work. Narratives in the literature have mostly emphasized this blurring of therapeutic boundaries in the provider–patient relationship and personal spheres (Boulanger, 2013; Rao & Mehra, 2015; Tosone et al, 2003); the issue of self-disclosure (Bown, 2015); and the countertransference of clinicians as both necessary tool and hindrance to the therapeutic process (Martin-Cuellar, 2017).…”

“…Literature on these conceptualizations has helped crisis counselors and other disaster relief workers understand the vulnerabilities and reactions to trauma narratives while serving in disaster zones, especially as mental health staff working exclusively with trauma have been shown to have higher levels of compassion fatigue when compared to other mental health staff (Went, 2016). Compounding this susceptibility, studies have shown that mental health clinicians and law enforcement professionals with personal histories of trauma reported significantly higher compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and secondary trauma symptoms in response to others with trauma histories (Follette et al, 1994; Hensel et al, 2015; Martin-Cuellar, 2017; Pearlman & Mac Ian, 1995; Pearlman & Saakvitne, 1995; Saakvitne, 2002). Furthering this theme, a study of Hurricane Katrina survivors showed that listening to simulated cosurvivor trauma narratives created distress rather than foster recovery (Boasso et al, 2015).…”

The impact of working with human trafficking survivors.

“…This highlights the importance of a supportive work environment that allows workers space to process the complexity of the cases they deal with. Despite the positive relationship between client trauma experience and compassion satisfaction (Craig & Sprang, 2010; Figley, 1995), participants still signaled a crucial need to have the space to disburden themselves to routinely process trauma in a safe way, showing a lack of immunity to trauma regardless of training and experience (Bent-Goodley, 2018; Martin-Cuellar et al, 2018). Participant 8 shared,I don’t think I would be working ethically or safely if I didn’t have some other accountability or another way in which I can kind of verbally work through what’s going on erm, with my clients to get support in dealing with individual cases but also in managing my own, making sure I’m cared for.…”

Merhamet Doyumu Ölçeği̇ni̇n Geli̇şti̇ri̇lmesi̇

“…Birçok araştırmada, merhamet doyumu ile merhamet yorgunluğunun birlikte incelenmiş (DePanfilis, 2006; Annalakshmi ve Jayanthy, 2019) ve merhamet doyumu ile merhamet yorgunluğu arasında negatif ve anlamlı bir korelasyon bulunduğu belirtilmiştir (Kim, Ha ve Jue, 2020;Jarrad ve Hammad, 2020). Ayrıca yapılan araştırmalarda merhamet doyumunun öz bakım (Alkema ve diğerleri, 2008), farkındalık (Decker, Brown, Ong ve Stiney-Ziskind, 2015;Martin-Cuellar, Atencio, Kelly ve Lardier, 2018), öz bakım aktiviteleri, değerlerin gelişmesi (Stainfield ve Baptist, 2019), duygusal uyumsuzluk (Kim, Ha ve Jue, 2020), tükenmişlik (Jarrad ve Hammad, 2020), olumlu duygular/düşünceler, stres yönetimi, zihinsel, sosyal ve fiziksel kaynaklar (Radey ve Figley, 2007) gibi pek çok faktörle ilişkili olduğu saptanmıştır.…”