Help for the Helper: Preventing Compassion Fatigue and Vicarious Trauma in an Ever-Changing World (Updated & Expanded)

An essential resource for helping professionals, updated for today’s challenges.

Since the publication of the first edition of Help for the Helper in 2006, the world has changed. Significantly. Due to existing and growing threats of war, increasing areas of civil unrest, the COVID-19 pandemic, financial collapse, natural disasters, and more, therapists and other helping professionals now often find themselves in a particularly tricky position: They are struggling to personally cope with traumas and massive stresses that are very similar to those experienced by their clients and others they serve.

To address these unique challenges, this revised and expanded edition now includes guidance for helping clients while maintaining therapists’ own safety and sanity in crisis situations, managing the usual stresses and challenges during normal times, and tips for dealing with trauma when that is not a therapist’s specialty. Topics include the neurophysiology and regulation of arousal, self-care during shared community/world crises, maintaining balance and strength, countertransference, somatic empathy, mirroring and mimicry.