ESSENTIAL SELF-CARE FOR CAREGIVERS AND HELPERS: Preserve Your Health, Maintain Your Well-Being & Create Effective Bounda

Howard Brockman, LCSW has written his second book, this time emphasizing the importance of self-care for the legions of people supporting and taking care of others. While there are books that have been written about the challenges to professionals such as social workers, nurses and psychologists to becoming burned out, Brockman's book is written also for the millions of untrained non-professionals who are being recruited daily to care for their elderly parents. Do you fit into either of these categories? He describes the many influences that lead to compassion fatigue and becoming ôinfectedö by the feelings of others. This is all about how unconscious empathy can take sensitive caregivers down a never-ending spiral to adrenal fatigue and depression. In Chapter 2, ôCharacteristics of High-Intensity Relaters,ö Brockman describes the primary personality of those helpers whose currency is relationship and who easily fall prey to subtle energetic influences that erode their vital force. Externally referencing to others' needs first tends to be one of their traits. Chapter 6, ôPrevent Self-Sabotage,ö is filled with practical ways to stay focused and positive while overcoming old, repetitive and negative inner chatter. Confronting your tyrannizing inner critic is never easyùBrockman tells you how.He describes different types of ôenergy drainersö that use our energy to enliven themselves and deplete ours. He does a good job explaining how to create secure and persistent energetic boundaries with difficult and demanding people and other disruptive environments. This is perhaps the most important theme woven throughout the book, for the helper personality tends to not know how to say NO to requests from others. Learning how to establish reliable energetic boundaries is incredibly important for protecting against the interpersonal hazard he refers to as psychotoxic contamination that can become cumulative over time and generate serious long-term health consequences. Dark and heavy energy can settle into and invade the body to wreak havoc with one's health and emotional stability. The good news is that you can effectively create these boundaries and more importantly, learn how to sustain them amidst the ongoing demands of the people you are helping.