Caregiver, advocate, and author Mimi Amaral shares from her new Amazon bestseller, "Death: Before and After: A Survivor's Guide". Written from her personal caregiving experience following the death of her father, Mimi has created a concise and practical guide for anyone who has a family member or loved one nearing [...]
First responders - EMTs, firefighters, and law enforcement - are exposed to stress and trauma as a regular part of their jobs. The impact of their work can lead to post-traumatic stress. Clinical approaches for their PTS, treating it as a disease or disorder, are not the answer. A full-spectrum approach [...]
First responders - EMTs, firefighters, and law enforcement - are exposed to stress and trauma as a regular part of their jobs. Their commitment to serve involves caring for the sick, injured, dying and victims of crime and disaster. As caregivers in sometimes extreme adversity, the impact of their work [...]
Compassionate, empathic people often feel called to a role that involves caring for others - such as caregivers, health professionals, or first responders. Such individuals, beyond their empathic nature, usually have personal histories that include suffering, trauma, and hardship. Caregivers' painful experiences give them even deeper sensitivities to the needs [...]
Special guest Teresa Lyons, a registered nurse with Hospice of Petaluma, shares from her life and thirty years of experience caring for dying adults and children. We are a "death-denying culture", Teresa maintains, to our great loss. Facing our mortality, not running from end-of-life involvement with those we love, can [...]
Facing adversity - even for highly successful and accomplished caregivers and others - ultimately means having to face our limitations. Adversity, such as caring for a loved one, places caregivers in a situation where they do not have control and will reach the end of their abilities. To develop resilience, [...]
The day-by-day world of caregiving is difficult, stressful, exhausting, depleting - and at the same time one of the greatest opportunities for a meaningful, fulfilling life of compassionate giving. How can empathic and sensitive caregivers prevent compassion fatigue and burnout? Effective self-care must include a deeper understanding of appropriate boundaries [...]
Effective, resilient caregivers don't run away from the hard parts of life. Embracing adversity can shape us into the people we were meant to be. Painful experiences leave us with emotional burdens which must be felt, decompressed and resolved. Denying our hard times, or splitting off and disconnecting from them, [...]
Stress, painful experiences, and the burdens of caregiving can result in taking on negative energy and emotions that find a place in both the mind and the body. The hardships of life can seem unfair but they happen to us all. It is possible to release the negative emotions and [...]
Peter M. Bernstein, PhD is a coach, mentor, educator and trainer with over 47 years of experience providing strategies for enhanced performance and relief from trauma. An Army infantry veteran who served stateside during the Vietnam War era, he feels a deep commitment to meeting the needs of veterans and their loved ones and caregivers. Peter’s approach utilizes a combination of coaching, mentoring and bodywork to offer hope and healing through transformative resilience.