FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CLERGY AND OTHER CAREGIVERS VULNERABLE TO TRAUMA, STRESS BURNOUT SAYS HUMANITARIAN AGENCY
Series of Post-Katrina Mississippi Coast Workshops Will Focus on Self Care for This 'Vulnerable Population'
GULFPORT, MS - Wed June 14- As post-Katrina recovery continues along the Gulf Coast and a new hurricane season is already making its mark this week, the region's faith leaders and other caregivers are learning a hard lesson: how to care for themselves.
Area faith leaders and caregivers are invited to attend one of three half-day "Caring for Caregivers" workshops scheduled for June 20, 22, and 23 in Bay St. Louis, Gulfport and Ocean Springs, Mississippi -- all devastated by Hurricane Katrina. One workshop will be held each city (dates, time, and locations below). The seminars are presented by humanitarian agency Church World Service (CWS) and the Mississippi Coast Interfaith Disaster Task Force, will be held.
The "Caring for Caregivers - Preparing for the Long Haul" workshops are designed for whom the seminar's presenters refer to as one of the most vulnerable and least-served populations in the protracted aftermath of disasters like Katrina.
"Clergy are well-versed in grief counseling. They learn that in seminary," says workshop co-leader Dr. Alan Baroody. "What American faith leaders haven't been trained for, he says, "is how to deal with the trauma that can follow a massive, community-wide disaster."
And, says Church World Service seminar coordinator William Sage, clergy are vulnerable to taking care of others first but not caring for themselves .
CWS consultant and workshop co-leader Dr. Katrina Cochran says the workshops first provide clergy and other caregivers an overview of the appropriate psychological and emotional care for disaster victims,"' she says, illustrating "how trauma care differs from the typical grief model. But then we spend the rest of the time on the importance of self-care for the caregivers themselves."
An April Caring for Caregivers workshop that Church World Service and the Mississippi Coast Interfaith Disaster Task Force held in Gulfport, Mississippi, drew nearly 70 people, mostly clergy from Moss Point, Biloxi, Pass Christian, Diamondhead, Ocean Springs and Bay St. Louis, but also Lao and Vietnamese Buddhists from Bayou La Batre in Alabama.
"One pastor who participated in the April seminar said 'I have no one to talk to.' He had no one," Baroody said. "His house had insurance, but he had nobody."
Right after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast and in the months that followed, media reports showed local church leaders opening the doors of their churches to take in those who'd lost their homes. They gave material goods and pastoral care to the grieving and traumatized and those who had nowhere to go.
Despite massive government, aid agency and public support nationwide, many across coastal Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are still pulling their lives together.
"But what the stories have shown little of," says CWS' Sage, "are the personal losses, damaged or destroyed churches and homes, and the ongoing stresses that the faith leaders themselves have experienced."
What do caregivers do in the face of such overwhelming, immediate and continuing needs, when the demands of care begin to erode their capacity to continue?
First, say the seminar's leaders, caregivers have to recognize their condition. "The power of denial in these situations is just incredible," says Cochran. "Often, when caregivers listen to me in these workshops, I know they're thinking about someone else rather than themselves.
""We tell participants, 'because of your caring heart, you may tend to over-function for a time. We want to keep you in the business as long as possible,'" she says. "One of the most difficult things to get across to clergy and other caregivers in disaster situations is the need for their own self care."
Cochran says, "If people haven't self cared to some degree, they won't be attending our seminars. By now, they'll have quit, even left the clergy, or transferred to another part of the world. The people who may think they have a problem, who're on the cusp, are the ones who'll be there," she says.
The "Caring for Caregivers - Preparing for the Long Haul" workshops are part of Church World Service's Interfaith Trauma Response Training program, initiated following September 11.
Cochran had extensive experience working with trauma victims following September 11, as well as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and in Church World Service caregiver workshops in Florida after the 2004 hurricane season.
Seminar consultant Alan Baroody is a member of the Church World Service Spiritual and Emotional Care Resource team and is Executive Director for the Mary Lou Fraser Foundation for Families, Inc., Hinesville, Georgia. A Presbyterian minister, pastoral counselor and licensed marriage and family therapist, Baroody focuses on the spiritual and emotional dimensions of disaster recovery.
"Even when not under trauma," he says, "pastors experience tremendous stress. Lots of pastors leave the ministry due to stress-related issues."
Add the trauma of a massive disaster on top of high professional stressors, says Baroody, "and some pastors themselves become victims. They burn themselves out, they may neglect their families."
Roberta Avila is Executive Director of Mississippi Coast Interfaith Disaster Task Force (IDTF) in Gulfport and co-sponsor for the workshops. Avila says her organization had been working with Church World Service on other aspects of long term recovery following Katrina. But she was also keen to bring CWS' Interfaith Trauma and Recovery Trainings to the region
IDTF was organized in 1980 to assist community-level churches and other organizations in providing post-hurricane long-term recovery services for vulnerable populations. IDTF is activated only during times of need. Before Katrina, IDTF was last mobilized in 1998 following Hurricane George.
Avila says, "The Caring for Caregivers seminars are about learning how to manage your stress and realizing how managing your stress impacts how you serve others.
"In the April seminar in Gulfport, one participant said she valued the emphasis on understanding that how she felt was important. She said she'd placed her feelings on hold. But in order to serve others, she had to take her own feelings into account."
Avila, a licensed therapist and a Mexican American, said it's important for caregivers to realize that "The work will always be there, " to combat the belief that "I can't stop because there's so much to do.
"This rebuilding on the Gulf Coast will take eight to ten years," she said.
Setting boundaries key to self care
Church World Service's Sage says helping caregivers set healthy boundaries is fundamental to good self-care. The agency's workshops stress setting boundaries for family time, for work schedules, for time out.
Setting personal boundaries before a disaster is key, says Alan Baroody. "They're ever more difficult to set after a disaster."
"Preparation tends to minimize trauma," echoes Cochran.
Baroody says in working with emotionally- and physically-taxed caregivers they see the results of weak boundaries: "It's the look of eyes glazed over, Bambi in the headlights. Some pastors go and go and go. It's the way they cope with their own trauma by not feeling."
"With Katrina and Rita," he said, "the support systems weren't there. The infrastructure wasn't there. Many came back to nothing or a church that was severely damaged. Some are really hurting. They have their own families, their own lives to put back together."
"Pastors can't be fix-it people to everyone," Baroody said. "Pastors and imams and rabbis need first to know the resources that are available to help people. They need to know when to refer and to whom to refer."
CWS' Sage says the trainings' approach is "holistic. A disaster affects the community, not just one group or one demographic, not just the rabbis, the imams or the United Church of Christ pastors and parishioners. It affects everyone.
"And the process of grief includes finding a new reality together" he says. "Building in a foundation of self-care strengthens that new reality.
"We plan the seminars for faith based caregivers," Cochran says. "However, we don't know who needs to be in the room, but God does. So anyone who comes, we welcome."
WHEN & WHERE:
Tuesday June 20 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM Christ Episcopal Church 912 S. Beach Boulevard Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
Wednesday June 21 1:00 - 4:30 PM Trinity United Methodist Church 5007 Lawson Avenue Gulfport, Mississippi
Thursday June 22 9:00 AM - 12:30 PM St. John Episcopal Church 705 Rayburn at Porter Ocean Springs, Mississippi
NOTE to EDITORS: Media are invited to attend the seminar with prior arrangement. Given the nature of the workshops, participants may be quoted on condition of anonymity. Interviews are available with workshop presenters prior to and following the events.
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MEDIA CONTACTS:
Lesley Crosson/Church World Service/New York, (212) 870=1676, lcrosson@ch urchworldservice.org
Jan Dragin - 24/7 - (781) 925-1526, jdragin@gis.net
For registration: Cindy Lamb, Mississippi Coast Interfaith Disaster Task Force, Gulfport, MS; phone (228) 868-0961 or clamb@msidtf.org
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