Building Resilience: Self-Care
Since moderators are often repeatedly exposed to emotional online content particularly in relation to more sensitive topics and discussions, they may experience emotional difficulties and moral anguish over the more emotive conversations with users, especially when these discussions relate to real life traumatic experiences. Therefore this section of the module provides guidance on recognizing potential stress and burnout symptoms and offers coping mechanisms for dealing with stress and emotional trauma that can be experienced by moderators.
Being a professional involved in delivering talking therapies (whether on or offline) is a fantastic career, with huge personal satisfaction that can come from connecting with and helping others. It can also be stressful and challenging at times.
Why is self-care so important?
It is really important to look after yourself in order to be able to look after others. Just like the flight instructions of putting on your own oxygen mask before helping someone else on an airplane, we need to be feeling as good as possible in order to have energy and focus to help other people.
Some definitions to be aware of:
Compassion is the feeling of empathy for another’s suffering and the desire to do something to alleviate that suffering. Compassion fatigue is the gradual lessening of compassion over time due to repeated demands
Secondary trauma is the emotional stress that results when an individual hears about the firsthand trauma experiences of another. Its symptoms mimic those of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) even though the flashbacks and re-experiencing relate to another person’s memories.
Burnout is a state of utter emotional and physical exhaustion caused by a prolonged period of stress and frustration
Self-care involves the actions that individuals take for themselves, on behalf of and with others in order to develop, protect, maintain and improve their health, wellbeing or wellness. Self-care is essential to enable therapists to function well.
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Recognising stress and burnout
On useful tool can be to take a burnout self-test. Note: This tool uses an informal approach to assessing burnout. While it may be intuitively useful, it has not been validated through controlled scientific tests and must therefore not be used as a diagnostic technique. Please, therefore, interpret the results with a pinch of salt. Also, make allowances for any recent events that may have a disproportionate influence on your mood at the time you take the test. If you feel like your situation is severe, you can reach out to a mental health professional for a more comprehensive assessment.
Self-care and coping mechanisms
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Self-awareness, assessment and self-care are critical to preventing a toxic, unhealthy build-up of the negative and invasive effects of your work. The bad news is no one is immune to these effects. We are all human and naturally feed off the emotional state of others around us. The transformation of the negative effects can be subtle or pronounced, positive or negative. There may be an awakening of feelings, including the passion for social justice, the joy of helping those in need, or a sense of connection and belonging to others. The negative aspect of the work can lead some to struggle with finding and maintaining a healthy balance in their life.
Providing on-going moderation to groups and individuals experiencing emotional issues can be draining and exhaustive, if proper steps are not put into place to equip the online moderator, with adequate self-care. Without understanding the importance of these preventative measures, an online moderator may experience burnout that affects personal and professional wellbeing.
- Self-awareness and self-care
- If you are dealing with a community tragedy, learn as much as possible about the event and deal with and articulate the powerful emotions and reactions related to the event
- Know your own “triggers” and vulnerable areas and learn to defuse them or avoid them
- Resolve your own personal issues and continue to monitor your own reactions to others’ pain
- Be human and allow yourself to grieve when bad things happen to others
- Develop realistic expectations about the limitations of your role and how much you can help
- Balance your work with other professional and personal activities that provide opportunities for growth and renewal
- Ask for and accept help from others
- Find opportunities to acknowledge and work through your experience in a supportive environment
- Debrief yourself regularly and build healthy support groups
- Seek assistance from co-workers and caregivers who have had similar experiences in your field and have remained healthy and hopeful. Learn from their experience and take their advice.
- Delegate responsibilities and get help from others for routine work when appropriate
- Develop a healthy support system to protect yourself from further fatigue and emotional exhaustion
- Live a healthy, balanced life
- Eat nutritious food, exercise, rest, and meditate or pray and take care of yourself as a whole being
- Set and keep healthy boundaries for work. Ask yourself “Would the world fall apart if I step away from my work for a day or a week?”
- Think about the idea that if you never say “no”, what is your “yes” worth?
- Take an honest look at your life before a crisis strikes. Find help to identify your obvious risks and work to correct or minimise them.
- Find ways to provide yourself with the emotional and spiritual strength for the future.
- Avoid certain actions when experiencing compassion fatigue
- Avoid making big decisions. Compassion fatigued caregivers should not try to make any major life decisions until they’ve recovered physically, emotionally and spiritually. This is perhaps the most important advice we can give. Don’t quit your job, get a divorce, or spend money on a lavish trip or a new sports car. It might feel great at the time, but a few days or weeks later, the same set of problems will resurface.
- Avoid trying a quick fix. Compassion fatigue often makes one vulnerable to addictive behaviours and substance abuse. Many helping professionals try to deal with compassion fatigue by working longer and harder. Other self-medicate with alcohol and prescription drugs. There are a whole host of other addictive behaviours that are used to relieve personal pain. Don’t abuse work, alcohol, or drugs and don’t fall prey to a quick fix. Just as drugs can be addictive and eventually cause a whole different set of problems, the quick fix usually complicates an already overburdened life, escalating the downward spiral to burnout and depression.
Organisational support
There is true value to sharing and talking about moderation experiences with colleagues and fellow moderators. This is a crucial element of self-care for moderators.
When working in online moderation it is important to create an internal support system for the moderators. Ideally the moderation team would plan weekly check-in meetings to discuss difficult or challenging case studies or discussions. This is how we can all learn from and with one another and provide a space for dialogue to process more complex emotional situations.
Finally, it is critical for moderators to understand their own responsibility and duty of care. The moderator’s responsibility needs to be clearly outlined, and moderators should be guided on setting personal boundaries and when to refer users to specialised support.