325 – The Cost of Burnout, with Dr. Alexis Kennedy

This episode is brought to you by Vanguard University and the Global Center for Women and Justice, who offer an incredible anti-human trafficking certificate. Whether you're a frontline responder, a social worker, in the ministry, a healthcare provider, or simply a community member who wants to help, this program is built for you. Head over to gcwj.org/ahtc to take the next step and apply today. 

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Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Dr. Alexis Kennedy as the two discuss the importance of self care within the parameters of professional careers.

Dr. Alexis Kennedy

Dr. Alexis Kennedy is a forensic psychology researcher, and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has led federal and state grants to study violence against women and children, and as an expert with more than 30 years of working with human trafficking victims, she knows intimately the risks of developing burnout and compassion fatigue. Dr. Alexis Kennedy works with first responders, health care workers, attorneys, and other helping professionals throughout the US and Canada to stay in important but difficult work without sacrificing their own health.

Key Points

• Burnout and compassion fatigue can take an emotional toll on professionals working with human trafficking victims, that can lead to significant mental and physical exhaustion.
• Dr. Kennedy emphasizes that self-care is crucial for maintaining effectiveness in high-stress jobs. Professionals must recognize the need to recharge and manage their well-being to avoid burnout. This includes developing healthy routines and taking breaks.
• Physical and emotional signs of burnout include changes in sleep patterns, appetite, digestive issues, and chronic pain. These symptoms are indicators that stress is impacting one’s health and should be addressed proactively.
• Vicarious trauma can affect individuals who work closely with trauma survivors as the secondary exposure to trauma can be as damaging as direct trauma, leading to symptoms similar to PTSD.
• Dr. Kennedy provides practical advice for managing stress, such as maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, creating a calming bedtime routine, and avoiding blue light before sleep. She also mentions the importance of finding balance and avoiding overwork.
• Peer support plays an important role in recognizing and addressing mental health issues, including suicide risk. Tools like the Columbia Lighthouse Protocol can help identify individuals in need of support and facilitate appropriate interventions.

Resources

• Compassion Recharge
• Alexis Kennedy
• The Columbia Lighthouse Project
• Trauma Recovery Yoga 

Transcript

Sandra Morgan 0:14
You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. This is episode #325: The Cost of Burnout with Dr. Alexis Kennedy. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. I am so excited to welcome Dr. Alexis Kennedy to be with us today. She is a forensic psychology researcher, and professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She has led federal and state grants to study violence against women and children, and as an expert with more than 30 years of working with human trafficking victims, she knows intimately the risks of developing burnout and compassion fatigue. She works with first responders, health care workers, attorneys, and other helping professionals throughout the US and Canada to stay in important but difficult work without sacrificing their own health. Dr. Kennedy, I am so excited to have this conversation today. Welcome.

Dr. Alexis Kennedy 1:52
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Sandra Morgan 1:55
So you can call me Sandie, can I call you Alexis?

Dr. Alexis Kennedy 1:58
Absolutely.

Sandra Morgan 1:59
Okay. So when I first heard about you, I had been in Las Vegas meeting Judge William Voy who had started a CSEC court, commercially sexually exploited children, and he was really on the cutting edge of looking at these kids with a different lens. You’ve been there from the get go with him, it’s like you’ve been swimming in trauma for decades. Can you give us a very tiny glimpse of that?

Dr. Alexis Kennedy 2:36
I actually started working in this area before it was called human trafficking, it was simply prostitution, exploitation through prostitution back then, and I’d been doing it for a decade before I even moved to Las Vegas. I was really shocked when I got to Las Vegas, how different the kids were being treated than you see in other countries. They were being criminalized and treated very differently. So of course, I jumped in to try and make a change. The thing is that these are really difficult stories to hear, these are really difficult situations. People who want to learn about it, want to help, we do it because we care, but there’s a cost to hearing these difficult stories, a cost to trying to change systems that are very slow to change, and that does take a toll on your mind and body, whether you notice it or not.

Sandra Morgan 3:24
When I started talking to you recently, you used a phrase. It captured my attention and I am sure there are going to be people listening, that have been with us for decades in this, and you use the phrase “getting out and handing it on?” Why do you need to get out?

Dr. Alexis Kennedy 3:47
Well I’ve been, 32 years now, hearing these stories, interviewing, taking information, and even if you have the best sort of reset button or way to process and hold all those stories, eventually you’re going to fill up how much you can take and how much you can handle. But it’s hard to leave when we feel like we’re the one with the answers, which is a problem with ego. I mean, that’s the exciting thing about education and the growing awareness around human trafficking, when there’s more people at the table, then we’ll be able to say, “Here’s my knowledge, here’s my expertise, here’s my suggestions, I’m going to step aside and hand the baton off to you.”

Sandra Morgan 4:31
That’s so healthy because burnout, what are some of the risks for burnout?

Dr. Alexis Kennedy 4:38
Burnout is something that can happen in any career and any job. It really is the idea that your body and mind and emotions are overwhelmed, and we can’t really address it if we don’t know where the source of stress is coming from. It’s a lot more complicated, once I started researching it, then people realize. It’s different than just simply stress. You had your daughter on, the other Dr. Morgan, and she framed stress really well, because it is something that we can use as a tool and have something that energizes us, but we also don’t want to have our foot to the gas pedal at 100 miles per hour, for year, after year, after year. For those of us that are working in fields with an urgency, like helping human trafficking victims, we’re not really good at turning it off when we go home. We don’t do this nine to five job where we stop thinking about the people we see that we’re trying to help as soon as we go home, on our vacations we’re completely relaxed...