Pouring From a Sustainable Cup

Self-care advice often asks social workers to recover from depletion without examining what keeps creating it. This interactive training moves beyond surface-level wellness and treats professional sustainability as a practice competency. Participants Will: 1) Differentiate burnout, compassion fatigue, secondary traumatic stress, occupational stress, and ordinary fatigue as they may present in social work practice. 2) Identify at least five personal, clinical, organizational, and systemic factors that contribute to professional depletion. 3) Assess patterns of overfunctioning, emotional overextension, boundary erosion, perfectionism, and difficulty disengaging from professional roles. 4) Apply at least four evidence-informed strategies involving boundaries, nervous-system regulation, workload recovery, emotional processing, and sustainable professional routines. 5) Develop an individualized Professional Sustainability Plan identifying warning signs, protective practices, boundaries, support systems, and strategies for maintaining effective social work practice.