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, we’re very bad at helping ourselves. We’re good at helping others and not very good at helping ourselves. Burnout really can be addressed if you understand where all these sources of stress are coming from, and figuring out ways that you can take a break, or give yourself a little more kindness, give yourself that chance to recharge, that we don’t when we’re gas pedal to the floor, changing the world, doing everything for everyone.

Sandra Morgan 6:01

I call this episode The Cost of Burnout. For me, after our first conversation, I started looking through your website, you’ve got recharged.how, and of course, your alexiskennedy.com. I began to really look at the cost of burnout from a personal perspective, but then from a network perspective. I have friends and listeners in 148 countries, we need every one of you to keep doing what you’re doing, recruit your replacement so you can hand things off at the right time. The cost of burnout is we drop the baton. We aren’t there for that child in the courtroom, or in the brothel on a side road. So your ‘why’ for making this transition, can you give us a little of an understanding of how, number one: this addresses burnout for you, personally, and how you envision this for the rest of us?

Dr. Alexis Kennedy 7:19

The interesting thing about the compassion fatigue research, it actually came out of the world of nursing where a lot of ER nurses were saying, “You know what, when I’m at work, I’m amazing. I give it all,” and by the time they get home, they flop on the couch and they don’t move for another 48 hours until it’s time to go back for the next shift. They said, “I like being good at my job, but I don’t want to leave 100% of everything at work,” and in contrast, the doctors they were working with work really similarly, at 100 miles per hour. They didn’t want to take those breaks and build that self care, and it was considered weak or too woowoo. What will happen with them is they’ll go 100 miles per hour for their career, and then when they finally do retire, a week into their retirement, they drop dead of a heart attack. So we can burn the candle at both ends, but there’s a cost to it. If we want to stay in a difficult job like human trafficking, advocacy, or any kind of research, we have to slow down and build in self care, and build in times to recharge. Because the people who go and say, I actually had students make me a t-