Compassion Fatigue and Recovery
Caring for the People Who Do the Caring
Give your peer specialists and frontline staff a plain-language, trauma-informed session that names compassion fatigue early and hands them real recovery practices they will actually use.
The people doing the supporting carry a load nobody talks about. This complete, facilitator-ready training kit helps peer specialists, recovery coaches, caregivers, and frontline staff recognize the early warning signs of compassion fatigue, tell the difference between healthy empathy and absorbing other people's pain, and build steady practices for peer debriefing, reflection, and firm emotional boundaries. Grounded in SAMHSA, NIDA, CCAR, and the research base on secondary traumatic stress and burnout. Written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including people in recovery and people returning from incarceration who are now doing this work.
- Who it is for
- Peer recovery specialists, recovery coaches, outreach and frontline staff, case managers, caregivers, harm reduction and drop-in center teams, and the supervisors responsible for keeping them well
- Group size
- 8 to 30 participants, breakout groups of 4 to 6
3 early signals
emotional numbing, cynicism about the work, and chronic exhaustion that rest does not fix, taught as signals rather than character flaws
Source: Research on secondary traumatic stress in helping professions
Empathy vs absorption
staff practice staying connected to the people they serve without carrying their pain home, the core skill that keeps people in this work
Source: SAMHSA and CCAR guidance on peer workforce wellness
4 recovery practices
peer debriefing, structured reflection, marking the end of a shift, and setting one firm boundary, all practiced in the session
Source: PAVE Pathways facilitator curriculum
What's in the kit
Every PAVE Pathways kit ships with the same ten components.
- 1.Training Blueprint and 2-Hour Flow Outline
- 2.10-Question Pre-Knowledge Survey
- 3.28-Slide Core Presentation Deck
- 4.Slide-by-Slide Presenter Notes with full scripts, metaphors, and analogies
- 5.Participant Notes Version (3 slides per page with lined note space, PDF)
- 6.Two Participant Handouts: the Check Your Gauge worksheet and an Empathy, Absorption, and Recovery concept summary
- 7.Group Breakout Session Kit (45 minutes, with group agreements, discussion prompts, and scribe and reporter templates)
- 8.10-Question Post-Knowledge Survey
- 9.Companion eBook (50 pages)
- 10.Optional Premium Prezi Storyboard, 28 frames (+20 percent)
Preview the materials
Five pieces of the kit to explore: the deck, presenter notes, handouts, the breakout kit, and the companion eBook. Open any one and page through real, watermarked samples.
Open preview, no signup required. Saving and printing are disabled to protect the material.
Open preview, no signup required. Saving, printing, and downloading are disabled to protect the material.
Frequently asked questions
Licensing options
Standard License
$397
Single-organization internal use. Delivered ready to facilitate.
Custom-Fit
$697
Your agency's name on the cover, your state's resources in the script, and a short call with our team before we build it, so the training already sounds like your community instead of being adapted after the fact.
White-Label / Agency License
$1,495
Full redistribution rights across every site in your network, source files your team can keep customizing, and a live orientation session so your trainers launch with confidence instead of a PDF and a login.
Because these are downloadable digital toolkits, all sales are final once a file is delivered. If a refund is approved by our team for an exceptional circumstance, a 25 percent processing fee applies to cover the cost of deactivating the license. Full terms are in our End-User License Agreement.