For Veach, helping others heal also helps him avoid burnout.
According to Paul Veach (WC ’87), everyone needs a therapist at some point, including those whose business is helping others.
“All therapists, teachers, emergency service personnel, first responders, even our pastors will experience compassion fatigue,” said Veach, a mental health counselor in North Carolina. “They became so focused on other people’s problems that their whole world revolves around handling those troubles.
“You need to set boundaries on your time and energy and keep God at the center of what you do. We need to learn how to leave our work at the office and not bring it home with us.”
Veach knows that feeling all too well. At times in his career, Veach said he became so overwhelmed by helping others that he doubted how effective he was. During those times, he has read and reread Philippians 1:6-10. In that chapter, Veach says Paul expressed his love for the people he had served with in Philippi and the joy he found in serving the Lord alongside them.
“That passage fits very well with my experience of working through those doubts and seeing that the Lord is faithful and understanding what it takes for me to continue on that path,” he said. “At different points in my career, I’ve wondered whether I should do something else. When you’re going through those struggles, you don’t always have a workable understanding of what is happening.”
Veach serves as a mental health counselor for a school system in North Carolina and runs a private practice focused on marital issues, addiction, and trauma recovery. One of the most fulfilling parts of his work has been serving as a volunteer leader for REBOOT Recovery classes through his church in Statesville, N.C.
“That has actually helped prevent burnout and compassion fatigue for me,” he said.
Founded by Jamie and Evan Owens, REBOOT is a peer-led, faith-based, and outcomes-driven program geared toward helping veterans, first responders, and others who are experiencing the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. Currently, the program is run in 44 states and 11 countries.
According to Veach, people with PTSD often go through spiritual crises as well as emotional and physical trauma. When an Army chaplain approached Veach 10 years ago about working with him in the REBOOT program, he was interested in the program’s non-clinical, scripture-based format.
The road to recovery, whether it is from compassion fatigue or post-traumatic stress disorder, takes many different paths. Veach relies on the three Fs — faith, fellowship, and free-time outlets.
Faith has been the keystone for Veach. As a Worthington Christian “lifer” (a person who attended the school from kindergarten through senior year), Veach believes WCS gave him a strong biblical foundation.
However, he admits it took a while for those lessons to sink in.
“I was a late bloomer,” he said with a laugh. “I didn’t apply all the things I learned until I was midway through college. I came to the realization I needed to get myself together.”
One of the facets that drew Veach to REBOOT is its incorporation of Christian teachings into the program.
“I was learning a lot of effective treatments for post-traumatic stress,” he said. “However, there is also a spiritual component that sometimes gets overlooked. Some feel that their faith, and even their pride, have been shattered. Jamie and Evan developed a curriculum to address spiritual and moral injuries.
“(Therapists) have to remember it’s through God, and not our own efforts, that people change. That kind of renewed my vow and my vision of what the Lord was leading me to do.”
Additionally, fellowship plays a central role in the program. Members of REBOOT meet once a week for 12 weeks in the initial phase, and 86 percent of the program graduates continue with The Weekly REBOOT aftercare program.
“Often there’s a reluctance or a stigma to share problems,” Veach said. “People become flooded with emotion and re-experience their trauma, so they don’t share it with others.
“We are social creatures who are designed to depend on each other, but that requires trust and safety. It’s a healing process not to be isolated or under the weight of shame. When they feel camaraderie with other veterans, they open up and face their trauma more easily.”
However, getting past the issues requires developing coping skills outside the weekly meetings. Veach said finding ways to express one’s feelings is “a key to the healing process.”
“Unexpressed emotions get expressed in other ways,” he said. “If it doesn’t come out of our mouths, get written down, or become expressed in some way, it comes out through our bodies in physical and mental illnesses.”
Veach’s outlets involve physical release. He’s an avid camper, hiker, and motorcyclist. He also participates in Fitness, Faith and Fellowship, a two-day outdoor workout.
“We just get out there around 5:30 a.m. and do a boot camp with sandbags, kettlebells, and cinderblocks,” he said. “It has become a big outlet for me.”
By focusing on the areas of faith, fellowship, and free-time outlets, Veach has seen the difference the program’s principles can make in others’ lives while also helping him battle compassion fatigue in his work.
One of the most rewarding experiences came when he was working with a client after she lost her father during her sophomore year.
“She came away from the grief group saying, ‘Mr. Veach, I want to do what you do,” he said. “She went on to get a master’s degree in social work, and now she’s leading grief groups for the same organization I partner with. It was a real moment for me to see one of my students become one of my colleagues.”