The idea behind this book was to give practical examples of continuing human education following up on the book Re-humanizing Medicine and my subsequent work with Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) since 2014.

About the Book

Caring for Self & Others is a self-care manual for people who care for people. Many of us have experienced high levels of stress during the pandemic in health care and education. Add to this the stress of social justice issues, political divisiveness, war, and concerns about our rapidly changing climate and it can all become too much. Burnout is all too common in health care and other caring professions. Compassion fatigue can occur, where we find it difficult to care about ourselves, our jobs, or others. We can think of burnout and compassion fatigue as forms of soul loss - where we lose touch with who we are and what matters most to us.

Building on the nine dimensions of being fully human from Re-humanizing Medicine, this book focuses on caring for: body, emotions, mind, heart, expression, intuition, spirit, context, and time - adding a new dimension of Becoming Caring - Caring for All. The book also draws on David’s work with Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) over the past ten years and brings in the perspectives of the hearts and minds of many leaders in the compassion revolution. Each of the ten chapters includes three practices for caring for different aspects and dimensions of self. Ultimately, the practice of caring shifts our sense of self to a nondual perspective where others are experienced as part of self - to care for others is to care for self and to care for self is to care for others.

Bio

DAVID R. KOPACZ, MD works as a psychiatrist at the Seattle Veterans Affairs primary care clinic and he is an education champion with the national VA Office of Patient Centered Care & Cultural Transformation, where he teaches Whole Health to VA staff across the USA. He is board certified in psychiatry and holistic & integrative medicine and is an assistant professor at the University of Washington. He has worked in many different settings and places, including holistic private practice, community mental health, and as clinical director of Buchanan Rehabilitation Centre in Auckland, New Zealand. David is the author of Re-humanizing Medicine: A Holistic Framework for Transforming Your Self, Your Practice, and the Culture of Medicine and with Joseph Rael, Walking the Medicine Wheel: Healing Trauma & PTSD and Becoming Medicine: Pathways of Initiation into a Living Spirituality.

Table of Contents

A BLESSING From Joseph Rael (Beautiful Painted Arrow) 

PROLOGUE My Own Dark Night

INTRODUCTION The Costs of Caring 

1. Caring for Body 

• Embodying

• Animating

• Nourishing 

2. Caring for Emotion

• Feeling

• Connecting

• Flowing

3. Caring for Mind 

• Thinking

• Minding

• Evolving

4. Caring for Heart 

• Compassion-ing

• Loving

• Relating

5. Caring for Creativity 

• Wording

• Drawing and Painting

• Creating

6. Caring for Intuition 

• Dreaming

• Visioning

• Receiving 

7. Caring for Spirit

• Integrating

• Unifying

• Transforming

8 Caring for Context

• Harmonizing

• Sustaining

• Communing

9 Caring for Time

• Growing

• Transitioning

• Becoming Who You Are

10 Becoming Caring: Caring for All

• Returning

• Interbeing

• Leading Caring

CONCLUSION The Full Circle of Caring

EPILOGUE Cancer and Beyond

Endorsements 

“This holistic, imaginative and soulful response to burnout is much needed in today’s world.”

Dr. Dina Glouberman, author of The Joy of Burnout: How the end of the world can be a new beginning.

“Caring for Self and Others speaks directly to us in these uncertain and difficult times; a book that we must read. The author uses his own experience both as a doctor and patient to deeply delve into the different kinds of caring: for the body, for emotion, for mind, heart. It is a book full of wisdom gained by the author’s insight and continuous growing curiosity about life and the importance of caring and healing. This book is written for you; that is, anyone with an interest in the world around us who knows that to live well (or thrive), we need to care for ourselves and others. David Kopacz both explains why we need to care but also gives practical ways of doing so.”

Jonathan McFarland, MA, President and Founder of The Doctor as a Humanist and co-editor of Health Humanities for Quality of Care in Times of COVID -19, Associate Professor, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

“Caring for Self & Others: Transforming Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Soul Loss  demands to be read with our heads and our hearts.   David Kopacz challenges us to care for ourselves, others and the systems we work in.  The book is filled with exercises and meditations that can help us in this work.  David also shares his journey and how he was employed the ideas and exercises in his own life that reveal the depth of his commitment to caring.

It is a healing experience to read the beautiful, self-journey into self-caring through the wounded depth of the dark night of soul. It is through such personal sharing of self that we learn from each other. David Kopacz 's book offers readers a gift of hope, courage and self love, that both teach and inspirit us with his soul’s path into self-caring and heart healing.”

Jean Watson, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN, LL (AAN), Founder Watson Caring Science Institute, Distinguished Prof/Dean Emerita University of Colorado Denver, College of Nursing, and author of Caring Science as Sacred Science

“As a clinician who has experienced deep burnout, I adore this book and find it endlessly useful. Dr. Kopacz aptly offers his work as an oxygen mask. He exquisitely supports attention toward the crucial self care healers of all kinds desperately need for thriving lives. A poignant resource to identify and heal the suffering of present-day society in a holistic, creative, enticing approach. Dr. Kopacz expertly guides healers to attend to their own healing so they can better cultivate the same in others.”

Kate King, MA, LPC, ATR-BC, author of The Radiant Life Project

“Caring for Self & Others Transforming Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Soul Loss is a blueprint for authentic happiness. Dr. David Kopacz has gifted us with an insightful guide for self-care. He points to how burnout and compassion fatigue lead to losing our souls and how the loss teaches us a way into depth and spirituality. He suggests ways to sit with equanimity between the wholeness of the sacred and the mundane. This book is an invitation to show up fully and to rediscover there is no split of body/mind or between the self and the collective; it contains perennial wisdom with all its regenerative power.”

Marianela Medrano, What a Word is Worth podcast, and author of Rooting, Diosas de la yuca, and other title

“David Kopacz, versed in worldwide healing traditions where illness is approached as a loss of soul and healing involves its restoration, offers a complete vision of individual, social, and earth practice where everything contributes to a communion of creation that transforms afflictions into affirmations of life. His personal “dark night” shows the way to a timeless discipline of compassionate creation with others, helping us see that we participate in a process larger than ourselves yet sustained by our unique and personal contributions.”

Shaun McNiff, Ph.D., author of Art as Medicine, Art Heals, and other books. University Professor Emeritus, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA

“As physicians, we may not always acknowledge that we each have a soul. However, we are in a sacred profession that truly holds the soul of our patients. Whatever we call it, there is a place deep within us--almost the elephant in the room--that is our compass guiding us, our North Star. Oftentimes we get lost because we don’t care for our internal compass. That is the essence of what’s lost in healthcare today. If we have the true soulful connection with our Self, it needs to be fed first so that we can be available to everyone else.

When we make self-care and colleague care an unapologetic and unashamed priority, we can give the best care to our patients. David Kopacz invites us to reconnect to our humanity, nurturing our hearts and minds as healers and setting the stage for our systems to heal as well.”

Mukta Panda, MD, author of Resilient Threads: Weaving Joy and Meaning into Well-Being and co-author of The Oath to Self-Care and Well-Being

“Finally, a book that puts together what self-care and healing are really about! Kopacz, an exceptional healer, presents a comprehensive and holistic perspective on ideas and practices that can mitigate the burnout and fatigue that are rampant in healthcare. This is a handbook that will help every practitioner reclaim their role as healer and reconnect with the Soul of their practice. An exquisite, insightful and transformative work!”

Lucia Thornton, ThD, MSN, RN, Past President, American Holistic Nurses Association, Past President, Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine, and author of Whole Person Caring: An Interprofessional Model for Healing and Wellness

“Caring for Self & Others charts a path through the inevitable downturns and struggles of our lives by using our very suffering as material for transformation and growth. It elaborates a practice of caring that leads us from our individual pain into service to others by breaking down the mental barriers that lead us to believe that there is a self separate from others. This is perennial wisdom for the soul.”

Stephen Cope, Scholar Emeritus, Kripalu Center, bestselling author of The Great Work of Your Life.

Reviews

Foreword Reviews Magazine
Reviewed by Stephanie Marrie (July/August 2024)

“A literary oxygen mask and a paean to health care workers, psychiatrist David Kopacz’s understanding self-help book illustrates how relatable and treatable issues like burnout are.

Kopacz, having himself experienced burnout, notes that “as a doctor and a patient … my views on caring for self & other have been continually changing.” His book laments pandemic times of uncaring and draws upon the story of Chenrezig as an example. A Bodhisattva, Chenrezig vowed to alleviate the suffering of all beings or burst into a thousand pieces; their story ends in transformation rather than fracturing, though.

This resonant book’s solutions distinguish themselves from generic ideas of resilience to demand more, cultivating not just bodily, emotional, and spiritual health, but values like creativity, intuition, and community caring. A series of grounding, embodied practices are present for support, alongside accommodating recommendations that can be employed at any time throughout the day—to hold a rock while meditating, keep a stone in one’s pocket to rub, or walk barefoot in the grass.

There are a multitude of different ideas and approaches to working with burnout throughout; the book’s general focus is on self-care and developing new skills. The book’s first nine dimensions are dedicated to one’s inner parts; the last is dedicated to leadership and caring for all, tying individual practices and institutional reform together at last. And the book issues a call to change centered in the idea of “thinking of yourself as a verb—a process of becoming—rather than a noun trying to maintain its objective thing-hood,” reframing change as a healing process that’s separate from the pressures of time.

A hopeful, practical guide for those experiencing exhaustion, Caring for Self & Others explores individual solutions to contemporary public health woes.”

Midwest Book Review
Reviewed by Suzie Housley

“Caring for Self & Others is a comprehensive guide that offers 31 transformative practices and meditations to nurture your body, mind, and spirit. Whether you seek to cultivate self-awareness, combat burnout, or find solace in times of suffering, this book provides a diverse range of techniques, from reflective journaling to creative expression, to support your growth journey.

Dr. David R. Kopacz’s book is a beacon of hope for healthcare workers grappling with burnout and fatigue. Drawing upon his extensive medical background, Dr. Kopacz offers a refreshing perspective on addressing the challenges faced by those in the healthcare industry.

In a world still reeling from the aftershocks of the pandemic, this book serves as a guiding light for individuals seeking to rejuvenate their passion and purpose in their noble profession. Join in welcoming this invaluable resource that promises to inspire, uplift, and empower all who turn its pages.”

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