Resilience for Professionals 2026

Helping professionals face tremendous challenges related to compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and burnout. Too often they suffer in silence as they navigate the daily landscape of mental, emotional, and physical stress. These challenges take a deep toll on work life, family life, and overall health. Compassion fatigue affects people who work in fields such as medicine, law enforcement, counseling, social services, education, animal welfare, and environmental conservation.

This course has been offered since 2018, providing critical tools and support to hundreds of helping professionals in the Grand Valley.

What is Resilience for Professionals?

• A series of nine Wednesday classes, from March 25 – May 20, 2026
• Classes are held from 1 pm – 4:30 pm at the Counseling & Education Center
• Facilited by Sydney Elks, MA, LPC
• Didactic and experiential activities based on current research
• Whole group, small group, and individual exploration
• Provides participants with a practical understanding of the neurobiology of stress
• Participants learn and practice skills to foster responsiveness (vs. reactivity) in the face of stressors
• Offers evidence-based tools to increase self awareness, as well as to mitigate and prevent negative effects of stress
• Develops strategies to address compassion fatigue and increase work satisfaction
• Promotes long-term lifestyle changes to allow for emotional regulation, improved relationships, and a deeper sense of well-being

The facilitator/creator of this program understands that these changes occur incrementally, over time, and developed the program to reflect this understanding. Each class builds on the previous class, culminating in the creation of a personal resilience plan in the final class.

Resilience is not a "quick fix." This course is not group therapy, nor is it a means to address organizational dysfunction. This course DOES encourage participants to know themselves better, shift perceptions regarding their stress, and feel empowered to affect lasting change and bring balance into their own lives.

This program is suitable for anyone in the community who is in a helping profession. Attendance is limited to 15 participants. Light snacks are provided. If you have questions, feel free to call 970-462-7118. If you are interested in a scholarship, please email [email protected].

Attendees continue to praise this program. A couple examples:

"Amazing. Every organization should send people. Benefits: Happy and understood employees perform better. Happy employees also STAY."

"This class was such a light to my soul. This is what I needed to fill in the holes in who I was and am becoming. MUCH appreciation and respect."

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher Grand Valley Gives