SWK 350 Ethics, Spirituality, and Self-Care Essay
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Grand Canyon University *
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350
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Philosophy
Date
Feb 20, 2024
Type
docx
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5
Uploaded by dalgal1219
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Ethics, Spirituality, and Self-Care Joy Meiller
Grand Canyon University
SWK- 350- Social Worker and Decision-Making
Vicki Cooper
01/14/2024
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Ethics, Spirituality, and Self-Care
Self-Care is one of the important things that we need to keep in mind and implement for
not only our well-being but also, so we are able to give the best to our clients. NASW Code of Ethics refers to self-care and its importance as a component of ethical and professional excellence. With proper self-care it lessens the chance of impaired judgment. It also helps prevent burnout as well as making you more emotionally sound.
To accomplish self-care, you can do this in many ways. Take time to relax doing things that you like and make you feel good. Listening to others’ problems all day can result in mood changes in you.
Self-Awareness needs to be part of your plan for your well-being. Having self-
awareness keeps you grounded. You check yourself by putting your bias opinion aside and open your mind to what they believe. That does not mean that you must change believes but understand where they are coming from. Self -searching enables you to know that you do not know everything, and your opinion is just that your opinion and others have theirs. In thinking
about it I feel that everyone on earth has a prejudice of some kind. Self-reflection makes you look at things in different ways then maybe you did before. It also can make changes in your actions and reactions to situations. In the NASW Code of Ethics gives guidelines for social workers to follow. There are descriptions of scenarios that we may run into and how they maybe handled and resolved. The guidelines that are given also help keep social workers ethically and morally sound. Some of the scenarios may test our believes, self-awareness, our ethical and moral thoughts. That is
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Ethics, Spirituality, and Self-Care
why we have the NASW code of ethics to fall back on. We also can go to our supervisor if we cannot find the resolution to our dilemma.
Spirituality differs in people. I have been raised as a Christian with high moral standards. I also have self-awareness that even though I am a Christian I am human and need to
self-check daily because I am a sinner and make many mistakes. As a Christian I know that if I
learn from my mistakes and ask for forgiveness I will be heard by my savior. As a human I have learned many things, but I feel the most enlightening is that when things get hard or heavy, I am not alone and if I leave it to God, he will fix it in his time not mine. When I worked at a Jewish camp and spent a lot of time with the staff. I learned a lot about their traditions and culture. I find it very educating to engross yourself into others spiritual beliefs. When listening to people that practice different religions, I am sure that I will find some similarities to Christianity that I could relate to. Above all, it is the most important thing to uphold ethics. We need to fulfill our professional obligation, treat people, and do no harm. Clients all need to be treated the same, if there is a resource available, we need to offer it. I am a true believer that if I try to walk in Gods path maybe I can get others to follow the same path. For me it seems to come easier than other things. Being known for my kind companionate heart often to a fault.
When working as a social worker many times you will use the resources from community leaders (Garland & Yancey, 2014). People that work in the fields like pastors and
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Ethics, Spirituality, and Self-Care
social workers have a high rate of burnout and compassion fatigue. Being mindful of this is important so that you can alleviate some possibilities that could lead to burn out or compassion
fatigue. Learning from a pastor on how they integrate mindfulness into their spiritual practices is always a good way to improve your well-being. Studies have shown that in the pastoral field integrating spiritual awareness improves the attention span and elevates their mood along with a closer personal relationship with God. You can take that experience to self-motivate and facilitate the teaching of this practice to others.
Some of the signs of burnout or compassion fatigue are the inability to focus your organizational skills are not up to par, you have mood swings are genuinely seemed to be crabby. Compassion fatigue occurs when you listen to other people’s tragic encounters every day. Take time out for yourself, do something just for you even if it is ten minutes daily. Soon it will be a pattern and it will come naturally. This is needs to be done so that you are at 100% and then you can give your clients 100%.
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References:
Lloyd, C., King, R., & Chenoweth, L. (2002). Social work, stress and burnout: A review. Journal of Mental Health, 11(3), 255– 265.
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199975839.013.882
Trammel, R. C., & Lee, S. (2023). Insights from Pastors on Christian Mindfulness: What Social Workers Can Learn about Spiritual Integration in Mindfulness.
Social Work & Christianity
,
50
(2), 164–190. https://doi-org.lopes.idm.oclc.org/10.34043/swc.v50i2.328
Trammel, R. C. (2017). A phenomenological study of Christian practitioners who use mindfulness.
Journal of Spirituality in Mental Health
, 20(3), 199-224. https://doi.org/10.1080/19349637.2017.1408445
Yancey, G., & Garland, D. R. (2014). Congregational Social Work.
Encyclopedia of Social Work
.