In this week’s episode, Carmen Gosa opens up about gaining confidence, how that helped her realize who she was as a person - on a servant’s mission - and how she found healing and learned to grieve after leaving social work.

In this candid conversation, Carmen discusses transitioning from social work focused on child welfare to the military and how a move at that time seemed good for her due to compassion fatigue, a phenomenon occurring in fields such as social work where a person has difficulty still feeling empathy for others because he or she is overwhelmed with others’ stress and suffering. 

Tune in to see how Carmen’s transition to a new career helped her overcame compassion fatigue, and listen to her thoughts on what it means to have a servant’s heart, regardless of career. 

Listen

Highlights

• Confidence is key to learning who you really are as a person.

• Carmen’s realization of having a servant’s heart.

• Carmen’s career progression from child welfare social work to being in electronics in the military.

• What custody case workers do to reunify children with their families.

• Working with post-custody youth who had turned 18 while in foster care and needed support for next steps as an adult, such as college.

• Real talk about the difficulties in staying detached from situations when working closely with children and their families.

• Carmen’s method for dealing with hard cases that led to sleepless nights was to know that she had done her very best to advocate for the child.

• Seeing adoptions was the best part of being a social worker - knowing that a child had a good, permanent family with stability. And some reunification cases were wake up calls for families that really worked their plan and made positive changes.

• Who has input into permanency plans during custody cases.

• The impact of being on a servant’s mission on personal relationships, whether having a social workers hours or being far away from friends and family while in the military.

• Discussion around how personal relationships impact people’s mental and emotional health - having a support system is key.

• One of the biggest lessons Carmen had to learn while in social work and after she left it was how to grieve.

• Healing is different for everyone.

• “It’s okay to not be everything to everybody all at once. You’ve got to know what your limits are and what you’re strong at and try not to overextend yourself.” Carmen’s response to what she learned when healing from compassion fatigue.

Disclaimer

The opinions within this episode are those solely of Carmen Gosa and do not represent the views of the military or the Department of Human Services (DHS).