Zone of Fabulousness

When professional roles involve frequently working with clients with a history of trauma, within traumatic circumstances, or within imperfect systems, there can be a risk of workers feeling burnt out or traumatised.

Vicarious trauma and burnout tend to play out in one of two ways:

• workers becoming too close and enmeshed in the work they do, finding they cannot switch off and needing to be the hero who saves others
• workers moving too far away and become disconnected, cynical, and overwhelmed with feelings of hopelessness. They might think they cannot affect the situation and that it is never going to change.

Neither stance is helpful. Finding the sweet spot, that place of balance between enmeshment and disconnection, is crucial.

Dr. Vikki Reynolds calls this the ‘Zone of Fabulousness’.

This is where workers can be heartbroken while recognising that they are not the centre of the heartbreak. It is in the Zone of Fabulousness where boundaries can be cultivated to help workers do their best work, supporting clients, themselves, and their teams.

While there may be patterns of thinking and behaviours workers experience when they’re enmeshed or disconnected, each worker and each team may have different expressions. Becoming aware and understanding these patterns is the first step towards creating the Zone of Fabulousness.

Once teams can spot the danger signs, they can be proactive and do something to help address the balance.

However, it is not enough to merely work on this as individuals. Vikki indicates that the zone only occurs when there is a collective responsibility to support and care for one another.

Rather than blaming or shaming any individual (including workers blaming themselves) when workers experience enmeshment or disconnection, a healthy team understands that a collective, shared responsibility will help everyone navigate this better.

Having a safe team culture includes caring for one another where uncomfortable conversations that bring teams back to their shared values and ethics can occur. Members can sensitively ask, ‘Hey, I noticed this. Is everything okay?’ when they see a colleague veering more towards enmeshment or disconnection. Vikki urges teams not to get stuck in the politics of politeness but to be proactive in taking a collective responsibility so they can better support and care for each other’s health, safety, and wellbeing.

Exercise

• This exercise can be done as individuals and/or as a team. It could be used as part of a team meeting or formal supervision or at a specific gathering.
• The exercise will take approximately 30 minutes.
• Print the Zone of Fabulousness poster for each person (double sided – the example and the blank template)
• Explain the purpose of the exercise using the above text.
• If you intend to do the exercise as a team, print an enlarged (A3) copy to gather the team’s thoughts.

Instructions

1. Meet with the team (preferably in person) and explain you’d like to explore the question:
   1. How do we maintain boundaries so that we don’t put ourselves at risk of burnout?
2. Taking inspiration from this page, explain the purpose of the exercise.
3. Talk the team through the example of a completed Zone of Fabulousness sheet, explaining each column in full before moving to the next column. The recommended order is enmeshment, disconnection, Zone of Fabulousness.
4. Explain that these thoughts/feelings and behaviours might be different for each person and that you’ll be reflecting and talking about this.
5. Explain that each worker will be invited to complete the blank sheet later in the session.
6. Facilitate a discussion around the following questions at an individual level, encouraging them to use the blank sheet to note their reflections.

If you wish to discuss this as a team (which we recommend):

1. Facilitate a discussion around the questions with an emphasis on ‘as a team’
2. Ask someone to scribe common themes in the blank sheet.
3. Facilitate further discussion on the following two questions:
   1. As a team, which of these states do you think we tend towards?
   2. What is one thing we could do to help each other lean into the Zone of Fabulousness more as we work together?
4. As a team, agree how you will support each other’s ‘zone slippage’ when you feel yourselves or spot someone moving out of the Zone of Fabulousness.

The Zone of Fabulousness

Resources

Download the Zone of fabulousness work sheet:

Source

Reynolds V 2019, ‘The Zone of Fabulousness: resisting vicarious trauma with connection, collective care and justice-doing in ways that centre the people we work alongside’, Context, 164: 36–39.