Investigating the Effects of Mindful Eating, Self-compassion, Emotion Regulation, and Spiritual Experience on Compassion Satisfaction and Burnout among Christian Counselors

It is crucial, in the effort to understand and to be intentional in positively affecting professional quality of life, to examine and balance the impacts of job demands. Nearly four decades ago, Figley introduced the concept of secondary victimization, which when unmitigated leads to compassion fatigue and burnout (Figley, 1988, 1995). Analyses show rates as between 46 and 83% of mental healthcare professionals face unique work environments relating to psychopathological symptoms and lower work satisfaction (Almadani et al., 2022; Lluch et al., 2022; Mollica et al., 2021; Morelen et al., 2022; Stebnicki, 2017; Unjai et al., 2022). Accessing and utilizing personal resources is critical in mitigating counterproductive effects of job demands. Mindfulness and spirituality may act as pathways through which personal resources, such as self-compassion and emotion regulation are accessed, while creating a positive synergistic psychosocial-spiritual feedback loop (Assan et al., 2022; Bodini et al., 2022). This study aimed to thoroughly analyze personal and professional variables preceding and influencing stressors through a Job Demands and Resource (JD-R) perspective. Further explored are the negative impacts emergent from inhibition of personal resources from a Conservation of Resources (COR) framework implying necessity to mitigate said inhibition pathways. A behaviorally anchored mindfulness-based protocol is examined as a node of self-care and presented in light of the direct and indirect impact on professional quality of life. Using a quantitative causal-comparative within-subjects design to evaluate how the protocol affects compassion satisfaction and burnout is presented also through interpretation of harmonious impacts on self-compassion, emotion regulation, and spiritual experience.