Are You Experiencing Compassion Fatigue
As psychologists continue to help those suffering from the impact of COVID-19, they should watch for signs of their own distress or burnout.
Are you experiencing compassion fatigue?
Psychologist Heidi Allespach, PhD, of the University of Miamis Miller School of Medicine, knows that the big hearts that propel people into psychology and other caregiving careers also put them at risk of developing compassion fatigue. Ironically, she explains, caregivers can become so over-empathic that they find themselves growing numb to their patients suffering. Thats why she urges the medical residents she teaches to develop what she calls a semi-permeable membrane around their hearts. Without enough of a shield, everything just comes in, says Allespach. And being overwhelmed with the feelings of others can feel like drowning.
Now Allespach and other psychologists are worried that psychologists are facing increased risks of compassion fatigue as the COVID-19 pandemic stretches on.
Compassion fatigue occurs when psychologists or others take on the suffering of patients who have experienced extreme stress or trauma, explains Charles R. Figley, PhD, founder of the Traumatology Institute at Tulane University. It is an occupational hazard of any professionals who use their emotions, their heart, he says, and represents the psychological cost of healing others. Its like a dark cloud that hangs over your head, goes wherever you go and invades your thoughts, he says.
What Compassion Fatigue Looks Like
It can have a variety of manifestations, but one of the hallmark effects is emotional numbness. When people start to develop symptoms of compassion fatigue, theyve often reached a point where theyve been exposed to the trauma of others so much that theyve become overloaded and unable to feel emotionally connected to their work or other parts of their life. This feeling may also be accompanied by other symptoms, according to the Canadian Medical Association, including:
- Difficulty concentrating or making decisions
- Mood swings, especially toward irritability or anger
- Feelings of hopelessness
- Symptoms of depression or anxiety
- Social withdrawal and self-isolation
- Physical symptoms like headaches or an upset stomach
- An increase in use of substances like drugs or alcohol
Get Back To The Basics
Very few of us feel like were at our best when were tired or hungry. If youre feeling low, try looking at your routine to ensure that youre getting adequate quality sleep, nutrition, water, and exercise. Often in professionals and people who experience empathy fatigue, one of those are lacking.
Taking care of your most fundamental needs may be just the thing to get you feeling like yourself again. It can also help to ward off both compassion fatigue and empathy fatigue.
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Practices To Help You Prevent Compassion Fatigue
Dr Neff identifies three components that work together for self-compassion: Self-kindness , a sense of common humanity and mindfulness . She recommends practices such as Loving Kindness Meditation, mindfulness based practices, and breathing practices.
Compassion, then, involves the recognition and clear seeing of suffering. It also involves feelings of kindness for people who are suffering, so that the desire to helpto ameliorate sufferingemerges. Finally, compassion involves recognising our shared human condition, flawed and fragile as it is.
Four simple keys to keeping your compassion vibrantly alive are:
Cultivate Healthy Friendships Outside Of Work
While it is great to have strong relationships with your co-workers, it is equally important to cultivate and maintain healthy relationships outside of work. It can sometimes be difficult for co-workers to avoid talking about work even outside the workplace. Connecting with friends who are not aware of the ins and outs of your work situation can provide much needed emotional and professional relief.
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Anger And Hatred Towards The Cause Or Perpetrators
When you work on cases where, for example, a child experiences extreme abuse, its normal to feel anger at the person who did it.
However, if anger becomes too much that it fills your heart with hate, and your work, judgments, and thoughts are affected, this is one of the signs of compassion fatigue.
Compassion Fatigue In The General Public
A secondary definition of compassion fatigue refers to the experience of any empathetic individual who is acutely conscious of societal needs but feels helpless to solve them. People who actively engage in charity, or volunteering, may come to feel that they cannot commit any more energy, time, or money to the plight of others because they feel overwhelmed or paralyzed by pleas for support and that the worlds challenges are never-ending.
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Symptoms Of Empathy Fatigue
Burnout, empathy fatigue, and compassion fatigue share many of the same symptoms. Often they manifest as thoughts and beliefs.
They can also manifest as emotional exhaustion or physical exhaustion. Often, there is a significant overlap in symptoms.
For example, someone with empathy burnout may feel exhausted because they arent sleeping. This can cause them to feel distracted and disengaged during the day. It can also prompt them to feel unsatisfied with their job performance and to be short-tempered with their coworkers.
Below are 12 symptoms of empathy fatigue.
Symptoms Of Compassion Fatigue
The symptoms of compassion fatigue vary from person to person and may change with time. They include:
- Symptoms that resemble PTSD, such as flashbacks, avoidance, disturbing dreams, and nightmares.
- An inability to show compassion or empathy. A once-caring doctor may begin blaming their patients for their maladies, while a social worker may lose interest in helping struggling families.
- Feeling poorly understood by others.
- Having increasingly few boundaries between work and home.
- A decrease in productivity and effectiveness.
- Feeling trapped.
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Always Being Tired Physically And Emotionally
This can have many causes, but it often has to do with the people youre around. It could be lack of people or it could be the wrong type of people. Figuring out who youre around and how they can be draining is crucial towards curing fatigue. Maybe the people youre with are always hateful, sad, and negative. Maybe theyre just too energetic and ambitious, which can be tiring. How are they acting and treating you? How is it affecting your energy levels?
Surviving Compassion Fatigue: Help For Those Who Help Others Beverly D Kyer
Kyer is a clinical social worker and trauma specialist who has dedicated much of her life to helping others.
In this book, youâll learn about her personal experience with compassion fatigue and how she overcame it.
This book has great practical appeal, as youâll learn strategies and techniques to support your wellbeing and self-care while caring for those in need.
Find the book on .
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Compassion Fatigue What Is It
Empathy and compassion are the two traits nurse take into their profession. Empathy is putting yourself into the shoes of other people so you know how it feels to be in their situation. Compassion, on the other hand, is the drive that will urge you to do something to fix the problem.
The nursing profession, in nature, practices compassion in providing nursing care. Compassion fatigue comes when there is confusion in the emotional boundaries between the patients need and the nurses personal needs. It literally translates to tired of providing care. It is the emotional stress a nurse may feel in providing care to patients.
Be Aware Of How Bad News Affects You
Be aware of your own physical, as well as mental, reactions, says Figley.
A lot of us carry stress in our bodies. If you notice your jaw is clenched, your shoulders are hurting, or you feel physically tense, it might be a good time to take a break from the situation.
Youre not in a good place to help anyone if youre on the verge of snapping.
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The Other Side Of The Coin
Compassion fatigue is a tough fact of life for many nurses, but that doesnt mean nursing is always a psychological drain. Carlson says he is optimistic about the career and the fulfillment that comes from the tangible differences a nurse can make with their patients.
There is an endless list of things that make nursing rewarding, Carlson says.
While it is important to focus on all the positive aspects of nursing, it is also crucial to address the challenge of compassion fatigue that some nurses will encounter as they strive to give the best care to their patients. Its also encouraging to know you can overcome it and continue the career you love.
Why Is Empathy Fatigue Becoming A More Common Issue
A single stressor, like illness, job loss, or grief from the death of a loved one, can rock you to your core. Multiple stressors, especially all at once, can make you feel like youre drowning.
Balancing the responsibilities of work life and family life has never been easy. But the past year has been uniquely challenging.
A once-in-a-generation health crisis caused underlying tensions in social justice, economic uncertainty, and relationships of all kinds to bubble up. It also caused political ideologies to explode, unable to be contained any longer by people that were already stretched to their breaking point.
Human beings dont enjoy uncertainty and disequilibrium. Abraham Maslow noted that humans thrive when our basic needs for survival safety and sustenance are met.
But when people are fighting for their basic needs while still needing to nurture their families and careers, this results in added stress.
We understand that we cant control everything that happens to us or our loved ones. But confronting that idea can trigger something of an existential crisis. We cling to the idea of control as a way to make ourselves feel more secure.
However, when so many circumstances and stresses hit us all at once, we tend to shut down and check out.
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There Is A Better Way
While the solutions arent easy, they are imperative to lifelong success in our personal and professional lives. This blog exists for physicians like us who are looking for resources and solutions to learn, grow, and thrive in medicine.
First and foremost, understand that achieving wellness and returning to the strong leader that you once were takes time. Give yourself that first.
All too often, we are looked toward to be the strong one and to keep our feelings buried. Perhaps you have been told to keep your chin up and to stay strong, but have those phrases ever helped? Likely not. I want you to know that having these feelings are OK. Dont put them on the back burner or try to convince yourself that they dont exist.
Acknowledge them for what they are, and lets develop a plan to get you away from these feelings toward a life of fulfillment and contentment.
So lets get started
Collision Of Burnout And Compassion Fatigue
In addition to this alarming number of respondents reporting compassion fatigue, symptoms of burnout were also evident, including physical exhaustion and sensing a lack of feeling appreciated. Eighty-nine per cent of respondents reported feeling low energy and almost 70 per cent reported an inability to concentrate.
Fortunately, depersonalization, an extreme symptom of burnout characterized by a callousness or lack of caring towards students, was not evident. Conversely, respondents reported pushing themselves to exhaustion to meet the individual needs of their students.
Albertas dismissal of many educational assistants and support staff early in the pandemic devastated the respondents who either lost crucial supports, or lost their own job, and could not help vulnerable students.
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What Can Cause Compassion Fatigue
Before we proceed with the signs and symptoms of compassion fatigue, we must first understand what can cause it.
Healthcare workers and chronic caregivers are the most susceptible people to compassion fatigue. Their job description requires them to care, listen, and devote themselves to caring and healing.
What Is Compassion Fatigue
The American Institute of Stress defines compassion fatigue as the emotional residue or strain of exposure to working with those suffering from the consequences of traumatic events. Its typically seen in those who regularly interact with victims of trauma or disaster at work, such as healthcare workers, emergency responders, social workers, therapists, and journalists, and can even affect their loved ones. It can occur from working a single, difficult case or after working in the field for years.
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Use Positive Coping Strategies
Earlier we mentioned that you should avoid turning to other substances and negative coping strategies, and the best way to do that is to use positive coping strategies to overcome your compassion fatigue. Ensure that you are avoiding some of the negative coping strategies like prescription drugs, alcohol, unhealthy eating habits, unhealthy sleeping habits, illegal drugs, or unhealthy lifestyle methods. Instead, focus on the positive coping strategies that work best for you like taking a walk, talking with your friends and family, exercising, watching a funny movie, meditation, slow breathing, or relaxing in the pool.
How To Overcome Compassion Fatigue
The expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss daily and not be touched by it is as unrealistic as expecting to be able to walk through water without getting wet. ~ Naomi Rachel Remen
Anyone who has been in a position of caregiving understands the toll and emotional exhaustion that can come if you dont take care of yourself first. You very quickly find yourself running on empty and eventually filled with resentment where once your heart was a well of kindness.
Compassion fatigue has been described as the cost of caring for others in emotional and physical pain. It is characterised by deep physical and emotional exhaustion and an uncharacteristic inability to feel empathy for others.
Compassion fatigue is also called vicarious traumatisation or secondary traumatisation, where the emotional residue or strain of exposure to others who are suffering, or reliving traumatic incidents, impacts you and over time can become overwhelming, possibly even causing burnout.
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Who Gets Compassion Fatigue
Anyone who spends significant time helping others or thinking about others suffering may develop compassion fatigue. Some especially vulnerable populations include:
- Very empathetic people who tend to serve as the therapist in their family or among their friends.
- People in dysfunctional families who continually try to support other family members without seeking support for themselves.
- People in medical and mental health professions, especially providers who work with traumatized, abused, or dying people.
- People in fields that confront systematic injustice. Lawyers who work on challenging cases or issues of social justice, activists, people who work in child abuse prevention, and others who work to end systemic issues are at risk. The work does not have to be paid work. A volunteer rape crisis counselor, for example, could easily develop compassion fatigue.
- Professionals who routinely intervene in traumatic or life-threatening situations. First responders such as firefighters, police officers, and EMS professionals may report vicarious trauma or compassion fatigue.
- Caregivers to chronically ill people. An adult child caring for a parent with dementia or another terminal illness may feel fatigued and burned out.
How To Prevent And Treat Compassion Fatigue + Tests
The wide range of circumstances experienced by counselors and therapists leaves them open and vulnerable to experiencing compassion fatigue .
Such a state of emotional exhaustion typically occurs in response to the depth of empathic involvement required to work with people seeking help for their mental health .
Compassion fatigue is widely recognized as a pathway to occupational burnout and is detrimental to physical and mental wellbeing. Not only that, the condition is damaging to the therapeutic process and harmful to the client.
This article explores the role of self-care in compassion fatigue and the tests, measures, and treatments that can reduce its likelihood and impact.
Before you continue, we thought you might like to . These detailed, science-based exercises will not only help you increase the compassion and kindness you show yourself but will also give you the tools to help your clients, students, or employees show more compassion to themselves.
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