What is Compassion Fatigue?

Compassion fatigue is a condition that affects those whose roles involve helping others. It can look similar to burnout and even accompany burnout. Despite this, the causes are different and the effects can be, too. Where burnout is a general sense of feeling fatigued or overwhelmed from too high of a workload, compassion fatigue is a result of consistently helping others. While you may also be experiencing burnout from workload and pressure, it isn’t necessary. Even those who have good work life balance in a position they enjoy can experience compassion fatigue. Victor Frankl said it best, “What is to give light must endure burning.”

Who Does Compassion Fatigue Affect?

Compassion fatigue is well known to affect healthcare and mental health care workers, but they are not the only ones. Anyone in a helping capacity can be vulnerable to compassion fatigue. This includes leaders, first responders, financial advisers, human resource workers, teachers, even caregivers for family. Some people are surprised to be affected when they do something non clinical. However, it makes perfect sense. If an accountant spends everyday hearing about other’s hardships and shares their time and skills to help with those hardships, they are exposed the same as anyone else in a helping profession.

What Does Compassion Fatigue Look Like?

Compassion fatigue comes in phases that tend to progress if left untreated. It actually starts as wanting to help others as much as possible and work really hard. Even when feeling overworked we find excuses to be able to keep doing our best and more. This leads into frustration, feeling overlooked or unappreciated, and even having some resentment for the job or coworkers. This leads to increased irritability at home and work. As time goes on we start to disengage from work, caring less about those we help, losing our sense of humor and joy. It starts to affect us physically, we feel tired or on edge, just the thought of work makes it hard to enjoy home life which leads to problems at home. It hits a head when we enter what’s called “The Zombie Phase.” We no longer feel any attachment to our work and can barely enjoy our home life. It feels like we’re on autopilot, going numbly throughout our day. We question why we even chose this field in the first place. All of this just escalates as work, relationship, and personal problems begin to blend together.

Am I Bad at My Job or Uncaring If I have Compassion Fatigue?

This is a very common question as questioning our worth is a part of both compassion fatigue and burnout. The short answer is no. This is a regular reaction that we experience when aiding others who are suffering. Even those who have been in intense fields for 20 years, such as first responders, can find themselves experiencing compassion fatigue. This can be cumulative, over time it adds up. No matter how resilient we are, human suffering still affects us. This has been a well known condition for a long time, even Mother Theresa mandated that her nuns have sabbaticals to recover from their work. In our environment where this is rarely an option, it means we need extra understanding of ourselves and increased diligence in noticing signs within ourselves so we can address it before it eats up too much of our lives.

If you are experiencing compassion fatigue, I encourage you to connect with friends and family and engage in self care if you can. If you are unable to or find that you’d like assistance in navigating these difficult sensations you can schedule a free consultation with me at burnoutpreventiontherapy.com and we can find a solution together.