Coping with Compassion Fatigue

Compassion fatigue refers to the emotional and physical exhaustion which can occur over the course of caregiving. It’s something that is being increasingly recognised in the helping professions but is equally applicable to those of us taking on voluntary or unpaid caring roles. 

Compassion fatigue is described as a gradual erosion of our connection to our caring roles – our hope, empathy, compassion for others and ourselves. We might find ourselves feeling less caring towards the people we support, more irritated with our teams and colleagues, and less able to do the things we normally do to take care of ourselves. 

What is the difference between compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and burnout? 

With so many different terms describing similar concepts it can feel difficult to keep track. Ultimately, if you feel as though something has changed in the way you feel about your work or the people you work with, we recommend getting some support and talking to your line manager. However, for the purposes of this blog, we will describe the differences between compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and burnout. 

As we outlined in our previous blog on the topic, vicarious trauma refers to the cumulative effect of exposure to traumatic material, for example, hearing about the traumatic experiences in the lives of the people we are working with. Although some of the signs might be similar, compassion fatigue doesn’t necessarily happen in the context of working with people who have experienced trauma. Compassion fatigue refers to the emotional exhaustion which can be associated with the act of caring in and of itself, regardless of the content of that care. If you would like some more information about vicarious trauma, please do check out our earlier blog on the topic.

Another related concept is that of burnout, which refers to the physical and emotional exhaustion which people can experience when job satisfaction is low, and feelings of powerlessness and overwhelm are high. Again, although burnout and compassion fatigue may be experienced together, burnout is understood as being caused by the work environment rather than by the act of caring. 

What does compassion fatigue look like?

In Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) compassion is defined as “a sensitivity to the suffering of self and others, with a commitment to relieve and prevent it”. When we are able to access this compassion, not only do we have the capacity to notice and engage with distress in ourselves and others, but we are also motivated by a desire to ease it. It follows therefore, that compassion fatigue describes a reduction or a loss of these abilities and motivations. 

This is likely to look different for everyone and is much more likely to be something we feel internally, whilst outwardly trying to carry on and do our best work. However, we might notice that we become more task oriented and less able to engage with the emotions of the work. We might pull away from our teams or support networks and become more isolated. The concept of fatigue is also key, as people might feel physically exhausted and emotionally drained. Feelings of fatigue like this can impact our ability to think, feel and behave as we normally would, meaning that compassion fatigue can impact every aspect of our lives. 

Some people might also experience other emotions such as resentfulness, anger, irritability, and intolerance. Understandably, this means that compassion fatigue has implications for our interpersonal relationships, both inside and outside of work. 

There is also a physical impact of compassion fatigue, related to the elevated levels of cortisol in your system. This can make us more susceptible to illness and injury in the short term, and if allowed to persist for long periods of time, can lead to heightened rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other long term health conditions. 

When we take all of this into account it is clear that we need to be alert to, and supportive of, anyone struggling with compassion fatigue. In our experience however, it can often be seen as something which is “part of the job”, or something which an individual should be managing by themselves.

What helps to prevent or relieve compassion fatigue?

Preventing and alleviating compassion fatigue requires a two-pronged approach. Whilst there are certainly things you can do as an individual to support yourself, there is also a responsibility on the organisation to operate as a psychologically healthy workplace. 

A psychologically healthy workplace

Compassion fatigue is a process which takes place over time, as we said at the beginning of this blog, it is a gradual erosion. As such, a workplace culture which values boundaries and supports employees to access regular time off can be supportive when facing compassion fatigue. Whilst taking a holiday might not be the be all and end all, we have worked in too many organisations where it is standard practice not to take all of your annual leave each year, or to work way over your hours each week. Without that vital time to rest, recharge, and remember who we are outside of work, compassion fatigue begins to creep in. 

Line managers can be supportive in other ways as well. They can create flexible structures which allow for shifts in workload or the nature of case work in order to support an employee to achieve more balance in their workload. Valuing opinions and feedback from your team, as well as staff development and reflective practice can help to create a preventative culture. Furthermore, research demonstrates that employees with more control over their own schedule report higher levels of job satisfaction. If it is possible to implement this flexibly in your organisation you could be supporting your team to avoid compassion fatigue and burnout. 

Personal strategies for preventing and relieving compassion fatigue

Much of the following advice will be familiar from any of the content you might read about taking better care of ourselves. It’s important that we find and maintain strategies which work for us, which might mean a bit of trial and error in the beginning. At first taking better care of ourselves can feel uncomfortable, especially if we are in the midst of compassion fatigue, but we would encourage you to stick with it and to access support from the people around you. 

Personal strategies might include engaging with hobbies you enjoy, getting enough exercise, practising maintaining healthy boundaries with work, and developing a strong social support network around you. One of our personal favourites is spending time in nature – mostly because it’s really difficult to check your work emails if you’ve got no signal in the middle of the peaks! It really forces us to consider how much time and energy we are spending on our work, and how much we might need to recharge ourselves. 

We hope that this has provided a bit of an overview of how to prevent and cope with compassion fatigue. If anything here has struck a chord with you and you feel like your team could do with some further support, please do get in contact with us to discuss it further.