Compassion fatigue: How to care for others without burning out
To be your most caring self, it’s important to practice self-care.
By Lila O’Farrell, MA (Couns. Psychology), MDiv – Mindfulness educator, clinical supervisor, and therapist.
Caring for others is beautiful, important, and often highly rewarding work, resulting in feelings of compassion satisfaction.
But, caring can take a physical and emotional toll if it comes at the expense of your own health and happiness. If you don’t look after yourself, you might experience compassion fatigue.
Caring for yourself doesn’t mean you are more important than others. It means you are just as important as others.
Signs of compassion fatigue
Compassion fatigue is a result of feeling overwhelmed in the presence of suffering. Similar to burnout, compassion fatigue tends to be gradual – it’s not usually something you develop overnight (Carter, 2014).
You might begin to experience some of the below emotions more often than usual.
Feeling exhausted or burdened by other people’s suffering
Blaming people for their hardships
Having trouble sleeping
Feeling tired all the time
Feeling numb or detached from other people’s experiences
Isolating yourself from friends, family or colleagues
Decreased optimism; feeling hopeless or powerless
Feeling emotionally overwhelmed
It’s normal to experience these emotions every so often, especially if you work in health, education or social services. But, if these feelings become frequent, it’s a sign you may need to make some changes.
Not all empathy is equal
Before you look for solutions to compassion fatigue, it’s helpful to understand the different types of empathy.
Research shows there are three different types of empathy: Cognitive Empathy, Emotional Empathy, and Empathic Concern (Goleman, 2017).
1. Cognitive Empathy
Cognitive Empathy is an intellectual understanding of how someone is feeling. It doesn’t involve much heart. Sometimes, it’s helpful to guard the heart a little so you can respond intellectually to a situation.
Imagine a doctor in an emergency room about to perform a complicated procedure – that’s one example of where Cognitive Empathy may help.
However, research also suggests that those who experience mainly cognitive empathy may be less inclined to reach out to others, and miss out on the deeper connection that comes from opening the heart.
2. Emotional Empathy
Emotional Empathy is when you’re really, deeply feeling what someone else is feeling.
The risk for Emotional Empathy is you could get lost in another person’s suffering, and lose some of your objectivity or effectiveness. The neural signature (or pattern of brain activity) for Emotional Empathy is emotional pain. We feel the other’s suffering as if it were our own, and because our mind and body are deeply connected, this can also affect our physical wellbeing.
If you care from a place of Emotional Empathy all the time, you’re at a higher risk of compassion fatigue or burnout.
3. Empathic Concern
The third type of empathy, Empathic Concern, is the most powerful type for compassionate action. Empathic Concern elicits the same neural signature as parental care. It involves feeling kindness and love for those who are suffering.
Caring with Empathic Concern, people are more likely to consistently take action to assist others. The neural signature of Empathic Concern is increased positive emotion in the mind’s of those offering care.
The empathy continuum
It helps to think of the different types of empathy as a continuum, with Emotional Empathy at one end, Cognitive Empathy at the other, and Empathic Concern in the middle.
To avoid compassion fatigue, you want to aim for the middle (Empathic Concern) as often as possible. But, it’s natural to veer to either end of the continuum, depending on the situation and what else is going on for you.
Overcoming compassion fatigue
You can’t control other people’s suffering or hardships. But, you can manage how you respond to people’s experiences.
Here are some ideas for managing compassion fatigue and aiming to operate from a place of Empathic Concern as often as possible.
1. Start with awareness
It’s human to want to launch straight into ‘problem-solving mode’. But, it’s important to start with awareness.
Be aware of how you’re feeling. Identifying feelings helps us to understand, soothe, and manage them.
Remind yourself it’s perfectly normal to feel this way from time to time. Try the self-compassion breathing space in the Mentemia app to take your emotional temperature in a non-judgemental way.
2. Prioritise self-care
Perhaps you’re familiar with the saying, “you can’t pour from an empty cup”. Self-care is about taking steps to ensure your cup is full, so you can serve others.
It’s often marketed as a luxury – like getting a massage. But, fundamental self-care starts with the basics: like getting enough rest, eating well, and getting plenty of fresh air and sunshine.
Finding it hard to make time for self-care? Try scheduling self-care.
3. Seek support
Lean on your support network, both professionally and personally. If you work in healthcare, education or social services, speak to your colleagues and managers.
Outside of work, make time for love and friendship. Make sure your needs for human connection are not only met through professional caring.
4. Consider your ‘philosophy of care’
Spend some time exploring your thoughts and values around caring – your ‘philosophy of care’. Why do you do what you do? What does it mean to you?
Is it possible that you’ve subconsciously inherited some problematic messaging around caring? For example, that it’s more worthy to care for others than to care for yourself?
5. Practice loving-kindness meditation
One of the most powerful things you can do to manage compassion fatigue is to practice loving-kindness meditation.
Go to the Mentemia app to try the loving-kindness meditation.
This mindfulness meditation practice increases your capacity for Empathic Concern. You’re more likely to witness, hold space for and actively respond to relieve the other person’s suffering without experiencing great personal distress. Research shows as little as eight hours of loving-kindness meditation can create the neural signature in the mind and body for Empathic Concern.
In other words, training in loving-kindness prepares your mind and body to generate Empathic Concern, and protects you from defaulting to Emotional or Cognitive Empathy.
The power of Empathic Concern assists us to better care for ourselves and others, generating compassion satisfaction all around!