When caring gets tiring
If I were being honest, which I definitely am, I would say that I am in a caring profession for selfish reasons.
From an early age I realised how good I felt when I helped people (yes, even on register 8 at my local Kmart) and I followed that feeling relentlessly. There is even a name for this phenomenon: compassion satisfaction. It feels good to give, and this has been proven again and again.
Unfortunately, like anything in life, you can take compassion too far – known as compassion fatigue. It tends to look a little like this:
Feeling hopeless
Difficulty concentrating
Hypervigilance; being easily startled or edgy
Irritability
An overall prolonged sense of stress on the system, which can lead to depression/anxiety/PTSD symptoms
What’s even more unfair is that people with high levels of empathy (which characteristically makes us ‘good’ at what we do) are more likely to experience compassion fatigue. The result: an overwhelmed nervous system, taking on everyone’s ‘stuff’ and ultimately not being able to do what we got into this to do – help people.
From bright spark to burnout
The road to complete burnout amongst health professionals tends to follow a continuum:
Overload – insufficient rest (mental, physical or emotional) for the demands placed upon you
Exhaustion – depletion of emotional resources after an extended period or high intensity of caregiving
Depersonalistion – distancing yourself emotionally, mentally and physically from work as a protective mechanism
Professional inefficacy – unable to form empathic and supportive relationships as a result of all of the above, which is essential for working with clients
While we will chat about what you can do about it, we also need to consider the environment where you provide your care. Research has found that if your expectations aren’t matching reality in the following six workplace areas, the risk of compassion fatigue burnout rises:
Workload and job demands
Decision making and autonomy around your work
Access to resources required to do your job effectively
Rewards and recognition (financial, social, internal)
Sense of community and team in the workplace
Congruence of values between the individual and the workplace
Notice how I said expectations, not conditions? This isn’t to say that because you’ve been told to expect a “high performing/hustling” workplace environment, you should lower your self-care and work-life standards. Communication of needs and setting clear expectations is necessary from the get-go, for both employers and their employees.
The remedy: care more (but for yourself)
So what can we do about it? I’m going to use a buzzword here: self-care. If your need to take care of yourself outweighs your ability to take care of yourself, you end up in a deficit, burnt out and overall feeling stuck. Self-care comes in many shapes and sizes, and it doesn’t need to be shared on Instagram to be effective.
Here is a (non-exhaustive) list from a 2019 research paper, outlining what social workers found helpful for managing their compassion fatigue:
Emotional
Spending time with others
Finding things that make you laugh
Staying in contact with important people in your life
Expressing feelings of social injustice through social action, letters and donations, marches, protests
Spiritual
Finding a spiritual connection or community (yoga, meditation, church)
Cherishing your optimism and hope
Psychological
Having your own personal psychotherapy
Writing in a journal
Noticing your inner experiences (mindfulness)
Letting people know the different aspects of you (being your whole self)
Being curious
Carving out time for self-reflection
Professional
Developing a non-trauma professional area of interest
Setting limits
Getting regular supervision or consultation
Taking time to chat with co-workers
Physical
Getting massages, facials or other bodywork modalities
Wearing clothes that you like
Not missing lunch or tea breaks
Getting medical care when needed
The most interesting finding from this research was that there was no statistical significance between any of the above self-care practices and reducing burnout, except for in the spirituality domain.
This can be particularly jarring for health professionals who put science first and refuse to get amongst the ‘woo woo’. Turns out it might just help! My form of ‘spirituality’ involves trusting in something greater than me, and paying respect to that through meditation and yoga (when I remember) and completing a gratitude journal (when I also remember). Who’d have thought that this would (loosely) be backed by science after all!
As Sheryl Crow would say, “if it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad”. The happier I am, the more I feel capable of helping others, so find what works for you and do it regularly.
Happy caring (for yourself first, then everyone else!)
Jen xx
