The Battle Against Compassion Fatigue and Burnout

The Unique Calamity for Healthcare Professionals

I’m a graduate student in counselling psychology, and I know that in the mental health field, compassion burnout is a very real thing, even for those who are well-established therapists. For example, if you spend a prolonged amount of time with other people and attend to their socioemotional and physical needs, you’re more likely to have lower energy reserves than most.

These types of emotionally-charged situations force healthcare professionals to pad themselves with dozens of coping mechanisms. This means that those wonderful therapists you talk to have vetted systems set in place, such as supervisors to talk to and breaks in between clients. When they get home, they likely have many self-care activities, such as watching a good movie or doing mindfulness exercises like a body scan.

Often, therapists have a high self-awareness of the conundrum they put themselves in, where they are expected to be highly empathetic and genuine but have to balance the scale with professionalism. In the process, they end up crafting individualized coping strategies that they’ve perfected over the years.

It took them a lot of time, money and effort, but they managed to develop their own coping systems — and that’s no easy feat, which is something to celebrate about.

Compassion Fatigue Versus Regular Burnout

Compassion fatigue is a bit different from regular burnout but is fundamentally similar. Compassion fatigue is often associated with absorbing the emotional distress and trauma of others, which could become a bit of an occupational hazard.

If you have compassion fatigue, then you are susceptible to regular burnout. Regular burnout can occur in any occupation and it’s like being worn out to the point that you are too burdened to handle everything.

This type of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion was exacerbated by emotionally charged and demanding situations across a long period of time. Eventually, those stressors continued growing, blurring the line between your professional working life and your personal life.

Even now, some people still struggle to maintain a good work-life balance, especially when both worlds are often in the same place, such as your computer, where you might be doing a zillion Zoom calls and making dozens of spreadsheets and daily reports.

However, despite this, many measures can be taken to reduce your feelings, such as:

• Doing one type of work in the office only and leaving recreation to another room
• Walking around and pacing yourself in between two laborious tasks
• Checking in with people, even if its just a Zoom chat or a simple text
• Crafting reasonable and relevant goals, and then breaking them down into smaller and more manageable pieces

If you wanted to, there’s a self-assessment for compassion fatigue and burnout called the Professional Quality of Life Scale for Compassion Satisfaction and Compassion Fatigue (ProQOL) from Dr. Beth Hudnall Stamm, a recently retired healthcare professional and researcher.

If you check out the website of the assessment, you are directed to ProQOL.org which has some resources specific to current world events. Even in retirement, Dr. Hudnall Stamm is still thinking bout the well-being of others.

While the PROQOL isn’t a diagnostic tool, it’s good to keep yourself informed, especially when it comes to our mental wellbeing. For now, try to do the best you can. In the wise words of Jenn Bruer,

“Slowly you may have transformed from a helper to one in need of help. It’s important to talk about this, to identify the wounds you carry.”

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