Reframing Compassion Fatigue in Caregiving Work- Spirals and Cycles

First in a series of five posts

Compassion Fatigue is defined as “a state experienced by those helping people or animals in distress; it is an extreme state of tension and preoccupation with the suffering of those being helped to the degree that it can create a secondary traumatic stress for the helper.”
Dr. Charles Figley, author, Secondary Traumatization and Compassion Fatigue

Chronic compassion fatigue can lead to burnout: physical, emotional and mental exhaustion experienced after a time of intense effort. The word implies a state arrived at from a place of passion. Once engaged and excited, the burnt-out person finds themselves less capable of raising a spark of interest, never mind a flame. It’s not that the person doesn’t care as much, it is that they can’t care as much as they used to. There is a risk of this in all caring professions: educational, medical, nonprofit, political, activist, veterinary, social work, therapy, law enforcement, journalism and ministry, just to begin the list.

People in caring professions ourselves live under systemic oppression related to race, class, gender identity and expression, immigration status, sexual orientation and other aspects of being in a society that is increasingly polarized. We all live with governing and economic systems that undermine our citizenship and our value as human beings. We all live in awareness of climate change and environmental crisis. In this context it is vital that we build our understanding of the compassion that can sustain us in these difficult times.

In this series of posts, I offer some conceptual frames for defining compassion and recognizing and addressing burnout. My aim is to provide new ways of understanding self care and support for people who do such important and challenging work.