A shared universe › Blog › When supporting others wears you out · Español
Compassion fatigue is the wearing down of those who stay close to other people’s suffering: it shows as apathy, irritability, low spirits and the feeling of having nothing left to give. It helps to separate their pain from yours, to cultivate warm care rather than carrying what they feel, and to have someone keeping you company too. You listen to someone who is suffering and you are left carrying their pain. If it happens once, it is empathy. If it happens every day, it ends up weighing so much that you feel like not listening to anybody.
The wearing down of people who stay close to other people’s suffering is called compassion fatigue. According to a 2011 review in the journal Nursing Research and Practice, the term appeared in 1992, in a piece by Joinson, to describe a form of burnout found in the caring professions, especially among oncology and palliative care nurses. It was later developed by the psychologist Charles Figley, who studied psychotherapists.
The same review lists the signs described most often: anger, apathy, low mood, a sense of being no use, helplessness, hopelessness, isolation and less ability to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.
The authors of that review, Day and Anderson, argue that people caring at home for a relative with dementia may suffer it too: they spend a lot of time close to suffering, have a strong bond with the person and, at the same time, the rest of their life keeps making demands on them. They acknowledge that this group has been little studied so far.
The same can happen to whoever is “the listener” in their family or among their friends, or to people who volunteer. If what wears you out is caring for a relative day after day, how to look after yourself when you care for a relative has ideas designed for that situation.
The researcher Tania Singer and her team found a difference that helps. In a study published in 2014 with Klimecki, Leiberg and Ricard, they trained a group of people first in empathy, feeling the other person’s pain as their own, and then in compassion, a warm feeling of wishing them well. Another group received memory training, for comparison.
When watching videos of people suffering, empathy training increased distress and activity in brain areas linked to empathy for pain. The compassion training that followed reversed that rise in distress, increased positive emotions and activated different areas. The authors suggest that cultivating compassion may be a way of protecting yourself from empathic exhaustion. It is a small laboratory study, but the idea is useful: keeping someone company does not require carrying everything they feel.
Some ideas that may help you stay close without emptying yourself:
And treat yourself with the same kindness you offer. If that is hard, what self-compassion is and how to start goes through it step by step.
If the tiredness does not lift with rest, if you have been sleeping badly for weeks, if everything irritates you or you feel you no longer care about anything, tell your GP or a psychologist. Asking for help when you care for others is not letting anyone down: it is the way to be able to carry on.
If what you feel is stopping you from living, do not go through it without company. In Spain you can talk to a person at the Teléfono de la Esperanza, 717 003 717, at any time. If you are thinking of ending your life, call 024: it is free, confidential and answered 24 hours a day. If there is immediate danger, call 112. In another country, call your local emergency number or a helpline there.
In A shared universe you can keep other people’s stars company at your own pace, and stop when you need to. And light a “For me” star on the days when the one who needs company is you. You can write in it what weighs on you, without saying who you are, and see how many people have kept it company.