Episode #13: Addressing Compassion Fatigue: Transforming Care and Self-Care Strategies
Jun 05, 2024
Transforming Culture Consultants
Welcome to Transformation Talks, your go-to podcast for tips, strategies, and inspiration to transform workplaces, communities, and lives. In this episode, hosts Sharon Wilson and Cindy LaCom explore compassion fatigue, also known as the cost of caring. They discuss the emotional and physical exhaustion resulting from prolonged exposure to others' trauma, affecting those in healthcare, therapy, social work, and beyond. Sharon and Cindy highlight common symptoms such as sleep problems, weight changes, hopelessness, reduced empathy, chronic exhaustion, and a desire to isolate. They share personal anecdotes and professional insights, emphasizing the need to set boundaries, prioritize self-care, and manage time effectively. Practical self-care strategies include engaging in hobbies, practicing gratitude, improving sleep quality, avoiding negative media, and establishing emotional boundaries.
For more resources and opportunities to connect with industry leaders, visit Transforming Culture Consultants at transformingcultureconsultants.com. Apply for a free virtual consultation to explore workplace culture challenges and connect with us on LinkedIn at Transforming Culture Consultants. Join us in our vision of creating workplaces where employees feel happy, respected, valued, and safe. Thank you for being part of this journey. Join us next time for more transformative insights on Transformation Talks.
Welcome to Transformation Talks, your go-to podcast for tips, strategies, and inspiration to transform workplaces, communities, and lives. In this episode, hosts Sharon Wilson and Cindy LaCom explore compassion fatigue, also known as the cost of caring. They discuss the emotional and physical exhaustion resulting from prolonged exposure to others' trauma, affecting those in healthcare, therapy, social work, and beyond. Sharon and Cindy highlight common symptoms such as sleep problems, weight changes, hopelessness, reduced empathy, chronic exhaustion, and a desire to isolate. They share personal anecdotes and professional insights, emphasizing the need to set boundaries, prioritize self-care, and manage time effectively. Practical self-care strategies include engaging in hobbies, practicing gratitude, improving sleep quality, avoiding negative media, and establishing emotional boundaries.
For more resources and opportunities to connect with industry leaders, visit Transforming Culture Consultants at transformingcultureconsultants.com. Apply for a free virtual consultation to explore workplace culture challenges and connect with us on LinkedIn at Transforming Culture Consultants. Join us in our vision of creating workplaces where employees feel happy, respected, valued, and safe. Thank you for being part of this journey. Join us next time for more transformative insights on Transformation Talks.
Welcome everyone to Transformation Talks. The intention of our podcast is to provide tips, strategies and inspiration to transform workplaces, communities and lives. I'm Sharon Wilson. I'm the co-founder and chief mindset and growth officer at Transforming Culture Consultants, and I have with me today our other co-founder, cindy Lecomte, our chief impact and inclusion officer. In our last episode, we talked about the role of mental health in our workplaces and steps we can take to support our colleagues and ourselves.
Speaker 1:
In this episode, we want to extend that discussion by recognizing that for many of us, our work includes caring for others, whether it's healthcare providers, mentors or counselors.
Speaker 1:
Providing care to others can be incredibly rewarding, whether that's within a therapeutic role or perhaps in helping to onboard and mentor a new coworker. If you provide a regular, active, intentional and ongoing help to others, you know that doing so can be really fulfilling, but can also exact a cost. Today we want to focus on what is called compassion fatigue, often referred to as the cost of caring and typically associated with health care, therapy and social work. Compassion fatigue is characterized by emotional and sometimes physical exhaustion and a measurable decrease in an ability to empathize. It is, or it can be, a form of secondary traumatic stress which results from indirect exposure to trauma and occurs as a result of helping or wanting to help those who are in need, and we know that some of you who are listening are nodding, thinking I recognize this. This is how I feel. Maybe you're not even in therapy or social work, but this can be in any industry we understand, and that's one reason we'll wrap up with some action steps that might help you manage and diminish compassion fatigue.
Speaker 2:
Exactly, karen. You and I have talked about this, and initially we actually did focus on health care provision and counseling, but as we continued to talk, we included other kinds of work in our discussions. What about the teachers who give unstintingly of their time, support and energy, who coach in the evenings and on weekends and who do outreach to students who they know might be unhoused or hungry? What about the administrator who integrates trauma-informed support into their work on a regular, consistent basis, staying late to brainstorm with a new team or spending weekends sending out birthday cards or condolence letters to the employees that they supervise? What about Terry? They're the person everyone in the office knows, the person that we confide in, we unload on and we turn to when we need advice. Most of us have a Terry in our office or department or on our team. In fact, you might be Terry. If you are, then you know that that can be exhausting, and, though we want to give a shout out to those who work in caring professions, thank you for the work you do. We also want to expand our usual thinking about compassion fatigue to recognize that many of us, in fact, can experience it. So how do we know if we are in fact, experiencing it.
Speaker 2:
There are actually a set of symptoms which are associated with compassion fatigue, and we want to just give you a list of some of the most common, some of which you may recognize Problems sleeping tendency or desire to blame others when things get rocky or perhaps don't turn out like you would hope or planned.
Speaker 2:
Blame others when things get rocky or perhaps don't turn out like you would hope or plan. Weight gain or weight loss are also symptoms of compassion fatigue, as is a general and persistent sense of helplessness or hopelessness, reduced feelings of empathy or a reduced capacity to care for others, dreading work or the feeling like you need to take care of another person and then, in many cases, feeling guilty about your feelings. You might also experience chronic exhaustion and, finally, you may experience isolation or a desire to isolate, and this can include cutting off or reducing social activities and ties both inside and outside of work. If you're only experiencing one or two of these symptoms, it doesn't necessarily mean you're experiencing compassion fatigue. After all, we may be taking care of three kids, we may be practicing elder care, sometimes we just have a bad day or a bad week or a bad month, right. But if you see yourself in many of these symptoms, then you'll probably find our recommendations at the end of this episode particularly helpful.
Speaker 1:
Definitely, and you know, though, it's true that everyday life and work can be exhausting. Compassion fatigue is not the same as normal life fatigue and, as you said, cindy, its causes are often rooted in our childhood experiences. If we've grown up without clearly marked and maintained boundaries, we are less likely to say no or to prioritize our own mental and physical health when others seek us out. Also, we may have had to develop an excessive sense of responsibility when we were children or youth. I know I'm the oldest of seven kids, so I really get that. Maybe a parent had chronic health issues and we had to be a surrogate parent to our younger siblings, or maybe our families relied on us to clean the house and cook the meals because our parents were working on a second shift. In such cases, we may have been praised for stepping up, which might, in turn, have fostered an identity and sense of self that equates caring for others, being a good and worthwhile person. I mean, does that make sense? I also think about the ways in the experience of being rewarded or praised for being other-centered can lead to a sense of guilt in those moments when we just want to tune out or to just practice self-care, and we just want to tune out or to just practice self-care. If we've been rewarded for being other-directed since we were 8 or 10 or 12, we may feel selfish or self-indulgent if we want to prioritize our own needs, even though doing so can be positive, necessary and productive. Having a highly developed sense of empathy for family and friends and colleagues is wonderful, but it needs to be balanced with a commitment to caring for ourselves.
Speaker 1:
One way I think about this is when I'm experiencing compassion fatigue is by asking what advice I'd give a friend or respected co-worker if they were in the same situation. If my answer is you need to take a break, you need to say no, please work on establishing better boundaries. Just say no. I don't think you have the bandwidth to take on another project or person. If this isn't the advice I might offer to another, I have to wonder why aren't I taking the advice I give? Why are we so often kinder and more gracious to our friends and co-workers than we are to ourselves? That's a question we might explore in a future episode, but at this point in today's episode, now that we've defined compassion fatigue and consider what might contribute to it, we want to consider action steps that we might take to address it.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely, and I really love that. You mentioned that you were the eldest in a family with seven children. You and I have talked about this, and both of us. I think this is a topic that resonates for us. But here's a real truth about compassion fatigue If you are experiencing it, you're the only one who can address it. This is an individual issue. It's not a workplace issue. This is an individual issue. It's not a workplace issue. And before you respond or maybe even get defensive, we want to explain.
Speaker 2:
There are some key differences between compassion fatigue and burnout. Compassion fatigue is caused by exposure to trauma and prolonged care of others. It's a term used to describe the impact and consequences of helping people, and if you manage it early, it typically actually has a faster time than burnout Now. Burnout, on the other hand, is caused by work-related issues. It's due to the nature of the job itself. It's due to your co-workers, or perhaps to ineffective management.
Speaker 2:
Burnout emerges over time as work-related issues become apparent. For instance, it articulates itself in response to a chronic lack of resources, a boss who tells you that they'll reward you, but only if you're doing more with less. It's a response to perpetual long shifts, or perhaps when management fails to enforce equity regarding caseloads, production expectations or distributing the kind of hard-to-work-with clients or customers. And it may be that you feel like why am I getting so many of those when so-and-so gets almost none of them? So burnout's a term that's used to describe the impact of a stressful workplace. It's systemic, it's structural in the workplace, and addressing issues of employee burnout relies on structural change in the business or the agency. It doesn't rely on changes by an individual.
Speaker 1:
Exactly, and our key point here is that, while burnout is difficult to manage because it's tied to the structure of your workplace, to a need for systems changes, addressing compassion fatigue relies on the individual to take action steps. Exactly.
Speaker 2:
And we're not saying that it's easy. But if knowing that it starts with you can be scary and I know that it can be we also believe it can be empowering. One of the first and perhaps most important steps you can take is to reevaluate your relationship with time. How many of you find yourself saying this a lot I don't have time, I don't have time. It kind of becomes a daily mantra and it has me. I said it to my partner, our animals and, yes, sometimes to my friends and family, and I know I wasn't alone.
Speaker 2:
For many experiencing compassion fatigue, a perceived lack of time becomes the enemy. There's never enough of it, and certainly not enough time to take care of ourselves. So to compensate, we multitask. Or just as often, we give up exactly those things that might help revitalize us. Maybe that's downtime, time with friends that doesn't feel like a duty. Maybe it's the walk with our dog that we've postponed, the yoga sessions we've been promising ourselves, or the half hour that we want and need to write in the journal that we keep meaning to start.
Speaker 2:
And I think a lot about something I heard Ava DuVernay say she's a prolific screenwriter, she's a film and television producer and she's a filmmaker, and I heard her in an interview. She was asked how do you find time to do everything that you do? Her response intrigued me. What she said was I don't. I can't possibly find the time to do everything that I want. So now, instead of saying I don't have time for that, she says I'm choosing not to make time for that right now. Think about how this gives her the autonomy and agency. She's no longer a victim of time, but the author of her decisions. And this takes us back to the point that it's a choice. Only you have the power and the capacity to address and diminish compassion fatigue.
Speaker 1:
I love that, cindy, and I love your point that making this choice can be terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time, and that really resonates with me, because if we make time the enemy, then we don't have to do the soul searching and decision making that can help us end compassion fatigue. So once we start understanding time differently, what are some other action steps we might take? We talk more about this in our workshop and extend our discussion to think about how businesses and organizations can implement policies and practices to help workers avoid compassion fatigue, but for now we're going to close with just a few more suggestions. A critical first step is to simply recognize and name the symptoms of compassion fatigue and give yourself the permission to address it and fatigue and give yourself the permission to address it.
Speaker 1:
Once you've done that, there are a number of things you might do, depending on your mental, emotional and physical needs and on those practices that center and really inspire and support you. This might mean carving out quiet time alone, engaging in hobbies that make you happy outside of work. It may mean that you actively avoid gossip and negative chatter at work as part of a routine of self-care negative media. For some of this, this may mean practicing gratitude For others. It might be gardening or committing to a healthier diet and more nutritious meals. All these are important to taking care of ourselves and sleep Quality sleep is so important and really, as someone who's experienced insomnia, I know that this is a challenge, but one I'm taking on because I know how much of a difference good sleep can make in our emotional and our physical state.
Speaker 2:
Big time. I agree 100%. And you know, for most of us it will probably include learning to set emotional boundaries and actually learning to say no. In our workshop we actually spend time talking about and having workshop participants practice different ways to effectively and respectfully say no. Because if you've experienced compassion fatigue, you likely haven't developed this habit as robustly as you might. And this is not a judgment call Trust me, I've been there but rather some guidelines that we're offering to help you find a way to stronger self-care and better self-love.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. You know, after all, it's hard to feel empowered when you're exhausted at the end of each day, when you start to dread going to work because you know others are going to demand your time, support and emotional resources on a daily basis. Right hitting that snooze button so many times. If you're doing, that, something's off. If we want to create more empowered workplaces, we need to acknowledge compassion fatigue and address it actively and thoughtfully, and this aligns with our intention to be a support and resource for you to help navigate these unprecedented challenges in our workplace cultures and create thriving cultures that have a ripple effect that impact us all in a positive way. We'd love for you to join a community of HR professionals, executive directors and managers that are wanting to create and grow more empowered workplaces and organizations, and you can get free tips, resources and opportunity to attend free virtual gatherings where you can engage with industry leaders and innovators, exchange ideas, strategies and best practices.
Speaker 1:
You can go to our website at transformingcultureconsultantscom slash HR. We're also available to provide you with a free virtual consultation to explore any challenges or opportunities in your workplace culture, maybe about compassion fatigue. You can apply for that at transformingcultureconsultantscom slash free application. You can connect with us on LinkedIn at transforming culture consultants, and our vision is a world where employees feel happy. Slash free application. You can connect with us on LinkedIn at Transforming Culture Consultants, and our vision is a world where employees feel happy, respected, valued and safe. Thank you for being part of this vision.
Speaker 2:
Definitely, and we hope you'll join us for our next podcast.
