Have you ever suffered from burnout from work? I am sure you have. What about burnout from helping others that are experiencing hardship in their lives? This is called Compassion fatigue and affects many people, but especially people involved in legal, medical, therapy and first responders, to name a few. People that are using their empathic skills to connect with people start to get overwhelmed with their pain and also begin to suffer.
The consequences of compassion fatigue can stop us from working to our best ability. Our high work standards may drop or we may have trouble with relationships in the workplace. There are also serious complications for our mental health; not only could this lead to anxiety or depression, but also posttraumatic stress disorder.
Secondary traumatic stress is another severe effect of compassion fatigue and refers to how people can become indirectly affected by trauma by helping other people who are directly affected by it. This is unfortunate that people helping others can experience pain themselves as it could potentially steer people away from wanting to help others in need.
I think I could compare strategies for coping with the phenomenon of compassion fatigue with a fireman that goes out to fight the fire with a suit that prevents him from being burned, or a policeman with a bullet-proof vest. If people are going out into the world to help people with their life struggles, they need to protect their own mental health with coping strategies.
I would like to take a couple of weeks to explore this phenomenon as I am sure it will help a lot of people. Stay tuned next week and if you are looking for someone to talk over your problems, feel free to contact me for a session. The first one is free.
storysolutionstherapy@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/CounsellorTrent/
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https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/signs-compassion-fatigue
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4924075/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7901735/
