compassion fatigue: understanding and identifying secondary trauma
Healthcare workers, counselors, and caregivers are vulnerable to compassion fatigue - a state of physical and emotional exhaustion that can occur when helping others through trauma or illness. Unlike burnout, which develops gradually from workplace stress, compassion fatigue can emerge suddenly from repeated exposure to others' suffering. Compassion fatigue is a normal and common reaction to caring deeply about others’ pain; not only is this condition real, but there’s evidence it's gotten worse through the last few years of the pandemic and beyond.
identifying compassion fatigue
Common signs of compassion fatigue include emotional numbness, difficulty sleeping, irritability, and decreased empathy. You might find yourself avoiding certain patients or clients, feeling helpless about making a difference, or experiencing intrusive thoughts about traumatic situations you've witnessed. Physical symptoms often mirror anxiety symptoms: racing heart, headaches, and digestive issues.
Risk factors include working in high-trauma environments, having a personal history of trauma, and a lack of strong boundaries between your job and the rest of your life. Social workers are among the most vulnerable professionals, but emergency responders, oncology staff, nurses, and those working in intensive care or emergency department settings may also be at increased risk.
strategies to prevent compassion fatigue
Prevention starts with self-awareness. Monitor your emotional responses to work situations. Are you becoming cynical? Feeling disconnected from patients? Becoming avoidant of certain people or places? These could be early warning signs. Try to find ways to establish firmer boundaries between work and your personal life, and try to prioritize the big five: sleep, nutrition, exercise, meditation/mindfulness and meaningful connection.
Professional support is also crucial. Depending on the resources available to you at work and beyond, take advantage of regular supervision, peer support groups, and even counseling to help process secondary trauma. Check if your organization offers any workshops of EAP services that may be of help. While any of these alone are certainly not a cure-all, taking any action to help yourself can also help in the short-term.
—————
If you’d like to see how coaching may be able to help you, consider booking a coaching fit call with us. Whether it's the right timing for coaching or not, we’ll do all we can to get you connected to the right type of support.
