In this guest post, our Psychology Services has penned a blog about compassion fatigue. If your work involves caring for or supporting other people, you may have heard this term before. Compassion fatigue can particularly affect those who work in homelessness, where staff often hear traumatic stories or witness distressing behaviour. This form of burnout can have a serious impact on our mental and physical health – but we can manage our potential for compassion fatigue by being aware of our limits and resources. Read on to find out more.
Compassion as an Important Value
Compassion is defined as ‘a feeling or emotion, when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve it.’
Staff in the homelessness sector often experience compassion as a motivator for their work, or part of their values in work. However, compassion, like other emotional responses to others such as empathy or patience, requires us to be internally resourced enough to access it.
What Is Compassion Fatigue?
Compassion fatigue is the emotional and physical exhaustion that can come from supporting others for a prolonged time, especially in work where trauma, crisis, and adversity are daily realities.
Compassion fatigue is not a sign of weakness or doing something wrong. It is a sign that people have been exposed to a lot and that things are getting to be too much.
Why Does It Happen?
Working in homelessness, staff can frequently hear about or witness challenging behaviours. They can be exposed to elevated levels of client distress and trauma.
Clients who have experienced repeated trauma and being let down can also direct their anger, frustration, hopelessness, and despair towards staff, who can represent figures of authority, care/support, or services which have previously harmed them or disappointed them in their past.
Many people experiencing homelessness have lost trust in the systems intended to help and people, and can push away or resist help.
Staff can in turn feel frustrated, shocked, angry, guilty, sad, and distressed in their everyday working life. These are very ‘normal’ and appropriate responses to being exposed to distress and trauma.
Staff benefit from support to deal with these feelings on a regular basis, otherwise they can become overwhelming and the ability to remain compassionate can be affected. This support includes self-compassion and compassion from colleagues and others around them.
How Might We Experience Compassion Fatigue?
We might notice signs such as:
Physically:
- Constant tiredness, even after rest
- Trouble sleeping or focusing
- The feeling of having ‘nothing left to give’
Emotionally:
- Numbness or feeling emotionally “shut off”
- Irritability, frustration, anger
- Feeling hopeless, cynical, or disconnected from the job
- Lowered empathy towards clients or colleagues
Behaviourally:
- Avoiding certain clients
- Becoming more reactive, withdrawn, or over-controlling
- Struggling to “switch off” from work
- Turning to unhelpful coping (alcohol, emotional eating, etc.)
The Impact of Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue can therefore have a negative impact on the staff member but also for the person seeking support, as compassion fatigue can influence the quality of care provided, and the relationship between staff and the client. These signs and symptoms can sometimes be difficult to notice in ourselves when we are ‘in the thick of it.’
It’s important not to judge ourselves or others if and when we notice compassion fatigue. It’s likely that all staff may experience this at some point or other.
Whilst some days and weeks are harder than others, if these feelings, beliefs, and behaviours are persistent, they should act as a signal to us that we need to take a step back to notice what is happening and make some changes, perhaps both individually and within our teams.
What Can Help with Compassion Fatigue?
Noticing signs of compassion fatigue can be a signal that we are experiencing more external demands on us than we have internal resources for so a first step is to look at what are the demands on us, what are our sources of work-based support, personal support, wellbeing and self-care and what changes might need to be made.
This can involve a combination of work-based adjustments, or adjustments within the team, and personal adjustments in our own self-care practices and work-life boundaries.
The Reality of Self-Care
Self-care can sound unrealistic or like a luxury we don’t have time for. When rotas are tight, phones do not stop, and admin is piling up, it is easy to skip breaks or think, “I’ll rest on my day off.”
But self-care is not a luxury; it is how we protect our ability to keep going. That does not mean just mean spa days or bubble baths (although those help too!). Self-care might mean:
- Taking a full break, even on a rough day
- Saying “no” to taking on more when our plate is already full
- Turning off work notifications when we clock off
- Talking to someone before things build up
Some of these practices involve boundaries that it helps to discuss and agree as a team and to think about self-care not just individually but collectively and organisationally.
From Compassion Fatigue to Compassion Satisfaction
Rather than soldering on relentlessly through difficulty, if we take time to allow ourselves to recharge, rest and reconnect with our values and positive intentions, this increases our energy and motivation to carry on, as well as maintains our positive sense of self.
More than just resting, we may need to find ways to restore our compassion satisfaction, which includes connecting to and finding meaning and fulfilment in our work, reminding us of the values of compassion that often brought us here in the first place.