Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/navigating-compassion-fatigue-with-compassion/5025618/
If you are reading this, you are likely an educator, caregiver, clinical professional or child protective agency caseworker who spends your day helping others. As such, you know that your work requires you to open your heart and mind to others. Unfortunately, empathy is something that can also make you vulnerable to becoming fatigued. Compassion Fatigue can also arise from direct exposure to traumatic events, (common among first responders), or secondary exposure, most common among child protective caseworkers, educators or social workers. The anxiety and preoccupation with the suffering of those being helped can be traumatizing for the helper. For this reason, compassion fatigue is also known as vicarious traumatization or secondary traumatization. As a way to destigmatize trauma, Charles Figley coined the term compassion fatigue: the phenomenon associated with “the cost of caring for others in emotional pain” (Figley, 1982).
Compassion fatigue differs from burnout, but the two can coexist. Many times, burnout and compassion fatigue are used interchangeably. Burnout is associated with stress and hassles involving a person’s work. It is cumulative; relatively predictable. Frequently, a vacation or change of job will eliminate the problem. Think about how relaxed you may feel after a two-week getaway, or even a long ...