Compassion Fatigue

We can all agree that we are compassionate beings. We do feel some amount of passion for our causes. We all care about some part of the society. Empathy as an evolutionary gift increases relatedness between people and their communities. Hence, all of us have the ability to be compassionate. Compassion fatigue is not just a phenomena that health professionals face. It is something we all face throughout our life. To recognize would be the first step towards a better mental health. Compassion fatigue is a direct consequence of our feeling of helplessness in the face of problems that are bigger than us. 

We can feel helpless in front of causes that endure through our time and effort, the attitude of our loved ones in relationships or the irresponsiveness of the world to our efforts. real people are impacted by these problems we want to fight. The sheer irresponsiveness of systems can be overpowering. This can be devastating when one has a lot of emotional investment in a person or a cause and efforts towards a solution prove to be fruitless or largely inconsequential. A prolonged period of compassion fatigue can lead to a loss of ones values, pessimistic attitudes about change and this can have disastrous consequences on our motivation to do better or even try and help causes we really want to make a difference in. 

Why do we face compassion fatigue?

Our values and the roles we assume in the society affect the way we look at ourselves as persons. The line between the three can get so blurry that we as individuals become our roles and champion our values without respecting our limitations. Being a person is always defined with respect to ones values or ones beliefs. Hence, being a person is a very complicated thing. A person is a container of life who transcends his body and his physiological arguments of homeostasis. So we need to define a person to define the limitation of such a being. A person is about being both a physiological being and an intellectual being. However, one part of a persons essence cannot be sacrificed for the other. Hence, one has to check in with their body and with their mind. 

How and why do we prevent it?

So lets watch out for bodily manifestations of compassion fatigue. Inability to fall asleep, excessive rumination, lack of motivation, physiological burnout, inability to pay attention, hopelessness in terms of values, loss of self belief and excessive pessimism. These manifestations are a consequence of excessive enmeshment or over involvement with causes. It is a consequence of equating our worth with our impact in whatever cause or relationship we are in. This is problematic given our limitations and given the size of problems we face as opposed to the fact that we are only humans. 

Understanding our limitations, understanding the importance of small impacts and small wins are important. These help us stay in sync with the causes we base our identities on. It helps us stay optimistic, able and motivated even if our impact is not larger than life. Knowing when to protect ones physiological needs is important. Protecting ones level of motivation is of the essence. Compassion just means you relate to causes and that you acknowledge you have some power to do something about it. It is something that keeps you useful, motivated and optimistic about the future you are going to inhabit. 

It is very important for us as a community to be compassionate evolutionarily speaking. surpassing mental and physical limitations can lead to mental health problems. This is the line that must be maintained.