What is compassion fatigue at work and how to fix it?

This is a portrait of compassion fatigue – a phenomenon that infiltrates workplaces, causes irritability and burnout in employees, and divides once cohesive teams that should thrive together. Not only do people fill other people’s cups before their own, they also carry far too much at their own expense. Eventually they break down and can’t help anyone because they pick up the shards instead.

Enter the pandemic and its focus on mental health and self-care. We began to learn that if we didn’t take care of our own emotional well-being through rest, proper nutrition, sleep, vacations, connection with loved ones, exercise, and other necessities, we certainly wouldn’t be emotionally available to fill those cups of others.

Widespread layoffs and economic insecurity can also contribute to compassion fatigue and poor morale. Compassion fatigue can not only impact employees, it can also lead to negative customer experiences, disrupt previously functioning teams, and cause strained relationships with leadership.

Here are the signs of compassion fatigue at work and steps to resolve them.

What is compassion fatigue?

In the age of “silent cessations,” compassion fatigue is the forerunner. It’s often defined as a lack of emotional bandwidth to take care of everyone you “need” – colleagues, customers, clients, bosses, and sometimes even those in your personal life. This comes from an initial overwhelm and sometimes burnout as too much is required without the ability to fully charge up to prepare to give again.

In the pandemic, teachers and healthcare workers in particular have been experiencing burnout, the sister problem of compassion fatigue. In a Canadian study, 80% of educators surveyed were burned out from emotional labor and caring for everyone else in broken systems, often at their own expense.

Similarly, outbursts, rude comments and aggression are on the rise, with a new study citing that 76% of people experience rudeness at least once a month.

People with compassion fatigue have an increased likelihood of experiencing irritability and frustration in all areas of their lives, both personal and professional.

At home, compassion fatigue can look like an inability to relate to your partner, children, or other friends and family, e.g. At work, you may become more irritated and impatient with co-workers, supervisors, and your team members because you have less time to help and collaborate with them. The two areas can become blurred—compassion fatigue at home can impact work and vice versa.

What are some signs of compassion fatigue?

Compassion fatigue looks different in everyone, and you may see signs in yourself at home, at work, or both.

Here are some signs:

• Lack of patience with colleagues or loved ones, or acting more irritable than usual.
• Feeling atypical compared to your typical behavior.
• The feeling of not being able to stick together at work despite the professional environment.
• Feeling overwhelmed and unable to complete the tasks on your plate.
• Confused or blurred personal and professional boundaries.
• Stick together during the workday but then snap at your spouse or child at home.
• Cancellation of meetings or other avoidance behaviors at work.
• Not trying as hard as usual or having a lack of motivation.
• Getting angry easily with colleagues or superiors, or rather telling them what you really think without worrying about the consequences.

How to Overcome Compassion Fatigue

Once you’ve determined that you or your employees suffer from compassion fatigue, it’s important to remember that there are concrete steps you can take to overcome this challenge. These steps can also be used to prevent compassion fatigue from spiraling out of control.

Distinguish between compassion fatigue and other mental illnesses

About one in five adults in the US has an anxiety disorder. For example, someone with anxiety may have persistent, intrusive negative thoughts about a person or situation at work. On the contrary, compassion fatigue can look like an employee exhibiting brief and irritated responses to the needs of a colleague or customer because they have limited bandwidth to meet the emotional need. One way to tell the difference is to speak to a mental health professional and make sure other mental illnesses, like depression and anxiety, are treated.

Take an inventory to see if basic needs are being met

When was your last day or half day off? Can you or your employees schedule regular meals and daily exercise, or are you overworked and not getting enough rest? Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a basic but essential starting point for your inventory: you are unable to take care of others if your own needs are not being met, including those for safety, connection, and sustenance.

If you or your employees are constantly concerned about job security, you cannot fully focus on the deliverables of a project or attend to the specific needs of a complex client. Employers may conduct anonymous surveys along with focus groups and one-on-one interviews to collect this data.

Create sustainable borders

When bosses answer emails at 10 p.m., there’s an unwritten expectation that others should too. In a work culture that values ​​real charging, this is not the case. Instead, consider removing your work email from your phone and encourage your team to do the same. Adhere to consistent closing times and your team will adhere to them.

Organize and encourage partial and full days off for mental health, professional development and sick days, and take them yourself if you are a business leader. Finally, show that breaks are valuable throughout the day, such as B. Taking a walk outside and sitting down for lunch instead of inhaling a sandwich in front of your computer screen. Leadership team members can help foster these habits among employees by mirroring these behaviors themselves. These seemingly small changes will improve charging and translate directly to caring for others.

The promising news is that there are concrete steps you can take to address compassion fatigue in yourself and your team and restore your emotional well-being at work. For many, compassion fatigue is a temporary state in which the body and mind beg for rest and a healthier work-life balance. Once you listen to the signals and act on them, your passion for your work and others will return as well.

Anisha Patel-Dunn, DO, psychiatrist and chief medical officer at LifeStance Health, works with people who want to gain insight into themselves and improve their quality of life. She believes that building a strong alliance with her clients is essential to getting the most out of therapy and creating lasting change. Through this alliance, she works with her clients to explore and address patterns of thought and behavior that serve as barriers to living life to the fullest.