How do I navigate compassion fatigue?

Let me begin by describing compassion fatigue for those who may not be familiar with this phrase. Often or most often you will hear it used by counselors and helpers who work with people who have experienced trauma, and what this phrase compassion fatigue refers to is a reduced feeling of compassion and empathy from the helper. So the helper—who could be a counselor, pastor, social worker, anyone who is involved in the care and recovery of the traumatized individual—this helper isn’t experiencing compassion and empathy for the people or the person that they are helping. Related to this experience of compassion fatigue are terms perhaps more of us have heard and even used, such as feeling burnout, or just everyday words that capture something of the impact on helpers such as feeling exhausted, overburdened, finding that you just aren't moved emotionally as you hear from suffering people.

So if a helper finds you are not moved emotionally for the people you’re helping, this is a very hard experience. It can be very disorienting to feel reduced compassion and empathy because your compassion and empathy are most likely the very traits that motivated you to become a helper in the first place. Helpers are generally and usually very skilled and instinctive about showing compassion; it’s the foot we lead off with, so to speak, in our care of hurting people. So if this quality is reduced or gone in you, that is a really hard thing. You will feel so disoriented in your work. You don't feel like yourself. And so I appreciate the person who asked this question using that verb navigate—how do I navigate this? And it truly is so difficult to navigate because of how disorienting the feeling of compassion fatigue will be.

Again as counselors and as helpers we are so used to feeling compassion and empathy—it is the very trait, it is a leading trait, that moves us into a helping ministry in the first place, so for it to be lacking it is going to be an experience of suffering for you. You don't feel like yourself and you want this disorientation to end, of course you do. You don't want to stay this way that doesn’t feel like you; it’s not the way you want to feel. So first let me just tell you that if you are suffering in this way, I have compassion for you in that. You are tired. You are weary. You have cared well and long and hard for others and it’s taken a certain toll on you. So the first way I want to encourage you is that the Lord has seen your good efforts, all your acts of faithfulness, big and small, as you have walked with hurting people. He has seen you and is concerned for your weariness. Let me read you a few lines from the book of Mark chapter 6. This is after Jesus’s public ministry has begun. He’s teaching and healing and traveling. Then in verse 7 it says, “And he called the twelve disciples and began to send them out, two by two, and gave them authority over unclean spirits. He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts—but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. And he said to them, ‘Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.”

So following after the pattern of the Savior, the disciples begin to serve and minister. The conditions of their ministry sound challenging. No bread, no bag, no money. Encountering people who might not listen or receive their ministry. And yet they faithfully go and preach, drive out demons, and anoint and heal sick people. A lot of work. Later in the chapter, they reunite with Jesus, now at verse 30: “The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, ‘Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”

So I want to highlight for you Jesus’s care and compassion for his disciples. They are tired, hungry, spent from doing ministry, and Jesus invites them to rest. “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place,” he said. I invite you to hear that invitation from Jesus and to know his care and compassion for you as you experience compassion fatigue. Come be with him, get some quiet, get some rest. To be engaged in ministry is challenging and can be taxing on us, and you also need care. And we see in this passage Jesus’s care for his faithful ministers.

As an outworking of his care, let’s get practical with what does that look like, what can it look like for you. So feel free to consider, what is restful for me? What is your version of a quiet place where you can rest? Where’s a place you can go to recharge? So receive the invitation by pursuing what is restful for you. Do it even if you don’t feel like doing it, and do it with the knowledge that Jesus has care and compassion for those he has called to ministry.

Continuing to think practically, I want to next encourage you to take some time for self-reflection. So whether this is with a journal or just taking some quiet time to think, I want you to consider, how do you think you got here to this place, to this season of compassion fatigue? So I want you to think broadly across many categories of your life. Before I begin to discuss some of those categories I have in mind, let me just offer a caveat, which is I am advising you to do this self-search but I don't mean it to be an exhaustive one. Don’t carry into this time an expectation you are going to perfectly know all the answers to the questions that you could ask about how you got here. There will always be some level of mystery involved with how something has come about, so I’m not expecting you to find the answer. Certainly go into this time of self-reflection prayerfully, asking the Lord to be with you as you search your heart, recall details of your work, and make assessments over different categories of your life, but know that my hope for you in this is to gain insight so that you can potentially make adjustments that will help you continue your ongoing ministry. To navigate compassion fatigue is to hope to get past it, and practical changes, even small ones, can make a difference.

So with that caveat in mind, here are some places to consider. Starting with your profession, your ministry, consider your caseload. What types of cases have you been taking? Do you think there is any correlation between the types of cases you've had recently with a reduced level of compassion? In general, are there certain types of cases that are more challenging for you for any reason? Certain issues or challenges that burden you perhaps more than others? Do you perhaps tend towards perfectionism or over responsibility as you walk with hurting people? And do you think there could be a connection between that tendency and your feelings of fatigue? As you continue to consider the season of ministry you are in, can you recognize any warning signs that have been there that led up to compassion fatigue? Those warning signs could be experiences like it's been hard for you to leave work at work, or you're thinking more often than usual about the people you're helping or about the problems, perhaps feeling anxious for the person or about how to help the person.

It could also be the case that you know exactly which case or which person you have been caring for that has led to your compassion fatigue. So consider, what about the care you have provided has been so taxing for you? What have you given to this person in terms of your time and your efforts? Have they required more of your time? Is there something about the trauma they experienced that you find particularly hard to understand and grapple with? Are their needs so complex that they require more than just you as a support, but perhaps you have been the only one on the scene for them?

What implications might flow from these questions that you are considering about your particular ministry and caseload? It could be that in this coming season, you need to say no to helping people with certain kinds of problems that are particularly hard for you. It could be that you scale back some of your hours, if that is possible, as you take some time to rest and rejuvenate. If your compassion fatigue is related to a particular person with a particular problem, then it could be that you consider who else could you loop in to help you care for this person? What other resources might be available for them? Of course, any pulling back from this person would need to be done delicately and with great care, so do seek counsel about how to do this well if you come to the conclusion that you need to step back.

Next, consider the level of support you have professionally. Are you speaking to other counselors and helpers about your cases? Are you receiving help for these cases when you need it? Are you perhaps isolated in your ministry and been carrying a lot if not all of the burdens of the people you are helping on your own? If you are feeling isolated in your ministry, I encourage you to think about who you can reach out to for support. if you're a pastor, is there an elder team or deaconate who can assist you with a certain person or when people come for help with certain types of problems? For a counselor, can you join a group of other counselors to gain support and have a confidential space to speak about your struggles with compassion fatigue?

Next, think about the season of life you are in personally. Are you perhaps suffering personally or facing a challenge or set of challenges that have been draining or overwhelming? How are your personal relationships? Are they a place of rest and restoration for you or are they fraught with conflict right now? I ask of course because I am wondering if perhaps you are feeling drained in your personal life which is giving you limited capacity in your ministry or counseling work. All helpers are also people with their own complex relationships and lives, so there is no shame in this; remember I’m asking these questions to help you consider potential connections to the experience of compassion fatigeu.

Next, think about your spiritual life. How are you doing with connecting with the Lord? Are you experiencing him as a place of refuge and restoration? Are you perhaps struggling with him because of the type of cases that you've been working on? Often we can struggle with God as Christian helpers as we are aware and see the pain of so many people's suffering, and it can understandably raise questions and doubts in our hearts about what God is doing or not doing for these people that we care about. it can be difficult to see others that we are helping suffering over a long period of time with little relief coming to them, to be joining them in crying out to the Lord, but not seeing changes or improvements that we hope for or are praying to see. This can lead to our own personal faith crisis. Does any of this resonate with where you have been lately in terms of your relationship and understanding of the Lord and how he works?

With these considerations of your spiritual life, let me encourage you to continued rhythms of the normal means of grace God gives us. Attending weekly worship, fellowship with other believers, prayer as a vital way to be connected to God who sees and cares for you. If you feel that compassion fatigue has come with hard questions for God about what he’s doing, I encourage you to speak to other Christians about that, your pastor perhaps. Doubts and wrestling is an expected part of the Christian life, and if you are working with severely wounded people and have seen the wreckage that evil can take on people in an up-close way, it makes sense that you might be wrestling with God. In the midst of that, you can speak to him about it and to other trusted Christians in your life about it. You can ask for prayer.

As a final thought for how to navigate compassion fatigue, I want to encourage you, because I think with this struggle you might be vulnerable to getting frustrated with yourself for feeling the way you do. But I want you to know and keep coming back to the fact, to the spiritual reality, of how much the Lord Jesus cares for you. I am inviting you to be open to making changes, to make adjustments where you can, and to do that from a place of knowing, believing that Jesus cares for you. That if you’re fatigued, that if you’re weary, he wants you to experience his care and relief. So make any adjustments from that place of knowing you are cared for, and without guilt.

And as a minister of his, I’ll close with something true about him that is good news for us as helpers. And that is that he is the source of all compassion. The God you serve is someone who is described as having compassions and mercies that never cease. He is not like us in that way! For us, for limited people, we find that our compassion for others can cease. We run out of mercies, even if temporarily. But his compassions never cease and his compassions are for you, they are for the people you're helping, and even if you are not feeling his compassions yourself, you can still point yourself and point hurting people to him, to the One whose compassions never cease. So to close, I invite you to receive and keep receiving the ministry of his care to you in the midst of this experience. And I do pray, for your sake, that it would end quickly.