What is Compassion Fatigue?

Compassion Fatigue is the damaging physical, emotional, and spiritual exhaustion that caregivers, social workers, medical professionals, animal care workers and front-line or public service professionals experience as a result of listening to clients and co-workers who are caring for people in pain and suffering.

It is a gradual depletion of positive energy that ultimately impairs our best qualities of caring - including empathy, hope, compassion, patience and our ability to solve problems. If ignored or unnoticed, it can damage our relationships and compromise our creativity, professionalism and on-the-job productivity.

Signs & Symptoms

• Difficulty concentrating
  
• Feelings of hopelessness, sadness and discouragement
  
• Exhaustion
  
• Irritability
  
• Intrusive imagery (i.e., can’t get memories out of my head)
  
• Cynicism
  
• Anger
  
• Withdrawal / lack of enjoyment
  
• Violation of work boundaries (i.e., possibly contributing to a toxic work environment)

See the full list of Signs and Symptoms & Resources.

There is increasing recognition that people in front-line and service occupations are significantly affected by Compassion Fatigue through:

1. Primary (direct) exposure - workers are deeply affected by their work through a direct experience of traumatic events (i.e., working as an emergency room setting or as a hospice nurse or doctor).
   
   
2. Secondary (indirect) exposure - examples include: listening to a client talk about their trauma and/or depression; helping people who have been victimized; observing people’s inability to improve their life circumstances; or feeling helpless in the face of animal cruelty. Situations of extreme poverty, mental illness and emotional anguish exacerbate the effects.

We provide specialized services to support our clients to move
from Compassion Fatigue to Compassion Satisfaction.