Caring and Doing for Others can Be Exhausting
Most of us go throughout our day helping others and not even thinking twice about how this impacts us. This can happen naturally if you are empathetic and have always been used to taking care of others. When we take a step back, we may start to realize how drained we feel or how much energy we are now lacking for ourselves. Fatigue, poor sleep and eating habits can develop as well.
You may be neglecting yourself, your needs and you can start to notice you do not even recognize who you are anymore. This can lead to episodes of guilt, fear and loneliness. The potential for depression, anxiety or trauma related symptoms can start to show themselves.
Burn our and compassion fatigue are mostly prevalent amongst the most empathetic people we know. This means you, your most caring loved ones and family members. Empathetic people tend to give and unfortunately also neglect themselves in the process. By neglecting yourself and putting yourself aside, you are only creating more space between you and your needs. It is important to recognize this burn out and compassion fatigue cycle.
Burn out and compassion fatigue are also common in the helping professions field. This is due to the nature of our jobs. We are trained to help other and we enjoy helping others. Helping professionals may not realize how exhausted they may actually be from helping other people. We compensate and we sometimes accept that neglecting ourselves is acceptable. This can add to the burn out and compassion fatigue cycle. Furthermore, leading to depression, anxiety or trauma related symptoms.
What is burn out?
It is a feeling of extreme exhaustion after doing so much for others. You quite literally can burn out, like a candle and not have any energy left to give. Burn out can be caused by both work or personal stressors. Helping professionals are susceptible to burn out due to the jobs we have. As helping professionals we are great about giving advice, and helping people. This is an irony since we most often neglect ourselves and we may not even recognize it when it first begins.
Burn out can feel as if you have nothing left to give. This is how we apply the term burn out, it feels as if you are lighting a candle but it simply will not turn on. It can feel daunting, isolating, frustrating and sad.
Burn out in helping professionals may also lead to prolonging tasks that you may actually want to accomplish. This can make motivation hard for you. It can cause you to over think, question possibilities and reflect on your imperfections. Burn out can lead to symptoms of depression and anxiety, trouble sleeping, weight fluctuation, aches, pains and anger.
What is compassion fatigue?
It is a decrease in empathy or caring for others. We may feel as if we have no more empathy left to give, we may give up on people and ourselves. Compassion fatigue happens when we are over worked and overly focused on caring for others. We can feel this way when we neglect ourselves for too long. Compassion fatigue can be dangerous when it starts to spiral.
Compassion fatigue can lead to helping professionals mentally checking out and not wanting to be around others. It can make you push people away. It can cause you to go into your shell and feel as if you no longer can do for others. Compassion fatigue can lead to isolation and can turn into symptoms of depression, anxiety or trauma as well.
It leads to us abruptly not caring anymore, lacking empathy and making decisions that are out of character. Compassion fatigue can make us question who we are and our own purpose. We may feel fatigue, pain, hopeless, reduced ability to feel pleasure and lead to isolation and sleep problems.
Our Therapists Can Help You Overcome Burn Out + Compassion Fatigue
By coming to therapy we can explore better ways to cope and reduce your burden. It is hard to look inward on a typical busy day. In therapy you take a pause, time to reflect in a safe space and recollect your own thoughts. You can gain a new perspective in therapy, maybe one you already know but are just not implementing. Recognizing and being more aware of the atmosphere you are promoting is the first step to wanting to try something different. In therapy you can learn to change the way you are thinking and empower yourself to take control of your actions.
In counseling we can create a plan to help you have a healthy work life balance and explore ways to self-care. Having time for fun, rewards and you is a great tool you can gain from therapy. By seeing that you have control over your own time with yourself, you can gain better boundaries with yourself and those around you. Helping professionals may benefit from time for yourself and therapy is a great space to (self-care) get the time you need to reflect and work on yourself.
Our therapists would love to support you.
