Turning Compassion Fatigue Into Compassion Satisfaction: 5 Key Strategies For Helpers
Compassion fatigue (CF) is characterized by deep emotional and physical exhaustion and by a change in the professional’s sense of hope and optimism about the future and the value of their work. It has been called “a disorder that affects those who do their job well” (Figley 1995). The level of CF experienced by a helper can drop and flow from one day to the next, and even very healthy helpers with an optimal balance between Life and work may experience a higher than normal level of compassion fatigue when they are overloaded, are working with a large amount of traumatic content, or find that their case load is suddenly filled with clients who are all in chronic crisis.
The best strategy to mitigate the impact of compassion fatigue is to develop excellent self-care strategies, as well as an early warning system that lets the helper know that they are moving into the CF caution zone.
If you would like to assess your current level of compassion fatigue, visit Dr. Beth Stamm’s website and take the compassion fatigue self-test. This test not only looks at CF, but also assesses helpers’ compassion satisfaction level, which is “the pleasure you get from being able to do your job well.” (Stamm, 1999)
For the past 6.5 years, I have worked as a compassion fatigue specialist, offering training and counseling to helpers through workshops and one-on-one counseling work. Here are some of the main strategies that workshop participants have identified as most protective:
Take Inventory – Check with yourself on a regular basis. I ask my clients to draw a plate on a piece of paper and list all the demands / commitments / concerns that they currently carry within the plate. Then I ask them to identify the demands that may be changing, even by one percent. Participants often comment that they rarely take the time to take stock, much less try to identify areas where improvement is possible. This can become an important and useful tool in managing your level of work and home stress.
2. Find time for yourself every day: Whether it’s 5 minutes or an hour, time for yourself allows you to regroup and refuel. If you can, try to rebalance your workload by distributing to your most challenging clients or by taking short breaks between sessions to take a walk, do some errands, talk to colleagues, or visit a fun, non-work related website.
3. Make a transition from work to home: Try to leave work behind and start over at home. This may mean changing out of work clothes when you get home, walking twice around the block before entering your house, or some other mindful ritual that allows you to transition away from work-related worries and difficult stories. work, where to belong.
4. Learn to Say No (or Yes) More Often: Many helpers tell me that they find that they now say no to friends and family all the time because they feel too tired or exhausted to give more. Others say they are caregivers in all aspects of their lives and walk through the door of work only to receive phone calls from family members in need, or a pager from work or the many committees they are on. Explore ways to set better limits at work or with demanding family or friends, or, conversely, try saying “yes” to something every week that you have limited time. Learning to set limits is a key tool for optimal self-care.
5. Assess your contributions to trauma: Do you read, view photos, and are generally exposed to difficult stories and images in your work? Take a trauma information survey on a typical day in your life. Starting with the moment you wake up in the morning, notice how many traumatic images and stories you absorb through the media, newspaper, and / or radio. Now look at your work. Not counting direct customer work, how many difficult stories do you hear, whether it’s at a case conference, around the water cooler, briefing a colleague, or reading files? Now watch your journey back home. Do you listen to the news on the radio? Do you watch television at night? Do you see? If you have a spouse who is also in the aid field, do you discuss business and inform each other? There is a great deal of extra information about trauma that we don’t need to absorb or hear. We can create a “trauma filter” to protect ourselves from this foreign material. This requires mindfulness and awareness of what lies ahead.
And some more strategies …
– Attending workshops / professional training regularly: Researchers in the field have identified further professional development as one of the main protective factors against CF. It makes sense: the more competent and confident we feel when doing our work, the less stressful the work is and the less exhausted we become.
– Consider joining a peer support / supervision group: This can be very informal and involve only two or three colleagues or friends. Informing and connecting with others is an important way to protect ourselves from burnout and compassion fatigue.
– Consider working part-time (in this type of work): It has been found that the optimal number of days of direct work with the client is three days a week. If you want to research ways to make this economically possible, there are some great books on this topic, such as Your money or your life by Joe Dominguez and Do what you love and Marsha Sinetar’s Do what you love and money will follow. You can also explore the possibility of sharing work with the direct client and taking on other tasks that feel complementary and interesting to you on the other two days.
– Learn more about compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma: read books (see below), visit websites, and attend educational sessions on CF and TV. Workshops can be validation experiences where you meet other helpers and learn new strategies.
– Start small: You may not notice it right away, but making a small change in your daily routine can have tremendous results in the long run. Imagine if you started taking two flights of stairs a day instead of using the elevator, what could happen after three months?