Compassion fatigue

While I was researching one of the authors of Maybe Days, Jennifer Wilgocki, I stumbled across a power point presentation she did on Compassion Fatigue.

You may not have heard of this before. It is a more common term used for people in the medical profession, pastoral work, or child services.

We, as parents, advocates, case managers, and caregivers full under this umbrella whether we are specifically mentioned or not.

I am suffering from compassion fatigue right now, and it is evident in many aspects of my life, but right now my lack of “caring” about the Virginia Tech shootings shows how much I am suffering.

Nancy and Cindy have written beautiful blogs about their grief over this tragedy, and rightly so. I am sad about what happened and shocked at the magnitude, but I just don’t have the energy to care beyond that.

I am not alone. I talk to so many parents that are frustrated, burned out, or whatever you want to call it. In many cases we get a diagnosis of depression, which can be helpful, but it doesn’t change what we live with on a day to day basis.

One website describes compassion fatigue as “The stress of caring too much.”

It also notes the difference between compassion fatigue and burnout:

Compassion Fatigue is NOT “burnout”. Burnout is associated with stress and hassles involved in your work; it is very cumulative, is relatively predictable and frequently a vacation or change of job helps a great deal. Compassion Fatigue is very different. Compassion Fatigue is a state of tension and preoccupation with the individual or cumulative trauma of clients as manifested in one or more ways including re-experiencing the traumatic event, avoidance/numbing of reminders of the event, and persistent arousal. Although similar to critical incident stress (being traumatized by something you actually experience or see),with CF you are absorbing the trauma through the eyes and ears of your clients. It can be thought of as secondary post-traumatic stress.

Compassion fatigue is even mentioned in people who care for animals, so why isn’t it mentioned in foster and adoptive parents?

There are several on-line “tests” to take to see if you are at risk for compassion fatigue, but they are all geared toward health care professionals.

In Ms. Wilgocki’s slides, she talks about what makes us vulnerable, and I think as foster and adoptive parents, we certainly qualify.

• Empathy- Boy, we have to have that in buckets for our kids, or we can’t be effective parents.

• Have experienced some sort of trauma in your life- Not all of us have experienced a “major” trauma, but I think as human beings, you can’t help but have trauma in your life. Maybe it’s the unexpected loss of a loved one, or living in an abusive relationship, but there is trauma all around us.

• Most vulnerable when working with the pain of children- What is our every day life? We have seen, read and heard stories that would make most people sick. We listen to our children as they recount the horrors that happened in their lives.

This is another reason that self-care is so crucial in our lives. I’m very good at reminding people to take care of themselves, but I’m horrible at taking my own advice. I’m reminding you to take care of yourself, and I’m going to get a massage tonight.

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