Burnout Blues: Confronting Compassion Fatigue

Good day. This is Dr. Jana Price-Sharps, and this is Mind Pilot. Today, we're going to talk about burnout and compassion fatigue. Those are terms that are often kind of thrown around and let's start diving into what those mean. This is going to be a several part series, but we're going to we're going to start talking about it today. And then at some point in either the next one or the third one in this series, we'll talk about what you do about it. I'll give you some hints about it today. So what is burnout and how does it differ from compassion fatigue? Well, if somebody is burned out, they're obviously getting tired of whatever it is they're doing. In this case, we're talking about jobs. So people start not wanting to come to work. They start getting irritated by work. They start calling in sick. They are irritable when they get to work, they start lagging on whatever they're supposed to do at work, like paperwork, following through with things. They tend to want to take a bunch of vacation time just to get away from work. And when they're at home, a lot of times they're very discombobulated. They they just want to sit on the couch. They have lethargy. It's almost gets the feel of depression where their energy levels start sagging, their follow through starts lagging a little bit, and they just feel irritable and maybe even angry a lot of the time. So burnout can be caused by a number of different things. It can be caused by working too much. We have a lot of people in this country that work a lot of hours and they forget to begin to take care of themselves and I know you've heard me say before, if you've ever listened to my podcast, Sleep, people that don't get sleep on a regular basis start getting burned out. Why? Because when you don't sleep, when we don't sleep, our mental resiliency diminishes significantly. And when mental resolve and see diminishes, then everything begins to feel overwhelming and irritating. So what ends up happening is people start getting irritated by work. People at work, their job, and they stop thinking about what they like about the job. Why they do the job, why they're there. They start thinking of all the reasons why they don't want to be there. Why are wanting to kind of distance themselves from work. And the problem is, I don't know what it is. Well, I have some ideas, but the brain wants to focus on what's negative. And we're going to actually have another podcast about this fairly soon because environmentally long term, are brain has been programed to focus on what is wrong. And there's some good things about that. If you're a first responder and you're listening to this, that's all you do every day is focus on what's wrong, what what needs fixing, what is the problem, what do you need to do about the problem? So it's all very problem solving oriented. The problem is a lot of things you can't solve. A lot of things are not within your purview. They involve other people making bad decisions and a lot of times we can't control what other people decide. So it can start causing people to feel frustrated and angry and then the more they get angry, the more frustrated they get, The more they focus on that, the more burnout they get. And it's almost it's like a lock loop and it's very difficult to get out of it, kind of pulls them into that real negative vortex. How do you know if you're there? Well, listen to what people who love you say to you. I know it's hard. I'm not great at that either. And I. I know it's easier just to say, Yeah, they don't know what they're talking about. They're just they wear those rose colored glasses that sound familiar? But take that step back and listen to what your loved ones are saying. They may be saying things like, Why are you so negative all the time? Why are you so angry all the time? Why don't you want to go to work? What is going on with you? If people are asking you that, take that step back and actually think about, huh? This is a person who loves me. They're giving me this feedback. Maybe I need to think about why they're giving me this feedback. So burnout is really just feeling overwhelmed, tired, irritated, wanting to distance from work, wanting to distance from whatever you're burned out about. It might not be work. It could be your caretaking, you know, a family member. It could be that you're volunteering. It could be a number of different facets of life. But typically when I'm talking about burnout, I'm talking about work. And so again, that's a lot of negativity that tends to wear people down and almost mentally exhaust them. So what's the difference between burnout and compassion fatigue? And can you have both? Absolutely, you can have both. One can lead into the other. Compassion fatigue differs from burnout in that it is specifically related to jobs or situations where the person is having to give a lot and not getting a whole lot back. So compassion fatigue is very common for people that are taking care of somebody with cancer, say, or somebody with Alzheimer's. A lot of people that have family members that need a lot of extra help, they can end up with compassion fatigue. Their their brain is just wants to be done with it. It's just they're tired and they're overwhelmed by it. And then some resentment can build some anger can build, some frustration can build. And they may end up getting angry at the person they're taking care of. So how does this fit with first responders? Well, all they see is tragedy very seldom do people call first responders when they don't need help. Right. You're not going to dial 911. If everything is good, you're going to dial 911 when things are going bad. So the tendency is the first responders are called to take care of things. And we see the same thing in the military, right? People don't go into the military to just kind of chat with other people and have a good time. There is a mission, there is a drive. There is things that have to get done well over time. If the things involve human trauma or sad things, people can start literally getting compassion fatigue where they almost move into PTSD kind of response. They might start having nightmares about it, they might start having thinking about it during the day. We call those day intrusions and they might relive some of the events that they've heard about. In other words, they start thinking about, I don't know, the children that they heard about dying or somebody who got killed and thinking about that and unable to stop thinking about that. You know, they're sitting, I don't know, at the dinner table or on the couch with a loved one. And suddenly they're thinking about things that have happened with maybe a community member. This this is a common one with the medical field. A lot of people in the medical field have compassion fatigue. They have a patient that they've been seeing or treating for a long period of time. That patient dies. That can cause some compassion fatigue. After a while, people start almost feeling like distancing from the patients they're treating. Get a lot of this. Actually, in my field, I'm a psychologist and so one of the things that I am very aware of is making sure that I'm showing up and I am not burned out because you don't want a psychologist that you're reaching out for mental health strategies and that person is burned out. They're angry. They have compassion fatigue, and they're kind of checked out. So it can happen to pretty much anybody that is somehow involved with people that are hurting or having a hard time. And that, again, can be first responders. It can be combat veterans, it can be doctors, it can be nurses, it can be teachers, even teachers that are dealing with kids that come from really troubled families. Obviously, social workers, psychologists, marriage, family therapists, it can span a wide range of groups of people. The good news is, and this is good news, there is a way out of it. There is a way to heal from this. But the first thing, as we've talked about before on this podcast, you have to identify it. You have to know that you're having this problem before you can fix this problem. And so that's where that self-evaluation piece that I'm always talking about comes into play. Because if you don't know if you have something, then how can you fix it? So if you're resonating with some of the things that I'm saying, stay tuned because we're going to start talking about what are some things you can do? What are some things that you can do to revive your life? It is possible you can do this. If those symptoms are severe, make sure that you're reaching out for professional help. This is just some thoughts and some techniques that I have seen work. It's not a replacement for therapy. I hope you have a wonderful day. Take care of yourself. You deserve to have a wonderful life. This is Dr. Jana Price-Sharp from Mind Pilot. Don't forget to subscribe.