Higher levels of resilience are strongly associated with lower levels of burnout and compassion fatigue. Many helping professionals experience both compassion fatigue and burnout. Over time, this can result in professionals feeling powerless, cynical, frustrated, and exhausted. Contributing factors may include role overload-defined by Duxbury (2010) as “having too many responsibilities and too little time in which to attend to them”-understaffing, low pay, harassment, ethical violations, and unfair policies. Professionals who experience compassion fatigue may feel powerless to effect positive changes in their lives, feel disconnected from themselves, and experience a negative change in their worldview ( Mathieu, 2012).īurnout results from prolonged exposure to severe job stress stemming from interactions with the work environment. Symptoms may include isolation, substance abuse, hopelessness, anger, guilt, reduced empathy, chronic physical ailments, and insomnia. Compassion fatigue is specific to the caregiving relationship and stems from empathetic engagement with the population being served. compassion fatigue is a secondary traumatic stress disorder, characterized by profound physical and emotional exhaustion arising from meeting the constant demand to be compassionate and effective in caring for traumatized or suffering people and animals ( Figley, 1995 Mathieu, 2012). Understood to be a natural consequence of helping those in need. This complex combination of stressors requires helping professionals to explore the steps they can take to effectively reduce the risks involved in their work and to increase their overall resilience in order to thrive in their challenging roles. Helping professionals of all kinds are exposed to a variety of stressors related to both their workplace systems and the ongoing exposure to direct and indirect trauma.
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