Comfortably Numb: How to wake up from Compassion Fatigue

(if you want to)

Comfortably Numb: How to wake up from Compassion Fatigue

(if you want to)

later that night
i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

What They Did Yesterday Afternoon (extract) – by Warsan Shire

The above poem often pops up in my social media, ironically one of the places that most frequently brings me to a state of  “compassion fatigue”. My inbox and Facebook feed are full of the latest atrocities and ecological disasters, with pleas for money and support for the many war-torn and destroyed places of our world. It often feels easier to turn off and focus on what can actually be achieved. This for me often means little more than keeping a relatively sane state of mind in order to face the challenges of my own life. This turn off is often called “compassion fatigue” – exhaustion and apathy in the face of problems which are too many or too complex to deal with. But is compassion fatigue a valid or acceptable response to suffering? Indeed, does it even exist?

The original meaning of compassion fatigue comes from the field of psychology and traumatology. It described the effects on nurses and other health workers of dealing with daily patient trauma and experiencing ongoing empathy for the suffering of their patients. Over time, this exposure to the trauma of others leads to a kind of emotional burnout, leaving these professionals nothing else to give. For this reason, it is also described as secondary trauma – its symptoms are similar to trauma and include anxiety, sleeplessness, overwhelm and numbness, as well as physical complaints such as headaches and nausea. [1]It is vitally important that this less visible hazard of jobs that deal with suffering is understood and validated.

However, the recent application of this term to healthcare professionals following the Covid pandemic is deeply morally questionable. It is often said in the UK that NHS staff are now suffering from compassion fatigue as a result of the pandemic – they are simply unable to go on with their jobs after so many years of physically caring for the dying and absorbing  the attendant heartache, grief and despair day after day. But is this really compassion fatigue? Or just a convenient cover up for the fact that these healthcare professionals were and are, underpaid, undervalued, and exploited? If they had been given adequate time off, worked shorter shifts and had been paid enough to know that their families were supported, one might assume they would be feeling stronger and more resilient now. Compassion fatigue makes a scapegoat of empathy, centering the problem in the fact that these people care and feel responsibility for others; whereas the real problem lies in the UK economic and political environment which continues to undervalue and exploit them.

To move to the second, more commonly used, definition of compassion fatigue, this includes us all, wherever we work. The idea is that the news and social media bombards us so constantly with images of suffering, war, and disaster that we become apathetic and tired of it, not only paralyzed from taking action but from even feeling the pain. Charity fundraisers battle this phenomenon by trying to think of cool and edgy ways to catch people’s interest. News writers are often advised to play to people’s personal biases, e.g. to frame the story of a tragedy through someone that everyone can empathize with, often a child.

The mainstream news solution in this case seems to be to re-personalize suffering, so that we experience it through the eyes of somebody we relate to. How much we relate to the sufferer will massively determine the depth of compassion fatigue. After years of widespread apathy towards Europe’s ongoing “refugee crisis” when the deaths of refugees from Africa and the Middle East had became so unremarkable they barely made print any more, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine abruptly woke Europe from its apathy. One of the responses was a widespread and inspiring societal and governmental mobilization to welcome and support Ukrainian refugees. This temporary waking from compassion fatigue feels entirely natural and understandable to an inhabitant of Central Europe and was an inspiring and heartening display of solidarity and collective action. It was, at the same time, horrifically heartless and racist in the eyes of equally valid refugees who were met with apathy at the very best in their struggle for safety in Europe.

Are there other ways to wake from compassion fatigue, beyond rebranding suffering in cool ways or declining to engage emotionally until it affects somebody who looks like us?

Joanna Macy, legendary environmental activist, teaches that the only way to live with the suffering of the world is to lean directly into it. Facing and admitting the brutal truths of our time period is terrifying but if we choose to ignore them, we cease to really exist in it at all. Macy has an accessible and inspiring collection of practical exercises (many available online) which help us build the skill of experiencing the suffering of the world without being destroyed by it. This includes the marvelously simple “Breathing Through” (available on YouTube). Our lives, on a finite and globalized planet, are intimately connected to everything that happens here.  In Macy’s words “If you block out the pain, you block the joy too”. Compassion fatigue may make us comfortably numb but without compassion there will also be little real passion.

More importantly, there will be no action. Unlike me, Greta Thunberg does not seem to fall victim to compassion fatigue. In her addresses to the UN and world leadership summits, she regularly lambasts leaders who talk about “giving young people hope” by pointing out that the opposite of despair is not hope but action. Once we start to act, hope is everywhere. So If compassion fatigue is a type of lethargy then it seems only sustainable, deeply-rooted and open-hearted activity can wake us from it.

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[1] Canadian Medical Association