Compassion Fatigue is not Limited to Healthcare Workers
Here’s why as an executive you’ve reached the point of overwhelm and what you can do about it.
Why Are You Overwhelmed in Leadership?
It's all too familiar. You get up early, go to work, get home late, struggle to keep up at home, go to bed, and do it all over again the next day. Part of your struggle includes managing your employees and helping them through their own challenges.
Many people think of compassion fatigue as something limited to healthcare workers. Healthcare workers aren't the only ones who suffer, though.
As a business leader, you care about your employees and their personal lives, even though that's not a line item on your job description. Despite your best effort and for reasons outside your control, you’re losing employees at an alarming rate.
Business leaders all across the country are struggling to retain employees due to the pandemic, among other reasons. This, coupled with increasing job and personal stressors, causes managers to become vulnerable to compassion fatigue.
Compassion fatigue is not new, however. It was a burden inherent to executive positions long before the pandemic.
What is Compassion Fatigue?
Many people consider stress, burnout, and compassion fatigue to be very similar, if not the same. Burnout is actually one of two components that make up compassion fatigue. The other component is what’s called Secondary Traumatic Stress.
Burnout is a type of job-related stress that usually stems from increased work demand and feeling overwhelmed, which leads to people feeling like they aren’t doing their job effectively or efficiently. (1)
An increased work demand can come from actually having too much work to do or from having limited resources to complete your work (a lack of time, money, or people, for example). Other factors contributing to burnout include:
Unclear job expectations
A lack of control
Losing motivation
Balancing multiple priorities
A lack of support
Poor work environment
Dysfunctional team dynamics
Work-life imbalance
Burnout has been classified as a diagnosable occupational phenomenon that all of the above and more contribute to. Although the incidence of those reporting feeling burned out has risen since the pandemic, almost 50% of employees surveyed reported experiencing burnout prior to the pandemic. (2) These factors contributing to burnout plagued leaders long before COVID added a heap of new stressors to the plate.
The second part of compassion fatigue that differentiates it from standard work stress is Secondary Traumatic Stress. Traditionally reserved for healthcare workers exposed to clients or patients who’ve experienced a significant traumatic event, we know executives and managers are also closely involved with employees affected by personal trauma, and subsequently become overwhelmed by indirect exposure to said trauma.
When your team members have experienced death in their family, inability to see dying loved ones, loss of their homes, or other significant traumatic events like so many have endured over the past two years, you likely experienced their stress as your own, to some extent. You can only have so much compassion for others until you’re stretched too thin.
Who Suffers from Compassion Fatigue?
Anyone with employees is susceptible to compassion fatigue. Executives, supervisors, and managers alike have a job to do, but they often want to go beyond “just getting the job done” and truly take care of their employees as well.
No age group is immune to the effects of compassion fatigue. Leaders in every generation have been impacted by this phenomenon.
Managers and employees who work remotely versus in the office are equally susceptible.2 Whether your employees are reporting their trauma to you virtually or in-person, your likelihood of being affected doesn’t change. (4)
In sum, no one is completely immune to compassion fatigue. Let’s explore what happens when you’ve developed this issue and some things you can do to help.
Effects of Compassion Fatigue
It’s easy for Type A’s like you to dismiss the signs and symptoms of compassion fatigue as “just stress”. But the effects of stress don’t look quite the same.
Stress may cause short term mental, emotional, and physical discomforts. When you’re dealing with compassion fatigue, the discomfort lingers even once the stressors resolve.
If you’re dealing with Secondary Traumatic Stress, you will likely display many physical or emotional symptoms similar to what anxiety looks like — stomach or digestive issues, muscle aches and tension, headaches, feeling nervous or restless, having trouble concentrating, and constantly worrying, to name a few.
The other leg of compassion fatigue, burnout, looks more like depression — feeling sad, lonely, irritable, or hopeless. You may find that you’re doing the things you used to do but you enjoy them significantly less. Taken together, compassion fatigue presents differently in different people but there are a host of symptoms to be aware of, outlined in the next few paragraphs.
Sleep disorders are also frequently associated with compassion fatigue. You may find it hard to fall asleep. Alternatively, you may have difficulty staying asleep through the night.
Alcohol use and abuse are also on the rise. There has been a reported 54% increase in alcohol sales since the start of the pandemic. (3)
When we try to stifle emotions, our bodies store them as physical signals, which over time can absolutely result in pain. Some leaders only experience compassion fatigue with physical symptoms which can make it even harder to detect.
The danger in allowing this to go on for months or even years at a time is the risk of those bottled up emotions eventually exploding. It’s always easier to treat a condition when it’s in the early stages and less severe. Allowing patterns to become embedded into our neural network just makes the healing process take that much longer.
How to Identify Compassion Fatigue
The number one way to fight against compassion fatigue is to recognize it. Knowing what to look for is the first step.
Are you feeling stuck lately? Trying to figure out the next best step for yourself professionally? Do you often wonder what you’re actually doing?
Asking yourself these questions alone likely does not make you think, “I should probably talk to a professional about this.” If you’re a business leader and you feel like you’ve plateaued, you’ve lost motivation, or you just can’t figure out what to do next, this is the perfect opportunity to assess whether you may be dealing with compassion fatigue.
Have you been feeling more on edge, or not your usual self lately?
Do you find yourself worrying about your employees outside of work hours?
Do you experience feelings of helplessness, despair, or impending doom?
Do you sometimes feel like you’ve “checked out” — you’re just going through the motions?
Have you caught yourself daydreaming and having trouble concentrating?
Do you catch yourself procrastinating or avoiding work, people, or both?
These are just a few examples of ways that compassion fatigue may be slipping into your life and negatively affecting you, your job performance, or both!
How to Combat Compassion Fatigue
Once you are aware that compassion fatigue is becoming an issue for you, make it a priority to take care of yourself and do restorative activities often.
This could mean reading for pleasure on your lunch break, scheduling dinner with a friend, or just a nice long bath at the end of a long week. Restorative activities look different for everyone, but have the main goal of helping you to feel like “you” again, whoever that is.
Oftentimes, self-care doesn’t quite cut it and you’re still feeling the effects of compassion fatigue despite your best efforts to manage it on your own. That’s where having a psychologist as an executive coach comes in handy.
Such an executive coach is someone who knows the unique challenges that business leaders face, and helps you explore different ways to either maintain or accelerate your career despite all your challenges and obstacles.
They’re like guides who help you navigate this portion of your life that no one prepared you for.
Work with Me
You’re stuck, you’re worried about your employees and your own career, and you were late getting home or completely disengaged from your home office — again.
If you’re feeling like you need a way out of this current state but have no idea where to start, schedule a call with me today.
Unlike many who call themselves executive coaches, I’ve got more than 30 years experience to back up why I can help you.
Psychologists who are also executive coaches are uniquely skilled in that they’re not only keen on best business practices, but they know the psychology and the “why” behind them.
It’s like getting a two-for-one deal! I’ll walk through your current struggles with you and we will come up with a plan together for moving you forward, out of this stuck place so you can get back to truly enjoying life.
Click here to schedule a call today.