We’ve been using our blog page to explore pertinent mental health topics for years. It almost always centers around someone who’s either personally experiencing a mental wellness challenge or supporting someone who is. In other words, a lot of our content has focused on the patient.
But today, we want to shift our focus and talk about the therapist. So, if you’re a therapist and you’re reading this: welcome!
Today, we want to focus on your mental wellness — and specifically on a problem called compassion fatigue.
The toll of caring
As a therapist, you spend your days hearing about the ups and the downs that life brings. As a good therapist, you don’t just listen. You care, you connect, and you feel a lot of empathy. You walk alongside your patients, and that often means getting into the weeds with them.
Spending so much of your day hearing and thinking about emotionally negative subject matter is (unsurprisingly) taxing. It’s completely normal to leave your office feeling down or drained.
But keep an eye on the toll your work takes on you. It can creep into unhealthy territory.
Specifically, you can start to experience secondary trauma from taking on the suffering of your patients. And this can lead to compassion fatigue.
Burnout is one kind of compassion fatigue, but this issue can extend past the symptoms of burnout. This specific type of fatigue is also called vicarious trauma or a secondary stress reaction.
Watching for the signs of compassion fatigue
As a therapist, it can be difficult to differentiate between a hard season at work and full-fledged compassion fatigue. As a result, it helps to know the symptoms of the latter.
Some of the signs of this problem include:
- Anxious or depressive symptoms
- Detachment
- Digestive problems
- Exhaustion
- Feeling trapped
- Headaches
- Intrusive thoughts
- Loss of productivity
- Loss of work-life boundaries
- Mood swings
- Persistently feeling on edge
- Trouble concentrating
- Trouble sleeping
Compassion fatigue can also take a toll on your personal relationships.
If some or all of those compassion fatigue symptoms sound familiar, the American Psychological Association (APA) recommends using the Professional Quality of Life (ProQOL) Health Measure. This screening tool can help you identify areas of imbalance in your life.
Addressing compassion fatigue
If you think you might be dealing with compassion fatigue, it’s time to slow down and take care of yourself. As the old saying goes, you can’t pour from an empty cup. The best thing you can do for your patients right now is prioritize your own mental wellbeing.
Seeing a therapist yourself can help here — we might even say it’s crucial to maintaining balance as a therapist. Yes, even therapists have therapists.
In tandem with professional mental healthcare, deploy self-care practices. We’ll talk more about these in our blog next week, but to get you started, you can try:
- Learning how to set healthy boundaries
- Getting active and maintaining movement
- Journaling about the challenges you’re facing when it comes to boundary setting as a therapist (therapist guilt can be very real!)
- Prioritizing a healthy diet
- Sticking to your sleep schedule
- Practicing self-compassion
- Reaching out to friends and family for support
- Focusing on/practicing gratitude for successes with your clients
Setting solid work-life boundaries also makes a big difference when your profession is taking a toll on you personally. If you don’t already have your own therapist, we’re here to help. Contact us at the Ventura Counseling & Wellness Center in Ventura or the West Valley Counseling Center in Tarzana.
