Empathy is a word used to describe a huge range of emotional experiences. It is the ability to understand and sense someone else’s feelings, thoughts or perspectives and how it might be impacting them. While empathy can promote social connections and provide space for emotional expression, empathizing with others over a period of time can lead to a feeling of tiredness, fatigue, and exhaustion.
When we respond with compassion to others’ pain, there is a part of us that experiences that pain as well. Constantly being exposed to the pain and suffering around us can take away from us a lot of our emotional resources, hence leaving us feeling fatigued and tired. This is a common experience when a person has to provide care, empathy and nurture someone else for a long period of time.
Empathy is an innate human emotion which is based on evolution. However, social conditioning reinforces women to be more empathetic than men. Women are often expected to be caregivers at home, ensure a pleasant work environment or provide a compassionate ear to their friends. Sometimes, we are expected to play all these roles simultaneously. These expectations also align with prescribed female gender norms including characteristics of being nurturing and accommodating. Women are often expected to manage emotional aspects of tasks, and the effort or work that goes into this is termed as emotional labor.
Along with the personal, professional and social aspects of life, we also exist in a world where information and news are constantly available to us via different forms of media. It is likely that while scrolling through our social media feed many of us would feel overwhelmed or exhausted, especially on those days when it is filled with news about an unpleasant event. Reading updates on unpleasant instances such as stories of harassment, war or mass shootings in different parts of the world, while being there for friends and family when they go through their own suffering, can lead to compassion fatigue.
Compassion fatigue includes feelings of being burdened, exhausted, helpless and angry at the same time.
Resentment can build up towards the person who is suffering or the source of the news. We can experience anger towards the person/ place expecting us to do tasks that require empathy. Previously, compassion fatigue was seen more commonly amongst people in the health care and social sectors. However, in this hyper-connected world where news is available in an instant, our brain processes the injustice and trauma we are exposed to and simultaneously empathizes with those involved. This contributes to the experience of compassion fatigue by people across different professions.
Thus, it becomes important to identify the spaces expecting emotional labor from us. We can then manage our experience of compassion fatigue and its impact on our mental health.
By Naina Shahri