✅ Today’s checklist:
🤔 Riddle me this: I start with ‘P’ and end with ‘E’, and I can be full or empty, even though you can never see me. What am I? (Find the answer on the bottom).
🌍 Work/Life: Have any exciting Bleisure trips coming up?
😇 Norms: Is toxic positivity really all that…toxic?
🤖 Tech: Shadow AI is not a comic book title.
📊 Culture: Exploring the PowerPoint’s magnetic pull on Gen Z.
Back in 1992, a registered nurse named Carla Joinson wrote about coping with the feelings of dread, irritability, and chronic physical fatigue she and other nurses sometimes experienced on the job.
She gave the cluster of feelings a single label that stuck: Compassion fatigue.
What is compassion fatigue?
A few years after Joinson used the term, an MD and professor offered a formal definition. He described compassion fatigue as an “extreme state of tension and preoccupation with the suffering of those being helped to the degree that it can create a secondary traumatic stress for the helper.”
Most formal studies focus on compassion fatigue in nurses, physicians, and other healthcare professions, but as we’ve seen with burnout, people across all roles and industries can experience it.
“It’s typically observed in people who spend their time helping others, such as social workers and other mental health professionals but can impact anyone who cares for or spends time with those who are stressed or suffering,” explains a comparison piece from Charlie Health.
Compassion fatigue also doesn’t limit its range only to professional/paid caregivers. Unpaid caregivers, most notably parents, can also run out of compassion.
How is compassion fatigue different from burnout?
The two issues are complex, interconnected, and very similar. One key differentiator:
Charlie Health breaks it down: “Compassion fatigue comes from consistently dealing with others’ trauma, while burnout, on the other hand, arises from prolonged, unmanaged stress.”
Common symptoms you might observe in yourself or others include:
Varieties of work linked with compassion fatigue include:
How can you recover from compassion fatigue?
The bottom line about compassion fatigue is that it very often occurs when workplace demands result in an imbalance between outbound and inbound care. That said, recovery strategies often focus on self-care that can restore someone’s ability to show compassion to others.
During an interview with Medical Professionals Reference (MPR), an MD and advocate for burnout prevention suggested go-to activities such as meditating, exercising, and spending quality time with loved ones. He also offered a few of his own more creative strategies.
Use a calendar to gauge your work-life-balance at a glance.
“Almost everyone has a weekly work calendar,” he told MPR. “I suggest that you also create a weekly ‘life calendar’ and keep it on your cell phone together with your work calendar. Include in your ‘life calendar’ those things you would like to create a work-life balance.”
“If you are unable to find anything to do because work is taking up all of your time, this is the first clue that something needs to be changed on the work front so that you can begin to include non-work activities in your life.”
Establish and stick to a powerful end-of-day ritual.
“I recommend some type of “boundary ritual” at the end of the workday,” he said, explaining that the ritual works kind of like an “off” switch on work mode.
“Your boundary ritual is anything you do at the boundary between work and home while telling yourself, ‘With this action, I am coming all the way home.’ For some people, it might be walking the dog, taking a shower, having a cup of tea, or simply taking a deep breath when you turn the doorknob of your home.”
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This week’s Subscriber challenge is one we can probably all relate to: Self-sabotage.
Self-sabotaging tendencies do indeed present one of the biggest challenges an individual can face. Let’s put it this way: only those who’ve never experienced it fall into the trap of assuming it should be easy to just…stop yourself from sabotaging…yourself.
If it were that simple, self-sabotage wouldn’t be such a pervasive and debilitating problem, potentially impacting over 60% of people, by some estimates.
Overcoming self-sabotage isn’t as simple or easy as just stopping the behavior because people experiencing it often lack the awareness to realize they’re even doing anything to stop.
Speaking of self-sabotage in a relationship-specific context, mental healthcare group Rula explains it like this:
“This doesn’t necessarily mean their actions are intentional or that they must bear all the responsibility for the problems in the relationship. It’s usually due to some underlying causes or past experiences that make it difficult to demonstrate trust and vulnerability with their partners.”
Self-sabotage, to put it bluntly, is anything but straightforward. That’s why it doesn’t always respond well to straightforward solutions, and also why making progress on them may require a complete pivot of your approach.
Here are some ideas from psychologist and former self-saboteur Sorina Raluca Băbău.
Instead of trying to ignore or suppress moments when you become aware that you’re self-sabotaging...
…pivot to focusing all your attention on what you’re experiencing, mentally and physically, in those moments.
Dr. Băbău says focusing on the experiences can lead to an awareness and understanding of what triggers the toxic patterns—a must-have if you ever hope to break them.
“Mindfulness is a useful tool in which you train the mind to focus attention on and hold all experiences without reactivity,” Dr. Băbău writes. “All trauma memories, including the trauma of shame, are stored implicitly, unconsciously, as body sensation, posture, movement.”
Instead of sticking with default right/wrong, good/bad, this/that, and other classic black-and-white thinking patterns…
…pivot to grey thinking patterns.
Dr. Băbău provides the following before-and-after example:
Instead of procrastinating, over-planning, overthinking, or otherwise trying to shield yourself from failure…
…pivot to leaning head-first into the possibility of failure.
Dr. Băbău explains that boldly and intentionally facing a thing that activates deeply rooted and potentially automatic self-sabotaging impulses could, in fact, be the key to deactivating them.
“Changing the relationship with how you perceive failure paves the path to eventually letting go of the importance attached to it,” she explains.
And if you let go of the importance attached to it, you will—with hope—also let go of the impulse to self-sabotage to avoid failure.
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“Don’t be afraid to own up to a mistake so that you have the support you need to solve it. Hiding a mistake just creates more problems!”
Celia Dolan, Administrative Assistant
📚 High Road Leadership is your guide to leading with empathy and strength.
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🎨 Relax and unwind with these paint-by-number kits.
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