There’s so much going on in the world: wars, the climate crisis, healthcare issues in America, my friend Olivia crying over some guy… and it feels like too just too much to care about it all. And sometimes - if I’m being honest - it’s easier to just not care. It’s so overwhelming, at least for me, so why not put these issues out of our minds while we deal with other stressors in our lives? Does that make us bad people?

Don’t worry! You’re not a monster for not caring…yes, I’m looking at you Olivia. Just because I say you should move on doesn’t mean I don’t care. The perception of “not caring” is an actual phenomenon. It’s called compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue describes the physical, emotional, and psychological impact of helping others — often through stress or trauma. It’s a response to trauma that’s not your experience. It mostly impacts medical workers, but recently it’s becoming more widespread. Why? First, I’ll share (rant?) all about where the term compassion fatigue originated, then I’ll psychoanalyze the science behind it, then I’ll play the therapist friend (like always) and give advice about  how to make it all better.

The origin of the term compassion fatigue comes from a study of burnout in nurses from three decades ago. At the time, Carla Joinson, who I can only describe as a registered nurse because there is little information about her life, was one of the first nurses to discuss and conduct research on compassion fatigue. She coined the term to describe nurses who had lost the ability to nurture. But I mean … this only really impacts medical workers right? Nope.

Other professions, like educators, also suffer from compassion fatigue, but aren't trained to navigate the emotional toll it brings about, leaving them particularly vulnerable. There needs to be more acknowledgement that the same issues that kids have been dealing with, our teachers, our bus drivers, our coaches, and our counselors have, too. Whether it be caring about a student's home life, school work, or just being worried about their students, educators definitely develop compassion fatigue. 

Today, compassion fatigue has many different names: burnout, secondary traumatic stress, vicarious traumatization, and traumatic countertransference. Charles Figley, a psychologist and director of the Tulane University Traumatology Institute, referred to compassion fatigue as “the cost of caring.” (The cost of my care is loss of sleep because someone keeps calling me in the middle of the night.) But how exactly does compassion fatigue develop? It can’t just be from being tired of a topic of conversation, can it? Well, yes, no… kinda? 

“Compassion fatigue is stress resulting from exposure to a traumatized individual,” states the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. It’s been described as the combination of secondary traumatic stress and cumulative burnout, which basically means those of us suffering from compassion fatigue are simultaneously stressed from not achieving a goal and not being able to rescue or save someone from harm which results in guilt and causes even more stress. Imagine you are a doctor and your patient suffers from a horrible illness. You, as a compassionate being, would feel bad, and as a doctor, you would try your hardest to help said person. 

Now imagine you have 200 patients with illnesses that are just as horrible, and you feel like you can’t save all of them, and there’s still paperwork to do, not to mention issues in your personal life. You’re burnt out, because being a doctor is hard, and you have stress from not being able to help all of the people who seek it. These two stressors, as well as environment and other variables, lead to developing compassion fatigue. But, in short, it’s a trauma response to trauma that is not your own. A trauma response is a survival instinct: something our body does without our input to help keep us safe.

What might a person with compassion fatigue look like? The classic symptom is a decline in the ability to feel sympathy (I care about the issues you’re having) and empathy (I feel your suffering), and to act with compassion (I want to help you with whatever is going on). When a person has compassion fatigue, they can be more angry and irritable and also less able to think clearly and to make good judgements. Over a short period you may feel major stress and even physical discomfort, like nausea. But over the longer term, compassion fatigue can increase the chances of  cardiovascular disease, obesity, anxiety, clinical depression, and addictions (including smoking, alcohol, drugs, and gambling).

Not only has this disastrous phenomenon affected health professionals and educators, but it’s also starting to affect people who don’t necessarily face traumatic experiences every day. I don’t know about you, but despite going to a relatively safe school, I’m still terrified of school shootings. Since 7th grade - I’m a sophomore now - there have been 134 school shootings in the US. Just last year, my school had one lockdown, two bomb threats, and an active shooter warning down the street. And yet, these incidents can’t stop me from going to school. And as a pretty clear example of compassion fatigue, or maybe just a lack of compassion, some of my classmates started an instagram live, which is like a FaceTime call with multiple people and others can comment, during one of our “stay in places” lockdowns because a school down the road had an active shooter. They were joking around and may not have meant anything by it, but they, and I, were desensitized to these situations.

Which brings me to another form of compassion fatigue: thinking too much about tragedy. Whether it's a refugee crisis on the other side of the world or a mass shooting in our own country, overthinking about traumatic events can make us too anxious or depressed to function. Compassion fatigue swoops in as a trauma response and keeps us going. Even though we might feel terrible if we brush off a mass shooting, just understand it’s our body’s way of protecting us from outside harm, developed from our survival instincts.

Hopefully, now we understand a little more about how compassion fatigue develops, and who it can affect. But, what are its implications … other than our mental and physical health?

In healthcare, compassion is of such importance that most healthcare organizations have established it as a crucial value in their ethical guidelines. The American Medical Association’s Principle of Medical Ethics states in its value statement’s very first objective that medical services should be provided with compassion and respect for human dignity. Compassion fatigue can be misconstrued as not caring, when in fact it is caring too much. Those who are affected are usually the ones who try to help the most.

But, again, compassion fatigue doesn’t only affect medical care workers. Sadly, we're often judged by the way we react to unsettling events in everyday life, many consider those with compassion fatigue to be heartless because they seem unsympathetic and uncaring towards tragedies. For example, when was the last time you saw one of those “in the arm of an angels” ads that pans over crying puppies and kittens in cages, sad eyes staring at you through the screen just begging for you to adopt them? The first time you watched it, like me, you may or may not have cried and immediately clicked on the link to donate. But then by the third or fourth time, you probably skipped right past the ad. But this does not make you a terrible person, however, you might still be judged because the reality is that our reputation in society is also impacted by the way we react to things.

In more recent examples, when was the last time you received an ad asking you to donate to or to help advocate for the victims of the Gaza or Palistian wars? The first few times I saw them, I couldn’t press the skip button. I clicked on the “HELP NOW” and signed a petition. But now, faced with the hundredth ad with a sad child or woman in front of a destroyed building asking for help, I skip the ad. I mean, they’ve even started to target those of us weary scrollers who try to skip past the ad by saying things like “Please don’t skip, just 10 seconds. Just use the audio and save my family.” The reason behind the fact that most of us don’t do these simple actions, like watching the whole video, using the audio, or liking the video is simple: we’ve been desensitized to the horrible tragedies. I mean, people are used to seeing others in desolate lands, barely managing to get clean water, and struggling to survive on social media. There are “TikTok lives” and “Instagram lives” - people trying to raise money for themselves and their community. We may think that it’s not a big deal for people who are suffering to go onto social media and beg for interaction so that they have a chance at saving their loved ones and themselves. The fact that they even have to turn to pleading on social media feels terribly dystopian to me.

Similarly, Brad Bushman, a media researcher at Ohio State University, conducted a study called “Comfortably Numb: Desensitizing Effects of Violent Media on Helping Others,” where he and his colleagues asked 320 students to play either a violent or nonviolent video game for 20 minutes. After playing, the students were instructed to answer a questionnaire, but while they were answering the questions, they heard a fight break out in the hallway outside. On average, it took people who played the nonviolent game 16 seconds to help those involved in the “fight”, whereas those who played the violent game took 73 seconds. What's more, those who played the violent video game reported the fight to be less serious than those who played the nonviolent game. The consequence of seeing violent images is becoming numb to violence, which may lead you to not help someone who's a victim of violence because you think the violence is normal or not so bad.

At this point, I’ve been talking about the negatives for so long, you might have compassion fatigue from the effects and implications of compassion fatigue. But don’t worry, I’ll help you work through that in the next few paragraphs or so. Plenty of time to heal.

Good news! Compassion fatigue can be reversed over time by slowly starting to emphasize again by doing things like humanizing the news. Calling for media outlets and social media users to change the way they represent refugees and other vulnerable populations can help. This way, instead of hearing about statistics, we’re reading and listening to real human stories which can help us feel more empathy and compassion and subdue compassion fatigue. In addition to making the stories we hear more human, we can also help change them for the better by involving calls to action on individuals or policymakers in the news so readers can help those in need rather than observing a crisis they feel cannot be solved.

I hope that you feel better about scrolling past news covering the Israel-Hamas war, or some article covering scary climate change facts. But hopefully moving forward, instead of feeling like the only option is to ignore and move on, you learn what little thing you can do to help. Trust me, even quickly filling out a short petition on your phone, or signing your name on a form, can do so much. So, the next time you feel overwhelmed, understand that compassion fatigue is a trauma response. Look for signs of compassion fatigue, so that you can anticipate it. And finally, be your inner therapist, and know that at the end of the day, it’s reversible.