DBT Therapy: Navigating compassion fatigue during crisis work
Are you someone trying to find the balance between emotionally charged direct patient care and self care without becoming so drained that you lose empathy in your work? This is normal in crisis care, where supporting people through trauma and emotionally heavy situations can start to take a toll on your own wellbeing.
You might notice yourself pulling back from clients, feeling numb, or struggling to connect the way you used to. This is completely normal, a well-known experience called compassion fatigue, where your emotional energy and sense of empathy begin to fade due to taking on an overload of other peoples’ stressful circumstances. DBT therapy can help you learn tools to find balance between accepting your reduced sensitivity to patients while working on restrengthening your self-care and empathy.
Signs you are Experiencing Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue is different from burnout due to its main cause being a secondary stress reaction to other peoples’ traumatic situations, rather than purely overworking. It is important to recognize symptoms of compassion fatigue for those in crisis work, including:
Reduced empathy toward patients
Drastic mood swings
Becoming pessimistic, easily irritable, and more prone to sadness, anxiety, or depression
Feeling detached or numb
Insomnia, issues in memory, or difficulty concentrating
Compassion fatigue can appear very suddenly, even if an individual has never experienced it before. It can take the form of a short-term issue or a long-term issue, depending on its recognition and steps taken to address it.
DBT Therapy & Compassion Fatigue
DBT therapy is a mindfulness and emotions focused evidence-based therapy that focuses on the core principle of accepting dialectics to manage intense emotions. Dialectics means holding two opposing truths at the same time and are usually opposites. For example, hate and love.
DBT therapy is focused on allowing the acceptance of two dialectics in an individual to exist at once in order to move forward toward change. It teaches people to allow two opposites to exist at the same time and work within them to improve their lives.
Skills taught by DBT Therapy:
Distress tolerance: strategies to help you stay grounded and calm when stress hits suddenly.
Emotion regulation: recognizing, accepting, and managing emotions
Mindfulness training: meditation, mind-clearing and self-soothing practices
DBT therapy validates individual emotions, focusing less on whether the emotions are bad or good, and more on accepting and working within said emotions to improve mental health. Two things can be true at once: you can be exhausted from supporting others AND still care deeply about your work. DBT therapy helps individuals find middle ground and be more accepting of their opposing feelings in order to move forward.
You Can Get Through This
Crisis work is a needed field of work, but it can get overwhelming at times. Negative emotions and detachment are expected in such demanding fields of work.
If you or someone you know can benefit from learning to accept that two things can be true at once, that you can be exhausted and still wish to continue caring work, then DBT therapy can effectively teach skills at accepting one’s current situation and working toward change at the same time.
Contact us to book a free 15-minute consultation with one of our DBT therapists today. Let’s work together to help you overcome exhaustion and lost empathy in an emotionally taxing line of work.
