Compassion Fatigue: Understanding it’s toll on you

It is important to be able to identify signs of compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary trauma. In order to understand compassion fatigue, secondary trauma, and burnout, those of us who are mental health professionals must share what we know. You should not feel guilty about feeling exhausted for taking care of someone with a mental health condition. 

It wasn’t until I experienced burn-out during the first 2 years of working in the field of mental health that I knew psychological and physical exhaustion was real. when I participated in the International Society of Trauma Professionals training on professional compassion fatigue (and obtained certification) a few months ago, I realized just how common emotional, psychological, and physiological exhaustion is. Because of this personal and professional experience, I have decided to incorporate what I know about compassion fatigue, burnout, and secondary trauma into most of my articles for my audience. To start out, I want to give you the opportunity to take a self-test for yourself online. The results might shock you! The Compassion Fatigue Awareness Project has designed 3 self-tests that help you determine if you could be experiencing compassion fatigue. I encourage you to take at least one of them and consider speaking to a therapist or medical professional such as your PCP about your results.

Stay tuned for my article coming up on Wednesday, November 18th that provides detail on what burnout, compassion fatigue, and secondary trauma is at blogs.psychcentral.com/caregivers.