MANAGING COMPASSION FATIGUE: the cost of empathy
Overview
Aid workers are increasingly thrown into highly stressful situations where their capacity for empathy and compassion get overstretched, not to talk of difficult life conditions and long days of harassing work. However, one can train ones’ natural empathy to make it an efficient working tool, instead of an enemy. So called compassion fatigue is different from cumulative stress and burnout in that it has a strong traumatic overtone. People who identify too much with the victim will start having many symptoms similar to a post traumatic syndrome.
Objectives
- Understand the nature of compassion and how empathy works
- Learn to recognize the signs of compassion fatigue
- Learn to control one’s stress level, particularly cumulative stress and burnout
- Learn to monitor and control communication within the helping relationship.
