Compassion fatigue: Psychotherapists' chronic lack of self care

TLDR

Psychotherapists who work with chronic illness tend to disregard their own self‑care needs while focusing on clients. The article discusses compassion fatigue as a form of caregiver burnout among psychotherapists, contrasting it with simple burnout and countertransference. A multi‑factor model of compassion fatigue highlights the costs of caring, empathy, and emotional investment, and proposes that limiting compassion stress, addressing traumatic memories, managing caseloads, and developing methods to enhance satisfaction and emotional/physical detachment can prevent fatigue, as illustrated by a case study.

Abstract

Psychotherapists who work with the chronic illness tend to disregard their own self-care needs when focusing on the needs of clients. The article discusses the concept of compassion fatigue, a form of caregiver burnout among psychotherapists and contrasts it with simple burnout and countertransference. It includes a multi-factor model of compassion fatigue that emphasizes the costs of caring, empathy, and emotional investment in helping the suffering. The model suggests that psychotherapists that limiting compassion stress, dealing with traumatic memories, and more effectively managing case loads are effective ways of avoiding compassion fatigue. The model also suggests that, to limit compassion stress, psychotherapists with chronic illness need to development methods for both enhancing satisfaction and learning to separate from the work emotionally and physically in order to feel renewed. A case study illustrates how to help someone with compassion fatigue.