Preventing (and beating) empathy fatigue
Second 50’s recent Sage Advice Live allowed members to benefit from the hard-learned wisdom of Annie Harvey about the risk of empathy fatigue when caring for others.
Is it possible to care about others while also looking after yourself? Second 50 member, Annie Harvey knows it is possible to manage emotional exhaustion and integrate self-care and self-compassion into our daily lives. But she learned this the hard way.
The catalyst for Annie’s interest in understanding empathy fatigue began after she retrained in her mid-40s as a primary school teacher and, because of her maturity and compassion, was allocated classes with incredibly challenging students. The advice given to her was to immerse herself in caring for these often very damaged children, so she poured her heart and soul into trying to both teach and help each and every child in her care.
The result was that Annie lost her energy, enthusiasm and confidence. And not only in the classroom. “With pretty much everyone in my life, I started losing my empathy,” she says. “It turned more into apathy.”
Empathy fatigue vs burnout
At the time, Annie was diagnosed with burnout but she now believes she was experiencing empathy fatigue. The two have some overlap but empathy fatigue relates directly to looking after other people’s emotional wellbeing rather than a result of general overwork (you can read more about how burnout is a risk even beyond the workplace in our Life Burnout blog).
As the name suggests, someone with empathy fatigue finds they have no more empathy to expend. For Annie, this was bad enough that she gave up teaching after just 18 months of her new career.
From empathy to compassion
One of the key takeaways of Annie’s Sage Advice Live (and there were many!) was the distinction between empathy and compassion.
“Empathy means feeling and embodying someone else’s pain,” Annie explains. “Empathy activates our stress response, meaning that we can become fatigued from feeling empathy.”
Compassion is also a caring response but instead of taking on someone’s pain, the focus is on encouraging and help giving. A compassionate response means we can continue to support people but from a place of strength and balance. “Compassion engages our reward systems,” says Annie. “So we don’t fatigue from compassion.”
“When we focus on alleviating rather than embodying someone else’s pain, it enables us to remain emotionally stable,” sums up Annie. “This lowers the risk of disrupting our own well-being and potentially theirs as well.”
Moving inward to self-compassion
The shift to compassion over empathy can extend to ourselves. After recovering from empathy fatigue, Annie researched everything she could about neuroscience and brain health before starting to share her experience and wisdom through coaching and keynote speaking.
She knows she couldn’t maintain her own wellbeing while doing this work (including with groups like foster carers and children) without daily practice of self-compassion. “I have to know I can be present with, and empathetic towards these children and adults but not get sick from that,” she says.
One of the easiest yet effective self-care strategies shared by Annie was placing a hand on your own heart or on your own shoulder while taking a deep breath. Annie encouraged participants to start taking a similarly deep breath or two before answering the phone each time it rings. You might find you are more receptive to the conversation and even receive comments on how calm you sound.
Our world needs more empathy and compassion
Annie is clear that, despite warning people of the risks of expending too much empathetic energy, she believes the world needs more empathy, not less.
“I’m not saying ‘don't have empathy’,” she says. “The world needs more empathy, but we need to understand that, on an individual level, empathy can deplete our emotional reserves.”
One Second 50 member has shared how she put her learning about compassion from Annie’s Sage Advice Live session into practice almost straight away, when her neurodiverse young adult was highly stressed after missing a flight home. “Being reminded of the importance of caring from my own wellbeing inspired me to calm my worries and send a supportive message instead of over-parenting,” she says. “The response I received from my child was deeply moving and reinforced the value of compassion and patience.”
About Annie Harvey
Annie Harvey is an experienced speaker, teacher, coach and mindfulness educator. She provides practical, evidenced-based tools developed during her years of research and working with clients in the area of mental and emotional wellbeing, with a particular interest in helping those in caring professions manage empathy fatigue. Annie delivered a much-viewed TED-X talk - “Silence to LOL” and is author of The Little Book of Still: Calm for Busy Lives, which contains short, simple mindful activities to provides simple daily strategies that add micro mindful moments to our day without needing to make time to meditate. Annie is also advocate for ‘Laughing Yoga’ and has created The Giggle Game, a little bag of cards with fun and quick exercises to balance the nervous system, decrease stress and anxiety and improve social, emotional and physical wellbeing. Her current project, and passion, is reducing intergenerational anxiety by bringing kindergartens and aged care residents together using laughter therapy. You can find out more at her website.
We are honoured to have Annie as a Second 50 member and are thankful for her sharing her knowledge with our community via a Sage Advice Live session, which was a nourishing and educational masterclass that members can watch (and re-watch) at any time.