5.5 The Relationship Between Self-Care and Burnout
5.5 The Relationship Between Self-Care and Burnout
You have probably heard the term “burnout” already in your human services education. Burnout is a “prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job leading to a combination of physical and emotional exhaustion” (Martin et al., 2020).
Human services workers are vulnerable to burnout by the very nature of our job. We often work with our clients during some of the worst times of their lives. We are exposed almost daily to the “emotional and interpersonal stressors” of our clients. Combined with other issues related to productivity and the pressure we may put on ourselves to be able to “solve” our clients’ problems, burnout is a very real risk.
Now that you have some experience with an agency, you may have seen some symptoms of burnout in other workers in the field. In fact, you may already be feeling some of the symptoms of burnout yourself! In this section, we will discuss the relationship between burnout and compassion fatigue and how appropriate self-care can help prevent or combat these issues.
What Are Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Self-Care?
Most of us who have worked in the field for any length of time have felt some burnout symptoms at different times in our careers. Symptoms of burnout can include:
- Physical symptoms such as exhaustion and headaches
- Emotional symptoms such as hopelessness, despair, anger, and depression
- Psychosocial symptoms such as a lack of connection with others
When we are feeling burned out, it is similar to the feeling of “running on empty.” We have used everything we have in our emotional and physical gas tank, and we are about to stutter to a stop.
Burnout can lead to another issue called compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue is a “state of significant depletion or exhaustion of the store of compassion, resulting from repeated empathic and sympathetic responses to pain and distress in patients and in loved ones” (Martin et al., 2020). This means that we literally find ourselves too emotionally exhausted to feel empathy or compassion for others.
Compassion fatigue may be limited to our clients but often also involves our colleagues, classmates, and loved ones. Many people describe compassion fatigue as feeling “numb” or as if there is a glass wall between them and the rest of the world. They can observe a situation and know intellectually how they would or should feel but simply do not have the capacity to connect with those feelings. We may want to feel compassion and empathy towards others but find ourselves unable to respond appropriately. For more details on burnout and compassion fatigue, check out the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s article on Compassion Fatigue and Self-Care for Crisis Counselors.
There are several reasons why human services professionals are prone to burnout. Because our profession is built upon empathy and genuine connection, we are literally using our “selves” as a tool in o