Here is the full transcript of Amy Cunningham’s talk titled “Drowning In Empathy: The Cost of Vicarious Trauma” at TEDxSanAntonio conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Let’s Play a Game
Let’s play a little game. We’ll play a word association game. I’ll say a word, and you can picture something in your head. You can even shout it out loud. Are you ready? Cow. Okay. So, most of you maybe were thinking this. Maybe a few of you were thinking more this. And maybe some of you thought this.
We’ll do another one. Work. Awesome. So, some of you really love your work like this. Maybe a few of you were thinking this. And I wonder if anyone felt this. We’ll do just one more. PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. So, most of you thought this. Maybe a few of you were thinking this. But I wonder if anyone thought this.
Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue is the post-traumatic stress disorder-related symptoms that you receive vicariously as a secondary target to trauma. Compassion fatigue is experienced by those in a helping profession: doctors, nurses, counselors, therapists, police officers, and maybe even you. If your unpaid role is that of a helping professional, then you may also be affected by compassion fatigue.
If you are the middle-of-the-night phone answerer or helping a friend through addiction or anxiety, if you are raising children or caring for parents, or maybe both at the same time, if your unpaid role is that of a helping profession, compassion fatigue could be affecting you as well.
Now, what puts you at a greater risk for compassion fatigue is empathy. Those generally in a helping profession have a very strong empathetic response system. And empathy is that ability to pick yourself up and put yourself in someone else’s shoes and get it, really get where they’re coming from. The problem with empathy is you don’t get to decide when to jump out.
And those traumas that they experience begin to change you. I remember when I was a supervisor of a therapeutic group home, and I was sitting down with one of my clients. She began to tell me the horrific and painful stories of her past. And as she laid out in detail what she had experienced, my cell phone began to vibrate. And I wanted to show her that I was listening and I cared about every word she said, so I picked it up and I silenced it and I put it back down and I continued to listen.
From that day forward, every single time I picked up my cell phone, swiped to silence it, I was transported back to her trauma. My brain had created a PTSD-related symptom that transported me back to her situation every single time for years. Now, this would be pretty normal if it happened that day after work at the grocery store, or maybe even a week or two weeks later.
But where we get concerned that maybe this trauma is starting to change you is when it’s sticking around for four weeks, six weeks, and maybe even longer. Now, for many years, compassion fatigue was confused. People called everything burnout. Until Dr. Charles Figley came around in the late ’80s and ’90s and began to do research, we called it burnout. But the truth is there’s a significant difference between burnout and compassion fatigue.
Burnout has to do with being worn out and tired and just flat out not liking your job anymore. Compassion fatigue has to do with being afraid. Compassion fatigue begins to change your hard wiring, change who you are.
The Impact of Compassion Fatigue
We see this a lot in child protective service workers. They start to become overly vigilant, believing that everyone is out to hurt them and their family. When I think of this, I can’t help but think of the nurse who came after one of my classes and said, still to this day, she can see the broken bones of the young man who was abused by his parents, that still today she knows the smell of death from a patient who laid in bed dying. These memories, they do not just go away, and they begin to change you.
But we like to make excuses because we think we’re superhuman. So, we say things like, “I’m fine. I’m a professional. I can deal with the stress.” In fact, it doesn’t even stress me out. My famous talk off was, “I’ve been doing this for 15 years. I know most people think it’s stressful, but I’m okay.”
The problem with that is when stress and trauma start to affect you, your brain and your body, they do not poll for your opinion, and they will start to show signs and symptoms because your body and your brain are shouting at you, “I am not okay. I cannot handle the trauma.”
In little ways, whether you start to have sleep problems, either you’re sleeping all the time or not able to sleep at all, another way it manifests is becoming a workaholic. Now, I know plenty of you in this room think, “Amy, there’s nothing wrong with being a workaholic. Get off my toes.” Let me tell you why it may be a problem.
Because when we start to feel like we are losing control of the world around us, what we do is we roll up our sleeves and we work a little harder. And I can work hard enough to make this trauma go away. Another sign and symptom is feeling unappreciated and under-resourced, like what you have is not enough to get the job done. Now, I’m not saying that’s not true.
Overcoming Compassion Fatigue
There’s a very good chance you are indeed under-appreciated. But when you started, when you started in this helping profession or when you started helping your friend or your family member, did you know? Did you know you were going to be under-appreciated, but you said, “It’s okay.