What is compassion fatigue?

To introduce the topic of compassion fatigue, it is essential to understand what compassion is. Compassion is defined as the ability to share and understand the suffering that a person before us is experiencing or communicating to us. It is thanks to this compassion that we are able to help our loved ones in our daily lives. If we did not experience this feeling, we could not put ourselves in the shoes of our loved ones, nor imagine experiencing what they are going through, and even less be able to help them in their daily lives!

However, this can have a negative impact on our mental or physical health when we exceed the limits of our compassion. This limit is often reached when we no longer consider our own needs and instead, the needs of others take precedence. It is as if we live in the same body as the person being helped, even though we also have needs that accumulate over time and remain unmet.

The term "compassion fatigue" is used instead of "compassion wear" in the field of caregiving, because it is easy to imagine how we can overuse our compassion when we see our loved one feeling less well, whether due to aging or illness. It is therefore common to exceed the limits of our compassion in this situation, especially since it is often someone we care deeply about, and the reasons we choose to continue helping them often become stronger over time, or even multiply.

It is therefore very important to remain attentive to this compassion, which can easily turn into compassion fatigue when caregiving leads us to direct our entire compassion towards others, leaving our own needs aside.