Compassion fatigue is a newer term that seems to be making its way around the helping professions. It's what happens when you care too much. Compassion fatigue is s a form of burnout and it is characterized by emotional and physical exhaustion resulting from the constant demands of caring for others, combined with a lack of self-care and support.
When our patient arrives and we bring them back to our operatory to get started, we really have no idea what kind of mood our patient is going to be in or what their emotional state is going to be. Did they just lose a parent or get some bad news, is one of their kids struggling or did their spouse lose their job? Or on the other end, did they just some exciting news or return from an awesome vacation? I paint this all to common picture to bring to light just how much emotional drama we have that gets in and out of our chair, all day long. We become emotional chameleons where we learn to meet our patient where they are, hour after hour. This is exhausting. And of course we want to be genuinely interested in their lives because we do care about our patients, but it still becomes exhausting and overwhelming and this current can take us under. Doing this day in and day out, multiple times a day is part of what brings us to compassion fatigue.
The other component of compassion fatigue is the physical component. A lot of people outside of dental hygiene think we just sit in a chair all day, but we know that's far from the truth. Hanging over patients in a static position, head down, takes a toll on our bodies. For me, towards the end of my clinical career, I started to stand while I worked on my patients and this helped a lot. But it became inevitable that my clinical hygiene days were drawing to an end as my body gave out thanks to both birthdays and rear-ender accidents.
Learning how to get out of compassion fatigue/burnout is about learning to reconnect with yourself. There are many symptoms that can fit into the physical, psychological, emotional, spiritual and professional categories. Life is too short - don't let your career run your life. After a long day at work, it's hard to come home and do things for ourselves that refuel you because you are just too exhausted. Learning to create boundaries around our emotional space as we day in and day out do our job, is where the answer lies. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not in over your head. You simply need to learn the skill of managing your mindset.
How do you manage your mindset? So glad you asked. One of the first things you do is learn breathing techniques. Breathing correctly and deeply helps to relieve stress and physically, makes our bodies feel better. Infiltrating our tissues with oxygen has huge benefits!
Get coaching. Being apart of a support group where people are like minded and share the same struggles. In coaching, we help you see your own mind and evaluate what's in your brain and do a self-evaluation of how you see things.
Learn to identify the stressors in your life. What causes you stress? Learning to anticipate these stressors can give you an upper hand when you know they are coming.
Check-in with yourself on your progress and the things that you are working through. This can come by way of journaling and doing some self reflection.
These are just a few ideas to help you get started as you and I think you'll find them quite helpful.
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