Let’s Chat: Are you a statistic?

By Linda Tooth on April 23, 2025.

As a follow-up to my article titled Heroes in First Responders, I would like to talk about compassion and compassion fatigue.

After my article appeared last week, I received a message from a medical professional I have known since elementary school. They believe that compassion needs to be discussed in classes instead of empathy.

They believe empathy has the potential to “trap the negative or sadness/hopelessness/anger feelings in our body, which can lead to PTSD. Compassion allows you to feel for what the other person is going through but “not to take it on or own the feelings within our body.”

I can see value in what they are saying, but what happens when you become so overloaded with what you are feeling that it starts to affect you?

Charles Figley, a U.S. psychology professor and author, defines compassion fatigue as “the cost of caring for others in distress.” Some occupations where people can suffer from compassion fatigue are teachers, first responders, health care professionals, clergy, or photojournalists who cover wars.

Figley believes that by being compassionate we are at the risk of suffering as well. This risk comes from either first-hand exposure (trauma we have experienced ourselves). or second-hand exposure (where we provide care for those who have experienced trauma).

In doing research on this topic, I came across a journal article from Health & Social Care in the Community, and in this article they recruited 607 participants in the helping professions.

Those recruited were nurses, doctors, paramedics, home nurses, teachers, psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, clergy and police officers.

The goal was to understand the prevalence and differences in compassion fatigue among those professions. The results were very interesting as the levels of compassion fatigue varied among helping professions. Those who scored the highest levels of compassion fatigue were those with the highest levels of self-criticism.

What do we mean by self-criticism? Simply put, it means to be critical of ourselves and our actions. Could I have done more? Is it my fault? I should have seen that coming. These are examples of things we often say to ourselves.

We must not forget that we are people, and we must look after ourselves. Failure to do that makes us a statistic when talking about compassion fatigue. How can we look after ourselves? A lot of talk centres around the idea of work-life balance. I do not believe it is even close to being balanced.

Next week I am going to be writing on something I am very passionate about. Stay tuned.

Have a Meowtastic Day and keep reading.

Linda Tooth is a part-time communications instructor at Medicine Hat College

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