Surviving Empathy

So you’re empathic. You absorb your students’ and colleagues’ emotions.

You care like crazy.

And you’re diving dangerously close to compassion fatigue and burnout.

What can you do?

I fear that my answers are going to sound easy. But they’re not. For example, the first answer:

Know your boundaries.

By definition, empathy (and compassion fatigue) requires a blurring of boundaries, a merging. That merging can be powerfully informative and moving. But surviving emotional merging means being able to snap back behind your boundaries, back into your own garden. And getting back to your garden is not always easy.

But it’s essential if you’re going to survive empathy.

So figuring out how to move from merged to detached (yet curious! and concerned) is an important skill for empaths. How can you practice that skill? Read on.

Second answer:

Metabolize your emotions.

I love this metaphor of metabolism. It implies that emotions are calories that can fuel us the way food fuels us. It also implies that emotions need to be broken down and — utilizing my preferred technical term — pooped out. So how do we metabolize our emotions?

We acknowledge and label them. We feel them. We meditate on them. We talk or write about them with the aim of understanding them. We honor them as data. We look for their meanings. We own what is ours and let go of what is other people’s. We recognize our limits. We let our bodies help by doing yoga or going for a walk or run.

And

we create or join a support group. Truth be known, peer supervision is a demonstrated antidote to compassion fatigue and vicarious traumatization. There’s something about sharing experiences out loud, being held compassionately, and being supported in working through emotions that heals.

I highly recommend Teacher Support Groups. Wanna know how to start one of your own? Check out my DIY TSG Manual.

Third answer:

Be an agent in your life.

One of the insidious and devastating effects of vicarious traumatization and burnout (that is, empathy) can be a sense of powerlessness. Powerlessness in the face of huge emotions, huge problems, huge suffering, huge injustice. Huge huge huge.

Being an agent in your life requires cutting huge down to size. Being humble about your limitations. Being grateful for your ability to feel love and concern. Formulating the problem in a way that facilitates a sensible and feasible response. And deciding what you’re willing to do given that formulation.

Is it making a donation?

Is it volunteering in a cause?

Is it setting up a face-to-face meeting?

Is it overriding your assumptions and getting more data?

Is it coming up with a plan of action (based on solid boundaries) and seeing what happens?

Is it seeking guidance from others?

Is it praying, or thinking good thoughts, or channeling the goodness of the universe towards people in need of goodness, including yourself?

I cannot overemphasize the importance of being an agent in our own lives. Empowerment can also heal.

So these are my answers. They are not exhaustive. But they might be exhausting! Because surviving empathy is not easy. It does not necessarily come naturally. It requires (emotional and relational) muscle, which requires exercise, which is best done regularly and steadfastly even when you just don’t want to.

But you are worth it. And if that’s not incentive enough for you, try this: The work of surviving empathy

is good for your students.

Because a present, healthy teacher is better than an overwhelmed or absent teacher.