A year ago I went through a burn out, I’d not heard of the term compassion fatigue before but soon got to know the ins and outs intimately, and realized that it is very much an occupational hazard. Having compassion is what makes us human, it is empathy, tolerance and patience all rolled into one altruistic emotional state.
Their isn’t really a way to prepare someone for what to expect in rescue, and when you become immersed in it you will find yourself lacking sympathy for those that find it too tough to see the things that for you have become the mundane, or their reluctance to hear about a sad story, as you will be aware that sorrow you have to endure on a daily basis far surpasses their brief selective dalliance with your world. This is an important part of compassion fatigue, you can become less understanding of the feelings of others. This isn’t because you are turning into a psychopath, or that you have taken a nose dive on the empathy scale, rescue work triggers an ever changing emotional nexus without a safety net.
Working in rescue changes the way you see the world, the way you see people and the way you see yourself, their are times that you will not be able to look in the mirror and recognise who is looking back.
The phrase ‘be gentle with yourself’ should be a mantra for every rescue worker, an industry where self care is so often forgotten, when own wants and needs are pushed aside for the sake of those that are dependents. It is easy to take on too much, to not sleep enough, to not eat properly, and to come in on days you should take a sick day dosed up on painkillers and coffee.
Their are beautiful moments in rescue also, where you know in that second exactly why you devoted your life to this, and why despite the times ahead that are bound to be tough, you know that you’ll stay. You’ll stay not because you are a masochist, though some people will judge you to be one, but because you’ve seen the darkness, felt the grief and the helplessness, made the personal sacrifices, but still hold onto the knowledge that you can make a difference.
I find also, that every time you feel you’ve lost your place, a new dog will come into your life, a new challenge, and it tends to be these dogs that you bond the closest with, as in some ways you heal each other. They become the ‘thing’ that you look forward to coming in to see each day, you think about them as you fall asleep, you pop in to see them on your days off and feel soaring joy each time you interact with them; a bit like falling in love.
One of the main triggers of compassion fatigue is actually not the animals, its the people, the people that give up on animals for reasons you don’t understand, that continue to use aversive training methods despite multiple patient explanations through gritted teeth as to why this is not the way to go, that put animals you’ve loved deeply in situations that set them up to fail.
The thing is, that being nice has to be a huge part of your job, and if you lose that humility and kindness or don’t work hard to put personal feelings aside in moments of frustration, then you will be understandably rendered incapable of doing your job. It is after all the people that we need to reach in order to have any hope of helping the animals that we are so desperate to not let down. You will find yourself becoming fascinated by human psychology, and will cling to the few humans that understand what you are going through, and don’t try to change the subject whenever you mention work.
For me, on days when I can feel my compassion dwindling, when i’m running on empty and have lost desire for human interactions, I picture Louis, my old friend, the one I couldn’t save, and I’m back in the game, learning, trying, working hard, not letting my emotions over come me but channelling them into the passion I continue to feel for saving as many lives as I can.
In the word of Eleanor Brownn:
“Self care is not selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.”
awareofthedog 