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Compassion Fatigue and Other Consequences of Caring

October 20, 2002

"We make a living by what we get,
We make a life by what we give."
--Winston Churchill

Are you tapped out, used up, beaten down, depressed, mad, and broke? Unmoved by the latest request for assistance, for another donation to yet another worthy cause? Unable to muster sympathy, let alone empathy? Are you weary of watching the evening news, unable to feel for today's victims of today's senseless crimes? Tired of passing that panhandler on the way to work? Apathetic about the world's ever-increasing woes?

You may be suffering from what I like to call "compassion fatigue." It's one of the consequences of caring. Not, thank goodness, the only one, but a real one. My colleague and friend Scott Alexander once called it "humanity fatigue," but, never mind, it's all the same. Writing to a world situation not unlike the one prevailing today, Scott wrote,

. . . In these increasingly insecure economic and cultural times we have, as a people, grown tired of caring for the least fortunate of our citizens. We have grown tired of feeding the hungry and providing for the poor. We have gown tired of looking at the homeless and caring for the millions of Americans with AIDS and other disabilities. We have grown tired of protecting the elderly, and the children who are neglected or born to destitute teenage mothers. We have grown tired of trying to fix the inner cities with all their unemployment, poverty and crime. We have grown tired of trying to rectify racial and ethnic discrimination, and the cruel inequalities of our economy. We have grown tired of desperate immigrants pouring into America in search of a better life. We have grown tired of the hard work that a multi-cultural society demands. All the social symptoms are there. Our hearts are tired. We have a bad case of Humanity Fatigue.

Sound familiar? Looking for relief? Well, don't look to religion for solace. Some cursory research this week revealed that "compassion" is a central demand of every major religious tradition. In Taoism, compassion is listed as one of the "Three Treasures," and this in a religion known for its advocacy of detachment. In Buddhism, compassion "for all living beings who are suffering, in trouble and affliction" is one of the four Sublime States, a worthy subject for meditation, and one of the two qualities, along with wisdom, which can lead to human perfection. And compassion is a more important aspect of Islam than jihad ever thought of being, despite recent fundamentalist claims to the contrary.

And forget about Judaism and Christianity. The most profound and significant characterization in the Jewish tradition is that of the "suffering servant," as depicted in the work of the prophet Isaiah:

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
     my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
     he will bring forth justice to the nations,
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
     or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
     and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
     He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
     and the coastlands wait for his teaching. (Is. 42:1-4)

Later in Isaiah, the prophet has the servant say,

I gave my back to those who struck me,
and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.

And finally, the reality of the servant's lot is made clear:

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried
     our diseases;
yet we accounted him stricken,
     struck down by God, and afflicted.
But he was wounded for our transgressions,
     crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.

On the Christian side it isn't much better, seeing as the early Christians understood Jesus precisely in terms of the suffering servant depicted by Isaiah. And Jesus himself, we remember, told about the separation of the sheep from the goats, and spoke of the "Great Commandment" to love God and one's neighbor, and we all know what he meant by our neighbor, because he told the story of the Good Samaritan to illustrate his point.

One of the great Christian exemplars of the 20th century, the martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote from his imprisonment under the Nazis that "Whoever happens to be one's neighbor and reachable is the transcendent," even the despicable former Nazi official in the cell next door. For Bonhoeffer, Jesus was "the man for others" whom we are supposed to emulate. "Being for others" was important in Bonhoeffer's view because, as he said, "[God} is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us."

Jesus, in the Christian understanding, is the "wounded healer." Henri Nouen, the great spiritual writer, wrote in his book The Wounded Healer of the importance of compassion to the Christian leader, saying that "Compassion must become the core and even the nature of authority." Indeed, as you can see from what I have been saying, compassion and care is at the core of the entire Judeo-Christian tradition. And that a person "lay down her life for another" is deemed to be the greatest blessing of all.

But how do we continue to be caring, compassionate, generous people when the demands upon us seem endless? The mails and the telephone lines bring a flood of requests for help. How do we decide to which causes we should donate our precious time, talent, and treasure? Given all the evidence, what are we to do?
The hard answer, I think, is that if we take our religious tradition seriously, we must "keep on keeping on." If the transcendent is to be found in those around us, than we have no choice but to soldier on. Even when we no longer feel like it. The world needs us. Our own Unitarian Universalist tradition provides ample evidence of those who have sacrificed in order to make the world a better place, those who have worked against the odds, those who have demonstrated compassion. People like Dorothea Dix, who sought more humane conditions for the mentally ill and prison inmates; Clara Barton, who brought nursing to the Civil War battlefields and later founded the American Red Cross; Whitney Young, one of the founders and leaders of the Urban League; and James Reeb, who lost his life while demonstrating with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, Alabama.

The trick, it seems to me, is to balance self-care with care for others. It is when we fail to take care of ourselves that our perspective on helping others can become skewed. Give yourself a break.

As those in the caring professions know, it is all too easy to become cynical in the face of the flood of need that exists out there in the world. Along with legitimate need, it must be accepted that there will always be con-men and women and sharks who want to take advantage of our good will. It is usually difficult to tell when we are really helping or when we are just enabling. But we must always err on the side of compassion, difficult though it may sometimes be to do so. Sometimes that means saying no.

I suspect that only saints can care all the time, and I even have my doubts about that. Caring much may be admirable, but it can also lead to burn-out, which helps no one. Here again, my colleague Scott Alexander is articulate:

It is not easy, day in and day out, to feel genuine compassion for and close connection with all those who are struggling most in life. It is not easy to make room in our public and private hearts for the homeless, the hungry, the prisoner, the sick and elderly, the chronically poor and unemployed. I preach first to myself. It is not easy for me to feel compassionately connected to the homeless beggars I walk past in the cold and dirty train station each day, and all the many others . . . who so desperately need a hand. It is not easy for me to gladly pay my ever-increasing taxes. But that is what the best part of our national soul--tha is what the full practice of religious living--calls us to do. I believe that God--the holy life-force that struggles in this world against death and negation--calls us to ever expand our circle of inclusion and concern to persons around us, especially those who are most difficult to include andcare for. That which is holy calls us back from Humanity Fatigue.

When I find myself growing tired, cynical, and even angry with the many requests for assistance that come to me at the church, I try to take a step back and to remind myself that I am representing a higher ideal. I try to depersonalize whatever frustration I may feel at being interrupted at something I consider to be more important, and to be as present as possible to whatever problem or need presents itself.

Often I do not succeed. I fail dismally. But I try not to be too hard on myself. After all, I am not God, and neither are you. Most of us are doing the best we can. If we were already perfect, there would be no need for the church or for religion, and that goes for me as well as anyone else.

A few strategies for dealing with all of this do come to mind, though. One is to give some thought to your charitable giving at the beginning of the year and then to stick with it. When Sabrina and I receive a call asking us to support yet another worthy cause, we like to say, "I'm sorry, but we have already made our charitable donations for the year." It's not a lie--we know that we cannot give to every group that asks for our support. Our largest contributions go to our church--surprise! I happen to think that giving to our church gives us the largest bang for our buck. We do give to other groups and causes, but sparingly, because we have no choice. We try to prioritize, and you should, too. What are you really passionate about? When it comes to caring and giving, you should follow your heart.

The other thing I try to remind myself of is that I cannot single-handedly save the world. As noted already, we are not God, but sometimes we act as if we are. What I try to do is do a good job in my own little corner of the world, what Wendell Berry calls "tending our own small acreage." If I can help even one person along the way, then I feel that I have done my part, at least for today, and maybe even for a lifetime. Compassion fatigue comes with the territory, but hey, you can't get compassion fatigue if you just don't care. And as we know, the rewards for caring are among its greatest consequences.

One reason for this is that caring gets us out of ourselves. It can take our minds off our own problems and give us a broader, healthier perspective on life. Sometimes, as in the case of our Partner Church support, it can even take us beyond the known world.

I think it is good to remind ourselves that we can't do it all alone. We need to remind ourselves of what my friend Scott has called "our irreducible belonging to one another." Together, we are much stronger than we are alone. We need one another for many reasons, but certainly we need one another if we are to effectively avoid the pitfalls of compassion fatigue.

John Wesley, the found of Methodism, once wrote:

Do all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
To all the people you can
As long as you can.

That, is seems to me, is what we are called to do. Some of us are in a position, spiritually and emotionally and materially, to do more than others. What matters is that you do what you can. No one can do it all.

St. Francis of Assisi once said, "Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take nothing that you have received . . . but only what you have given; a full heart enriched by honest service, love, sacrifice and courage." Let that be our thought for this morning, as we go forth into the world with its many problems and demands and needs, its many calls upon our generosity and good will. May it carry us forward through the many causes of despair which inevitably come to us all on this journey of life, reminding us of what is truly important. So be it. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock