Tag: burnout

Posted on

3 Key Ways You Benefit When You Show Compassion To Others

I can think of few things more beautiful than compassion.

Compassion heals us when we suffer and hurt. It is the balm that steadies us when we are lonely. It soothes us when we are angry.

Compassion is the remedy we need in these unstable and uncertain times.

So, how can we encourage ourselves to generate more of it? It might help to remember these 3 key benefits.

  1. Compassion energizes you. It makes you feel good.

You might have heard of compassion fatigue. It can happen to anyone in a helping profession, and is a common cause of burnout and early retirement.

But here’s the thing: there is no such thing as compassion fatigue.

This is empathy fatigue. Empathy is tiring. It requires you to put yourself in the shoes of others and to take up their feelings as you own. It has a searching and reaching quality to it. It requires effort. Others’ feelings can stay with you and drag you down. This can definitely create exhaustion.

But compassion is different than empathy. While the two feelings often occur together, empathy is tiring, while compassion is not.

Compassion doesn’t sit and marinate in feelings, as empathy does. It has an active quality to it. When we feel compassion, we take the difficult feelings of others and pour sunshine on them. We wish them well. We pray with sincerity. We hope for the best. Compassion is active. This sets it apart from empathy.

Research done in 2013 found that when meditators practiced feeling empathy for others, the brain’s areas for negative feelings were turned on. Empathizing for long periods of time was a struggle. By contrast, when the same meditators were told to practice compassion, it caused the areas of their brains that make dopamine and oxytocin to become more active. There was a positive emotional response that uplifted and energized. Practicing compassion was much easier.

Bottom line: empathy tires. Compassion uplifts.

2. You have an endless supply of compassion. You can’t run out of it.

Many people think that generating compassion is difficult. We fear we won’t have enough of it, so we become stingy, and reserve it only for those closest to us.

But the truth is, you have an endless supply of compassion. It’s an essential part of your being. You can’t run out of it.

You can see this natural capacity for compassion most easily in toddlers. They share easily. They give to others who are sad. They have open and generous hearts.

This is because of the mirror neurons in their brains – in our brains. Humans are profoundly social creatures and we learn by watching and imitating others. It is through these mirror neurons that we see and react to other’s emotions. It is how empathy evolved.

If we want to be happy, we soon learn that the other members of our tribe need to be happy too. So, if someone we know is in pain, we feel a natural compassion for them. We want them to feel better so we can feel better too.

Jack Kornfield is an author and meditation teacher. He describes compassion as a channel within us. Fear, anger, depression, and worthlessness can cover over this channel. They can cloud our ability to show compassion.

But our natural ability for compassion is always there. It sometimes becomes blocked, like the clouds covering a blue sky. But if we can work to keep our hearts open, by caring for others and noticing the beauty of the world around us, then our natural compassion will flow through.

So, please don’t worry about portioning out your compassion. Your heart is rich with it, as long as it remains soft and open.

3. Compassion occurs when love meets pain.

By definition, compassion arises in response to the difficulties of others. This means that, without pain, there can be no compassion. I find this incredibly moving.

Luckily, life has no shortage of pain and difficulty. No one, neither rich nor poor, is exempt from it. This means you can spread your compassion widely to everyone you pass by on the street. You always know it is going to a deserving place because we are all struggling with something.

But this is also why compassion must start with you. Too often, we compare our hurts, thinking that some people deserve more care than others. But there is no ranking system with pain. It just is. A sore heart is a sore heart, no matter the size of the hole within it. This means there is no greater recipient of compassion than you, yourself.

So, be sure to show yourself as much compassion as you can. And know that when you show yourself more compassion, it’s easier to spread it to others.

As you move forward in your life today, please remember these 3 things about compassion:

  1. It can’t tire you.
  2. It’s impossible to run out of it because it is intrinsic to your being, and,
  3. The person most deserving of compassion is yourself. You can travel the whole world and experience pain from all corners. But in the end you will find there is no one more in need of your own compassionate heart than yourself.

Now, go out and be compassionate! Shower compassion on others, but especially on your own tender being. Wish others well. Pray to ease their suffering. Hope that all will understand their own worth. And then, notice how much better you feel.

The world is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Compassion makes it softer. For both yourself and the other hurting souls within your midst.

Posted on

3 Crucial Steps to Recover from Burnout

Confession: I used to dread getting out of bed.

My mother-in-law had dementia, and I lived in the same house with her. This meant that I was regularly confronted by her as soon as I left my bedroom.

Sometimes, she would ask me a question over and over again. I would lose my patience as I answered her multiple times, with increasing irritation. I often lost my cool well before I left the house for the day.

Sometimes, she would be accusatory. Why did this happen? Why did I do this? Who was responsible? Whatever it was, it was surely someone else’s fault, even if it was obvious that she was the culprit. If you dared to suggest that it was actually her who did this thing, she would be indignant and scoff vehemently. In these cases, it was usually best to just drop the subject and quietly clean up the mess. You quickly learn that you can’t win arguments with people who have dementia.

Sometimes, I would arrive downstairs to find some disaster in progress. She couldn’t remember how to turn the stove on, and so was eating her eggs raw. Or there was a puddle of pee on the floor in the middle of the room. She had lost control of her bladder without even noticing. Again, no comment required. Just remedy the situation as best you can.

One day, she found some expired food in the refrigerator and was eating it, along with the blue-green mould on top of it. She thought it was healthy because it was green! A battle then ensued as I tried to take the mouldy food away from her, while she chased me through the house in an attempt to retrieve it. Sometimes, the absurdity of the situation made me laugh. Sometimes, it made me cry.

But I think you get my point. My bed was my safe place. Leaving it meant being confronted by some form of headache-inducing chaos. Naturally, I preferred to put that off as long as possible.

The thing is, for months and even years after we finally got my mother-in-law into a nursing home, I continued to have difficulty getting out of bed. It was like my heart had become wounded somehow. Or my faith in life. Probably both.

I tried reprimanding myself. Why was I so lazy? I never used to have such difficulty getting up in the morning! I worried about my work ethic. What had happened to it? It seemed to be permanently disabled.

When reprimands didn’t work, I tried thinking of rewards instead, like the grilled cheese sandwich I would prepare for myself later for lunch. Or the walk I would have with my dog after work. I relished being under the gracefully arching branches of the trees, with the sun warming my face. This helped somewhat. But though this got me out of bed, it didn’t restore my enthusiasm for life.

The fact was, I simply didn’t want to get out of bed anymore, and I didn’t know how to fix the problem.

It took me awhile to realize that I was suffering from a classic case of burnout. Well, maybe not classic. In classic burnout, you feel numbed by your life and uninspired by your daily activities. By the time you reach the stage of being unable to get out of bed in the morning, your burnout has reached epic proportions.

So, what did work? What finally helped me get out of bed?

Number One: Remember the things you loved to do as a child.

In my case, it was drawing. I used to love drawing when I was young. Art was always my favourite class in school. Although it took some coaxing from my mother and my older brother, I eventually signed up for an evening drawing class at the local art centre. And every time I went to that class, it was like life was breathing itself back into me.

Number Two: Treat yourself with exquisite kindness.

Beating myself up for my lack of initiative was not making me feel better. In fact, it was making me feel like even more of a failure. Although it seemed counter-intuitive, offering myself boatloads of compassion and kindness made me feel less tight and defensive. It allowed my heart some space to open. It gave me some room to heal. While kindness didn’t get me out of bed right away, it did loosen my huddle and paved the way for later expansion.

Number Three: Find a way to express your feelings.

One definition of burnout I’ve heard is “repressed emotions”. And I certainly had plenty of those. All the frustration, anger, fear, anxiety, dread, and sadness that my mother-in-law’s condition had inspired in me needed to be felt. I couldn’t keep pushing it down and pretending it didn’t exist. It was killing me. Or rather, it was keeping me in a deadened state.

This final point turned out to be a big insight. My body was so stuffed full of unfelt feelings that it had actually become numb. I never knew what I was feeling about anything anymore. Mostly, I just didn’t care. Allowing myself to feel all those difficult, challenging feelings – hard as it was – was life changing.

Every morning, I would settle onto my yoga mat, and essentially do nothing. I would lie in various restorative yoga poses, using props to support me, and gently check in with myself. Then, keeping my breath steady, I would allow myself to feel whatever feelings were there. Nothing was off limits. Anger, sadness, dread. All were welcome.

It took awhile to get this process started, but once my body began to feel safe, I was surprised at the different emotions that came up each day, usually with a boatload of tears. Gradually, the contours of physical body began to take shape again. I could feel the heaviness of my limbs on the ground, the tingling of the muscles along my spine as they began to soften and relax, the gentle opening of my hips. And then, finally, as my physical body began to relax, my mood became lighter. One day, I felt the gentle rise of energy within me, and cried with relief. I was finally returning to myself.

I still don’t know if I’m fully recovered from that awful case of burnout, but I do know that I feel much better. I don’t have any problems getting out of bed anymore. I look forward to my daily plans. I’m still not always as inspired as I’d like to be, but I feel confident this will come in time.

For now, I’m just enjoying becoming better acquainted with myself, feeling what I feel, doing the hobbies I like, and resting when I need to, without guilt or self-reproach. It’s a new way of life for me, and one I plan to continue.

If you are interested in doing some gentle, restorative yoga classes, consider stopping by my website at www.rebeccasrestfulyoga.com. You can attend a class live, or sign up for a monthly membership, where you’ll have access to dozens of already recorded classes, all taught by me – a person very familiar with burnout and all the emotions that come along with it. Please know that you’re not alone. Together, we can heal from the pain of burnout.