Sadly, compassion fatigue is an occupational hazard for those in helping professions like missions or social work. If you’ve developed compassion fatigue or vicarious trauma as a missionary, there is nothing wrong with you and you shouldn’t feel any guilt. These are simply the byproduct of the sacrifices you’ve made to be with people in their pain. The beautiful gift of empathy and compassion can easily become twisted when we stop having self-compassion and violate our own boundaries. This is why missionary care is so important.
Compassion fatigue is the physical and mental exhaustion and emotional withdrawal experienced by those who care for sick or traumatized people over an extended period of time.
The reasons for compassion fatigue or vicarious trauma are many, but include witnessing or counseling people with trauma, feeling helpless in situations of systemic injustice, experiencing abuse in missions, overworking as a missionary, and not setting clear boundaries for personal health. It can also be brought on by the buildup of cumulative grief of grieving with those who grieve and having little emotional support for your mental health. As someone who has been through compassion fatigue and healed myself, here are my 5 steps to heal from missionary compassion fatigue.
Signs of Missionary Compassion Fatigue:
- A loss of compassion or empathy
- Anger or resentment towards clients or family members
- Exhaustion, burnout or adrenal fatigue
- Becoming socially disconnected
- Feeling a lack of emotional support from others
- A decrease in productivity or motivation
- Anxiety and depression
- A sense of hopelessness or feeling trapped
- Loss of compassion toward self–striving/perfectionism
5 Steps to Heal from Compassion Fatigue
- Reduce your workload: While prevention of compassion fatigue is crucial, once you’re in the middle of it, reducing your workload and exposure to further vicarious trauma and grief is important. This might mean having a conversation with your missions sending organization or church to inform them of compassion fatigue and your exposure to it and strategies that will help you recover.
- Set Boundaries: You may need to reassess where you’ve violated your own boundaries or have not set clear boundaries in place. An example of a healthy boundary might be: “I will no longer be checking my work phone or email from 5 PM to 9 AM during the week, and will take Saturday and Sunday off to rest.” Or, “I will be taking a break to rest and recover from compassion fatigue. Please find someone to replace me during this time.”
- Relax: Using stress reduction techniques like exercise, grounding, breathing, meditation, spiritual healing modalities like Theophostic prayer or HeartSync, and building in moments of joy (or glimmers) and gratitude into your day can greatly reduce compassion fatigue symptoms.
- Self-compassion: This is a key tool in healing from compassion fatigue. The simple act of being kind to yourself, saying kind words over yourself, and silencing the inner critic in your head, is a crucial step in recovery. Self-compassion can also help you regulate your nervous system which plays a vital role in keeping calm and building your capacity.
- Emotional Support: Compassion fatigue is not to be faced alone; it requires vulnerability and emotional support such as an educated compassion fatigue therapist, friends, family, and church support. Don’t be afraid to tell someone what you’re going through and what your needs are, especially if you are a solo missionary.
- Investigate your theology of work/suffering/perfectionism: Oftentimes we burn out because we have a skewed view of what missions requires of us or we have perfectionism tendencies that make us feel like we’re never doing enough or that we’ve failed. But you haven’t failed. God is proud of you. And you should be proud of yourself.
Leaders Helping Teams Experiencing Compassion Fatigue:
- Lighten workload: The workload is often great for ministry leaders. Allowing breaks and time off for members dealing with compassion fatigue is crucial. This could come in the form of redefining roles, encouraging sabbaticals, or offering missionary retreats & debriefing regularly.
- Make space for grief: Offer patience and empathy realizing grief can exhibit in many different forms: anger, disillusionment, resentment, withdrawal, depression. Create safe spaces for employees to share their grief without repercussions. Lead with vulnerability.
- Create a culture of well-being: A Limeaid report stated 40% of employees leaving jobs cited burnout as the primary reason, often seeking employment with organizations providing better member care. A culture of well-being is one where members have permission to do self-care, to dialogue authentically without punishment, and where a culture of wellness is promoted through the encouragement of programs like meditation, exercise/yoga, virtual work and flexible work hours, and group debriefing.
- Encourage connection: Isolation develops higher levels of work-related stress and compassion fatigue. During the COVID-19 era, many missionaries felt lonely and without support. As humans, we need to feel connected to others, especially in our pain. Foster connection through regular communication, community counseling, and member satisfaction surveys.
- Offer recognition & control: Most missionaries feel underappreciated and like they have no control within their organizations. Workers who believe they have more flexibility and control in decision-making, and the skills and capacity to meet crises, often do better. Encouraging your staff by recognizing their work leads to better outcomes, as well as training to build their capacity and resilience.
- Give resources for support: Having counselors and coaches on hand who can provide the necessary support for those in ministry is vital. You can also offer regular debriefing and retreats–you can find more resources on my missionary care resources page.
I hope you found this article helpful, if you did please give a share to a missionary in your life. And as always, be well, my loves.
PS: If you’d like to take a 5 minute survey to help me improve the quality of content I write here I would be so grateful!
