Compassion fatigue can come from the sense that your work is being undone.

One of the hardest things about taking care of others is that often they don’t take care of themselves. Whether you tend to a person’s body, mind, or heart, in your professional career or personal life, it’s one thing to offer others your compassionate attention and skill. It’s another to see them repeat the same self-sabotaging mistakes over and over, and then come to you to get patched up. It can become exhausting.

We all like to be effective and make a difference. Physically creative labor can be immensely gratifying. The sight of a finished carpentry project, garden, or painting represents a day well spent and a job well done. But what about when your labor involves human beings, with all their faults and foibles? On the one hand, it’s not your job to control them; if you try to, you’ll be met with resistance, resentment and rebellion. On the other hand, it IS your job to “help.” But how do you help those who aren’t presently ready, able or willing to help themselves?

People in need are understandably, temporarily self-centered. They have to be. And if it’s your career, you’re getting paid for your encounters to be completely focused on them. But one downside is that you aren’t being recognized for what it’s like to invest your own heart in your efforts to alleviate their suffering… and how helplessly pained you may feel when it becomes evident how much of that suffering is self-inflicted.