“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”
– Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on The Christian Life
“You can’t care for another until you take care of yourself…first!”
Richard Anastasi
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The major source of stress for a CareGiver is estrangement from him or her self.
The more engaged the CareGiver becomes in the daily life of the Cared For, the greater the chance the Care Giver will be ‘sacrificing’ self-care in order to meet the needs of the Cared For.
Eventually, the Care Giver gets to the point where he or she doesn’t t feel like they can continue care giving or become ill, and sometimes die before the Cared For dies. Mistakenly the Care Giver believes this is being compassionate: putting the care of another before our own care. This form of compassion only leads to what researchers are calling ‘compassion fatigue.’
There many articles and discussions about ‘compassion fatigue’? Human Kind (humankind.org programs 219, 220) presented a documentary called “Resilient Nurses”. This documentary explored the causes of compassion fatigue within the nursing profession. Leaders in the nursing profession interviewed in the documentary proposed that nurses be taught how to develop an attitude of compassion method to reduce compassion fatigue.
It is a false sense of compassion that leads to compassion fatigue. Our common sense form of compassion is not sufficient to reduce the stress of being a Care Giver. While compassion may be an innate human feeling, we must nurture compassion for it to become a well from which we can draw for our comfort and the comfort of others.
True compassion is the essential attitude necessary to reduce the stress of being a CareGiver.
Compassion literally means “suffering with” another. It does not mean suffering in place of another nor does it mean to suffer with another to your own detriment.
Care Givers start with the belief they are alone in the task of care giving. Care Givers feel isolated and alone. They think no one understands what they are enduring each day. Rather than reaching out for support, they go it alone, feeling there is no one available to support them.
Gail Sheehy in her bestselling book Passages in Care Giving, documents how, at some point in the care giving experience, the Care Giver winds up in a deep, dark place, alone, powerless and feeling “I can’t do this anymore.”
To avoid reaching this ‘deep, dark place,’ the Care Giver can begin with ‘being friendly toward oneself’. In Sanskrit, the term for this is maître. It is the first step in developing a true attitude of compassion. The Care Giver has to realize that you cannot take care of another until you take care of yourself…first! It is not selfish to care for yourself first. In fact, the opposite is true. It is selfish not to take of yourself first.
If you don’t care of yourself, you have nothing to give to others. You cannot give what you don’t have. That’s being selfish.
Chaplains — Humankind on Public Radio (humanmedia.org)
HumanKind.com Program 169 • 29 mins
Chaplains at hospitals and other health care institutions serve both religious and non-religious patients and their families, people who may be facing a medical emergency, and sometimes even a life-threatening condition. The role of chaplains is to comfort anyone who may feel afraid, angry, alone. In some cases, a health challenge can trigger a spiritual crisis, and chaplains are trained to help patients sort through complex feelings that may arise. In this episode of Humankind, we hear stories of inspiring and sometimes profound encounters with patients by three Boston-based chaplains: Rev. Michael McElhinny, Director of Chaplaincy at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston; Rev. Lucy Sanders, Director of Pastoral Care, at Sherrill House, a nursing and rehabilitation facility in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts; and Rev. Beth Loomis, Director of Pastoral Care at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge.