Spent: Compassion Exhaustion

I am tired. Really and truly zonked. The last two months have used up every last ounce of patience, self-care, and kindness I have. And I’ve only been seeing the same four people!

The hardest part of it all is how much more I wanted to help others in this time. For all my work, we have me, who works a flexible at home job that can take a few weeks off and just do crunch time when the girls are back in school. Forrest was told to work from home and he is able to flex his hours to give me at least a few hours every day. And the girls schooling from home is a deep inconvenience but there were no major issues with lack of support services.

Everywhere around us are reminders of how hard this whole time is on everyone. And other than offer sympathy, we really are supposed to just stay out of the way, reducing our likelihood of catching or passing on germs. It is hard to be connected and therefore aware of all the needs, including those that aren’t being filled.

But it doesn’t take a global pandemic to make me realize that I am not able to help every person who is in pain. Even if I understand that compassion doesn’t mean fixing problems, but rather helping how I can, there is a limit to the help one person can give. If I say yes all the time, I’ll get burned out quickly and be of no use to anyone. Or I’ll start limiting my exposure to who I feel I can help and ignore the very real pain of people around me. I don’t want to limit my compassion by overusing it or rationing it.

So what is an exhausted lady to do? Nothing else. You see, all this work I’ve done so far into building connections, all these moments of generosity and vulnerability and self-sacrifice have come together to teach me one thing. Humility. Because the more I get to know people, get to experience their lives and appreciate them, the more I realize how both essential and nonessential I am. I have a job to do – give my time and talent to what’s in front of me. But so do they and I can trust my community. No one is shirking or taking. We are all in this together, as much when I am working as when I am resting.

My only job is to get out of the way, get myself rested and fed again, and then get back to it so they can take a break too.

What do you do when you’re overworked and exhausted? How do you meet your needs when there are so many needs around you?