Working in trauma-informed care is deeply meaningful, but it can also take an emotional toll. Professionals in this field are consistently holding space for others’ pain, often hearing distressing stories and offering support through intense emotional experiences. Over time, this sustained exposure to suffering can lead health care professionals to develop compassion fatigue (or what is sometimes referred to as “empathy fatigue” or “compassion overload”).
At Meadows Psychology Service, we understand the emotional demands that come with caring for children and young people who have experienced trauma and attachment disruptions. Whether you’re a therapist, support worker, educator, or foster carer, recognising and managing compassion fatigue is essential to sustaining your well-being and effectiveness in trauma-informed care practices.
What Is Compassion Fatigue?
The term compassion fatigue occurs when professionals absorb the emotional pain of those they are helping. It can manifest as emotional exhaustion, reduced empathy, irritability, and even physical symptoms like headaches or sleep disturbances. While it shares some physical and mental overlap with burnout, there are important differences:
- Burnout tends to arise from chronic workplace stressors such as workload, systemic issues, or lack of support.
- Compassion fatigue is more specific to the emotional impact of exposure to trauma and suffering. It is a form of emotional and physical exhaustion that helping professionals may experience after prolonged trauma exposure, suffering, or distress of others. It often results in a diminished capacity to empathise, care, or remain emotionally connected to those they are supporting.
Why Are Trauma-Informed Professionals Particularly Vulnerable?
Professionals working in trauma-informed roles are trained to offer high levels of empathy and relational attunement. While this is essential for helping young people to heal from their early experiences, it also increases vulnerability to compassion fatigue.
Supporting people who have experienced complex developmental or relational trauma often means holding space for profound pain, mistrust, and rejection, without always seeing immediate signs of progress or connection.
This emotional labour, especially when unacknowledged or unsupported, can contribute to a gradual wearing down of our empathic capacity.
Recognising the Signs of Compassion Fatigue
Being able to identify compassion fatigue in trauma informed practice early is essential. Common signs include:
- Emotional numbness or detachment from the people you support
- Difficulty concentrating or decision fatigue
- Feeling that your efforts are never enough
- Increased irritability, cynicism, or hopelessness
- Physical health symptoms like fatigue, headaches, or disturbed sleep
Blocked Care: A Hidden but Powerful Indicator
One of the key indicators that we might be experiencing compassion fatigue is a reduced capacity to sustain caring and empathic feelings towards the children and young people we support and look after. This is known as ‘blocked care’.
When we emotionally connect with children and young people, our brains release “happy hormones” like oxytocin and dopamine. These help us feel joy, fulfilment, and motivation in our caregiving role. However, many of the young people we care for, particularly those with relational or developmental trauma, may struggle to trust, connect, or accept help.
When repeated attempts to connect are met with rejection, resistance, or withdrawal, our brains stop releasing those feel-good chemicals. Instead, we may start to feel inadequate, helpless, or like nothing we do makes a difference. This can create stress in a care services environment, which, over time, can trigger blocked care.
Blocked care can have a serious impact, not only on us, but on the young people we support. It can look like emotional detachment, reduced empathy, or becoming task-focused rather than relationship-focused.
Tragically, this can reinforce the very dynamic trauma-informed care seeks to heal. Children and young people may experience this withdrawal as rejection or abandonment, reinforcing their beliefs that adults are unsafe or unavailable, perpetuating a cycle of disrupted attachment.
Compassion as a Strategy
When we experience challenging behaviour, especially in prolonged stress or blocked care, it’s entirely human to find our capacity for empathy waning. In these moments, compassion becomes a vital alternative strategy.
Compassion differs from empathy. While a trauma informed approach using empathy involves feeling with someone, compassion involves acting with the intention to reduce suffering. Crucially, the part of our brain responsible for compassion often remains accessible, even when empathy feels out of reach.
Instead of relying solely on our emotional response, we can consciously shift into a compassionate mindset by reflecting on the young person’s story, using formulation to understand their behaviour. This means asking ourselves:
- What traumatic events has this young person experienced?
- What might they be feeling underneath this behaviour?
- How can I respond in a way that feels safe for them?
This intentional shift helps us regulate ourselves and stay connected to our purpose, even in the face of rejection, aggression, or shutdown. Most importantly, when we respond compassionately, even without feeling emotionally close, we send a powerful message to children and young people: “You are not too much. I still see you. I still care.“
By choosing compassion, we reduce the risk of reinforcing their negative beliefs about themselves and help build a more secure and healing relationship.
Self-Care Strategies to Support Trauma-Informed Practitioners
Healing and preventing compassion fatigue means tending to our own emotional needs with the same care we extend to others. Below are practical strategies for personal and professional resilience, factoring in the key principles of trauma informed care:
1. Emotional Boundaries
Learn to differentiate between being empathic and being emotionally enmeshed. Healthy boundaries protect your capacity to care long-term.
2. Supervision and Peer Reflection
Make space for regular supervision or reflective practice. Processing difficult cases with others helps to release emotional tension and gain a new perspective.
3. Mindfulness and Somatic Awareness
Grounding practices, such as breathwork, body scans, or mindful walking, can help reconnect you to your body and regulate your nervous system.
4. Joy and Play Outside of Work
Engage in hobbies, relationships, and experiences that bring you joy.
5. Self-Compassion
When you’re feeling emotionally depleted, notice how you speak to yourself. Are you offering the same compassion you extend to others?
Taking some time to practice self-care can help you further overcome feelings of self-doubt and fatigue, allowing you to provide a better quality of care.
Organisational Practices to Mitigate Compassion Fatigue
While individual self-care is essential, organisations have a responsibility to protect and support their staff or carers. Trauma-informed workplaces can promote well-being by:
- Embedding reflective supervision as standard practice
- Monitoring caseloads and preventing overwork
- Encouraging open discussions about compassion fatigue and the emotional demands of the caring role
- Offering training on recognising and responding to blocked care
- Building a culture of collective care where asking for help is normalised
Learn to Manage Compassion Fatigue With Meadows Psychology Service
Compassion fatigue is not a sign of failure – it is a sign that you’ve been deeply engaged in the emotional work of helping others. But sustaining that work requires care for ourselves, too. Recognising signs like blocked care and secondary traumatic stress, leaning into compassion, and responding with self-kindness can help us stay connected to ourselves, our work, and those we care for.
At Meadows Psychology Service, we’re committed to supporting the well-being of trauma-informed care professionals. When we take care of our carers, we ensure safer, more attuned care for everyone.
Are you interested in team training or consultation around compassion fatigue or blocked care? Contact us to find out how we can support your team.
