A<\/span>re you a caregiver? Have you found yourself coping with feelings of being stretched too thin from time to time as you nurture, support, and protect your loved one? If so, you are not alone. Many caregivers are being pushed to their emotional limits, and in some cases, beyond.<\/p>\n If all the caring and caretaking you\u2019re doing leaves you feeling completely drained, don\u2019t resign yourself to thinking, \u201cThis is just the way it is.\u201d It doesn\u2019t have to be.<\/p>\n Most of us are familiar with remedies for physical exhaustion, such as sleep and downtime, but you may not be aware of how to deal with empathy fatigue. This kind of energetic, emotional exhaustion deserves your special attention.<\/p>\n Empathy is when you connect with and feel someone else\u2019s pain. It\u2019s a beautiful way to relate to others, but remaining in this state becomes exhausting because you are in constant giving while not receiving anything back to fill your coffers.<\/p>\n Compassion is when we try to alleviate someone else\u2019s pain. Compassion is love in action. When you start to feel tired or drained from giving, that\u2019s empathy fatigue. And the key to healing lies in compassion.<\/p>\n There are tools to help you if you feel overwhelmed. Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) is one.<\/p>\n Mindfulness expert Christopher Germer, Ph.D., and pioneering self-compassion researcher Kristen Neff, Ph.D., MSC developed MSC. The practice invites us to be fully present and aware of how we are feeling and caring for ourselves.<\/p>\n The three components of MSC are mindfulness, self-kindness, and shared humanity. It is an ideal solution for empathy fatigue.<\/p>\n The mindfulness practice of Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) offers many tools we can use to overcome empathy fatigue in the present and help to prevent it in the future.<\/p>\n Here are five tips inspired by MSC to help you to recognize, heal, and avoid empathy fatigue.<\/p>\n When you feel exhausted from the many ways you care for those in your world, please don\u2019t ignore it. That\u2019s empathy fatigue! If you don\u2019t acknowledge it and work to heal it, it can take over and wreak havoc on your sense of well-being.<\/p>\n When you add compassion to your empathy, something beautiful happens: You help another person, and in return, you experience self-compassion and self-care.<\/p>\n Caring best for others starts with taking the best care of YOU. The well-worn analogy of putting your oxygen mask on first applies here. If you don\u2019t keep yourself healthy and well in body and mind,\u2014 and impossible to maintain long term!<\/p>\n Make time for mindful self-care by taking a few minutes for meditation each day. Take a nice, hot bath. Call a friend. Take a walk and practice staying grounded by putting your attention on the soles of your feet. Listen to music that soothes and inspires you. Fill yourself back up with an abundance of caring.<\/p>\n Balancing empathy with compassion (for self and others) is crucial for avoiding empathy fatigue. We can\u2019t just feel all the pain all the time and expect not to be drained. Switching over to compassion enables us to take action to alleviate suffering. When empathy fatigue happens, remember that you are missing the compassion component!<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a meditation from Mindful Self-Compassion program developers Kristen Neff and Christopher Germer. I learned it during my MSC training, and it is terrific for caregivers of any kind.<\/p>\n Family caregivers can use these words when helping loved ones who are suffering. Friends can use it when helping friends going through rough transitions.<\/p>\n Try it for yourself in any context where it feels helpful to you:<\/em><\/p>\n Everyone is on their own life journey.<\/em><\/p>\n I am not the cause of this person\u2019s suffering, nor is it entirely within my power to make it go away, even if I wish I could.<\/em><\/p>\n Moments like this are difficult to bear, yet I may still try to help if I can.<\/em><\/p>\n Your empathy fatigue tells you something: It\u2019s time to turn your tremendous, caring skills towards yourself. And it\u2019s the furthest thing from selfish to do so, despite what your inner critic may be piping up to suggest.<\/p>\n Caring for ourselves is a necessary part of being able to care for others. It makes it possible for us to show up refreshed, grounded, and balanced so others can lean on us without causing us to collapse \u2014 physically or emotionally!<\/p>\n Never resign yourself to just suffering your way through it when you\u2019re tapped out.<\/p>\n Mindful Self-Compassion is an effective and accessible way to acknowledge that caring for YOU is crucial to your ability to care for others effectively.<\/p>\n Ideas for caregivers when they are pushed us to their emotional limits<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11284,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[139,141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-summer-2021","category-spring-summer-2021-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11193"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11522,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11193\/revisions\/11522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/healthyaging.net\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What Is Empathy Fatigue, Anyway?<\/h3>\n
What is Mindful Self-Compassion?<\/h3>\n
1. Don\u2019t ignore fatigue<\/h3>\n
2. Add compassion to your empathy<\/h3>\n
3. Be a caretaker of YOU<\/h3>\n
4. Schedule \u201cYOU time\u201d<\/h3>\n
5. Practice self-compassion<\/h3>\n
Mindfulness Meditation for Caregivers<\/h3>\n
Julie Potiker is a mindfulness expert with extensive teacher training in a variety of tools and methods, including Mindful Self-Compassion. Through her Mindful Methods for Life program offerings and her book, Life Falls Apart, but You Don\u2019t Have To: Mindful Methods for Staying Calm in the Midst of Chaos<\/a>, <\/em>Potiker\u00a0helps others bring more peace and wellness into their lives. For more information, visit MindfulMethodsForLife.com.<\/a><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"