Empathy protects from emotional burnout?

A person who works a lot is not immune from emotional and physical burnout. Blame for all the demanding bosses, lazy colleagues or the desire to earn more money. But what is it for those who are forced to take on themselves the grief and pain of other people on a daily basis? It is about social workers and employees of rescue services. Empathy and other strong emotions are at the forefront of their professional activities.

Emotional barrier as a way to protect against depression

Over time, people employed in the social sectors begin to experience the so-called fatigue of compassion and lose motivation to help those in need. According to psychologists, emotional burnout associated with helping others can become depressed and even leads to suicidal thoughts. And if a social worker does not want to sacrifice his own mental well-being, he builds an emotional barrier between himself and his clients. In this case, its performance suffers. How can a person with a low threshold of empathy help others?

Should I fear the pain of others?

A new scientific study was aimed at finding answers to this question. Heroes of the experiment should be beaten by police officers who provide assistance to victims of sexual violence. This work requires the police to have a high degree of emotional impact. It's no secret that the victims of violence are afraid to apply to the court. The decisive argument that removes shyness is often the high degree of empathy emanating from people in uniform. Thus, the police can directly affect the development of the case. However, according to the authors of the study David Turgus, Naomi Glover, Chris Barker and Lucy Maddox from University College London, officers pay for a high degree of sensitivity, experiencing a secondary psychological trauma. They pass through themselves the pain and suffering of people who are victims of violence.

Progress of the experiment

The author's group worked with 142 British police officers who work in a special unit and daily listen to horrible stories from victims of violence who were lucky to survive after the attack. The officers informed the scientists about levels of compassion, emotional and psychological exhaustion, and secondary traumatic stress (this disorder causes symptoms similar to PTSD). Then, using a questionnaire, the researchers measured the overall level of dispositional empathy of the officers. One of the statements of the questioning sounded like this: "I can determine when another person is sad, even if he does not say anything."

Between empathy and burnout there is a link

As a result, a correlation was found between empathy and emotional burnout. However, a rather unexpected picture emerged. Those officers who experienced higher dispositional empathy had lower levels of emotional burnout compared to their counterparts. The conclusions of the experiment provide preliminary support for the theory of empathic involvement in the fate of victims, serving as a protective factor from their own emotional exhaustion. In other words, the more sympathy social workers have for the victim's story, the more likely they are to help the population more meaningfully.

So, the employees of rescue services do not need to be fenced off from people by a high impenetrable fence of indifference. Otherwise, their work will really lose effectiveness. But one should not be afraid of one's own depression or suicidal thoughts. As a bonus, social workers and police officers receive a different reward. This is a sense of accomplishment, which also protects against burnout. There is no doubt that empathy makes the work of officers more significant, and this feeling helps them cope with depressive factors.

What are the levels of empathy fatigue?

Surprisingly, British scientists have not found any officers with a high level of compassion to be tired of sympathy or susceptibility to secondary trauma. The findings are a counterargument that runs counter to the persuasive belief of psychologists that social workers are often depressed and have suicidal thoughts. Apparently, people with a high level of empathy, as well as other employees of rescue services, are still subject to emotional burnout. However, the fatigue of compassion is present in most officers only in an easy degree.

Three-fourths of police officers were not subject to secondary traumatic stress. This would be great news, if not for the commensurate years of work of the officers participating in the study. The total mass of participants worked for their position for about two years. Either way, empathy actually reduces the symptoms of burnout. And this should be borne in mind by all employees of social services.