The Cost of Caring
Kayla’s alarm began to chime. Somewhere from the depths of her dream, the soft music rouses her awake. She stretches her arms up to the ceiling and points her toes, waking them up with a gentle wiggle. With one hand she turns off the alarm while her other wipes the sleep from her eyes. Her dog stirs and her husband flicks on the bedside lamp. Kayla pulls her blinds open to reveal the rising sun. A new dawn. A new day. So many possibilites. She watches the sun’s slow movement for a minute, taking in it. She breathes in all its beauty, the pink and red dance with the last remnants of the night’s sky. She is present.
Two hours later, Kayla pulls her ratty old car into the parking lot, she looks around the school grounds with gratitude. Becoming a teacher was a childhood dream come true. The sun is higher in the sky now. The birds dance and the cicadas chirp. A new day. So many possibilites. Kayla could feel her energy. It was buzzing. Her headspace was clear. She felt enthusiasm and excitement while preparing her lessons for the day.
At 8:30, Kayla walks into her classroom to find Sophie, her most diligent student, desperately trying to hide her tears behind the book she was pretending to read. The chairs had been taken down, the day’s timetable was up. Sophie’s greatest strength is kindness. Thomas and Giovani mill around the box of math equipment making some kind of creation with the multi-link cubes. Oscar races in, dumps his bag, and races back out. Squeals of laughter dance in from the playground.
Without making a scene, Kayla expertly cradles Sophie’s emotions. Sophie’s parents are getting divorced. Kayla knows those feelings. She knows Sophie’s pain. She sits with Sophie, offering her someone to talk to. They bond over a pain only children whose parents separate could understand. Over the next few weeks, Kayla continues to support Sophie. Sophie becomes reliant on her teacher. The boundaries become blurred. Unaware, Kayla begins to relive her childhood trauma. The feelings she had as a child are brought to the surface but she is so consumed and over invested in Sophie and her healing, she cannot see herself changing. She pushes the feelings aside. Her students and their needs are more important. She can no longer see the beauty in the sunrise because she stopped looking. She can no longer feel the gratitude of her childhood dream coming true because she stopped feeling. She can no longer find any enthusiasm for her work because she stopped showing up for herself, she was too busy showing up for everyone else who needed her.
Everything just feels like it’s too much.
*A few weeks later*
Kayla’s alarm begins to chime. Inwardly, Kayla groans. She rolls over and hits the snooze button. Her eyes are heavy. The birds are chirping outside but to Kayla it feels like nails down the chalkboard. The alarm chimes again. Kayla groans again. She rolls over and hits snooze, again. Her husband plops a hot cup of coffee on her bedside table. He opens the blinds to reveal another glorious morning. The light burns her eyes. Silently, she curses her husband.
Two hours later, Kayla pulls her ratty old car into the parking lot, she looks around the school with dread in the pit of her stomach. In her head, a storm is raging. Her childhood dream felt more like a nightmare but she can’t pinpoint what’s causing her to feel this way. She is unaware and moving through the days without connecting to herself and nourishing her needs.
At 8:45 she drags herself from the staffroom and forces her feet to carry her to her room. There isn’t enough coffee in the world to energize her.
25 little tornadoes tear through the classroom.
She loves them all.
A little too much.
Their problems and trauma outweigh her own, or so she makes herself believe.
Her love holds her students with empathy and compassion.
She gives. And gives. And gives some more.
She feels like she has nothing left to give, but even then, she gives some more.
She feels like she is drowning.
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“There is a cost to caring. Professionals who listen to their clients’ stories of fear, pain, and suffering may feel similar fear, pain, or suffering because they care,” - Charles Figley, 1984.
Charles Figely first coined the term Compassion Fatigue in 1984. Compassion Fatigue is the cost we pay when we care for those with emotional pain, when we take on their suffering and begin to feel burdened, both physically and mentally. When we are empathetic of the situations our learners are facing, both outside and inside the school grounds, we have the ability to feel what they are feeling. This can retrigger past trauma within ourselves; being exposed to another's trauma can also lead to secondary traumatic stress (SST). When we are compassionate, we feel this invisible force that drives us to protect and alleviate the pain and suffering our students are feeling. Lisa Baylis, the author of ‘Self-compassion for Educators’ states that, ‘compassion is empathy in action.’
Compassion and empathy are often a teacher’s superpower. We are nurturing, we are loving, and we want to see our learners happy, because we know happy kids learn. As teachers, we are surrounded by children who bring their whole worlds with them into the classroom, even those who try to hide it. We see children going through the death of a family member, we see children dealing with their parents’ messy divorce, we deal with kids being neglected by their parents, both physically and emotionally; we have children in our classrooms who have been traumatized by the Christchurch earthquakes, frequent flooding events, and now the impacts of Covid-19, not to mention the growing mental health crisis smothering our rangatahi. Our classrooms are filled to the brim with children fighting their own battles, and it is only natural we want to ease their pain and make the hours they spend at school as happy as we can. We know for many, the classroom is their safe place, so we take it upon ourselves to be their beacon of light, but at what cost?
Compassion Fatigue has a number of psychological and physical symptoms that do not differ much from Burnout. Burnout happens from being exposed to things that stress us out over a long period of time, it is more chronic. With compassion fatigue, the onset is generally rapid, like a snowball speeding down a steep hill, getting bigger and bigger with each roll, until it hits the building at the bottom and smashes apart, causing ice, snow, water and rocks to release from the pressure.
The symptoms of Compassion Fatigue include:
Depression, anxiety and deep sadness
The desire to withdraw and be alone more than usual
No longer interested in the things that bring you joy
Poor sleeping patterns - sleeping more or sleeping less than usual
Issues with weight - losing or gaining
Living in what feels like a heavy fog of exhaustion
Intense feelings of overwhelm
An incredibly short fuse and unpredictable mood swings
Headaches, body pains like lock neck, back aches and muscular pain
Loss of job satisfaction
Breakdown in relationships
Taking on the emotions of the child/ren you are working with as if it’s your own
Past traumas re-triggered
It’s not just the workload that makes our jobs hard. We can suffer because we care, and as ironic as it may seem, the best way to alleviate Compassion Fatigue is with more compassion. Compassion is actually an infinite resource, just like we can never run out of love to give, we can never run out of compassion. I bet you can think of times where you have been completely energetically depleted, yet still muster up the strength you need to be compassionate for those in your life, beit your family, friends or your students. When we are feeling fatigued from caring for those around us, it’s not necessarily just because we are giving too much to them, it can be because we are not giving any to ourselves.
SELF-compassion is one of the most powerful practices you can add to your ‘self-care tool kit’. It could be worth more to you than those fortnightly nail appointments and eating well because when we can meet ourselves by being more mindful of how we are feeling, thinking and acting, without judgment, we are able to stop the rumination and storytelling that causes us great suffering.
As a teacher, maybe you feel too much compassion for your akonga. Maybe you struggle when you see your students struggling. Maybe you take on their pain, hoping it will take it away from them. Maybe exercising and eating well isn’t enough - maybe you need a little self-compassion in your life.
