#compassion fatigue | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thepeacefulgarden · 5 months

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#rest #give yourself permission to rest #self care #self care is not selfish #self compassion #self respect #self love #work culture #grind culture #stop the glorification of busy #spoons #chronic illness #burnout #compassion fatigue #activism fatigue #no guilt #no shame

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elumish · 2 months

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In the wake of what's going on in the world, I see a lot of rhetoric that basically boils down to the idea that everyone has a responsibility to watch every bad thing that's going on in the world all the time. That awareness itself is a responsibility that everyone has always.

I'm not going to say that people do or don't have a responsibility to be aware of things, but I want to talk about how to take care of yourself and others while doing so.

For some context, I spent close to a year and a half reading about every terrorist attack in the world as part of my work on the Global Terrorism Database. It was 2015/2016, so this was the height of ISIS/Daesh, it was a major time for Boko Haram, and it was when there was a lot of political violence that we weren't sure how to classify in places like Yemen, Crimea, and Libya (stuff the GTD didn't know how to classify had all of is information recorded, and then it went into purgatory until someone above my paygrade decided what to do with it). What this means is that I was spending 10-20 hours a week reading about hundreds or thousands of attacks a month and, in my case, recording infomation about the type of attack and the type of weapon. Much of my life was reading terrible things.

Limit what you do in isolation. One of the worst changes for me during that time, mental health-wise (even though it was great for my commute) was when I went from working in-person to working remotely. With other people, there are ways to diffuse the pain. A burden shared is a burden halved and all that. That may mean talking about it, or joking about it, or finding some other way to engage with it that isn't just reading about the most horrible things in the world and then stewing in your own thoughts about them.

Find something to do that's totally unrelated. I highly recommend finding something to do with your hands, if you can (knitting, Lego, cooking, whatever), but regardless of what it is, you should have some time when you entirely switch away to something different. During a fair amount of my time with the GTD, I was also doing my undergrad thesis about terrorism on TV, so a huge amount of my life was about terrorism in some way. The only other thing I watched was Great British Bake Off, and I would just rewatch the episodes, over and over.

Be compassionate about how you share information and with whom. Use trigger warnings, and consider using consistent tagging on places like Tumblr so people can blacklist it if they need to. Also consider whether it's appropriate or necessary to share photos of bodies or other results of horrible violence. What is it accomplishing, to show that? Can that goal be accomplished other ways that don't require the equivalent of jumpscares of unexpected photos of dead or brutalized people? Are you just showing it because you think that everyone should have to see it? If you are showing it, are there ways to mitigate against harm it may do?

Do what you can to avoid an echo chamber. Sometimes, when everyone around you is upset or angry about the same thing, it just amplifies itself, and you all get angrier and more upset in perpetuity without accomplishing anything.

Work towards action. Watching terrible things happen for the sake of saying that you haven't looked away isn't as meaningful as taking action in some way. Write to your Congressperson. Donate. Do whatever is appropriate for the thing you want to stop. But penance via watching terrible things happen doesn't accomplish anything.

Recognize compassion fatigue and do what you can to mitigate it. If you spend long enough doing this, you start to lose context, and you start to become less able to have compassion about things. If you're reading about attacks with dozens or hundreds of deaths regularly, five can start to not seem like that many. If you're reading only about the worst suffering in the world, "lesser" suffering of those around you can start to seem unimportant and petty. Do what you can to mitigate that.

Be kind to yourself. You do nobody any good if you burn out. Look away, if you need to. Take a break. Do things so you can enjoy life, because otherwise you are just another person suffering in the world. Other people's pain isn't a hair shirt for you to wear.

#elumish blogs #compassion fatigue #activism

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whereserpentswalk · 4 months

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Activist burnout isn't a moral failing of a community, it's not people being selfish. It's a natural result of how human minds work, and you can't expect communities to out-moral human psychology.

When people are exposed to the same upsetting thing over and over again, either it fucks with their mental health and makes them more depressed and anxious, or alternatively it makes them apathetic and desensitized. Neither of those things are good for a movement, and those are the ways humans are going to react to constant upsetting messages. You cannot avoid this by telling people to just be better people, you cannot use higher reasoning to make an entire community's emotions work in a fundamentally different way to how human emotions normal work.

Every successful movement account for the fact that people can't be at 100% all the time. Movements that ask for a level of extreme and undying anger, burn bright and die fast, it's a useful way of organizing a very immediate response, but cannot be done for something larger scale. If you give people, the ultimatum of either being at 100% or 0% all the time, they will choose 0% because the alternative isn't possible for most people.

If you're constantly showing the same disturbing images over and over again, they will lose their effectiveness quickly. If I see a post detailing the horrors of the current genocide, I'm probably just going to scroll past it, because it's all things I already know, and I've seen it so many times there's no emotional reaction, and this is how a lot of people are with posts like this, because you can't ask people to have the same emotional reaction to the same information hundreds of times over.

You can't stop activist burnout by being a better person because burnout isn't a choice, it's a psychological response. If your activism doesn't account for the material reality of the community (in this case being humans with human minds), then that's on you for organizing badly.

Also, if you need to hear this: you are not a bad person for experiencing compassion fatigue, it's literally part of being a person. Don't hurt yourself.

#196 #my thougts #free palestine #palastine #activism #activist #protests #activist burnout #burnout #mental health #compassion fatigue #praxis #leftism #leftist

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justalittlesolarpunk · 6 months

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You have to take care of your own heart. You were not meant to carry the pain of the entire world. Do what you can for others, because you owe it to them, but be realistic with what you can achieve. If you’re already going to protests, donating money, working for liberation, holding power to account, taking care of the worst affected - then breathe. Take a step back and stop doomscrolling or endlessly refreshing your news app. Go for a walk in the woods. Eat your favourite chocolate. Watch a film with a loved one. Sleep. I promise you all the agony and cruelty and suffering will still be there when you get back. But maybe you’ll have a little more strength to fight them if you’ve remembered to keep tending the fires of joy inside you. You save no-one by letting them go out.

#hopepunk #crises #social justice #optimism #community #self care #bad news #compassion fatigue #burnout #love #solarpunk

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zee-rambles · 1 year

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Tapping out.

@saspas-corner

First I Prev I Next

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wiisagi-maiingan · 10 months

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That post was not about shaming people for not volunteering at their local food banks or anything like that, it was about how the internet and the constant global news feed flood people with misery and guilt over every single tragedy in the world that we have no power over and we end up so overwhelmed with helplessness that we aren't able to see the point in doing "small" things because they feel so insignificant compared to massive tragedies happening on the other side of the world.

What does joining an urban gardening group mean in the face of Russia's invasion of Ukraine? Why volunteer to pick up litter when you're just going to get called an heartless psychopath by an anon on tumblr for not posting enough about the genocide of Uyghur people in China?

This isn't a new or sudden issue, it's been building steadily since people started having constant and immediate access to global news. We're scared and we're tired of being scared. There's so much going on all the time in every direction that it just feels so much easier to just curl up and cry than try to care about everything or come off as evil for not caring about everything.

#ableist language #because those anons are always ableist as hell lbr #compassion fatigue

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agendergenderqueermasculenbyguy · 2 months

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Welp, it happened.

I have posted before about how blocking content on tumblr has no stigma attached

You – yes, you, person reading this – are allowed to block whatever tags/ content you want

You don’t need to have a “reason”, you are allowed to block and filter content “just because” or “because I don’t want to see it”

Content does not need to trigger or squick you for you to be allowed to filter it

This post is officially your personal permission to filter out whatever content you would rather not see

And this includes filtering/ blocking “#current events” “#current news” “#global news”

You are allowed to exclude/ block out current world events from your tumblr experience

This does not mean you don’t care!

Yes, you are allowed to filter content “just because” or “because I don’t care”

But filtering exhausting and upsetting content does not imply you do not care!

Compassion fatigue is a real thing!

Especially if you (like me) follow several, multiple, a bunch of activist bloggers

There are global crises everywhere, I just read of 6 genocides happening which is precisely why I decided to finally block/ filter out those “current events” tags

How to filter in the tumblr app:

Go to your own blog >

click the little gear in the top corner >

General Settings >

scroll down >

just above “Color Palette” there it is >

Filtering

Type in whatever tags or words you want to not see in the future

This works for filtering out user-URLs too, if you have specific people you’d like not to see posts by

The “full text” filter will, however, 1) also look at the URL of the prev to who put it on your dash 2) ignores spaces in the post

Example 1: You follow “microplasdick” and you filtered “orange”; if the OP is called “orange-fishburne” your filter will hide that post; if the person microplasdick reblogged is “orange-cucumber” your filter will hide the post. Doesn’t matter if the word “orange” is not within the post itself

Example 2: You have filtered “orange” and a post goes “I also ran getting to my bus” – that post would get filtered because it contains “o ran ge” in that sequence

So “#tumblr is my safe space” and for that to stay true, you’re most definitely allowed to block out current events/ world news

Please take care <2

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hope-for-the-planet · 2 years

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To burn out trying to resist a system that is fueled by burning things out is not resistance.

Sarah Jaquette Ray, A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety

#quote #inspiration #climate change #hope #hopepunk #activism #environment #burnout #mental health #compassion fatigue

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babyspacebatclone · 2 months

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Just a general reminder to anyone working in a “caregiving” or adjacent field.

Second Hand Trauma is real, and you deserve to take care of yourself

It’s not just doctors, first responders, or social workers - although the amount of trauma they receive on a regular basis definitely needs to be acknowledged and given protection from.

Office workers of any medical field where you regularly need to read and sort horrifying details that is someone’s reality.

Custodial staff, doing their best to keep the living environments hopeful despite the despair around them.

Childcare and school teachers who pick up hints of unsafe family environments, but are powerless to get more than the children and parents can or are willing to disclose.

If knowing other people are experiencing trauma is an inevitable part of your daily job, it takes it’s toll on your.

Compassion fatigue and burn out are almost guaranteed if you don’t mindfully acknowledge and address how witnessing the effects of trauma impacts you.

Don’t berate yourself for feeling bad when “it’s not happening to you.”

Because it’s beautiful that you care, that you have this empathy and sympathy.

But it has a cost, and you need to care for yourself in order to keep caring for those suffering around you.

#second hand trauma #vicarious trauma #compassion fatigue #burn out #employment burn out #burnout #ptsd #c ptsd #trauma #post traumatic stress disorder

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neuroticboyfriend · 2 months

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been struggling with compassion fatigue lately and idrk what to do. i'm just pouring everything i have into getting through the day. i don't really know how to handle anything that isn't addiction related. it sucks. i keep beating myself up about it, because there are people struggling a lot more than me, and i feel like an asshole. i wish i had more to give out to others. but i just don't.

#julian rants #vent #compassion fatigue #addiction recovery

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bfpnola · 5 months

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from the Jewish founder and director of ProjectLETS ^^

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thepeacefulgarden · 3 months

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Self-care is great, but the truth is, it only goes so far.

#kindness #compassion #community care #you matter #family #friendship #found family #we live in a society #activism fatigue #compassion fatigue

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unchartedthelostlegacy · 3 months

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the thing is that "compassion fatigue" can be a useful term in the case of, for example, healthcare workers during the pandemic watching more patients die per shift than they ever have, intubating the nurse who was supposed to train them, sacrificing their own mental and physical needs for those of others for a prolonged period of time. It can refer to parentified children who are enmeshed with their parents to a degree not appropriate for their age, like a child who needs to make sure their substance abusing mother gets up in the morning and call 911 if she's unconscious, or who becomes her father's confidant in regards to interpersonal issues with her mom. It refers to a specific kind of trauma resulting from putting others' needs before your own to the point it is detrimental to your wellbeing.

TLDR: The medical staff in Gaza, serving far too many patients with far too few resources and experiencing tragedy after tragedy have more claim to "compassion fatigue" than anyone looking at posts about it online. one month into the pandemic and you were ready to kill grandma if it meant "feeling more normal" because eating dry turkey while coughing on each other and having superspreader events at mediocre theme parks was that essential to your wellbeing. these people have never known your comfortable safe bomb-free life and their life is unrecognizable in terms of lack of sleep, food, water, hygiene, and sense of safety to anything you have to experience and yet they are providing care in these terrible circumstances to others.

you will survive caring about their plight a little bit.

#compassion fatigue #healthcare work #gaza #free palestine

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notesfromtheidiotbox · 4 months

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I'm showing a picture of this post instead of reblogging because I don't want to distract from OP's point, but the various comments and reblogs all seem to have a common thread of "how did this happen? Why don't people seem to care?"

My personal theory is widespread compassion fatigue. It's finally ingrained itself fully into our collective psyche. And I'm not just talking about recent events either.

I'm 47 years old. I've lived through the end of the Cold War, two Gulf Wars, one major terrorist attack on US soil that upended literally EVERYTHING about everyday life in the US, the rising threat of climate change, a once in a century pandemic, multiple boom-and-bust economic cycles, the rise of the internet and with it the rise of accessibility of both information and MISinformation, multiple smaller conflicts around the world, the change in corporate attitudes from "we serve our customers our products faithfully and loyally" to "fuck you! That's our money in your wallet and we're not even going to pretend we thought of you as anything else anymore," the creeping resurgence of fascism as a political ideology in the US not seen since the 30s and early 40s,* rapidly rising inflation and wage stagnation without any sort of action to mitigate it for most of the population. and literally hundreds to thousands of people online yelling at each other for not "doing more," "doing better," or for not supporting/believing/doing the right things in the right way.

I honestly think the compassion/empathy tank is not just empty in the US, it's burned through the fumes and is now bone dry.

Being as generous as possible with the timeline, ever since 2001**, what we laughingly call the news in this country has served us a 24/7 diet of crisis after crisis, with no respite. It's ebbed and flowed, of course, but the general message has been "everything is getting worse, nobody is going to save us, we can't solve the existential threats of war, disease, famine, climate change, racism, and lethal prejudice that exists everywhere." And while collective action has garnered several significant victories, the attitude is still "this won't work because everybody has their own ideas of what needs to be done and how to do it and spend more time arguing over the details rather than doing anything***"

I think we don't care because we just CAN'T anymore. Even the things we would normally use to recharge ourselves aren't working. The food doesn't taste good, the entertainment is turning into forgettable sludge by the rapid rise of streaming, and it seems like you aren't allowed to be anywhere in public without spending money, and if you aren't required to spend money to be somewhere, odds are if you stay there for too long you'll have somebody giving you the side eye and demanding an explanation.

And online? Anger, dehumanization, and the constant cry of any sincere expression of joy or excitement is "cringe."

22 years of being constantly told the world is shit, humans are awful, you only have as much value as your bank account has digits, your employers don't respect you or the customers who get affected by their boneheaded decisions, leaving you to take the bullet, and constant reminders if problems which are too big to be solved in our lifetime.****

We're all tired, and we're beaten down, and we just don't have any more fucks to give about the latest crisis created by those in positions of power for what we are realizing are the most petty and stupid reasons.

There isn't a one size fits all solution here. But that's pretty much what I think has happened: the people of the United States in general have reached a point where we don't have the emotional capacity to deal with any more of this seemingly unsolvable shit. And I honestly think it's going to continue to get worse before it starts to get better.

Try to take care of each other out there, okay?

--

*For younger readers: oh yeah, during Hitler's rise to power until Pearl Harbor, there were PLENTY of people who thought Hitler was just swell.

** I'd actually argue the trauma cycle started with Vietnam, but it really accelerated with the 24 hour news cycle, the increase in internet speeds, and the events of 9/11.

***On a related note, be EXTREMELY leery of those online who won't accept anything but full-scale revolution as a remedy. Most of the time, these people have no plan for what comes after or seem to think that when society collapses, they'll be on top of the pile, ready to be the boot.

****The kinds of changes that would be needed to wipe out war, prejudice, and many other systemic problems are probably going to take decades, if not centuries. And because of the always on demand nature of society right now, a lot of people seem to have a real problem wrapping their heads around that. Change for the worse happens immediately. Change for the better takes a LOT longer.

#compassion fatigue #state of the world #united states #cannot wait for the shitshow this post is going to start

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skiptomy · 1 year

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Help a disabled trans person get back on their feet

Forcing myself to ask for help. It's really hard for me to do this cause I always feel like I've already asked way too much, but a few kind folks have suggested I do something like this, so I guess here goes nothing.

For more info about what's going on you can check out this post, but the tl;dr is that I'm flat fucking broke right now with no way to get extra income. A lot of my stuff is super old or super broken and at the point where I need replacements that I cannot afford.

So I guess here's a list of stuff, and general prices, though if anyone has better recommendations I'm super open. I'm limiting it to things I actively need rather than just things I want cause that obviously doesn't seem fair to ask folks for.

Bedding: at this point all my pillows are so old they are actively yellowing. My comforter is pretty stained and starting to tear up at the seams and whenever I come home from doing one of my dog sitting jobs I've noticed how much worse my allergies are. Fixing this will drastically help my lungs and sinuses, as well as help with joint support/comfort.

Allergy safe pillows: Usually between 8$-15$ x 2 at least, 4 preferred (joint support)

Cooling comforter: [link] 35$ plus shipping

Allergy safe mattress cover: Most I can find are between 30-50$

Cooling mattress pad: [link] 43$ plus shipping

Med support: This part is pretty self explanatory as to why I need them. But just in case you'd like to know; I have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, fibromyalgia, chrons/ibs, asthma, pretty bad environmental allergies, as well as being recently diagnosed with ADHD/Autism. This leads to near constant pain, always constant fatigue, and just general bad vibes y'know? My body is essentially a poorly constructed ball joint doll that thinks it's funny to just sprinkle on the symptoms.

This one is just way easier to do as a wishlist, cause there's a LOT of things that could help and a lot of them are very expensive.

Work: I work as a digital artist, and the biggest thing I'm saving up for right now is a functioning PC, as my current computer continues to crash and is plagued with a whole lot of troubles and has never really had enough RAM to do what I need. Thanks to the incredible people in my life I have a little towards this already, as well as a big discount through one of my friend's jobs. The build that my tech buds and I worked out would suit my needs and keep me going for a good decade or so is about 1,400$. I've got 500$ towards it already that I refuse to touch for anything else (if it's not life threatening), and I'm trying my best to save up on the side, but bills and life keep making that very hard.

I've got Paypal, Venmo (just ask for QR), and Ko-fi.

I also do commissions but those are quite slow going right now because of all the aforementioned problems. But if you don't mind waiting a while (trying to catch up on older ones right now) you sure can put an order in.

If you are able to help, I cannot express how much that would mean to me. But I also completely understand if you can't. It's tough out there. Especially right now with everything going on. In any case, I wish you all the best, and thank you heartily for reading and sharing.

#compassion fatigue #tumblr help #community help

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zee-rambles · 1 year

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Breaking Down

First I Prev I Next

Save ROTTMNT

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