That Numbness You’re Feeling is Compassion Fatigue
Compassion fatigue is no longer just a first-responder problem
I first learned about compassion fatigue on a police department ride-along. I was researching a book about crime scene investigation, and one of the investigators was collecting blood samples in the rain after a shooting. Even soaked and working in the dark, she said the job was easier than her previous one. Prior to becoming a crime scene investigator, she had worked as a police dispatcher, fielding calls for help that came into the department.
That job, the woman said, was unrelenting. Some of the calls were soul-sickening: suicides; a person who rolled over and smothered their sleeping child. To work as a dispatcher, you had to maintain a heightened state of alertness hour after hour. The woman kept feeling like she should have done more to help the people who called. Predictably, she fell apart.
We talk a lot about burnout in this country, about how long hours and lack of agency at work can lead to psychological paralysis. Far less is said about compassion fatigue, in part because its effects can be painful to admit to. For some people, it manifests as a numbness to the suffering of others, an inability to care any longer. (You can find one standard scale here.) For the police dispatcher, it resulted…
