Welcome to Black Girl Burnout, Kelly here. And today I want to talk all about how to opt out of

compassion fatigue. We know that so many of you are probably experiencing this.

And if this term is new for you, I'm going to define what it is, but also give you strategies on how to

prevent and manage it because it's so closely linked to burnout. And we're going to dig into one

particular way to combat and prevent compassion fatigue,

and that is by building a supportive community.

So what is compassion fatigue?

It can be also known or closely linked to secondary traumatic stress.

It's very closely linked to burnout.

And it literally looks like a state of exhaustion,

both physical, emotional, and mental, when you are forced to be in the presence of others' pain.

It's particularly common among helping professionals. If you are a nurse or a mental health

professional, any health care worker, sometimes it can also be first responders if you are the first person called to a scene of someone suffering a crime, things of that nature.

But I also want to put a historical and kind of cultural lens on compassion fatigue and also say that it may also occur when you

are in the state of watching the cultural sufferings of others. So watching videos of people being

murdered by the police, for example, constantly feeding your mind and your eyes and ears on stories of trauma, of traumatic

past of others, it can also lead to compassion fatigue. How do you know if you're experiencing

compassion fatigue? Well, like I said, it can manifest in a number of ways,

but one way is by emotional numbness and attachment. This means that people often feel

emotionally distant from the people that they are helping. They can be indifferent.

Sometimes physical symptoms show up, such as headaches as assigned, fatigue, insomnia,

gastrointestinal problems, stomach aches, stomach disruption, all of that can be a sign of compassion fatigue. Irritability and mood swings

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