Empathy Fatigue: Healing the Mind, Body, and Spirit of Professional Counselors

“Meeting Someone at the Edge”: Counselors’ Experiences of Interpersonal Stress

“…On the contrary, the research related to secondary traumatic stress and compassion fatigue captures an interpersonal stress component. Yet, these stress responses necessitate that these counselors are working with clients who experience direct traumatization (Figley, 1995; Stebnicki, 2007). From a national survey, Pérez‐Rojas et al (2017) reported that approximately 21.2% of clients presented with trauma‐related concerns in community counseling centers.…”

Helping Nurses Cope With Grief and Compassion Fatigue

“…Because several years had elapsed since the re membrance ceremonies were discontinued, nursing leadership wanted to determine if nurses' feelings had changed regarding grieving preferences. Stebnicki (2008) stated, "In traditional Native American teaching, it is said that each time you heal someone you give away a piece of yourself until at some point, you will require healing" (p. 3). After approval from the institutional review board (IRB), a survey tool was developed and distributed to nurses on the inpatient oncology unit (n = 32), and 21 nurses responded.…”

The Routledge Handbook of Neuroethics

“…2 As the neuroscientist Simon Baron-Cohen (2011) has argued, even such "obviously" morally desirable capacities as the ability to empathize may have morally undesirable consequences in certain cases. Mark Stebnicki (2007), for example, has discussed the phenomenon of "empathy fatigue," which refers to the physical and emotional exhaustion that grief and trauma counselors sometimes come to face: their inability to distance themselves emotionally from the pain and suffering of their clients may ultimately interfere with optimal job performance (for related work, see, e.g., Melvin, 2012, andPerry et al, 2011, on "compassion fatigue" among nurses). Likewise, Carol Williams (1989) has hypothesized that among helping professionals, high emotional empathizers may be disposed to earlier career burnout, thereby undermining their long-term effectiveness (see Zenasni et al, 2012, for a more recent discussion).…”