Compassion Fatigue, Vicarious Traumatization, and Burnout

This chapter focuses solely on counselors and the importance of having an established self-care regimen to guard against compassion fatigue, vicarious traumatization, and burnout. Counselors actively listen to clients' stories, and responding to these pain-filled stories may affect counselors' emotional balance over time. Self-care is an essential aspect of counselors' well-being. Helping professionals may feel compassion fatigue or empathy fatigue as a result of listening compassionately and empathically to their clients' pain-saturated stories. These counselors should monitor themselves for signs of depletion, distress, and impairment. Recognizing and identifying salient features of empathy fatigue may be enhanced by the Global Assessment of Empathy Fatigue (GAEF) rating scale, which is a theoretical measure of the holistic experience of empathy fatigue. Professional counselors who have client exposure to extraordinarily stressful and traumatic life events may be predisposed to an empathy fatigue reaction.