Right after you lose someone, people constantly say, “let me know what I can do to help.” Sometimes they mean it and sometimes they don’t. What we often find though is that even those who do want to help, are only willing or able to help for so long. They get what’s called “compassion fatigue.”
Compassion fatigue is something that can be experienced severely by professionals who treat victims of trauma, but it can happen on a smaller scale for the people who are supporting you. Compassion fatigue sets in when someone becomes indifferent to your suffering because of the frequency of your need for support.
As an example, if your relationship with a friend or family member (let’s call her Jan) was previously based on fun activities and laughter, but now your interactions more commonly revolve around you needing support for your bereavement, Jan may begin to pull away from you. If she isn’t sad, and if being around you repeatedly makes her sad, and this goes on indefinitely, over time it can consciously or unconsciously move you further down the list of people she chooses to surround herself with. It’s crappy, but it’s true.
People are naturally averted to pain and sadness. We also really dislike feeling like we are incompetent. So it’s not just that your sadness evokes empathy and makes them sad too, it’s also that they don’t know how to help you, or feel like they’re failing to help you get through your grief. That can create frustration, embarrassment, and insecurity for them. You are the one who is grieving, you shouldn’t have to bear the responsibility for making it easy to support you, and you don’t have to. This is just here to help explain why some friends may be fading from your life just when you feel you need them most.
Sometimes people say that “when someone dies, your address book changes”. People with whom you shared close relationships can drift away. When you experience this it usually becomes a source of great hurt and anger for you, as the ending of this friendship becomes another loss you have to pile onto your existing grief.
I wish that this were one of the articles where I can give you some snappy advice to help prevent your friends from getting compassion fatigue, but all I can do it make you aware that this may happen or may be happening. The best things you can do are:
- Evaluate the importance of this relationship. Is this someone you want (or need) to make the effort to keep in your life? Would it be okay or even beneficial to let them go?
- Be honest with the people who are supporting you and communicate your position and needs. Encourage them to communicate theirs.
- Do your best to try and understand when they don’t know how to help you. Tell them it’s okay and that listening is enough (if it is for you).
- Don’t rely entirely on one or two people for support. If you’re able, expand the group you can talk to honestly about your feelings so the burden doesn’t fall to a pair or individual.
- Consider talking to a grief care professional who is extensively trained to handle the burden of other’s grief.
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Thank you thank you thank you. You help so much!!
I know this is a really old post, but I was googling the topic because of a situation I’m in and this is one of the results that came up.
I have an older long term friend who lost his wife suddenly 11 years ago. I have been friends with their whole family for almost 30 years, and it was hard for everyone who knew them because they are a good family and she was a sweetheart. My friend had a rough upbringing, and when they met in their late teens, she was the thing that “fixed” his life and made it worth living. I know you never get over the loss of someone you love that much and I would never, ever expect someone to do so. But 11 years on he’s at the same level of grief that he was in the first few months. He won’t go see a grief counselor or therapist because he either doesn’t believe in it, or perhaps feels that letting go of some of his grief would somehow dishonor her memory.
He lives a couple hours away and I make it a point to meet up at a mid-point for dinner with him about once a month just to get him out of the house, but the dinner conversation always ends up being the same one with the same stories: his bottomless grief, the deification of his late wife and due to that, his life regrets surrounding wishing he had done things differently in their lives and not put off so many things that he thought they would have the chance to do. Each dinner starts out with trying to talk about the things that were common interests and catching up on latest things, but within 5 or 10 minutes, it’s a couple hours of crushing grief, almost to a script.
I feel for him, but after more than a decade of this I don’t know what to do. I had dinner with him last night and driving up, I was kind of dreading it and when things went the way they always do, I dutifully listened and expressed empathy. But I was also feeling frustrated inside. Frustrated and guilty that I am tired of the routine. Frustrated that he hasn’t made any efforts to get professional help. Frustrated that our friendship has over the years morphed into a one-sided situation where he doesn’t really ask how I’m doing, what’s going on with me, or letting me share things. During the evening, when there is a pause in the conversation I’ll ask him about some other things, but it’s a one sentence answer and then it is back to the topic at hand. He just unloads and I just sit and listen, and after all these years, I’m feeling worn out.
According to all kinds of articles like this, not having bottomless reserves of active empathy makes me a bad person.
I know there is no timeline for his grief, and he’s now in his early 70’s so I doubt things will change. He’s not the kind of guy who no matter how gently I tried to ask if we could engage on some different topics as well, would take it well. We have a long history, and he’s a good guy so I’m trying my best and failing. A lot of his close friends have wandered off over the years, I’m sure because of the same reasons. I know that when things are rocky in my life – I have a few chronic health issues that flare up and can become really challenging, and in the last year my partner of 17 years had to drop everything to go back to Japan to care for her elderly parents indefinitely, so I’m feeling a sense of loss.
During the times when I need to practice self care, I tend to schedule our dinners less frequently, because I just don’t have the reserves. If I try to share bits about the challenges I’m going through, it then becomes almost a competition in suffering, where what I’m going through can’t be nearly as bad as what he’s going through. It just makes me feel worse and makes me just shut up.
Anyway, I don’t know why I felt compelled to respond, other than to let folks know that there is another side to this narrative.