Empathy Fatigue is a fatigue reaction experienced by mental health professionals who utilize empathy-focused interactions and person-centered theory and techniques as their primary means to build and establish therapeutic rapport with their clients.
Symptoms:
- A decreased ability to listen and respond empathically to clients.
- Counselors may be overwhelmed by emotions that parallel those of their clients and experience feelings of anxiety, depression, grief, loss or detachment.
- Symptoms can move along a continuum from low to moderate to high levels of fatigue, and have acute, cumulative or delayed onset reactions.
- Burnout Syndrome can result when a counselor reaches the significantly impaired phase of Empathy Fatigue. Significantly impaired phase can last weeks, months or even years.
