Compassion as a Culture Bolster
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Compassion is a deeply human experience that according to some scientists, evolved in our species because human offspring are entirely dependent. Thus parents must care for their offspring much longer and much more intensely to create the ability for further procreation. Compassion is also theorized to have evolved as a part of a complex group of emotions like gratitude and anger for the purpose of being able to interact with and create beneficial relationships, in other words, to connect. Compassion is not just perceiving the feelings of another and internalizing them, but having the desire to take action to relieve the suffering of the other. The desire to take action is what separates compassion from empathy, sympathy, pity and so on.
Referencing back to an earlier blog, Compassion Warriors, we remember that sympathy is caring about someone’s emotions. Empathy is taking on another’s emotions whether it is cognitive empathy, wanting to intellectually understand the emotions, or emotional empathy, feeling the emotions of another. And compassion is taking that empathy and turning it into action to relieve any suffering. So if we look at it this way, empathy is the feeling and compassion is the action. While not interchangeable, they are interwoven. We cannot have compassion without empathy.
Humans are social creatures that long for feelings of connectedness. We seek out connection with our fellow humans and our animals. Isolation and extreme loneliness cause a significant increase in mortality with some scientists suggesting it is more dangerous than smoking. It is no wonder that animals play such a critical role in the lives and wellbeing of people. While this might be stating the obvious, it matters because one of the most outstanding ways to feel connected arises from feelings of compassion. There are institutes created to study compassion and now some businesses are requiring employees to go through compassion training.
Compassion rests in the fourth chakra, the heart chakra. When we make a heart to heart connection with another human being or an animal, we are connecting at the most intimate level and allowing energy to flow back and forth. While we might move from the fourth chakra to the lower chakras in our feelings to help the other being, or maybe we move into higher chakras to determine a way to solve a problem for the other, a key in the prevention of compassion fatigue is returning to the heart.
Imagine seeing a dog on the side of the road, just hit by a car that did not stop. The dog is alive and crying in pain. Immediately, feelings of hurt, possibly anger, arise followed by a need to seek help for the animal. This is compassion. This is understanding the pain of the dog and performing an action to relieve the suffering. There are few people that do not relate to these feelings. We find it to be easy to hold such compassion in our hearts for animals. They are helpless and we are the helpers.
What about self-compassion? It is a simpler task to see an injured animal and want to help but do you turn that same compassion inwards? I have seen so many veterinarians and staff members broken by life. We go to the hospital to mend a fractured arm but what do we do when our heart is broken? What I did was turn outwards and work harder and harder to heal more and more until finally, I could no longer function. I thought if I blocked it out long enough it would go away and I could survive it. But that thing or things that broke you are just anchors that drag behind you, invading every single cell of your body, until finally you cannot walk an inch further. You sit, surrounded by your anchors, and you give up or you ask for help.
At my previous veterinary hospital, we saw the injured wildlife of the county at no charge. It was an honor to treat these patients because what I witnessed was countless humans offering aid to helpless animals. Hurt owls, raptors, sandhill cranes, songbirds, opossum, racoons, tortoises, a bobcat, black bears and on and on these wonderful samaritans would bring them in for care. In the early years my staff and I would work around the clock, taking home the wildlife and often plodding out to the marshes to release the animals. It was a labor of love.
Along the way I was able to care for a bobcat with a fractured forearm. She was a feisty girl that I anesthetized to surgically repair her humerus. After weeks of recuperation and radiographic evidence of bone healing, it was time to release her. The entire staff was beyond excited and we all planned a release party with video. Two cars arrived near the place she was captured to watch her return. We quietly brought her covered carrier out to the middle of a path. Cameras and video recorders were ready because the smartphone had yet to be invented. I opened the carrier. That feisty bobcat shot out so fast not one of us saw her reentry into nature nor did we catch it on video. It was a hilarious and lovely second. She was gone. And five seconds later, cheers broke out.
Every single one of us has that moment that we remember so fondly of helping a particular animal. When we think about it, it brings us joy. So how do we harness that feeling of joy from the act of compassion and keep it with us? It isn’t easy in our line of work. As that great moment drifts further and further away and our days get longer and more arduous, we can lose that sense of happiness from the work that we do. We begin to feel that instead of our work filling us up, it is draining us. We look at everyone around us as so needy. They need so much from us and we have nothing left to give.
If compassion, which normally resides in the heart chakra, stays there, it flows effortlessly and continuously. It does not fatigue. It actually rejuvenates you and energizes you. It’s when it slips down into the second chakra, the emotional seat of the sacrum, that compassion reverts to empathy and we take on the emotions of client after client. We feel pain for our pet patients and slowly over time, it becomes unbearable. Empathy resides in the second chakra. When we operate from compassion, we bring the empathy up into the heart chakra and we take action to relieve suffering and feel those amazing benefits. But it takes work to keep what we do heart centered.
You may or may not choose to believe in the chakras of ancient Indian wisdom and that makes no difference to understand this program. The chakras can be just metaphors for you but it creates a very concrete way of understanding what is happening in ourselves and in others. We can understand why we walk into a room and are instantly attracted to a person there or instantly repelled by them. We can grasp better that in order to successfully keep compassion in our hearts, we must move out of our own way, or out of our ego chakra. It takes a lot of work but is truly rewarding. In vet school, we learn the body system before we learn how to fix it. In this compassion fatigue program, we walk by learning why this is happening to us so that we can run to the path of healing. This project is about healing ourselves so we can continue the incredible work of healing others. All those darling wide-eyed innocents who first get into this field think this is all about the animals. But all of us seasoned ones know, this is just as much about the humans that accompany their beloved pets into our clinics.
Find me on The Veterinary Compassion Fatigue Project Spotify Podcast, my website, Facebook and YouTube @TVCFP. Let’s keep talking about what we face in the veterinary and animal care world and ways that we can help each other. Reach out if you have a particular topic you would love to hear about. Subscribe to hear updates on our annual restoration retreat to be launched in Spring of 2025. As always, I hope you find what you are looking for and share it with anyone who needs it.
With love and hope,
Dr. Erin Holder