How to cope with empathetic distress in the wildlife industry with Olivia Oginska

One of your, uh, main areas of expertise that you've spoken about quite a lot is compassion fatigue, which is something that is very well spoken about within our community, um, yeah, particularly within our, our veterinary care and our caregiving industries.

So it is a topic that we want to delve a little bit deeper into.

Mm.

From your, uh, perspective, from a psychology perspective, are you a- able to talk us through a little bit what compassion fatigue actually is?

Yeah.

Yeah, of course.

And I think I'm gonna turn everything upside down straight away because-

[laughs]

... compassion fatigue, it is actually a misnomer.

It's a term that has been coined in 1990s.

Um, it was used to describe the experience of the caretakers who were exposed to the suffering of their patients or the humans or the creatures that they took care of for a very long time.

And it is in a way correct that there is a level of tiredness, the level of exhaustion connected to taking care of other people or creatures.

However, compassion within itself, it's a very, very energizing, very strong, very empowering emotion.

Yeah.

So what compassion truly is itself is first of all, the empathy, so the cognitive empathy, my ability to see that there is suffering in front of me, that you suffer-

Mm

... that the patient suffers, that the animal suffers.

But the other part of the compassion, which is really important, is that knowing that I am able to do something about that suffering.

So I can soothe, I can help, I can treat.

So when we say compassion fatigue, it doesn't make sense really because compassion is energizing, and it indicates itself that we are powerful to change it.

So it gives the energy.

It doesn't cause that exhaustion.

What causes-

Mm

...