Compassion fatigue: Spiritual exhaustion and the cost of caring in the pastoral ministry. Towards a ‘pastoral diagnosis’ in caregiving

Daniël Louw

doi:10.4102/hts.v71i2.3032

Abstract

The pastoral ministry of caregiving inevitably implies a cost. The spiritual ethos in the Christian ministry implies a huge sacrifice. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (see footnote 9 in the article) described this ethos as ‘the cost of discipleship’. Very specifically in the case of unexpected and the so-called ‘undeserved modes of suffering’, the meaning framework of the caregiver is being interpenetrated, causing a kind of ‘depleted sense of being’. It is argued here that an appropriate diagnosis, and a description of the phenomenon of compassion fatigue, can help caregivers to better understand their sense of being depleted. Instead of leaving the pastoral ministry, this can help them to attend anew to their spiritual capacity. In this regard, a theology of compassion, framed by theopaschitic theology, can help pastors to become ‘healed’ in order to re-enter the pastoral ministry and regain a sense of parrhēsia.

Highlights

It was C.R. Figley (1955) who came up with the central thesis that there is inevitably a cost to caring
How should one understand the connection between compassion fatigue and the spiritual tension experienced by caregivers? Despite communalities, is there a qualitative difference between compassion fatigue in the pastoral ministry and the same experiences in other helping professions? If these are the same, what is the unique emphasis in pastoral caregiving, and how does one cope with compassion fatigue within the liminality between life and death, healing and dying, meaning and non-sense? How does compassion fatigue influence existing theological models regarding the involvement of God in human suffering?
In pastoral caregiving with its focus on existential life questions, and the connection between transcendent meaning-issues and philosophical life views, compassion fatigue describes a kind of spiritual exhaustion within the interplay between being functions and inappropriate frameworks of meaning in life

Summary

Introduction

It was C.R. Figley (1955) who came up with the central thesis that there is inevitably a cost to caring. If these are the same, what is the unique emphasis in pastoral caregiving, and how does one cope with compassion fatigue within the liminality between life and death, healing and dying, meaning and non-sense?

Results

Conclusion