How Do I Respond? - Suffering and Burnout

Dear Caring Congregation:

Burnout occurs when the energy expended does not move you closer to the goal desired.

When we encounter suffering, ours or another’s, our natural reaction is to want the awkwardness created by suffering to cease. When the suffering is ours, we desire relief, a diminishing of symptoms. When the suffering is another’s, we also desire for our experience of the symptoms to diminish, either by the elimination of another’s suffering or by pressing the relationship into normalcy.

In my last several musings I’ve discussed five responses to another’s suffering: indifference, pity, empathy, sympathy and compassion. I’ve also attempted to convey how each of these responses is a reasonable option, even Christianly, depending upon our proximity to the suffering and our capacity to alleviate it.

In today’s musing I want to bring together these responses and propose how we connect our response to our capacity and proximity, thereby avoiding the burnout created by unmet expectations. On first blush, our tendency is to lean heavily into compassion, doing things to diminish, perhaps eliminate, suffering. But over time, if the suffering persists, we become frustrated because our good efforts fail to bring the healing and resolution desired. When our resources and energy are depleted, we regress into pity or indifference, not because we no longer care, but because we’ve burned out.

We may generate moments of empathy—we feel bad because someone is feeling bad, or even sympathy—jotting off another note or making a quick phone call. But because we find ourselves incapable of eliminating suffering, our goal of normalcy eludes us and we collapse in a sense of failure. Unwilling to confront our inadequacy, the initial rush of concern degenerates into unproductive helplessness. They should just get over it, because we’re tired.

I’m suggesting that, in confronting pain, we should pause to consider the goal we desire when we respond. Will we resent our efforts if the recipient of our goodness fails to improve? At what level will we be able to sustain our kindness? To what degree are we performing acts of generosity or service to make ourselves feel better? How comfortable are we in saying “no” or “not right now” to the pain of others? Does our ability to help match what is needed? Can we be whelmed without being overwhelmed? How we answer these questions will directly affect our likelihood of burnout.

We burn out not because we’re working too hard, but because our work does not bring the result desired. Indifference, pity, empathy, sympathy and compassion are all reasonable responses to suffering, each in their appropriate context.

Nina Herrmann, my predecessor as chaplain at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (now the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab), experienced tragedy upon the sudden death of her fiancé the day before her wedding. The experience understandably shook her life. She left her position as a reporter for WGN News to become a Presbyterian chaplain, later marrying James Donnelley, whom she met at the Rehabilitation Institute. What perplexed her was the number of friendships which withered under the grief. Reflecting on that wave of secondary loss, she published the book, I Never Know What to Say: How to Help Your Family and Friends Cope with Tragedy (Ballantine Books, 1987). In it she explores how people faded away not because of her neediness but because of their personal feelings of inadequacy. Nina perceived they had set themselves up, seeking to restore the un-restorable. Normal, as previously defined, was not going to return.

Those who endured were the ones who realized early on that her situation was not a problem to be solved or a brokenness to be fixed, but a new reality to be shaped. Living into that reality required friends to be flexible, sometimes indifferent, other times pitying or empathic, or sympathetic or compassionate. No one reaction fit every circumstance. Those who companioned through her journey were the ones who earnestly gave only as their capacity allowed, never insisting she change to make them feel better but thriving in the awkwardness and instability of what was real.

Seeking to give as grace provides, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor