BREAKING POINT

Written by Andi Bazaar from the creator of “Mental Health Youth Crisis: #MoreThanIDid” (MHMTID) x TMYCSUK

"We often underestimate how much anxiety can impact every aspect of our life even when going through it, we feel like there may be something more because we can’t believe that anxiety can do so much damage to our bodies and all areas of our life."

We are going to talk about "the harmful impact of having a lot of empathy and how we can mitigate them."

Many of us may have gone through emotional burnouts from being there for others at the expense of ourselves, empathy is seriously the best attribute in a human being. It connects us with others and transcends our differences in ways that nothing else can. However, when we are so attuned to other peoples’ moods and problems and we leave a wide open door to being hurt.

This is especially true for empathy that develops alongside mental health issues, for example: I may have gone through depression and when I started to recover, I made my life mission to not let others who are going through depression be isolated.

By doing so, I am pushing myself and my emotions to a point of emotional burnout (aka compassion fatigue) and I feel like I can no longer experience empathy. We may get detached or no longer be able to connect with other people, this turns into a worse spiral.

We may feel like horrible human beings because we no longer “care," we punish ourselves verbally or through our thoughts leading to a further degradation of mental health and before we know it also we are going through another cycle of depression.

This also happens a lot for individuals who are constantly taking care of others, be it as part of their job or caregivers to loved ones who require constant care. When we reach that level of compassion fatigue, we may get frustrated or even accidentally those we want to care for.

This isn’t because the caregiver has turned into a bad human being but the compassion fatigue simply isn’t allowing them to connect with others the same way and without that empathy, it is difficult to truly care. So the big question is, "what can we do?"

There are two options and they fall into two lines, prevention or treatment. If we haven’t fallen into that emotional burnout yet, prevention is the tool we need to use. The first important aspect of prevention is boundaries, our empathy is a finite resource.

Not only is it limited but it is also highly dependent on how we feel, meaning that the better we can take care of ourselves the more we can sustain our empathy. It means putting ourselves first by prioritizing ourselves and establishing boundaries, we can sustain a level of empathy that can last a long time without too big a risk of emotional burnout. It means not feeling guilty because we can’t help at the moment or because we need to put our self-care first, it can take therapy to solve guilt, but it is crucial.

If we are already in the stage of compassion fatigue, then we need treatment and a break (if possible) from the situations that caused the burnout to begin with. It can be taking an extended leave from work or passing the care to another person temporarily.

While doing that, we are also going to treat our compassion fatigue especially if it went all the way to the full development of anxiety/depression/secondary trauma. Once we feel that we are starting to heal, we will adopt the prevention method listed earlier.

Honestly, even after being a therapist for 5 years I still flirt with the line of compassion fatigue from time to time. It is a matter of trial and error to find that balance, sustaining empathy in the long term is the hardest skill that I am still learning.

Don’t be hard on yourself if it takes a while to get the right recipe for this, empathy is truly wonderful but can hurt us so much as well. If you are reading this and going through an emotional burnout, please remember that you are an amazing person.

Just because you are going through this burnout doesn’t make you less of a good person, it doesn’t mean that you lost your empathy forever. It just means that this is the signal to put yourself first and to use your support system so you can recover.

I hope that this part was helpful in explaining the harmful side of empathy and how we can mitigate it or treat it.

Let’s talk about "exposure therapy and some ways that we can safely engage in it if therapy is not accessible at the moment for any reason."

Exposure therapy is one of the most efficient forms of therapy for overcoming specific fears and phobia, let’s dive into it.

When a certain stimulus has a phobic and anxiety component, our brain will activate the fight or flight mechanism through a rush of adrenaline, increased heart rate, shallow breathing to distribute oxygen to our muscles, tunnel vision to focus on the danger, etc.

However, when the “danger” is a location, an animal or any non threatening trigger it can make it difficult. We tend to experience the panic attack, go away from what makes us experience the panic and it reinforces the idea that the stimulus scary.

This is why untreated anxiety can lead to agoraphobia, which is the fear of the outside world because we slowly reduce our comfort zone until we can no longer go out of our house without having panic attacks, it can be very debilitating and lead to a huge loss of quality of life.

In order to understand how exposure therapy works, we first need to understand something very important about panic attacks, they are short lived. A panic attack has a peak about 20-30 minutes into one and then goes down no matter what.

If we stay or leave whatever we do, the panic attack will go through the same cycle. That’s where exposure therapy comes in. In essence, it is about not leaving the situation or location we are scared of if there is no real danger waiting for the panic attack to slowly reduce.

Once the panic attack starts to subside, our brain starts to realize that there is no need to be scared of that environment — that it is safe and will slowly stop associating the stimulus with the notion of “danger." While in theory, it sounds simple but it is not easy.

Even knowing in theory that a panic attack is not dangerous and that it will go away soon, it is deeply overwhelming. It is important to have a support system and people we trust help us through this process, let’s say that I get a panic attack everytime I go to the supermarket.

I haven’t set foot in it for 2 years because of that fear, now I want to try it because that fear is impacting my quality of life. I can’t just pick up my wallet and go to the supermarket alone, if I have a crisis it is going to be difficult to find immediate support.

To start with, I will take a family member or friend that I really trust and just go to the vicinity of the supermarket, I may have a panic attack but I will stay there and allow my support person help me through it. Once the panic attack is down, I will stay just a little longer.

Then I will go home, that’s it for today. A few days later, I will repeat that same process until that vicinity of the supermarket is no longer as triggering. Then I will go close to the supermarket and repeat that same process with my support person.

Then finally, I will step inside and repeat that process with another person a few times until I am no longer scared. After that, I can finally try alone and finalize this process of exposure. It is important to find that balance between exposure and not overwhelming ourselves.

It also depends on the stimulus that scares us, some of them have no inherent risk of safety and can be done fairly quickly, other stimuli or locations may not be. It is also important to remember that we shouldn’t force anyone into it.

Don’t ever trick or force a loved one to go through exposure, it is a sure fire way of leaving them even more scarred and deepen the trauma. It is a process that happens from within and when we are ready, not something that can be forced upon another person.

This is in essence how we can do exposure therapy while keeping in mind to keep safety in mind and to have someone we trust helping us through it, I hope that this part was helpful in explaining the concept of exposure therapy.

to be continued...

A SPECIAL THANKS TO

• Dr Oliver Schofield (Consulting)
• Dr Seth Gryffen (Consulting)
• Henrie Louis Friedrich (Analyst)
• Clayton Euridicé Schofield (Editor/Journalist)
• Timothée Freimann schofield (Photographed)
• José Schenkkan and Benjamin Schenkkan Joseph (GQ’s Studios)
• In appearance: Mark J. Levstein (Model)
• In collaboration with The Creator Of “Mental Health Youth Crisis: #MoreThanIDid” (MHMTID) Andi Bazaar