Caring Without Crumbling: Compassion Fatigue and Burnout in HR and Leadership

Burnout and compassion fatigue are reaching crisis levels in HR and leadership roles. In this episode of Beneath the Busy, Lauren Davis explores the hidden emotional cost of being the person everyone relies on and why caring roles are breaking under the weight of constant demand.

This conversation goes beneath surface level self care to unpack compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and the nervous system toll of people centred work. Lauren explains why self care alone is not enough, how emotional residue builds over time, and what sustainable care actually looks like for HR professionals and leaders.

You will learn:
 • What compassion fatigue really is and why it is not a personal failure
 • Why HR and leaders are uniquely exposed to emotional overload
 • The difference between healthy compassion and self abandonment
 • Why supervision and reflective spaces are professional hygiene
 • How self preservation supports better leadership and decision making

This episode is for HR professionals, senior leaders, people managers, and anyone in a role that requires constant emotional availability.

If you are feeling exhausted, numb, or quietly overwhelmed, this episode offers language, validation, and a way forward.

Links and resources mentioned:
 • Compassion Fatigue Self Assessment
 • Reflective Group Practice for HR
 • Leadership Coaching and Support

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Compassion Fatigue
• 2:46 Understanding the Weight of Caring
• 6:10 The Impact of Compassion Fatigue on HR and Leaders
• 9:06 Recognising the Signs of Compassion Fatigue
• 11:52 The Impact of Self Compassion
• 15:13 Strategies for Recovery and Support

Transcript

I've spent years sitting with leaders and HR managers across various industries who all look fine on the outside, but inside there's something very different going on. If you're here, you're probably somebody that ends up carrying a lot, expectations, responsibilities, and maybe you're starting to feel the weight of that all. So join me as we try and make sense of this all together. I'm Lauren Davis, and this is Beneath the Busy.

This podcast is my way of creating a little moment of calm in a world that is intent on never stopping. It's an opportunity to explore the psychology underneath high performance work. When you think about who is quietly holding everything together in the organizational space, who comes to mind? For me, it's typically the leaders and HR. These are the people who everyone turns to, who everyone depends on.

And yet, they're rarely ever the ones who get asked, how are you really doing? And that's what I'm gonna be talking about today. How do you continue to care as much as you do without crumbling in the process? But before we get into it, let's just take a moment of pause together. Let your hands be still.

and just take a deep breath in.

and slowly exhale.

And if you can drop your shoulders and clench your jaw and give yourself the permission to just be present. You do not have to solve anything right now. You just get to sit back and listen.

So here's my question for you. How many people did you care for in the last week? And when last did you stop to take care of yourself? And if you're really honest with yourself, when last did anybody at work check in with you with the same interest and the same energy and care as you give everybody else? Today, we're unpacking a concept called compassion fatigue, which is the cost of working in people-centered roles. If you're not in HR,

Please don't tune out. This episode is for you too, because as a leader, yes, your job is to get results, but how do you do that? You do that through people. And so your primary function is to listen, to support, to encourage, to care for the people who you have to deliver results through. And so you're also holding a lot. And this episode will resonate and provide you with some insight into how you can continue to lead with care and compassion without crumbling. So let's...

Just do a quick self-check, a quick energy check. Take the rating scale from one to 10, where one is super energized, engaged, motivated, and one is absolutely empty, depleted, drained, no motivation, no energy. Just take a moment to think, where would you fall on that scale, let's say in the last week, if you had to sum up your energy over the last week, where would you land? So if you scored between an eight and a 10, stay with me anyway.

because this episode will help you keep that capacity intact and help you keep your energy tank full. If you're between five and seven, then this is the time to pay attention because your energy tank, your system is starting to give you some signals that you need to be paying attention to so that you don't start crumbling. And if you're below five, please don't listen to this just as background noise. Please listen as if I'm talking directly to you because I am. And you're not weak, you're not being dramatic.

Your system is just drained, depleted, and there's a very intentional, deliberate way that you need to think about how to refuel. Because you're likely showing symptoms of compassion fatigue, and there are signs and symptoms that you are displaying that you need to pay attention to. John Kabat-Zinn, a mindfulness professor, says that our current lifestyle, the modern life we're living, is running at a pace that is way beyond what our human nervous system can actually manage.

Our physiology was never designed to withstand the constant pings and notifications and restructures and crises and 24-7 availability. And this applies to everyone, but those in HR and caring professions like leaders are feeling it the most. Recent research has shown that 81 % of those in HR professionals are feeling burnt out and two thirds of those surveyed were considering leaving the industry. Equally in the leadership space,

Research has shown that up to 86 % of executives that were interviewed for the studies were thinking of leaving their job due to their wellbeing. Think about it. It's HR, it's leaders, it's the people that are holding the organization together and driving it forward. And huge numbers are considering leaving the job altogether because of their wellbeing. And part of the reason that HR in particular is feeling this huge sense of responsibility and the associated depletion.

is that everything in an organization actually depends on people. Part of the reason, particularly for HR professionals, that they're feeling this huge responsibility and the associated depletion is that everything in an organization ends up involving people. Performance, results, conflict, restructures, crisis management, hiring, onboarding, training and development, grievances, wellbeing, restructures.

policies, procedures, exit interviews. HR is often expected to be the calm center of the storm with leadership a close second. In the HR reflective group practices that I run, I often hear comments that indicate how dehumanized HR professionals feel and how leaders are just feeling completely drained. Here's one that really stood out for me recently, where an HR colleague said, every time I walk into the office,

It feels like everybody's hooking an emotional ivy drip into me. And then I go home and there's still expectations and demands of me. So I never get a chance to just feel like a human being who is tired and also needs time to rest and recharge. HR has been at the center of the organizational world for a very long time. During the pandemic, HR became the frontline of the organization. They had to manage the transition to work from home. They had to hold the fear.

support leaders who were lost, they had to manage layoffs, navigate vaccine policies, coordinate return to work, all the while experiencing these events themselves. They were going through the same fear and uncertainty as everybody else, and yet were expected to also support others. And during that time, we clapped and applauded for the healthcare workers, and rightly so we should have, but there was no applause and recognition for HR. And it hasn't stopped.

for HR professionals. I think the pace has just increased. The expectations have doubled. Resources have dropped. Mental health challenges have arisen. And all of this is coming across your desk as HR professionals without mental health support or training and with nowhere for this emotional residue to go. So this is where compassion fatigue comes in. It's a form of burnout that is unique to those in the caring professions. So it has a lot of the characteristics of burnout.

but there's a particular quality to it. And it comes from the cost of caring, not because of overwork, but because of caring for too much, for too long, without replenishing. It's a late night worrying about the employee that you had to retrench. It's anxiety about an upcoming performance discipline process that you have to mediate. It's the noticing the shift in morale in the company that nobody else is necessarily noticing or talking about. And over time, this emotional load adds up.

So you might find yourself feeling a bit numb, finding it difficult to care for the things that you usually care deeply about, and possibly also losing patience, where normally you have huge amounts of patience to listen and care for others. These are not signs of you failing. It's not signs that you're not able to do your job. It's a sign that your nervous system is in overdrive and is struggling to cope. In the leadership circles that I run or the one-on-one coaching, I'll often hear leaders and HR professionals saying,

You know, I really used to love the people management part of my job, but I'm really struggling to still care in the same way as I used to. And one leader who had the courage to be very honest shared with us that recently when somebody's come into his office with a personal challenge, needing some support, he knows he needs to show care and outwardly he's trying to do that the best he can. But inwardly, he's silently thinking, can you just have a teaspoon of cement and harden up?

I'm also struggling, everybody's struggling, can we just get on with the job? Again, not a sign of being an incompetent leader or an uncaring HR professional. It's a sign that your caring cup has run empty. So it's not a character flaw or a competency flaw, it's compassion fatigue. And it often looks deceptively noble. It's underpinned by beliefs of everybody's depending on me. I can't stop now or...

There's just a busy time. Once this is over, I'll take care of myself. And the other thing that contributes to compassion fatigue is a concept called vicarious traumatization. So you're having to listen to people's troubles, traumas. You're having to lay off people, do restructures. All of that support and listening and being present for people who are experiencing emotional upheaval is also in a secondary way experienced by you.

And so eventually what happens is the nervous system starts protecting itself by numbing, shutting down, slowing down. Gabor Matei, a well-renowned psychiatrist, says that he actually doesn't believe in the concept of compassion fatigue as such, because he says we'd actually never get tired of caring for others. That's part of our human nature. So he says what this concept is, he calls it the helper syndrome, and he says it comes not from a lack of compassion for others, but actually from a lack of compassion for ourselves.

So we're exhausted not because we're caring for others necessarily, but because we are caring constantly without boundaries and without support. We've forgotten to turn that kindness inwards. So the question that I want to pose is not how do we care less, but instead, how do I continue caring in a way that doesn't destroy me? If any of this is sounding familiar and you're curious to know potentially if you are experiencing compassion fatigue,

There is a self assessment in the show notes. It's not a diagnostic tool, but it is about an opportunity to raise your self awareness and give you a chance to see where you fit on the self compassion continuum and what you need to do to support yourself. And so what do we do to prevent or recover from compassion fatigue? Well, the answer is right there in what Gabor Matei says, it lies in working with compassion in healthy ways, compassion for others and compassion for ourselves. In season one,

in an episode around boundaries, I spoke about the tea bag analogy. And that applies here too. Because if we give compassion to others, where we steep ourselves in other people's emotions, think about what happens to a tea bag once the hot water has been poured over it and you've let it soak for a little bit. That tea bag loses all of its flavor and it's soggy. And sometimes if you leave it in for too long, it actually breaks. And so that's what happens if we continue giving compassion and care without any boundaries.

if our boundaries are completely porous. And then what might happen as a result is we go the complete opposite and we give compassion like a stone where we let nothing out and nothing in, but that's also not effective. And so we have to come to see compassion more of being able to hold both the responsive and selective at the same time. So I can be responsive to you, but I'm selectively responsive. And I also know when I need to withdraw and recharge. So compassion ultimately is about

paying attention, but not letting everything in. And now let's talk about self-compassion. This is a concept that's foreign to many. And many people, especially high performers, often believe that self-compassion is lazy, it's complacent, it's self-pity. But it's really not. It's not indulgent. It's not a luxury. It's a way of relating to yourself with kindness and curiosity instead of criticism and contempt. It involves accepting your imperfections.

accepting that you are human, inherently flawed, and that you will mess up, you will make mistakes. But that doesn't make you bad person. That doesn't mean you're failing. I think also what gets in our way of practicing self-compassion is that we think of it in binary terms. Either I'm completely selfless or I'm selfish. And selfish has got a bad rap, let's not kid. Nobody wants to be called selfish. But actually I don't think selfish is that bad. I think we've confused selfishness with being inconsiderate.

Selfish just means paying a bit more attention to yourself. And so if we see self-compassion on a continuum, then we know that sometimes I need to be, I can be more selfless because I have more energy in my tank. I have more to give. But then when I feel more depleted, I need to move more to the selfish side. So the goal is not to live permanently on either side and definitely not to stay on the self-abandoning selfless side. Part of self-compassion is a concept that I call self-preservation.

where we actually fiercely protect ourselves and it actually has to become part of the job description. And so a huge part of self-preservation is taking care of oneself, ensuring you're setting your boundaries, ensuring you're getting enough sleep, checking in constantly around how much energy you have and when you need to replenish, making sure you do those things. And I've shared a lot of insights about those kinds of practices in season one. What I want to add as a self-compassion practice

is something that not many people know about in the workplace. And this is about how do we share our emotional load. And this work is too heavy to carry alone. Even the most competent, high-performing HR professional and leader will start to feel the weight. And no podcast, not even this episode, is enough to help process the emotional load. Awareness is important. Absolutely, it's the first step, but it's not enough on its own.

So what kind of support am I referring to here? Well, I want to take a leaf out of the psychology field where psychologists are expected to be in supervision, not the kind of performance management supervision. It's a professional space where therapists go to share their caseload, to check in on their wellbeing, and to get a supervision, somebody who is outside of their work, helping them to process what they are experiencing in their workday.

So it's a space to pause, to reflect, to think deeply, and most importantly, to offload, to reflect, and to recalibrate. So I'm a huge advocate for HR and leaders needing something similar. I call it reflective group practices or leadership coaching circles, which is a space where professionals can come together to share their load in a confidential way with a professional facilitating the group. And so the load is not yours alone to carry.

It offers a professional space to think clearly, to reflect deeply, to say some of the things out loud that we never want to say anywhere else. One HR director told me that it's the only time in her month where she gets to be a human who works in HR, not just an HR director. And one senior leader said he sees it as his mental dishwasher, where he can put things in order and make sure that nothing spills out over to his team. So it's not just a nice to have.

I believe it's actually professional hygiene. It keeps HR and leaders steady so that they can lead well, and it reduces the risks that come from working under chronic pressure. So I want to propose that the answer isn't about pushing harder, working more hours, expecting more from yourself. I want to suggest that actually the answer is about treating boundaries, support as your strategic imperative, as a core part of your leadership and HR competence.

Because it's not a weakness, it's a strategy. I really invite you to rest before you collapse, to ask for help before the resentment builds, and to stop carrying the whole system alone. So as we begin to close, here's some reflection questions for you to take into your week. What does your compassion currently cost you? In your sleep, in your energy levels, in your patience, in your ability just to enjoy life? Where are you paying that quiet price that nobody else is seeing?

And where is that sitting in your body? And where could you take it to offload? And lastly, what is one thing you could start protecting more fiercely so that you can continue to care for others sustainably? Is it your sleep? Is it a lunch break? Is it ending work at a specific time? And if you take one thing away from today, let it be this. You do not have to do this all alone. Whether it's with me or somebody you trust, please find a space that supports you.

not just the work that you do. Before I wrap up, just a quick note about next week's episode. It's going to be focusing on a concept I call healthy excellence. How you can pursue high standards without exhausting yourself. Too many people still believe that excellence means stretching themselves way beyond what is actually good for them. So healthy excellence is a grounded, humane way to still achieve great things without burning out. And as always, please remember,

It's okay to not be okay, but it's not okay to stay that way. You are not alone. Help is available. And please be gentle and kind with yourself and others. Thanks for listening. Until next time, take care.