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What is empathy fatigue and how can you fight it?
Psychology
The wear and tear of home meetings leads to headaches, eyestrain, and difficulties in focusing
What is empathy fatigue? We could say that one of the consequences suffered, surely, those who continue to telework. And it is that, the peculiarities of working from home can end up weighing, especially after the long time that some have spent without stepping on an office.
When we talk about empathy fatigue, explains Verónica Rodríguez Orellana, psychologist and director of the Coaching Club, which is the feeling tired that some workers feel after a work meeting through a video call. A greater fatigue than they could feel after a face-to-face meeting. «This exhaustion is the first symptom of what ends up leading to other more serious symptoms such as depression, sadness or loss of appetite and
wanting to do more things, “explains the professional.
«Headache, visual fatigue, difficulties to focus, inattention, irritability and anxiety they are some of the symptoms that alert us that we are wearing ourselves out and, therefore, feeling this fatigue ”, explains Sonsoles Gómez Mato, psychologist on the TherapyChat team.
The problem of always being nice
One of the triggers of this problem is that, in front of a camera, always being smiling and empathetic. «Many people are forced to smile, to be more sympathetic and to convey an image of themselves that on many occasions does not coincide with who they are. This situation leads to personal wear and tear, ”explains the psychologist Rodríguez Orellana. In addition, Gómez Mato points out that, on a screen, «the faces of others are shown larger than they are, which makes us feel uncomfortable since our brain understands that they are at a short distance and interprets it as an intense situation that will lead to mating or conflict. ‘ On the other hand, he says that face-to-face conferences are usually less exhausting, since we can turn our attention to other things and non-verbal communication makes conversations much lighter.
Tips to avoid fatigue
To avoid this fatigue, Sonsoles Gómez Mato leaves several recommendations:
1. Don’t use the full screen, reduces the size of the screen of the people, avoids the gallery mode in which all participants appear and activates the mode where only the person who is speaking appears.
2. Take distanceStay away, use a keyboard independent of the monitor to create more space between you and the screen.
3. Disable the camera as much as possible or try not to observe yourself too much to avoid the mirror effect.
4. Take care of the space where you work: have good light; take care that the work surface is orderly and without many objects; have a comfortable table and chair; and so on among other things.
5. Take breaks in long meetings, turning off the camera and using only the audio. Move around and change space.
For her part, Verónica Rodríguez Orellana gives three more tips. First, do not put meetings in a row. “It is necessary to allow time between one meeting and another. Get up from the table, change of scene and free your mind with other lighter themes that allow us to disconnect a bit, “he explains. Second, it is important to relax the reading of non-verbal communication on the screen. “Avoid your desire to please through a video call and understand the limitations of that medium,” he recommends. Finally, he explains that it can be good to change the scene between the video meeting place and the work area. “This differentiation has been shown to alleviate the stress and fatigue caused by video meetings,” he says.
To live is to experience the full range of emotions
The idea of always having to be nice is exhausting. «Always being personable is practically impossible. Living is experiencing the full range of emotions, so repressing and not showing all that wide range of other emotions is very exhausting and damaging to oneself “, says the psychologist at TherapyChat. Therefore, his recommendation is to embrace those days when we do not feel quite well, since all emotions are in us because they help us with something, that is, they are adaptive. “We don’t have to pretend, you have the right to feel this way, it’s okay to be sad! Validate your emotions, acknowledge them, understand why, what they do in you and show them to your co-workers or your boss if you have the confidence, always in the best possible way “, recommends the professional.