Compassion Fatigue is Real
Yin Depletion and the Victim Triangle Dynamics
Compassion fatigue is real.
Often times it arrives quietly
When the “no” rises in your body.
When the rescuer has grown tired
Of the cycle that shows no signs of movement
While we all move through grief
Through seasons of rupture
Through hurt that slowly unravels us
It’s part of being human
We suffer pain, loss, tradegy even.
We witness so much around us
Only to come home to our own grief.
It’s a lot to carry.
And the thing that goes left unsaid is we’re all carrying something.
Heavy and unspoken.
We all carry the memories of the past
And hopes for the future.
And in the moment we all grieve.
Showing up for others is a joy sometimes
For the rescuer it’s life giving.
Until it’s not.
Until it’s expected.
Because there’s a difference between holding space and care
For what we’re moving through
Rather than living inside it.
Our stories soften in time
And some stories stay the same
Because we’re not ready to let go
To the care we receive by being the victim
To the story
Rather than the survivor of it
We long for the care
The nurturing
The arms of the Mother
Yet we seek it through everyone else
The same ache
The same underlying need
The same reaching
For someone else to make it feel different
Healing may not be linear
But the path to integration
Doesn’t wind endlessly
There is a threshold
Where healing asks more of us
Not just to be seen by others
But to see ourselves
Not just to be held by others
But to learn to hold ourselves
Through traditional Chinese Medicine
We learn that YIN is the unseen substance of life
It is blood
It is body
Its is the deep well that sustains us.
It is capacity.
Women by nature are cyclical beings
There is an intelligence to this wisdom
Releasing, Rebuilding, Renewing.
There is a quiet knowing that understands how to begin again.
So when capacity is absent.
When the suffering of life has you constantly reaching outward
For validation
For containment
For someone else to shift how you feel inside
This is a sign of depletion.
A lack of capacity
That is asking for you to lean inwards
To understand your patterns
Of reaching outwards
Rather than walking across the threshold
And allowing renewal to begin.
Because when the role is applied to others
The triangle continues to move
Until the depletion is felt
By those around you
And the care stops
Not out of cruelty
But because the role was never meant to be sustainable.
The energy needs to flow
Move freely
Because care without reciprocity
Becomes exhaustion
And eventually even the most open heart
Closes out of self preservation
There is nothing wrong
With stepping back from
A cycle that refuses to move
Healing asks for many things from us
But at it’s core it will ask for your participation
A willingness
An accountability
To build capacity
From within.
To take responsibility for what is yours to carry.
Because eventually the question is not “who will hold me”?
But “can I learn to hold myself”?
Because if people start noticing the pattern
And you are unable to look
It’s not that you simply lack capacity
It’s that you are benefiting from others offering you theirs.
Compassion fatigue is real.
We’re all grieving
We’re all carrying something.
This is why learning to sustain yourself
And showing up in equal reciprocity
Is the lifeblood to sustain our connections.