November 10, 2025 • 12 mins
Compassion fatigue and prolonged isolation have left us caring alone. Join Psychotherapist Christina Crowe for a brief exploration of how to rebuild collaboration and co-regulation in our post-isolation culture.
Resources for After the Show:
- Clinical Supervision and Consultation.
- Real life advice from our team of ADHD therapists on The Dig Deeper Blog.
Find Christina (CRPO #3908): Website | Find a Therapist | Instagram | Podcast page
A gentle reminder that this is not therapy, and Christina is not your therapist. If you would appreciate one on one support or treatment, please check out the links posted above or our Resources page on our website.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:07):
Hello everybody, Welcome back tothe Christina Crow Podcast where
we connect the dots and search for more balanced mental health.
I'm Christina Crow, psychotherapist, clinical
supervisor, and somebody who spends a lot of time thinking
about what makes us feel connected and the things that
kind of quietly pull us apart, alot of times without us even
(00:30):
knowing. For a species wired for
connection, I'm sure you've heard that phrase before.
We have spent a lot of time alone, and it shows.
Today I want to talk about something called empathy
fatigue, which is that deep kindof emotional exhaustion that
comes from caring too much for too long in isolation.
(00:51):
And how maybe what's really hurting us isn't empathy itself,
but the fact that we've forgotten how to be human
together. If you've been feeling
emotionally thin or cynical or numbed out, this one's for you.
So empathy can absolutely be, I hate the word superpower, but
(01:11):
kind of superpower. It really is what sets us apart.
But for those of us that don't have like a stop on that or
feeling like we have a lot of prospective control over our
emotions, it can also really be our vulnerability.
It's what allows us to feel withother people, to imagine what
they might be going through. When we don't have the space,
(01:33):
support or safety to process what we're absorbing, then
empathy can start to hurt. And clinically, we call that
empathetic distress, fatigue andthings along those lines.
It's not burnout in the traditional sense.
It's kind of emotional erosion that happens when you've been
exposed to suffering without enough replenishment.
And in Canada and in the world right now, it's everywhere
(01:57):
across healthcare, across education, caregiving roles.
Compassion fatigue rates continue to climb even though
the acute crisis of both the pandemic and a lot of the post
pandemic era has passed. But there's a lot of deeper
things going on. There's been a lot of prolonged
isolation. It's almost like we were
(02:19):
isolated for so long. We went through the motions of
getting back together, but a lotof us emotionally are more
isolated than ever. And for the past few years in
this post pandemic space, we've lived through what a lot of
psychologists call a social drought.
So even after the restrictions lifted, many people never truly
(02:39):
came back to their communities. We got used to doing things by
ourselves, parenting, working, coping, recovering, just all by
ourselves. According to Statistics Canada,
nearly one in four Canadians still reports feeling very
lonely or disconnected often or always.
And that's not just a feeling, it's a health risk.
(02:59):
As you may have heard, loneliness is now linked to
increased inflammation, cardiovascular disease and
depression. So when empathy starts to hurt,
it's often because we've lost that buffer that makes empathy
sustainable, which is Co regulation.
And I talk about this a lot in terms of the work I do in equine
assisted psychotherapy. I talk about it a lot in
(03:20):
parenting relationships. And it becomes really important
in couple therapy and in some ofthe skills you learn to do in
couples therapy that you can take back home with you.
You know, we used to share the load through physical presence
with each other, lunches with colleagues, hanging out in the
office, water cooler chats, laughter, being able to
celebrate silly things together.And now even in our helping
(03:44):
professions, we collaborate mostly through screens.
We're caring, but it doesn't feel like we're connecting all
the time. And we've become pretty
emotionally dehydrated in a culture that glorifies being
independent and being an island unto ourselves.
And here's the truth that I see in my therapy sessions time and
time again is not only have we forgotten how to depend on each
(04:08):
other, we don't feel good about needing to.
And that's a problem. So when we stop practicing
interdependence, which is like collaborative living with the
other humans in our lives, empathy stops being a shared
experience and becomes the solo burden that we bear.
It's like trying to carry an emotional backpack meant for,
(04:29):
you know, a whole bunch of people, but by yourself and a
family. For example, in teams, this
looks like compassion fatigue, hostility, even disconnection,
or that new thing we're hearing about quiet quitting quote, UN
quote. And in families, it can be the
sense that there's only one person.
Maybe it's the mom, maybe it's the dad, or a single parent is
carrying the entire emotional climate and wait for everybody.
(04:53):
And in friendships, it's the awkwardness that sneaks in after
years of we should get together sometime, but we don't do it.
Or one person's always driving the need to get together and the
want to see each other and everybody else is just kind of
OK to keep canceling. And this is where empathy starts
to feel like pain instead of connection.
Because without the reciprocity,without the community, it
(05:16):
becomes something that's pulled out of us instead of something
that we can receive. So what do we do?
How do we recover our empathy without burning out again and
without becoming less human versions of ourselves?
Right. And it starts by relearning how
to collaborate not just at work,but emotionally with the people
in our lives. You have to name it.
(05:39):
You have to say it out loud. I feel like I've been doing
everything alone. The moment you name that, you
can start to shift from being ashamed of being in that state
to being aware you've got potentially A solvable problem
on your hands. The second thing we really want
to do is to be able to schedule Co regulation time together,
which is not advice to go get self-care right.
(06:03):
Back in the day when I heard someone say take care of
yourself, it meant booking myself into a spa to get a
massage. And while that feels good and
it's nice to have a break, if I went by myself and did that as a
solo activity, partly because I'm an extrovert but partly
because I'm human, it didn't feel good.
(06:23):
Like it didn't feel good to spend the afternoon alone.
I'll be at doing something for myself and still no further
connected to anybody else. And maybe I'm connected to my
own sense of disconnection and that makes it front and center.
But if I don't know how to do anything about that, then the
awareness of that might actuallyjust make me feel worse, right?
(06:45):
And that's why sometimes when wehear about you got to meditate,
meditation actually can make certain mental health conditions
worse. And so it actually is really
important to make sure you've got all the data if you're
following Wellness trends, rather than speaking to someone
specific about what you should be doing if you have an actual
mental health diagnosis. We really believe good mental
(07:08):
health care should be accessibleto everybody.
That's why it dig a little deeper.
We offer therapy at a range of price points, including reduce
cost sessions with our experienced supervised graduate
intern clinic. Whether you're exploring therapy
for the first time or looking for specialized support, we can
(07:28):
help you find the right fit for your needs and for your budget.
Start today at Dig a Little deeper.ca.
So if the antidote is people, then it's not just go for a
walk, but go for a walk with a friend.
(07:49):
It's not just reflect on a toughsession, it's talk through it
with a colleague. Let someone witness you.
Let someone witness your process.
Let someone bear witness to yourlife.
That is what the joy of growing up in the 90s was.
You didn't kind of passively watch other people's lives.
We experienced them together. And a little bit of that coming
(08:13):
back would be really nice. And it's OK if it feels weird
and awkward. I think it's like a muscle, you
know, it kind of hurts at first,but pretty quick it remembers
how to do it. So teamwork and working together
and collaborating feels clunky. We may not feel like we need to,
we have anything to give. And I think the trick is that
you won't ever have anything to give if you continue to stay in
(08:35):
isolation, right? So we have to start sharing
again, talking again, brainstorming again, and letting
other people take the lead and finding the places where we can
let go of our her white knuckle grip on things.
Having to go our way because it's not a threat anymore now
(08:56):
becomes a place of safety where we can rely on other people.
And that's really what interdependence is.
It's this healthy, healthy placewhere empathy thrives instead of
dies. And if you're a therapist or a
mental health leader and you're listening to this or maybe a
group practice owner or an educator or a nurse, I like to
talk about psychological safety.I've done it a lot on this
(09:18):
podcast. There's a couple of episodes way
back, I think in season 2 or 3 where I talked about
psychological safety in familiesand psychological Safety at
Work. And we can't work in
psychologically safe teams without psychological connection
to each other. So that means the people with
the most power have to do it first.
(09:39):
They have to be the ones to model vulnerability.
They have to be the ones to say I'm tired or I don't have all
the answers or I need to take a break this afternoon, but I'll
be back for you tomorrow. And in my own group practice,
I've noticed that when we normalize needing each other,
whether it's supervision or consults or check insurance or a
friendly smile, empathy just becomes sustainable again.
(10:00):
You can breathe again when we'reno longer over functioning
individually, but we're functioning collectively.
That's how you make empathy workfor you.
And it's really important to to start the right way.
We don't expect people with lesspower to lead that.
It's the people with power that have to lead it.
And if the people without power don't recognize that and don't
(10:22):
want to step into that, they've got their own individual work to
do, as we all do. But if you were somebody in a
position of less power in a workplace and but you're not
sure if your boss really means it, they're talking the talk
when it comes to mental health, you'll never know if you never
take them up on it. So being able to figure out how
(10:43):
to do that and incremental stepsthat allow you to face the
places where there's uncertaintyand maybe some psychological
unsafety, to challenge your own beliefs and to allow the other
person to step up to the plate because chances are they might
survive. They might surprise you these
days. So it's the one reflection for
(11:04):
the week, maybe I'll leave you with is if you've been operating
kind of like emotionally, like we're still in lockdown, what's
one small active connection you can practice this week?
It doesn't have to be ground shaking.
Maybe it's just calling somebodyback.
Maybe it's calling someone on the phone instead of texting.
Maybe it's doing a FaceTime instead of a voice note or
(11:26):
saying yes when you usually justsay I'm fine.
Because empathy doesn't live in a feeling.
It lives in that living, breathing, organic connection
between you and somebody else and ensuring the experiences of
our lives together. Today's episode resonated with
you. I'd love it if you shared it
with someone you've been meaningto reconnect with.
And you might be surprised at how good it feels to remember
(11:47):
we're not meant to do this alone.
You can find more episodes, resources and upcoming talks at
Dig a Little deeper.ca. And as always, take care of
yourselves, take care of each other, and remember we are all
just walking each other home. I love that quote.
Have a great week, until next time.
(12:12):
Thanks for joining me today as Icontinue to try to make the
invisible visible. My hope is that these
conversations help you feel a little more seen and supported
as you navigate your own journey.
If you're curious to digdeeperyoullfindmoreresourcesarticlesandepisodes@digalittledeeper.ca
(12:33):
and if something today you heardstirred something inside of you,
please know that reaching out toa licensed professional can be
an important next step. You certainly are not alone, and
you don't have to carry it or figure anything out on your own.
Hello everybody, Welcome back tothe Christina Crow Podcast where
we connect the dots and search for more balanced mental health.
I'm Christina Crow, psychotherapist, clinical
supervisor, and somebody who spends a lot of time thinking
about what makes us feel connected and the things that
kind of quietly pull us apart, alot of times without us even
(00:30):
knowing. For a species wired for
connection, I'm sure you've heard that phrase before.
We have spent a lot of time alone, and it shows.
Today I want to talk about something called empathy
fatigue, which is that deep kindof emotional exhaustion that
comes from caring too much for too long in isolation.
(00:51):
And how maybe what's really hurting us isn't empathy itself,
but the fact that we've forgotten how to be human
together. If you've been feeling
emotionally thin or cynical or numbed out, this one's for you.
So empathy can absolutely be, I hate the word superpower, but
(01:11):
kind of superpower. It really is what sets us apart.
But for those of us that don't have like a stop on that or
feeling like we have a lot of prospective control over our
emotions, it can also really be our vulnerability.
It's what allows us to feel withother people, to imagine what
they might be going through. When we don't have the space,
(01:33):
support or safety to process what we're absorbing, then
empathy can start to hurt. And clinically, we call that
empathetic distress, fatigue andthings along those lines.
It's not burnout in the traditional sense.
It's kind of emotional erosion that happens when you've been
exposed to suffering without enough replenishment.
And in Canada and in the world right now, it's everywhere
(01:57):
across healthcare, across education, caregiving roles.
Compassion fatigue rates continue to climb even though
the acute crisis of both the pandemic and a lot of the post
pandemic era has passed. But there's a lot of deeper
things going on. There's been a lot of prolonged
isolation. It's almost like we were
(02:19):
isolated for so long. We went through the motions of
getting back together, but a lotof us emotionally are more
isolated than ever. And for the past few years in
this post pandemic space, we've lived through what a lot of
psychologists call a social drought.
So even after the restrictions lifted, many people never truly
(02:39):
came back to their communities. We got used to doing things by
ourselves, parenting, working, coping, recovering, just all by
ourselves. According to Statistics Canada,
nearly one in four Canadians still reports feeling very
lonely or disconnected often or always.
And that's not just a feeling, it's a health risk.
(02:59):
As you may have heard, loneliness is now linked to
increased inflammation, cardiovascular disease and
depression. So when empathy starts to hurt,
it's often because we've lost that buffer that makes empathy
sustainable, which is Co regulation.
And I talk about this a lot in terms of the work I do in equine
assisted psychotherapy. I talk about it a lot in
(03:20):
parenting relationships. And it becomes really important
in couple therapy and in some ofthe skills you learn to do in
couples therapy that you can take back home with you.
You know, we used to share the load through physical presence
with each other, lunches with colleagues, hanging out in the
office, water cooler chats, laughter, being able to
celebrate silly things together.And now even in our helping
(03:44):
professions, we collaborate mostly through screens.
We're caring, but it doesn't feel like we're connecting all
the time. And we've become pretty
emotionally dehydrated in a culture that glorifies being
independent and being an island unto ourselves.
And here's the truth that I see in my therapy sessions time and
time again is not only have we forgotten how to depend on each
(04:08):
other, we don't feel good about needing to.
And that's a problem. So when we stop practicing
interdependence, which is like collaborative living with the
other humans in our lives, empathy stops being a shared
experience and becomes the solo burden that we bear.
It's like trying to carry an emotional backpack meant for,
(04:29):
you know, a whole bunch of people, but by yourself and a
family. For example, in teams, this
looks like compassion fatigue, hostility, even disconnection,
or that new thing we're hearing about quiet quitting quote, UN
quote. And in families, it can be the
sense that there's only one person.
Maybe it's the mom, maybe it's the dad, or a single parent is
carrying the entire emotional climate and wait for everybody.
(04:53):
And in friendships, it's the awkwardness that sneaks in after
years of we should get together sometime, but we don't do it.
Or one person's always driving the need to get together and the
want to see each other and everybody else is just kind of
OK to keep canceling. And this is where empathy starts
to feel like pain instead of connection.
Because without the reciprocity,without the community, it
(05:16):
becomes something that's pulled out of us instead of something
that we can receive. So what do we do?
How do we recover our empathy without burning out again and
without becoming less human versions of ourselves?
Right. And it starts by relearning how
to collaborate not just at work,but emotionally with the people
in our lives. You have to name it.
(05:39):
You have to say it out loud. I feel like I've been doing
everything alone. The moment you name that, you
can start to shift from being ashamed of being in that state
to being aware you've got potentially A solvable problem
on your hands. The second thing we really want
to do is to be able to schedule Co regulation time together,
which is not advice to go get self-care right.
(06:03):
Back in the day when I heard someone say take care of
yourself, it meant booking myself into a spa to get a
massage. And while that feels good and
it's nice to have a break, if I went by myself and did that as a
solo activity, partly because I'm an extrovert but partly
because I'm human, it didn't feel good.
(06:23):
Like it didn't feel good to spend the afternoon alone.
I'll be at doing something for myself and still no further
connected to anybody else. And maybe I'm connected to my
own sense of disconnection and that makes it front and center.
But if I don't know how to do anything about that, then the
awareness of that might actuallyjust make me feel worse, right?
(06:45):
And that's why sometimes when wehear about you got to meditate,
meditation actually can make certain mental health conditions
worse. And so it actually is really
important to make sure you've got all the data if you're
following Wellness trends, rather than speaking to someone
specific about what you should be doing if you have an actual
mental health diagnosis. We really believe good mental
(07:08):
health care should be accessibleto everybody.
That's why it dig a little deeper.
We offer therapy at a range of price points, including reduce
cost sessions with our experienced supervised graduate
intern clinic. Whether you're exploring therapy
for the first time or looking for specialized support, we can
(07:28):
help you find the right fit for your needs and for your budget.
Start today at Dig a Little deeper.ca.
So if the antidote is people, then it's not just go for a
walk, but go for a walk with a friend.
(07:49):
It's not just reflect on a toughsession, it's talk through it
with a colleague. Let someone witness you.
Let someone witness your process.
Let someone bear witness to yourlife.
That is what the joy of growing up in the 90s was.
You didn't kind of passively watch other people's lives.
We experienced them together. And a little bit of that coming
(08:13):
back would be really nice. And it's OK if it feels weird
and awkward. I think it's like a muscle, you
know, it kind of hurts at first,but pretty quick it remembers
how to do it. So teamwork and working together
and collaborating feels clunky. We may not feel like we need to,
we have anything to give. And I think the trick is that
you won't ever have anything to give if you continue to stay in
(08:35):
isolation, right? So we have to start sharing
again, talking again, brainstorming again, and letting
other people take the lead and finding the places where we can
let go of our her white knuckle grip on things.
Having to go our way because it's not a threat anymore now
(08:56):
becomes a place of safety where we can rely on other people.
And that's really what interdependence is.
It's this healthy, healthy placewhere empathy thrives instead of
dies. And if you're a therapist or a
mental health leader and you're listening to this or maybe a
group practice owner or an educator or a nurse, I like to
talk about psychological safety.I've done it a lot on this
(09:18):
podcast. There's a couple of episodes way
back, I think in season 2 or 3 where I talked about
psychological safety in familiesand psychological Safety at
Work. And we can't work in
psychologically safe teams without psychological connection
to each other. So that means the people with
the most power have to do it first.
(09:39):
They have to be the ones to model vulnerability.
They have to be the ones to say I'm tired or I don't have all
the answers or I need to take a break this afternoon, but I'll
be back for you tomorrow. And in my own group practice,
I've noticed that when we normalize needing each other,
whether it's supervision or consults or check insurance or a
friendly smile, empathy just becomes sustainable again.
(10:00):
You can breathe again when we'reno longer over functioning
individually, but we're functioning collectively.
That's how you make empathy workfor you.
And it's really important to to start the right way.
We don't expect people with lesspower to lead that.
It's the people with power that have to lead it.
And if the people without power don't recognize that and don't
(10:22):
want to step into that, they've got their own individual work to
do, as we all do. But if you were somebody in a
position of less power in a workplace and but you're not
sure if your boss really means it, they're talking the talk
when it comes to mental health, you'll never know if you never
take them up on it. So being able to figure out how
(10:43):
to do that and incremental stepsthat allow you to face the
places where there's uncertaintyand maybe some psychological
unsafety, to challenge your own beliefs and to allow the other
person to step up to the plate because chances are they might
survive. They might surprise you these
days. So it's the one reflection for
(11:04):
the week, maybe I'll leave you with is if you've been operating
kind of like emotionally, like we're still in lockdown, what's
one small active connection you can practice this week?
It doesn't have to be ground shaking.
Maybe it's just calling somebodyback.
Maybe it's calling someone on the phone instead of texting.
Maybe it's doing a FaceTime instead of a voice note or
(11:26):
saying yes when you usually justsay I'm fine.
Because empathy doesn't live in a feeling.
It lives in that living, breathing, organic connection
between you and somebody else and ensuring the experiences of
our lives together. Today's episode resonated with
you. I'd love it if you shared it
with someone you've been meaningto reconnect with.
And you might be surprised at how good it feels to remember
(11:47):
we're not meant to do this alone.
You can find more episodes, resources and upcoming talks at
Dig a Little deeper.ca. And as always, take care of
yourselves, take care of each other, and remember we are all
just walking each other home. I love that quote.
Have a great week, until next time.
(12:12):
Thanks for joining me today as Icontinue to try to make the
invisible visible. My hope is that these
conversations help you feel a little more seen and supported
as you navigate your own journey.
If you're curious to digdeeperyoullfindmoreresourcesarticlesandepisodes@digalittledeeper.ca
(12:33):
and if something today you heardstirred something inside of you,
please know that reaching out toa licensed professional can be
an important next step. You certainly are not alone, and
you don't have to carry it or figure anything out on your own.
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