🕯️ IFS and Compassion Fatigue

Compassion fatigue often shows up as numbness, irritability, or quiet despair. In IFS, it means the caregiving parts have been running without relief, carrying pain that isn’t entirely theirs.

• A helper part may absorb everyone’s suffering to feel useful or loved.

• A therapist part may equate worth with holding others together.

• A tired part may shut down to survive the overflow.

IFS doesn’t demand renewed empathy. It invites inner boundaries and care:

• “Who in me feels responsible for everyone else’s pain?”

• “What are you afraid would happen if you rested?”

These protectors once learned that compassion was the only way to stay safe or valued. Self meets them now with compassion for them.

As they feel seen, the system recalibrates. Compassion becomes something shared, not extracted. The body begins to sense the difference between caring for and carrying with.

True compassion doesn’t drain—it circulates. When parts no longer have to prove their goodness through exhaustion, empathy returns as warmth, not weight.