In his new memoir, The Theater of War, he writes: "I took comfort in knowing that I wasn't the first person who had experienced compassion fatigue, or who had hesitated to act decisively in the presence of extreme suffering, or who felt ambivalent about helping someone to die, or whose grief manifested itself in a withdrawal from the world".
If people haven't experienced compassion in a smaller organization, that omission might sting more.
And when experienced, compassion overwhelms selfish concerns and motivates altruistic behavior.
"We found that employees who'd experienced compassion at work saw themselves, their co-workers, and the organization in a more positive light," said Dutton.
Workers experienced compassion fatigue for many of the same reasons they felt job stress, such as high job demands and having little control, the researchers write in the Emergency Medicine Journal.
You could be a financial manager lamenting the apathy of those in your profession towards cuts to the health service, or a doctor who has experienced compassion-less care where staff won't even call you by your name.
It is also known that a feeling of intrinsic reward may occur as a result of experiencing compassion for others.
But an issue even more critical for people in the caring professions is when they experience "compassion fatigue".
This research area hypothesizes that whereas liberals generally experience compassion for suffering individuals, conservatives experience a more nuanced compassion directed primarily toward those perceived as ingroup members.
Mind-training techniques may be better suited to increase people's ability (rather than motivation) to experience compassion.
Bernard claimed that while God neither suffers nor experiences compassion in his own nature, he does suffer and experience compassion in the human nature that he assumes at the Incarnation.
