Radey and Figley’s “The Social Psychology of Compassion” examines the implications of the existence or lack of empathy amongst social workers and the possible impact of it on individuals, organizations, and society. The article draws from the field of Compassion Science to suggest that positive outcomes in social health work are subject to gentleness. The provision of high-quality, gentle care is the basis of the helping profession. In this regard, individuals working in the caring sector often seek to alter the emotions of others through support. However, they also need to find the ways of coping with their feelings. In the context of caregiving, providing therapy after a traumatic event can end up being stressful for the social worker and result in compassion fatigue and languishing. Four major factors have been identified as the causes of fatigue: failure of self-care, lacking control of stressors, unresolved past trauma, and dissatisfaction with work. The article, therefore, introduces the various ways in which social workers can capitalize on energy culminating in satisfaction rather than focus on dysfunction. This can be achieved by increasing affect, resources, and self-care to produce a high positivity-negativity ratio.
The article explores a theoretical model for predicting compassion satisfaction with clients, using affect, resources, and self-care, which are incorporated in the context of social work. With a reflection of personal experience, Radey and Figley offer a description of how the lack of affect, resources, and self-care can have a toll on the wellbeing of professionals, colleagues, and clients. On the contrary, the presence of the three factors does not guarantee satisfaction but rather the proper use of discernment and judgment to comprehend responses to different situations. The failure to discern and judge altruistic behavior in various situations may result in over or under response. This causes disruption of the mechanism used to reinforce empathy, and, in turn, leads to burnout, apathy, and fatigue. Thus, discernment and judgment stand out to be the most important features in how workers respond to stress. Despite the importance of affect, resources, and self-care in bringing satisfaction, discernment and judgment have been identified as the determinants of the positivity-negativity ratio. Cultivating the three factors, therefore, increases the potential of experiencing satisfaction, hence the potential to flourish.
In the absence of positive affect, resources, and self-care, the efforts put by social workers can only result in negativity, which causes fatigue. Nevertheless, the article identifies compassion and empathy as factors necessary for the survival of humans, which are likely to help social workers to burgeon. In this sense, the core of the profession requires social workers to avoid emotions that increase negativity or otherwise convert them to positivity. It is most likely that practitioners encounter negative emotions in the line of duty, which creates the need for them to continuously cling to a source of inspiration to increase positivity. The article, therefore, suggests three ways of improving the positivity-negativity ratio. The first is to increase the positive affect by maintaining a good attitude towards both workers and clients. The next is to increase the resources required for managing stress, and the last one is to enhance the levels of self-care by finding sources of inspiration in life. However, significant attention should be put on the appropriate discernment and judgment to ensure that the three factors culminate in compassion satisfaction.
References
Radey, Melissa and Charles R. Figley. “The Social Psychology of Compassion.” Clinical Social Work Journal, vol. 35, no. 3, 2007, pp. 207−214.