Two days ago, three IDF soldiers the same age as one of my kids got murdered on the Egyptian border.
And I’m not really ‘feeling’ it at all.
In the past, all these terror attacks, all these killings, all these Jewish lives cut short would have upset me way, way more. But post-Covid, post all that tremendous stress and worry – which is still lurking there, behind the scenes, despite the world ‘going back to normal’ – I seem to have lost a lot of my capacity to ‘feel’.
There’s a name for this. It’s called ‘compassion fatigue’.
Here’s a definition:
Compassion fatigue is a condition characterized by emotional and physical exhaustion leading to a diminished ability to empathize or feel compassion for others, often described as the negative cost of caring. It is sometimes referred to as secondary traumatic stress (STS)….
People who experience compassion fatigue may exhibit a variety of symptoms including lowered concentration, numbness or feelings of helplessness, irritability, lack of self-satisfaction, withdrawal, aches and pains, or work absenteeism.
Journalism analysts argue that news media have caused widespread compassion fatigue in society by saturating newspapers and news shows with decontextualized images and stories of tragedy and suffering. This has caused the public to become desensitized or resistant to helping people who are suffering.
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I think I’ve probably been processing the shock of the last few years better than a lot of people, but I’m still noticing that all year, there’s been a certain lack of patience for others going on. I no longer really have the energy to talk to people as much as I used to, or to interact with them so much.
Maybe, things got so ‘complicated’, so fraught with other people, and all their ideas about me having to wear masks and ‘vaccinate’, that I’ve developed some sort of phobia of getting into discussions with people about anything much.
Maybe.
Or maybe, I’m just really, really tired, spiritually, of having to deal with all the lies and bad middot out there.
I’m coming to the conclusion that a lot of people just want to whinge and moan about how bad their situation is, without taking any responsbility for their part in creating it, or acknowledging that God sends us hardships in order for us to make teshuva, and to start walking a different path in life.
No-one has it easy in this world.
No-one.
We all have our tests and disappointments and pain. We all have those moments of just wanting to give up, because we just can’t carry on like this, anymore.
All of us.
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In the past, it seems to me I had a lot more patience for other people’s processes, and a lot more empathy for the difficulties they are going through.
Right now – I don’t.
Or at least, my supply is running so low, that I’m trying to husband it for the people who are closest to me, because they are my first priority. And honestly, even for those people sometimes I’m running out of patience, a little.
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Human beings don’t deal very well with 24 hours a day of ‘bad news’ and fear porn.
At some point, the ‘overload’ button is flipped, and our ability to really feel and engage just shuts down.
I think that’s currently where I’m holding.
If the ‘threats’ would let up for a while, even for a few days, or a week or two, there would be time to recuperate, recharge, regenerate, renew, and for the compassion for others to regroup and regenerate, a bit.
But I can’t see that happening at the moment. We are still caught in the tornado of madness, the ‘Agendas 2025 and 2030’, the effort to subjugate the human soul and totally conquer the planet for evil.
God’s salvation comes in the blink of an eye…. but until it comes, I need to figure out more coping strategies.
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Sometimes, I wonder how it is for the people who don’t keep Shabbos, have i-Phones, and who don’t follow Rebbe Nachman and Rav Berland.
If I’m cracking at the seams a little, I wonder how those people are managing at the moment?
Maybe the answer is, they aren’t.
It seems as though the ‘road rage’ incidents are increasing, the fisticuffs over stupid disagreements is increasing, the lack of patience and tolerance for ‘the other’ is increasing, the quiet feeling of despair is mounting, all over the place.
All of us have collective C-PTSD, from three years + of tremendous narcissistic abuse inflicted on us by our ‘Motherlands’ (and all their associated ‘flying monkeys’) in the name of public health.
At least, I know that what happened the last few years was just plain wrong and plain evil.
At least that.
And of course, it’s not over yet.
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So.
Now I’ve identified this problem of ‘compassion fatigue’, I am going to make some effort to try to resolve it.
And the first place to start is by having more compassion for myself.
That means looking after myself better. Making more time to do ‘fun’ things, and things that strengthen my soul, like painting, dancing, going to visit kivrei tzaddikim, taking walks in nature, things like that.
And of course, trying to ‘catch hold of myself’ more in my daily hitbodedut, which has been coming pretty hard for months. I am still showing up for my hour a day, every single day, with God’s help. But the insights and the ‘aha’ moments have been so few and far between, recently, and I just sit there quietly for long periods of time.
Some days, it seems I don’t even have a lot of energy to talk to God.
I know He understands, I know He gets it. But for me, I’m missing our deep and meaningful conversations.
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Like you, I really just want all this cacky stuff to go away already, and for life to have more of those happy, calm and content moments that haven’t really happened for a very long time.
But that’s not going to happen ‘from the outside in’ – things aren’t just going to ‘change’ hey presto, and all the bent politicians and New World Order pedos suddenly disappear and give up on their big plans for humanity.
They will fight until the bitter end.
So, ‘happy, calm and content’ has to come from within. It has to sprout out of the internal storehouse of emuna in Hashem, and bitachon, that whatever is happening right now, it’s OK and exactly the way it needs to be.
And it’s just a prompt for me, myself and I to change in someway, and to change how I’m doing things, in some way.
Walking that tightrope between hakol letova without getting stuck in compassion fatigue is pretty challenging, I have to say.
But that’s what is required.
And with God’s help, that’s what I need to knuckle down to now, and to start really trying to figure out.
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