Barb is in her early 70s, settling happily into retirement, when she unexpectedly finds herself stretched thin from offering care in three different directions. To her delight, her daughter and daughter-in-law both got pregnant at the same time and had babies within a month of each other. Although she loves babysitting her grandbabies, she finds it overwhelming to be receiving near-daily requests to care for them. At the same time, Barb’s elderly mother began developing dementia and needing both more frequent and intensive care from her. Before long, Barb feels that she has more demands upon her care than ever before, leading to a sense of burnout and resistance to caring, especially during the daily trips to visit her mom.
Empathic Distress Fatigue
It’s one thing to care for someone once and another altogether to be called into intensive, ongoing care. Yet, whether for professional, familial, or other reasons, long-lasting caregiving is a reality for many. A nationwide survey in the United States, conducted between 2015 and 2017, found that among adults 45 years of age and older, more than one in five reported caregiving duties for family or friends over the previous month. One third of such caregivers offered 20 or more hours of care per week—numbers expected to grow due to an increasing older adult population.1 A common risk of such intensive care is a distinctive sort of fatigue, a form of empathic distress fatigue, rather than compassion fatigue, as it is commonly misnamed. One key practical implication of this is that cultivating compassion, such as through training in practices like Compassion Compass, could be an ideal long-term remedy for preventing and reducing empathic distress fatigue.
Unfortunately, however, when giving so much care to others, caregiving may contribute to a sense of care depletion—a pervasive feeling that there’s no more care to go around, least of all for one’s inner self. Without denying the reality of feeling depleted by caregiving, it’s important to recognize that seeing care as a limited resource can itself be a barrier that causes more depletion. Indeed, studies show how people who view compassion to be limited can experience a self-fulfilling prophecy—tragically leading to not only more empathic distress fatigue but also less overall caring and lower-quality care.2 Thus, we again encounter the truth that how we think about our care matters for both the quantity and quality of our care.
A Mindset of Care Abundance
Fortunately, the seeds for shifting from a mindset of care scarcity to one of care abundance are already planted in basic elements and practices of we-care. As you grow more familiar with the we-care mindset, you greatly expand your experienced reservoir of care. You stop abandoning yourself or others in ways that artificially restrict its flow, generating more energy to care in both directions. Most critical for caregiving, you stop second-guessing the value and importance of your personal self-care. You can more clearly trace a line between your personal well-being and transformation and what’s good for those you care for. More than this, as you grow more adept in blending self-care and other-care, you discover the results are not additive but multiplicative. You realize that you don’t have to wait to feel more energized—engaging in acts of we-care, whether primarily for yourself or others, often energizes you in ways that ultimately benefit everyone. This builds your capacity to keep your heart open to suffering while avoiding different kinds of confused care, such as enabling, conflict avoidance, and people-pleasing. Over time, you might even find yourself in awe of the sheer vastness of your undivided heart—a natural, replenishing wellspring of life-giving care.
From From Self-Care to We-Care: The New Science of Mindful Boundaries and Caring From an Undivided Heart by Jordan Quaglia. © 2025 by Jordan Quaglia. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.