Compassion Fatigue and Keeping an Open Heart
How loved are you feeling these days? How loving? How at peace? How inspired? How balanced are your emotions?
Do you feel able to accept and embrace the things that make you human, the things that make you, you?
Check in with your body for a moment. How open does your chest feel? How easeful is your breath? How strong is your immune system? How healthy is your heart?
If your answer to any of the above questions was ‘not very,’ you might want to pay a little bit of attention to your heart chakra.
We’re often asked in yoga to focus on our heart. Bringing our hands to heart center for meditation or devotional practices, opening the heart through backbends or sun salutations, breathing with the heart, and so on. There’s even an entire system of yoga rooted in following your heart! (We won’t get into the history of Anusara yoga here, but perhaps not coincidentally, it does speak to much of what I want to share with you about the heart chakra and our modern society’s influence on it.)
So if we have so many tools dedicated to opening the heart chakra, why are so many of us still feeling pain and tension in our chests and shoulders, tired, lonely, or ‘emotionally out of whack,’ as one dear friend recently described it?
Do we care about caring?
In the last ten months, loneliness, depression, isolation, withdrawal, intolerance, and distrust have risen to epidemic proportions, seemingly alongside the pandemic by which they’re being fueled. We’re all tired of being separated, apprehensive about the future, and weary of conflict with those who think differently than us. But in many cases, these feelings are nothing new. They’ve simply been pulled to the surface, stirred up, and enhanced by current circumstances.
As a society, we have been dealing with the symptoms of significant cultural imbalance for quite some time. We’re asking ourselves to operate in an environment that is not conducive to thriving. One that doesn’t really respect the rhythms of nature nor our needs as human beings, and as social beings.
Yes, there are many economic, social, or political reasons for this unnatural situation that we find ourselves in. But long story short, we are disconnected from the earth, from each other, and from our own true selves.
“I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough to make every moment holy.”
We have asked something very inhuman of ourselves- to operate as individuals, beholden to no one, able to trust in no one, outside of perhaps a very small circle that we have deemed ‘safe.’ Our neighbors have become our enemies, and we view the whole world as a harsh and scary place.
We’ve created a false dichotomy between survival and cooperation, and we make extreme independence a source of pride. The demands of daily life within our current systems often require us to choose work over family, ambition over connection, and achievement over contentment.
We hold romantic love above all other types, and even then it’s usually not love we’re idolizing, but some overly-sexualized and dramatized substitution.
We hide grief in the shadows, and spend more time avoiding loss than we do pursuing depth of experience.
Some of us may seem to excel in doing what has been asked of us by this society we’ve created- learning early on not to cry, reach out, or rely on anyone else.
Others of us, in an effort to find balance, find ourselves moving in the other direction, becoming overly self-sacrificing, forgetting our own needs and clinging to relationships in the hopes that our needs might be met through the love of another. We feel empty if we’re not in constant contact with other people, and don’t have a strong sense of self-love when we are alone.
Often, we swing back and forth between the two, giving everything we can to everyone we meet, until exhaustion, resentment, or burnout forces us to shut out the world and ‘focus on ourselves.’
None of these is a balanced approach to meeting our essential needs for connection, love, and fulfilling interaction with the world.
Connecting in the Age of Coronavirus
So, we have all been functioning somewhere in the spectrum between hyper-independence and self-sacrificing, many of us swinging from one to the other in reaction to our environment, just trying to keep our inner world running as smoothly as possible, and then 2020 hits.
What happens to this already fragile internal ecosystem when our whole world changes overnight, our usual modes of staying connected are taken away from us, and we’re told that even our dearest loved ones could be dangerous to our health?
Well, we’ve seen, and felt, what happens. All of the discontent and disconnect that we were keeping pressed down rises to the surface, so happy to finally have our attention. And it. Feels. Messy.
But what if we could consider this a gift? An opportunity to look at how we have been meeting (or not meeting!) our very real needs for connection, balance, and self-love up until now. An opportunity to explore whether there are other, more sustainable, more satisfying ways of meeting those needs in the future.
I would imagine that in the last year there have been more heart-centered yoga classes than ever before. It is where we like to go as yoga teachers because it’s a reflection of the world we want to live in. Many of us try to jump right into heart-centered living when we begin this practice. It feels good to be compassionate, altruistic, open-hearted. We feel connected with the world, with others, with ourselves. If that is true for you, and has continued for you throughout the challenges of this year, then great! Keep it up.
But what if you are feeling tired, closed off, disconnected, or wounded? What if you’re wondering, ‘where is the compassionate, altruistic, open-hearted world that we were taught was possible?’
Going Back to Basics
It is possible to live with an open heart. Yes, even in this world as it is right now. But we’ve missed a piece. We’ve forgotten to consider the current realities of a world that feels unsafe and uncertain. You see, you cannot hold an open heart if your foundation is faltering. We cannot open our hearts from an ungrounded place. We cannot reach out for authentic connection when we feel our very survival is being threatened. If we try to do so, the connections we make will most likely come with a ‘catch,’ some type of unstated obligation, clinging, self-abandonment, or underlying fear or distrust. Either that or we’ll burn ourselves out trying to give to a world that feels as if it’s giving nothing back.
Yogis know this: attempt a backbend without a strong core and sure footing, and you’re sure to end up hurt eventually, usually sooner rather than later.
Psychologists know this: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs clearly places relationship needs after those of survival and safety. How safe are you feeling these days?
Neuroscientists and biologists know this: countless studies show the negative impact of survival threats and isolation on our ability to be open to new experiences, display pro social behaviors, and on our respiratory and cardiovascular systems.
So, if lately you’ve been noticing some tightness in the chest and are feeling like you don’t have much left to give, I invite you to consider whether it is time to turn your attention inwards. Take the world off your shoulders and put it down for a moment. Give yourself a break. Find grounding, nurturing, and strength by exploring and nourishing the energies in your lower chakras. Rest, hydrate, eat, and snuggle with your pets. Write, play, and get outside. Breathe. Be discerning about your social circle and the type of media you choose ingest. Choose those with gentle, uplifting, and stabilizing qualities.
These practices can also be described as ‘filling up your cup,’ and it is only from this steady place that last change is made. With time, your strength will return and your mind will clear. Your eyes will see love and beauty in the world again. Your heart will feel open enough to both give and receive. And each small act of love will move us toward healing.