Work and Compassion Fatigue

A lot of people tell me I'm amazing for what I do. I'm not. I'm dreadfully human.

Work is hard. With the project what I do all day is wander around a refugee camp, complete with the mud and garbage and everything else, usually in the rain this time of year, and with very little idea of what can be done for anyone. I ask people to talk with me and we sit down and talk for a while, I ask questions and they talk. They tell me awful things, missing children, rape, corruption, hopelessness, or worse, faith in something that won't happen for the vast majority. I listen and write, ask thoughtful follow-up questions, and maintain my composure even when I want to get up and walk away. And when one interview is done, I go and find another one.

I suppose it's not surprising that, difficulties with my translator aside, I've hit a wall pretty quickly in terms of what I'm able to absorb. I'm not sure, with reflection, what it is that gets to me so badly. Is it being faced with so much difficulty? Is it being unable to do *anything* while interacting with people who believe I can and will do something? Whatever it is, parts of me have started shutting down. I've found myself dissociating during interviews so that I've relied a few times very heavily on notes I don't remember writing and recordings that I listen to later. I've been unable to get out of bed a few times.

I'm not sure that this means that I'm not cut out for any of this, I do think that the pace at which I've been trying to work is the problem as well as the desire to do serious and good work for the organization, for school and, more than anything, for the people I'm talking to.