Compassion satisfaction and competence satisfaction

Throughout my career to date, I have grappled with compassion fatigue and burnout. Caring for animals and working hard to help them takes a psychological toll.

Over time, I’ve encountered two tools that I’ve found to be useful in helping to address compassion fatigue and burnout. Of course, I emphasize that these tools ought to be used in combination with, and not as a replacement for, the obvious and efficacious tools like reducing work hours, minimizing exposure to emotionally triggering content, speaking to a therapist, and getting plenty of sleep, exercise, and social connection. Burnout is no joke.

The first is compassion satisfaction:

“Compassion satisfaction occurs when empathy drives altruistic behaviors on the part of the helper and results in the alleviation of patient suffering; thus, allowing the caregiver to cope with the negative aspects of their work-life. In addition, the caregiver experiences hope and optimism with a desire to continue in the care-giver role.” (Sacco and Copel 2017 link)
“[C]ompassion satisfaction represents the positive feelings derived from the ability to help others and the gratification from competent caregiving. Compassion satisfaction is driven by altruistic behavior and the sense of accomplishment, meaningfulness, fulfillment, and satisfaction healthcare professionals feel having improved the well-being of patients…” (Deriglazov et al 2025 link)

The second is competence satisfaction:

“Competence satisfaction refers to a […] general, affective experience of effectiveness which results from mastering a task.” (de Broeck et al 2010 link)

Compassion satisfaction feels great when you can access it. But often, advocacy projects take years to bear fruit. Particularly with policy advocacy, it can be difficult to see the link between link one’s work and the animals who actually beenfit from that work.

Therefore, I’ve found that competence satisfaction is often easier to access. Competence satisfaction is broader — rather than having to see your work benefit others, there are often many more opportunities to simply enjoy whatever tasks you have to execute for a particular day. I often derive deep competence satisfaction from administrative tasks, operations work, and even non-work tasks like playing sport or doing housework.