I know it’s caused by giving more than what we have mentally and overworking our minds, but why is that a thing? What is finite about empathy and other things in the brain? Why can we handle XYZ for a period of time until we just cant?
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This happened to me in my last relationship. It was exhausting after so long of hearing the same “I hate myself, I’m so fat, this and that, I’m so ugly.” You can only help someone so much and encourage them before you just can’t. Also it gets tiring feeling like you are trying to constantly pull someone out of a rut. You have to help yourself at some point because it’s draining on others especially your partner.
To answer your question I think it’s the feeling that we’ve given it our all and you start feeling helpless. That’s when your empathy stops. You know how sometimes you try and try and try at something until you have to either ask for help or give up? That’s the feeling. You feel defeated. You don’t know how to help anymore and that starts consuming your mind and stressing you out like you have never been. It’s a total mind fuck tbh.
To my understanding your body releases chemicals during stressful situations that keep it at its peak performance. This is the stuff that can push your body to great feats of strength or endurance to save your life when it is in danger. Normally this is only supposed to last a short time and then your body falls back to normal where it spends some time recovering from the event. Burnout just happens when it spends too much time above normal and never gets a chance to recover.
While we often think of compassion as a good thing, it isn’t a positive emotion: with care comes concern and worry, and with these things comes stress. And like all stressors, people can only take so much of it over a prolonged period without rest. Push them too far, and they break. Shaming them for that only stresses them further, hastening and worsening the eventual break. People need respite.
Short answer is that we don’t KNOW exactly, but there are a few theories.
One of the theories that make the most sense is that using specific brain/neural pathways (for example while doing a specific intensive task, or experiencing empathy), like any cellular usage, causes the buildup of metabolites, which degrades the functioning of those cells until the metabolites are cleared, just like how muscles can get fatigued, even if you have sufficient systemic energy.
Muscles have ample blood supply, and metabolites can be cleared fairly easily and quickly with rest. However, the brain needs sleep to efficiently clear the buildup of metabolites. So we effectively have a limit of how much we can do (well) in a day, mentally.
There are theories that suggest that it is the energy reserves in those brain cells that get depleted, but there is also evidence against that.
Other factors also play a role. Like for example you could developed a learned resentment for a person/situation after prolonged exposure, but that would be different from the physical fatigue it causes.
I had to set very strict boundaries with my best friend because she would call every single day after work to dump on me and since I’m very empathetic and compassionate this seemed like it was ok to her. I had to nicely but firmly tell her to get a therapist as I couldn’t just listen to her problems every day because it was affecting my mental health.
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