Mutual Destruction
Have you ever felt like you just can’t do it one more time? Maybe you have helped a friend or family member so many times before that you can no longer summon the energy to care. The compassion you once had is gone.
It seems reasonable that everyone has their limits because caring hurts. Caring for those who are suffering often has a cost. It is almost like our bodies know that we cannot handle those powerful emotions anymore. Just like external cuts and bruises on our bodies, our emotions get wounded too. We inherently know we have had enough, and those emotions barely register anymore.
Imagine being in a profession where you go into work every single day and it requires countless compassionate interactions. Each of these interactions takes its toll. Sometimes it can hurt, a lot. It can hurt so much it never leaves you, an emotion so powerful it cannot be shaken. I don’t know about you, but at some point, I might just decide to go ahead and walk away. Stop the pain. I might just leave compassion for the rookies. They don’t understand what the world is really like, yet. The vital profession that has to decide to make that decision each and every day is the police force.
Each interaction we have with a police officer has a certain level of danger for both parties. Police have guns and can use them if threatened. Police can ruin others’ careers. Innocent until proven guilty can still be detrimental, even if you were wrongly accused.
The emotional state of an officer can determine the rest of someone’s life. The FBI asserts in a bulletin put out in April 2020 that when emotions such as compassion are repressed they “may reemerge in multiple problematic ways for officers’ health and well-being, including isolation from family, alcohol abuse, and difficulty controlling frustration and anger during interactions with others.”
When your teenager decides to take their first set of wheels out to that abandoned road, just outside of town, to see how fast 100 mph really feels; and the officer who pulls over your child is already emotionally fragile from a career full of heartbreak, they decide to do anything possible to teach this kid a lesson. After all, they have seen these little punks before and they are “all the same.” Better throw the book at them, so they learn their lesson. Besides, compassion hasn’t been working for a long time. Maybe they have tried for years and have just finished working a homicide for one of those kids who received countless efforts of compassion. What good is it? They don’t listen anyway.
Police have one of the most important jobs in American society. They show up when no one else will. They are called to suicides, murders, domestic disputes, rapes, child abuse cases, mental health cases, and everything in between. It’s impossible to show up to any of those and walk away unscathed. That same FBI bulletin says, “Compassion fatigue may adversely impact officers’ relationships with family and friends because its effects cannot be left at work and may disrupt the adaptive transition from shift work to family environment. If police officers or their supervisors continue to ignore the signs, symptoms of compassion fatigue can accumulate over time, ultimately leading to debilitating effects on officers' health and well-being.”
Maybe the police inadvertently hurt us because the job is literally destroying them.