Sustainable Compassion without burnout

In the last few months, I’ve facilitated versions of my Sustainable Compassion workshop with community professionals across many roles—healthcare workers, educators, advocates, nonprofit leaders, caregivers. Different settings, different pressures. And yet the same tension shows up regardless of the group.

On one hand, they have a deep desire to be fully human in their work—to offer genuine presence, warmth, and connection to the people they serve. Yet on the other hand, there is the very real need to protect themselves from burnout, overwhelm, and emotional depletion.

In the core workshop, we don’t start by fixing behaviors or improving coping strategies. We start by noticing what’s already happening inside the body. Emotions. Sensations. The subtle signals of strain, fear, care, fatigue, anger, tenderness.

Many professionals are highly skilled at staying in their heads, analyzing situations, making plans, solving problems, pushing through. Far fewer have been supported in allowing their embodied experience to be there without immediately trying to manage or override it.

When we resist what’s happening in the body, we fracture ourselves. We may still perform with competence, kindness, or professionalism, but internally, something is being held down or pushed aside. Over time, that internal split shows up as exhaustion, reactivity, or a quiet loss of meaning.

When we allow emotions and sensations to be felt we restore internal, physiological integrity. The system no longer has to fight itself. That alone creates more space.

From that space, something important becomes possible: authenticity. Not the raw, unfiltered kind that spills everywhere, but a grounded authenticity that allows us to show up aligned with our values and true character, even in difficult conditions.

Sustainable compassion isn’t about giving more of yourself. It includes stopping the internal resistance that drains you in the first place.

Learn about the Sustainable Compassion workshop.