Is The Compassion Trap Holding Staff Wellbeing Back?
I’m writing this having just finished up a coaching call with one of my one-to-one clients, T, literally moments ago and I felt compelled share this...
T is an incredible human being. She’s thoughtful, generous, caring, reflective and compassionate. The problem is that, in the past, most of these wonderful traits have been saved especially for the benefit of others and rarely given to herself…
T won’t mind me saying that this is something we’ve been working on a lot over the past few months: giving herself more grace. Today’s call was no different and comparison became a major focus of our coaching once again.
To say T’s life is tough right now is the understatement of the century…
She’s just made the transition back to being in school full time in her KS1 class teacher role, having taken some time off work due to her mental health at the end of last year. Her husband’s dementia is rapidly advancing and there’s been a lot of change and uncertainty around his care and residence. Her children are growing up and going through their own challenges. This all sits alongside T’s own struggles with her mental, emotional and physical health over the past 12 months: chronic stress, anxiety as well as the myriad impacts of the menopause.
Like many of us, T has spent her life and teaching career giving to everyone but herself. She’s also part of a generation who were often taught that their worth lay in what they do for others, how much time they spend being busy and what accolades they achieve. And, again like many of us, she was also conditioned to believe that putting herself first was selfish and self-indulgent, and was slapped with a large side order of shame anytime she considered putting her needs before the needs of others.
This means that anytime anything went wrong, or even if things went right but weren’t quite perfect, T blamed herself. She internalised these perceived failures as moral failings and would almost always opt for the stick, rather than the carrot, to move herself forwards.
This is a very typical reaction, by the way. Self-criticism directly triggers the brain's threat-protect system (the limbic system), releasing cortisol and activating the sympathetic nervous system, the same fight-flight-freeze response as a physical danger. Self-compassion, by contrast, activates the mammalian care-giving and attachment system which helps us shift us from threat to safety.
So, naturally, a lot of our work over the past nine months has focused on practising compassion - and for good reason!
Studies consistently find that teachers with higher self-compassion had significantly lower burnout, and that self-compassion was more closely related to burnout prevention than teacher efficacy itself. But it’s important we look at all of compassion, not just the nice bits.
When talking about this subject, I like to use the Compassion Coin analogy.
We often think about compassion as being just one sided: comforting compassion. With ourselves, comforting compassion is the nice stuff, the warm and fluffy part: giving yourself the night off, indulging in some ice-cream on the sofa, allowing yourself a soak in the bath rather than a gym session. It’s giving yourself the benefit of the doubt and some comfort when you need it most - and it can be a vital yet rarely practised skill.
Providing comforting compassion for others might look like validating that colleague as they vent their frustrations from the day or doing the rest of the planning so that our year group partner doesn’t have to, or putting cake in the staffroom with a note acknowledging how tough the term has been, to pick people up.
It’s the side of compassionate behaviour that might be necessary at times but can also become a slippery slope to not really dealing with the deeper, root reasons of why we, or others, feel how we feel. We do the surface level, more comfortable, more pleasurable side of things whilst neglecting the other side of the coin. I call this the Compassion Trap.
It doesn’t take much thinking to imagine how, in the long run, relying only on comforting compassion might actually put us, and our staff, in a worse place mentally, physically, emotionally - even culturally!
"Compassion is not a soft skill. It's a human capacity... Sometimes the response is calm and grounding... Other times, the response brings energy and focus... One soothes. One defends. Both are vital." - Dr Jonathan Fisher, Cardiologist
Constructive compassion, however, is that other side of the coin I mentioned, the side which we often avoid.
This is because it’s hard, uncomfortable and takes effort. To paraphrase my former coach and unofficial mentor, Dave Cottrell of Mindset By Dave, these things feel like firing a slingshot: it takes effort in the short-term, but you get the benefit in the long-term of waving goodbye to the problem as it sails off into the distance.
They might be uncomfortable but they move us forward.
It’s things like making your breakfast the night before or choosing an early night over doom-scrolling social media. It might be paying that bill or getting yourself out for a walk even though it’s raining. It could even be something like making the time to sit and think through why we made certain choices to help us not repeat the same cycle.
At school, it might look like having an uncomfortable conversation (also known as a courageous conversation) with a colleague because you know it’s in their best interest. You may need to set a difficult boundary with someone who keeps overstepping, or spend time upskilling yourself to support a new pupil who has joined your class.
But this is tough stuff.
And because it is tough, it's easily avoided. We favour the niceties over the necessities. It doesn't take much to imagine all the ways this might manifest in school: we avoid giving feedback others really need to hear, we plaster over the cracks with pleasantries to raise morale, we focus on the quick and easy fixes for wellbeing rather than taking things back to the drawing board when we need to.
As comedian Trevor Noah says, we're nice, but we're not kind. Sometimes being kind is uncomfortable, it takes effort - it takes constructive compassion.
"Niceness is the performance of kindness, but it’s not necessarily the action." - Trevor Noah, Comedian
To make this just that little bit more tricky, we also need to mention compassion fatigue in teaching. I have experienced this both as a teacher and as a coach, and I’m sure it’s something you’ll relate to too!
Compassion fatigue is exactly what it sounds like, it’s ‘the emotional and physical depletion that results from absorbing others' emotions’. In fact, a 2022 study into the factors contributing to burnout in teaching found almost half were experiencing moderation or severe compassion fatigue, with only 7% experiencing no symptoms at all.
"It's not just tender self-compassion we need to get through the mess of life. We also need fierce self-compassion... Part of fierce self-compassion is fighting for justice, drawing boundaries, motivating change." - Dr Kristin Neff, Researcher & Author
Within the current context of teaching, compassion is complex and how we relate to it is influenced by so many factors: our conditioning, our environment, even our personality traits and genetics! There's truly no one-size-fits-all answer.
However, metaphorical model of the Compassion Coin can simplify it and give us practical, small steps that we can take to begin bringing more compassion to our lives, and the lives of those around us.
References
Cottrell, D. (n.d.). Mindset by Dave. https://www.mindsetbydave.co.uk
Fisher, J. (2025). Compassion is not a soft skill [LinkedIn post]. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/happyheartmd_justoneheart-compassion-empathy-activity-7312089308914413568-n7mR
Hu, Z., Zeng, H., Zhang, Z., & Hu, G. (2023). Examining the effects of teacher self-compassion, emotion regulation and burnout on student achievement and teacher wellbeing. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1217272. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1217272
Mental Health Center Kids. (2022). Research on compassion fatigue in teachers. https://mentalhealthcenterkids.com/blogs/articles/research-on-compassion-fatigue-in-teachers
Neff, K. (2021). Fierce self-compassion: How women can harness kindness to speak up, claim their power, and thrive. HarperWave.
Noah, T. (2025, January). Brilliant Minds conference [In conversation with S. Sinek]. Shared via Trevor Noah, Facebook, 5 January 2026. https://www.facebook.com/TrevorNoah/posts/kindness-and-niceness-arent-the-sameniceness-is-about-keeping-things-comfortable/14295...
