When Caring Feels Costly - The Price of Witness Fatigue

I'm excited to share with you my latest Brainz Magazine article...

I hear it in the words of my clients, this confusion about the response or rejection coming from people in their lives. Underneath the surface lies the endlessness of suffering — a reality where they are battling illness or pain for an extended period of time. They are locked in grief or bound by old wounds from the loss of a relationship or a dysfunctional childhood.

As the weeks turn to months — and the months, to years — something has changed in the support and understanding offered by friends and family.

It stopped. And not because they healed. But because they didn’t.

This silent fading of friendships can be one of the most painful parts of living with long-term illness, trauma, addiction, or emotional struggle. It’s hard not to personalise the absence as you feel alone and isolated. The confusion invites in uncomfortable doubts. Have I become too much? Am I too broken? Too negative? Too demanding?

What those pulling back are experiencing is something I call witness fatigue.

What is Witness Fatigue?

Witness fatigue is the emotional exhaustion that arises from repeatedly holding space for someone else’s ongoing pain, trauma, or illness — especially when the witness feels powerless to help or fix the situation.

It’s not the same as caregiver burnout, which affects those actively supporting someone day-to-day. Witness fatigue happens silently in the background — in friendships, social circles, extended families — when people feel emotionally overloaded by your story, even if they’re not part of its daily demands.

The overwhelm others feel watching you struggle makes them uncomfortable. The sense of helplessness builds until they need to release the pressure. Most don’t know how to name it, so pulling away feels easier. There’s no malice in their actions. For them it’s self-preservation. But to you, it feels like abandonment. It feels like you’re failing, unable to live up to others’ expectations, punished for the imperfection your reality gives you.

The reason I could see it in my clients was because I lived it.

When I was in my 20’s I became chronically ill with Human Seminal Plasma Hypersensitivity. It took two years for doctors to diagnose the cause of the debilitating pain crippling my life. But with that diagnosis came the words: “We have no cure. You’ll have to learn to live with it.” There was no end in sight.

I’d been married for a year, and we were still in love. He had grown up longing to be a father. All our dreams for the future were shattered. There was just pain. My autoimmune system viewed human proteins as a threat, so it mounted a full-throttled attack. It was my body that was breaking down. By the time I was diagnosed, everything I ate made me feel sick or nauseous. By the three-year mark, we decided to separate.

Now my heart hurt as much as my body. With no treatment options available in the medical world, I turned to natural therapies and found hope but no quick solutions. Seven years after the pain began it stopped, but it was two more years before the supplement that finally switched off my autoimmune response came on the market, and I took it for two full years to ensure it had finally calmed down.

Needless to say, throughout that decade of illness I watched friends fade away. By the time I was on the healing side I had no one left to tell. They’d all gone. I get it. Witness fatigue. My sadness was sad. The injustice unjust. The confusion confusing. The heartache heartbreaking. It was a lot to live through. It was too hard for friends to witness.

Here are three things you need to know:

1. Most People Confuse Witnessing With Fixing
In our solution-focused culture, love is often equated with action:
“Let’s find a way to fix this.”
“Think positive!”
“Have you tried…?”

But what happens when the pain isn’t fixable? When the story doesn’t resolve? The grief lingers? The illness has no cure?

Few people are taught how to sit with someone they love in their pain. The idea of holding space without personalising their fears is a hard lesson to learn. The discomfort more often than not leads to avoidance. Not exposing themselves makes logical sense to their brains — “If I can’t fix them then I have nothing to offer” justifies their retreat.

Witnessing asks us to just be there. If that means listening to the heartache another dozen times, then that’s what we do. Witnessing asks us to see the person behind the illness, grief, loss, and pain. To remember they are doing the best they can and that they are more than just their circumstances.

2. Chronic Pain Defies the Emotional Timeline People Expect
Society likes neat timelines. We’re conditioned to expect a story of hardship, followed by triumph. A comeback. A breakthrough. Something that wraps up in a tidy, feel-good bow. Just like on TV or in the movies.

When someone’s journey doesn’t follow that structure — when the struggle stretches out with no clear ending — people don’t know how to hold space for it. They silently start asking:
“Shouldn’t you be over this by now?”
“Aren’t you better yet?”
“Do you really need to keep talking about it?”

Continued pain challenges their worldview. It reminds them that not everything gets tied up. That some wounds don’t fully heal. And that truth is uncomfortable to sit with for too long.

3. It’s Not Your Job to Shrink Your Story for Others
Other people’s discomfort is their responsibility. It’s tempting to think you have to start silencing yourself or downplay your reality. Censoring yourself to protect others’ discomfort merely adds to the hardship of your journey. Now you’re suffering and alone.

It’s at this point that you need a mantra to keep things in perspective:
“It’s my journey not theirs. I am grateful that they care and want me to heal. There are days when this is all too much for me. It’s only natural that it gets too much for them. We all need a break. We all need support.”

Your experiences are sacred. Your choices are yours. Witness fatigue is real — and it is born from love.

A New Way Forward
If you are noticing witness fatigue in friends and family, open the door to understanding. Let them know they aren’t here to fix you, but their support, love, and kindness mean the world to you.

If you recognise the rising presence of witness fatigue within yourself, take a breath and remember their struggles are not for you to fix. Your presence is everything; your solutions are not required.

Stay close. Stay kind. Stay open.

Love transcends. Connection softens the fear of the unknown and the unknowable.

https://www.brainzmagazine.com/post/when-caring-feels-costly-and-the-price-of-witness-fatigue