Look for the Helpers

When you witness suffering at scale, your capacity to care can feel like it’s running on empty. In this episode, we’re diving into the biological reality of compassion fatigue and the potent "antidote" found in moral elevation. We discuss why "looking for the helpers" isn’t just a sweet sentiment—it’s a vital nervous system intervention that activates the vagus nerve and restores our ability to hope. This conversation is an invitation to honor your personal capacity, embrace complexity, and find your own sustainable way to show up.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What compassion fatigue actually is
• The "Compassion Budget"
• The science of Moral Elevation: How witnessing acts of goodness triggers the vagus nerve to slow your heart rate, reduce inflammation, and release oxytocin.
• Dialectical Thinking: The "both/and" logic that allows you to acknowledge horrifying truths without losing sight of community resilience.
• Matching Capacity to Advocacy: Why "offering the shovel" is sometimes exactly enough, and how to match your current resources to the causes you care about.

3 Takeaways:

1. Compassion fatigue is real—and so is your capacity limit. Not every cause can be your cause. Ask yourself: What do I have to give right now? And where do I want to give it? Be honest about your capacity and kind to yourself about your limitations. Sometimes offering the shovel is enough.
2. Looking for the helpers activates moral elevation—a biological antidote to compassion fatigue. 
3. Practice dialectical thinking: both/and, not either/or. Horrifying things are happening AND people are showing up for each other. You can witness harm AND witness helpers. 

Resources mentioned:

• Book: Healing Through the Vagus Nerve by Amanda Armstrong

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Transcript

Welcome to Regulate and Rewire, an anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong, and I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research-based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in.

Hey friend, welcome back. Today is a continuation or more a deepening of some of the concepts that I talked about in last week's conversation on regulated activism. This idea that we are all experiencing some collective trauma right now and the importance of staying personally resourced. I talked about some tangible tools and one of those tools was looking for the helpers. 

This idea that looking for the helpers or being a helper yourself directly counters this sense of helplessness, the compassion fatigue. And it can lead to something called moral elevation, which I think is one of the most powerful nervous system interventions we have access to right now. And it's completely free. It doesn't require special training. And it's something that you can even do from your own home on the couch when you're exhausted. 

So I want to start by sharing a quote by Fred Rogers. This is  from Mr. Rogers neighborhood. And he said, “when I was a boy, I would see scary things in the news. And my mother would say to me, look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” Looking for the good in the midst of bad is not denial. In fact, it's essential. Looking for the helpers, like I mentioned last week, is a biological antidote to compassion fatigue. The world is not only bad. The world is not only good. Your life or your health is not only bad. And it's likely not only good either. Reality is always somewhere in between these two points. And we do not make the world or our lives any better by only witnessing the bad. In fact, we make it exponentially worse. 

And I want to remind you, that we have a built-in negativity bias as humans in our brain. That's adaptive and it has helped us survive for centuries and centuries and centuries. But our world is different now. And the things that our nervous system perceives as dangerous are not actual things that we can directly face and resolve. And so countering this negativity bias is so essential, maybe essential to be intentional about more, now than ever. And finding the quote helpers triggers something. It triggers an experience for us that is called moral elevation. 

So we're going to talk about that in a few minutes, but first I want to answer the question around what is compassion fatigue? This is a term I've thrown around a couple of times. And this is something that happens when you witness suffering at scale with no relief. So essentially, compassion fatigue is what happens when your capacity to care gets depleted. And it's not that you don't care anymore or that you don't want to care anymore. It is that your nervous system literally cannot sustain the level of empathetic activation required to keep absorbing all of the pain that you're seeing.

Healthcare workers know this very well. So do therapists. So do parents. So does anybody who has tried to spend the last few weeks or months watching horror unfold in the world on your phone while trying to make lunch for your kid or do your day job. Each of our nervous systems has a compassion budget. And right now, many of us are running in a deficit.

So when you experience compassion fatigue, I want to help you recognize kind of when you might be reaching or over that threshold. 

You might notice more numbing out, things like scrolling past the news, especially a news story that would have stopped you in the past. You would have been like, oh, I'm going to read this or oh my gosh, if you're just like, yeah, on to the next one.

If you're noticing more irritability, you're snapping at people that you love, you have less patience. 

If you're feeling more hopelessness, feeling like, oh man, that like apathy of like, it doesn't matter. Nothing that I do matters or shut down, just finding yourself wanting to sleep or hide or disappear and disconnect from all of it. 

All of these things, are your nervous system protecting you from overwhelm in some of the only ways it knows how? Disconnect, immobilize.step away, shut down towards. 

But here's a problem I see and something that I am personally experiencing that's kind of tricky. It's how to make peace with or find balance with my everyday life and heaviness and the world's everyday heaviness and the joy that I want to feel and the magic that I want to create for my children and, and, and, and, and, right?

And I want to acknowledge that behind the scenes of all of the community or collective injustice, the wars, the loss of rights, the benefits, each and every one of us also has our personal lives, right? Behind what's happening in the world, for me personally, is the fact that I am barely six months postpartum. I have been woken up a minimum of three to four times a night, every single night for the past six months. Like that is… a weapon of war. This level of sleep deprivation is used as torture. 

I've had sick kids and doctor's appointments, marital conflicts, sibling needs, things that went wrong in our house that needed fixing, right? There's been some stress and insecurity around my husband's job. There were many, many snow and ice days. So that was not great for my nervous system, right? And on and on and on. And you have your own list too. And I need

capacity and compassion for the life that is in front of my face, for my motherhood, for the work that I do with regulated living. And this means that I cannot afford to run myself into a compassion deficit constantly by consuming and taking to heart every gut-wrenching thing happening in the world that I cannot control or change.

I 100% want to acknowledge the privilege that I have to dial up or down my attention to certain circumstances happening in the world right now. And for me, the truth remains that every cause cannot be my cause. And maybe that's something that you need to hear. Every cause cannot be your cause. And every season of your life may not be the season where you give your all to the things outside of the four walls of your daily life.

We get such an intense pressure from every angle to shout about one issue or stay quiet about another. There's too much suffering. There's too much information for it to possibly all be for all of us. And this is important context. If you do want to be a helper, some of you might be like, Amanda, how is this going to come back around to seeing the helpers or being the helpers? The reality is, I don't know exactly where I'm trying to go with this specific point I'm trying to make. 

Maybe it's that we would all do well to take a pause, to take a true beat and deep breath and ask ourselves, what do I have to give right now?

What one cause or place do I want to give to? How can I face the reality of my current capacity in this season of my life with compassion and still look back 20 years from now and feel good about the side of history I was on, the way that I showed up for humanity?

And what I'm learning is that it's okay. It's okay if people don't understand what my current way of doing this looks like. It's okay if they don't understand that in order to give where it feels most important or impactful for me, or in order to give in a way that matches my current season of life or capacity, it's going to look different than it does for them. And I may even be called out or criticized, but I need to know me enough.

And maybe, you need to know yourself enough, to have your own back in finding the right spaces and the right balance to avoid being in a constant compassion fatigue deficit. And I will share maybe just two quick, maybe trivial examples. At least this first one feels a little trivial of this.

So I live near a large apartment complex and those folks often park on the curb in front of my house. So we just had that gnarly snowstorm, an ice storm that got half of the country. And so one of the days I was sitting in my living room, which has windows that look out onto the street, and I was watching people trying to dig their cars out. And the creativity was truly astonishing.

Most people who live in an apartment, at least who live in an apartment near me just outside Washington, D.C., they don't own a snow shovel. So I saw people coming out with broomsticks and ice scrapers and hammers. It was whatever they had to try to dig their car out. And whenever I was there and I saw somebody who maybe needed a more effective tool, I offered them our various shovels. 

Great, now, amazing, Amanda, you offered them a shovel. 

But here is kind of the caveat that I want, what I want to point out to this. I did not offer to dig their car out for them. I didn't even offer to help them dig their car out. I simply offered them the tool that would hopefully make their work a little bit easier. There was absolutely a tiny voice in my head saying, you're not doing enough. You should do more to help them.

But I also had like this house full of kids and school was canceled and a breastfeeding baby and like my own work to do in the margins of this chaos. So what I could offer without overextending myself was, hey neighbor, here's a shovel. So that's what I offered. What can you do without overextending yourself? 

Another example comes from a conversation I was having with one of my sisters last week. This sister is pregnant, which will be context that matters in a moment. This sister also works in immigrant and refugee resettlement. She's also been part of foster care programs and the list goes on and on and on for the ways that she cares for and works with under-resourced and marginalized folks. She was sharing in a kind of a tearful phone call to me how hard it has been for her to reckon with the fact that while she'd normally see herself as someone who would like use her body to protect other people. The reality is that right now she was admitting that she probably wouldn't. If she was put in a position to physically get between a harmer and the person being harmed, she would likely have to stay back and witness because it's not just her now. It's her and her unborn baby and the family that she's creating that she has stewardship over. I, in this, you know, just shared with her that I had played out similar scenarios in my own head and it's hard. And this is all so impossibly hard to grapple with. 

And one of the things that I shared with her was a simple Instagram post that I found helpful. And I want to share it here too. It invited you into a brief personal assessment. So this is where we really get back on track to talking about seeing the helpers and being a helper in a way that doesn't overextend your nervous system. So this post invited you into like this brief personal assessment to match your capacity to your advocacy.

which again is so important when you don't just want to look for the helpers, but you want to be a helper in a sustainable way. So one of the slides in this post read, kind of the top of it said, decide your risk level, then act accordingly. Let's be honest, not everyone can do everything.

And then it gave three levels. Do you rate yourself low risk, medium risk, or high risk? And in the caption, I think it gave a little bit more description, you know, or you can even just self-identify. If you are a low risk person, maybe you're elderly, maybe you have your own health conditions, maybe you're a parent to young kids. I'm in a low risk season of life. Okay, here are some things that you can do. If you're medium risk. Here is ways that you can step beyond your home and do medium risk things. And if you're in a season of life where you're high risk, my other sister is unmarried, not pregnant, young, healthy. She would categorize herself as high risk where she can do more of the protesting or the active things. 

And what I loved about this was that it, for me, it just like, it felt so validating. It validated that there are so many ways. That humanity and causes need people to show up right now. Things you can do quietly from your own home, things that you can do loudly in the streets, things that you can do with a few minutes of your time or thousands of your dollars and everything in between. And that all of the things matter and are needed. 

So echoing what I talked about last week, the tangible helps to kill the sense of helplessness. Not just now, but… All of the time as humans, we need connection. We need purpose. We need reasons to keep showing up. We need our compassion intact. And I even want to call out in this conversation that you may be in a place mentally, physically, financially, where you actually don't have any extra, anything to give to something outside of your life or managing your mental health or your immediate family.

You might even be in a season of life where you really need to be the recipient of help or support. And I need you to know that that is okay. And it is so human of you and you do not need to justify that to others. Be a helper if you can in some way. And also be honest and kind to yourself if you can't right now in this moment.

And regardless of whether you can or can't, if you are witnessing the bad, make a point to look for the good, to look for the helpers because our nervous system desperately needs it. And in the spirit of practicing what I preach, I spent the last few days very intentionally noticing helper moments. And here's just a brief list from these past few days. First, my son holding the door open. for somebody. cute helper. The folks at, or there's a group of folks at the local climbing gym that we're a part of who multiple days a week early in the morning, they volunteer to belay individuals who are fighting Parkinson's. So there's an hour or two, a few days a week where folks battling Parkinson's can come and climb and be supported. And it's just volunteer. It's members of the community. What a beautiful. example they all set for me and my son during our morning gym sessions. I watched somebody help load somebody else's groceries into their car. My neighbor watched my kids for a few hours. My sister who gives tirelessly to support vulnerable families. A church member who organized a meal train for a family who just had a new baby. And a teenager who shoveled a neighbor's driveway without being asked. I am trying to point these things out to my kids too, especially my five-year-old.

Part of living in this world is that we have to intentionally notice the good. We have to intentionally balance out what is our negativity bias. And for me, part of my being a helper right now is teaching my kid how important it is to be one, in part by pointing out the ways that other people are helping. 

And in seeing the helpers, that I just listed my son and I have had beautiful conversations around Parkinson's about racism we even had a conversation around periods I bled through my sweats the other day at home luckily but we talked about it because he was the one who noticed it and I was like what could you do if you saw this happen to a girl at school someday like how could you be a helper I'm building a compassionate human which is one of the most effective ways that I can think to be a helper within my capacity right now. 

Okay. I think I have made this point more than sufficiently, and I want to help you now better understand why. And this is where the conversation about moral elevation comes in. So what is moral elevation? It is this warm, uplifting feeling that you get when you witness somebody doing something good, something kind, something brave. It is a feeling that you get when you see a stranger help someone in need, when you watch your neighbors show up for each other, when you witness courage in the face of cruelty. 

And here's what is incredible about this witnessing is that this moral elevation, taking the time to really be in and noticing those things, it actually has measurable physiological effects. So when you witness these acts of kindness or courage or compassion, your vagus nerve activates. This is that nerve that runs from your brainstem all the way down through your chest, your major organs, your abdomen. It connects your brain to your heart, to your lungs, to your gut. It is the primary nerve of your parasympathetic nervous system, of your rest and digest, your regulated community connection system.

It is the nerve that I actually published an entire book about titled Healing Through the Vagus Nerve. I will link it in the show notes. But when our vagus nerve is activated, it slows your heart rate. It deepens your breathing. It can reduce inflammation, increase feelings of warmth. It triggers a release of oxytocin, that bonding hormone. it really, it makes you more likely to help others yourself. So this isn't just some like feel good woo woo. This is measurable biology. When you witness helpers, your nervous system receives evidence. I think I said this last week. It receives evidence that while the monster is real, the protectors are active too. And that activates a part of your nervous system that can still hope, that can still connect, that can still act.

And one other concept I believe I mentioned last week that I want to take a few more minutes to expand on here is something called dialectical thinking. So this is a cognitive approach that reconciles opposing viewpoints. It embraces complexity and paradox, the both and logic, rather than what we are so often exposed, which is that either or extreme narrative.

So here is where all of this can get really, really practical. When your nervous system is overwhelmed, your thinking narrows. It becomes black and white, all good or bad, safe or dangerous, us versus them. We lose the ability to sit in curiosity and nuance. And this is a survival adaptation because when you are in actual immediate danger, you don't have time for nuance. You need clear categories, threat or not threat, safe or dangerous. But when we are dealing with, which we are dealing with, these chronic complex stressors, the things that we are dealing with, the things that we are seeing, the things that we are facing, it's not a single predator that we can fight or flee from, but it is ongoing systemic and global harm. 

Black and white thinking does not serve us. It keeps us stuck in extreme activation. It eventually is going to lead to compassion fatigue. It is going to lead to dissociation and shutdown. Dialectical thinking is a practice of holding two seemingly opposite truths at the same time, right? It's like the definition of like nuance. There are horrible things happening and

There are beautiful acts of community building happening too. I many days am terrified for my children's safety and I am finding moments of joy and connection. The world often feels like it is falling apart and people are showing up for each other in extraordinary ways. Both are true. This is not about pretending the bad isn't happening. The bad is happening. But it is about expanding your nervous system's capacity to hold the both and, to hold some of this complexity. Because when you can hold both truths, you do not have to choose between staying informed and protecting your mental health. You do not have to choose between rage or hope. You can hold both. And I think it matters. I think it matters so, so much that we all do right now.

Our nervous systems are constantly scanning for safety and threat. This is something called neuroception at the subconscious processing level. It's how our nervous system evaluates risk. So when you are only witnessing harm, your nervous system gets stuck in a threat state. And this is going to bleed into the way that you parent and partner and work. It's going to bleed into the way that you breathe and move and the tension you hold in your body.

And our mind and our bodies are only going to tolerate so much of that for so long. This nuance, this both and is what allows us to stay within our window of tolerance, to remain active enough to care and respond without tipping into a chronic state of overwhelm or shutdown. So friend, I am going to echo the invitation that I left you with last week, which is to look for the helpers. And if you're in a place to be a helper, assess what it looks like to be a helper within your current capacity. Assess your actual, not your ideal risk level, but your actual risk level. Not your ideal capacity, but your actual capacity and what falls within that. And when you do this, when you are consciously directing your attention to witness moral courage alongside moral injury, when you can look for everyday acts of care alongside the crisis.

The sense of hopelessness doesn't always disappear, especially if you are somebody currently struggling with anxiety or depression. Your stress bucket is already so full. Our nervous systems are already so hypersensitive. We might be so much quicker into what feels like uncontrollable, unproductive, unbridled rage or complete disconnection and shutdown. But when we can, make room for this both and. Again, while hopelessness might not totally disappear, we make room for other things, for a sense of agency, of connection, possibility, just a little bit more hope. 

All right, now wrapping it up with our three takeaways for today. 

Number one is compassion fatigue is real, and so is your capacity limit. Remember, not every cause can be your cause. So ask yourself, what do I have to give right now?

And where do I want to give it? 

Number two, look for the helpers. This activates the sense of moral elevation, which is your biological antidote to compassion fatigue. 

And number three, practice dialectical thinking whenever, however, as often as you can, both and. Horrifying things are happening and people are showing up for each other.

That is what I have for you today. If you found this episode helpful, please share it. Share it with somebody who needs to hear it. Share it to your social media. You never know who may need these reminders. And if you want to go deeper, I'll remind you there's two primary ways that we support people. 

The regulated living membership, which opens for enrollment in just a couple weeks. 

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Thank you for being here. Thank you for showing up in the world in the ways that you do.

for continuing to bravely step into your healing. And until next week, I am sending so much hope and healing your way. 

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