Forgiving Yourself for Caring Too Much About Strangers | She Rose

She Rose: Women Who Turned Pain Into Purpose · Oct 23, 2026 · 8m · transcript

In this episode of She Rose, host Bethany Cook explores the heavy burden of empathy fatigue and offers a compassionate path to forgiving yourself for caring too much about strangers. If you find yourself exhausted by global news, feeling guilty for not fixing every injustice, or experiencing secondary trauma from scrolling through headlines, this episode is your permission slip to rest. We discuss the critical difference between witnessing pain and absorbing it, explaining why treating compassion like a muscle that must be torn down is harmful. Instead, we frame empathy as a garden that needs…