One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.Bertrand Russell The other day a client asked if I thought overwork caused heart attacks. But what is overwork? Let’s define overwork as mental rather than physical, since most of us here work with our heads. Overwork is …
There are a lot of people out there suffering work stress in silence. Sometimes I hear from them, and they say something like, yeah, wow, I’ve really got a lot of stress in my job and they roll their eyes, implying that it’s bad, but not so bad that they’re going to do anything about …
I’ve called this post ‘Why you are addicted to food’ because a very high percentage of my clients and readership tell me they are. Stress, Anxiety, Overwork, Exhaustion, Loss of Reward, Perfectionism and People-Pleasing combine to provide fertile ground for the development of addiction. Food addiction is widespread because: we must eat to live; food …
The World Health Organisation has this year recognised Burnout as a medical condition. WHO defines Burnout as a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed with three attributes feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to …
An Unlikely Topic Highlighting a Modern Problem My attention this week has been drawn to “The True Believer”#1 by Eric Hoffer, 1951. In the book, Hoffer (a stevedore in San Francisco) discusses the rise of mass movements. I don’t normally study such things, but what caught my attention was this quote describing radicalised people as: …
You’ve heard a lot of tips on how to be happy, but here’s one I’m going to share because it’s simple and it works anytime, anywhere. Calm Your Nervous System In a similar way to meditation, this technique drops you from: physical stress response (sympathetic nervous system – boosting adrenaline and cortisol for fight or …
You’re stressed out at work – times are tough, job security is rare and the company is demanding. So, you do everything you can, pitch in to help, never say no. You put in more and more hours, develop new skills, take on new tasks. You try to keep up with what you THINK your …
What is burnout and how do I know if I’m burnt out? Burnout is defined as “physical or mental collapse caused by overwork or stress”. These days most of us are more susceptible to burnout from stress. Burnout comes when the effects of unmanaged chronic stress start to erode our resilience, then our quality of …
Burnout : 10 signs of burnout and how to recover Read More »
Type A personalities are competitive, time urgent, aggressive and suffer from chronic high stress. The term Type A personality was first coined in the 1950s by two cardiologists, Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman, who studied the risk of heart disease in association with Type A personality traits, prompted by how quickly their patients wore out …
