Angelus

Hi everyone, sorry I haven't been around much. It's largely due to the very thing I want to talk about.

I've hit a big wall at my job, to the point where it's making me physically ill and emotionally drained. I can't enjoy my weekends because I'm exhausted from work and depressed about having to go back. My people-pleasing has again sabatoged me, I've been working nights and weekends. Last Sunday I was on my way to see my family and I was called in to work, and stupidly I went.

Despite my perfectionism or perhaps because of it I've started to slip. Yesterday was a 12 hour day, very rough, and I was worried about a certain piece of ad copy that I thought I had messed up. I stayed till 9:30 looking for the ad, wandering the office like a zombie. Didn't get home till 10:30 and when I got up today I found I couldn't face going in and called in sick. My friends say I shouldn't go back tomorrow either.

I'm in counseling and starting my Yoga teacher training this weekend, so those are positive steps, but honestly I don't know how much longer I'm gonna last at this job. My codepency, disease to please and fear of failure arew destroying me.

Barbara52

Only you can make the neccessary changes in yourself. Anyone would be going nuts working the hours you are! What can you do to start expecting yourself to do everything?

bookwyrm

(((angelus))) Realising how your actions are making such a negative impact on your life is the first step in changing them. Take one step at a time and remember, progress not perfection!
Breaking out of the people pleasing habit is really hard (I haven't managed it yet myself!). Being self aware enough to catch myself in the act and stop it is difficult and takes a lot of effort. But I try!
You sound so wound up - try to relax! Work out how to deal with the stress you're under - even if your codie ways are causing most of it - and try to take care of YOU. Its back to the basics, make YOU the main priority - no one else will!

Docpotter

<b>Burnout is a kind of job depression and is a motivational problem.</b> A person struggling with burnout is demotivated, dispirited, depressed - DOWN. The person caught up in the burnout cycle finds it more and more difficult to perform and increasingly dreads going to work.

<b>Burnout is caused by feelings of uncontrollability.</b> Powerlessness, damned-if-you-do damned-if-you-don't situations. It is prevented by developing feelings of control over the job - which is an on-going process.

Being a perfectionist, you create your own trap of uncontrollability because you can never be perfect so you are always criticizing yourself. As a result you probably also procrastinate because that goes along with perfectionism.

To learn what burnout is and take quizzes to determine if you are burning out and the burnout potential of your job, along with strategies for overcoming it, visit my site at docpotter.com.