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Women's Moderator Welcome to WebMD Live. Our guest today is Ruth Luban, creator of the audiocassette program: Keeping the Fire: From Burnout to Balance and its companion book 101 Ways to Beat Burnout.

Ruth J. Luban is a counselor, consultant, and author specializing in stress management and career burnout. She received her masters in counseling psychology from Columbia Pacific University. After 20 years of experience working with individuals, corporations, and health care facilities, Luban has spent the past eight years focusing on career burnout and issues related to mid-life transition.

In addition to treating the clinical aspects of exhaustion and burnout, Ruth approaches burnout philosophically. She describes it as a "call" from one's "core self", an opportunity to return to one's heartfelt values and priorities as a means of getting back into balance.

Welcome Ruth, it is really a pleasure to have you here today.

Women's Speaker Hi everyone! It's great to be here with you today.

Just a bit of personal background as to how I ended up with you here today, speaking as an "expert" on burnout. About 8 years ago, I hit the wall with serious burnout of my own At the time, I was in fulltime private (psychology) practice, single-parenting my then teenage sons, providing intervention programs in the local schools and taking clients on healing retreats several times a year. To "balance my life, I used weekends to play in tennis tournaments and run marathons! Over time, as you can imagine, I got increasingly tired, detached from the very work that had been my calling for 20 years. Even though I am a psychology professional, I didn't, at the time, realize I was burning out. It took studying my symptoms, quitting work for awhile, and really working on myself to get back into balance. So I'm here today as a psychology professional, but more importantly as a crusader, hoping to save you from going to hell and back with serious stress and burnout.
Women's Moderator How can one differentiate between Burnout and day to day Stress?

Women's Speaker Let's begin by defining burnout. Though the term burnout has become a cliché in our work-addicted culture, it actually has this clinical definition:

Burnout is a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion resulting from chronic, relentless stress. Stress is a part of burnout, but here's the important difference. Stress occurs as the result of events that have a beginning, middle and end; these events occur as a moments in time. For example, you're late to the office at the same time as you're caught in traffic: there's a stressful event. Or you're pushing to meet a deadline at the same time as the boss calls you, the coffee on your desk spills, etc. Each of those are stressful events. Burnout, on the other hand, is a process; it occurs over a long period of time. I always tell people that the easiest way to differentiate between symptoms of stress vs. burnout is this: If you feel stressed-out and take a day, weekend, or even two weeks off to recover, and you feel back to normal, it's likely stress. If you take those timeouts and feel no better, regardless of how long you were off, you're probably in a stage of burnout and you should look very seriously at your symptoms and your situation.
katierose_WebMD how do I get my family to understand that I essentially work 2 full time jobs, one outside the home and one managing the home, and the stress is getting to me

Women's Speaker As a dual-career parent, you absolutely are working two fulltime jobs. There's a lot to explain about burnout, and maybe a good way to get your family onboard is to tell them that burnout occurs over a long period of time...it's not just a bad day.

To really grasp the stages of burnout, please explore my in-depth audio program, Keeping the Fire: From Burnout to Balance. There's so much to consider that I can't adequately go into during our short time today. But on the tapes, I depict the stages as follows: Stop me if this explanation gets too long! The Honeymoon Stage: You know you meet the criteria for burnout but your energy and enthusiasm are high, so you determine to stay positive, work harder and all will be well. This is the beginning of denial. The Disillusionment Stage: Your best efforts aren't working, in spite of having given up daily workouts, healthy eating, time off in service to work and family, you begin to feel confused, impatient, frustrated and lacking a bit of confidence that you can control your stressful job, work style, family demands, etc. The Brownout Stage: Your emotional fuel runs low. You're still functioning well on the outside, but inside you're experiencing fatigue, irritability, disturbed sleep, possible escapist drinking, shopping, indecisiveness and decreased productivity (in your opinion...others still see you as high functioning at this point). The Frustration Stage: As the result of pushing through the earlier stages, this stage brings anger, loss of enthusiasm, cynicism, detachment and physical illness -- notable because these symptoms occur in people who've always been hardy, healthy and resilient. Burnout tends to happen to GIVERS, people who are the bright, perfectionist, idealistic high achievers in our culture. Finally, The Despair Stage: At this point, burnout symptoms have been growing over time, even though we try desperately to deny them. Despair is another word for clinical depression: you feel a tremendous sense of failure, pessimism, self-doubt, loneliness and emptiness...a longing to "run away" and abdicate responsibilities. Unfortunately, I often see clients when they've hit this "wall" of despair and have to finally surrender to their burnout. Does any of this sound familiar?
katierose_WebMD I am feeling stressed, almost to the point of burnout; however, my doctor's answer was to prescribe some sleeping pills to help me get more rest; I'm not comfortable with his solution

Women's Speaker Sleep is essential, but I'd rather see you get to sleep on your own steam. Can you begin to set some boundaries, like doing less at night, trying to decompress at the end of the evening before you go to bed, using meditation or relaxation tapes to help you fall asleep? How you interrupt the downward spiral that is burnout depends on which stage (as described above) you are in. The later stages, from Brownout onward, are the more serious stages for which more radical interventions are indicated. I could go on and on making suggestions to you, but I need more information. Meanwhile, please know there are many suggestions on my audio and its compare ...sorry...companion book, "101 Ways to Beat Burnout." Here are a few more suggestions: I'd suggest that you begin, slowly, to do a little bit each day toward getting back in balance. Buy all the help you can afford, e.g., housecleaning help; babysitting to cover time out for rest and recreation. Take a day away from work and home; use the time to journal about your options, how you can modify, reduce, delegate, etc. to begin to relax more. It's critical that you get your mate and family on-board. Set up a date with your mate, away from home, and brainstorm ways he could take some of the load off of you so you can begin a recovery program of your own design. Change whatever you can to give yourself extra rest, like sleeping in one morning each weekend; long weekends away from home that are mini vacations; forcing yourself to get to sleep earlier each night. Set boundaries: stop over giving and try to be good enough rather than perfect. Look at what you can delegate--in all areas of your life! A daily "decompression ritual" that you do between work and home each evening (but not alcohol!). Maybe announcing to your family that the first 20 minutes you walk in the house each evening belong to you. Use the time to change into sweats, stretch out on your bed and use a relaxation tape to unwind; or listen to classical music on your walkman; or schedule a yoga or exercise class you go to immediately after work but before you go home to your second fulltime job -- of taking care of your family.

Women's Moderator Many women have dual careers, as professionals and as mothers. Often times this results in constant crisis management. How can one find the balance?

Women's Speaker First, please know that Guilt (capital G!) is a constant feeling in working moms. We always feel guilty that we're not home enough, or giving quality time to the kids, and guilty that we're not giving enough to the job.

Take heart: a recent study by the Families and Work Institute found that 75% of kids believe their mothers handle work-family issues well and 70% of working moms express enjoying their jobs and enjoying working. So the stuff of balance is an internal issue for you to identify as the unique individual that you are. The same study I just quoted mentions that kids don't resent the lack of time moms spend with them; rather they say they want more communi8cation with us. They want to hear about your work, your day, etc. So one suggestion is to share more with your kids about your day. That'll serve a dual function: connection with the children while venting a bit about your day! Learn to not-do during your downtime. Instead of stressing about housekeeping, simply "bless the mess" once in awhile and take care of yourself instead. I know this is counterintuitive, but by spending time not-doing, you'll create a great deal more energy and efficiency when you go back to Doing. Set limits: don't be on call 24 hrs a day. Prioritize and use email, voicemail, etc. for contact to which you'll respond the next day. But don't get addicted to these electronics either. J Don't take the computer on vacation with you! Don't talk on your cell phone while driving or walking. If you're in burnout, such behaviors are accidents waiting to happen! Try to notice and FEEL INTO the ecstatic moments of your life, e.g., closing that deal...finishing that 10k...watching your baby take his/her first steps. Freeze-frame these moments for instant stress reduction and joy.
Women's Speaker As women, we thrive on affiliation, connection, communion and communication. Identify a special friend to whom you can vent

and exchange feelings-discussions. Talking about burnout is one of the best cures! Again, my book "101 Ways to Beat Burnout" offers a cookbook of ideas for balancing your work-family stress.
abigale_WebMD Am I experiencing burnout? I used to love my work, I felt like I really was contributing and doing something important. Now I am so fried by the end of a day I feel like I have lost my sense of self. Everyone around me is as equally overworked, of course we are under staffed. I don't feel like I should be complaining. I am just really tired and there is no end in sight.

Women's Speaker Sure sounds like burnout! One of the hallmarks, particularly in women, is that we blame ourselves for our burnout. Since everyone else has the same environmental stress, we figure we are the ones not coping.

The first thing to do is acknowledge how "fried" you feel and immediately take a weekend to make no plans other than looking at your options right now. Most of us can endure an extraordinary amount of stress as long as we feel the work has meaning and that we get validated for the efforts we give. Are you getting enough recognition and reward for this stressful job? Studies on burnout suggest that the personality features I mentioned earlier -- bright, talented, idealistic, charismatic achievers -- are those who tend to burnout. But more recently, work environments are being recognized as the primary culprit. Environments that involve deadlines, a lot of responsibility without adequate authority to go with those responsibilities, competitiveness, rejection, etc. are setups for burnout, as are companies undergoing downsizing, reorganizing, merging, etc. Again, be careful not to blame yourself as you examine your situation. Burnout includes your work style and stress-style, the type of work you do, and the environment in which you do that work.
Women's Moderator Why is it that often times women feel horrible after the Holidays are over?

Women's Speaker It's not unusual to fall apart after the crisis, so to speak, that crisis being the demands of the holiday season. To accomplish all those demands, you had to stay in your head

You had to keep driving forward and be totally task-oriented. Now it's ok to take a few deep breaths, during which feelings will rush forward and sometimes be overwhelming as they bring the truth of your fatigue and burnout. Generally speaking, women get set up for burnout as the result of too many demands with too little sense of control; too little validation for the efforts they give, both at home and at work; work-family balance issues; the demands of technology -- being constantly on-call; and not enough help or support from mate, family, relatives, etc. Wouldn't you say the holidays bring all of those set-ups in a concise period of time?
jeffreygn_WebMD I am a professional who works twelve hour days and struggle with having any energy after work. I'm not burned out yet, but I feel that I have no life outside of work. How do I keep myself feeling healthy so I don't burn out? Any tips on speaking with my employer about my heavy workload?

Women's Speaker What type of work do you do?

jeffreygn_WebMD I unfortunately work for an Internet company.

Women's Speaker Pardon me for chuckling...

Unfortunately, the demands of companies like yours are multi-layered: you are at effect of the technology; of deadlines; of interacting with the technology rather than getting to have as much "human" interaction as you might prefer. I would love it if you felt comfortable enough with your boss to make a list of all that's on your plate, showing him/her how 12 hrs/day are not only inadequate for the workload, but for your life as a whole. Ask the boss to brainstorm some solutions. Sometimes empowering the boss to help you reduce your stress allows them to HEAR you more meaningfully, rather than seeing you as simply complaining.
jeffreygn_WebMD When I take vacation time during the holidays, I feel a lot of angst throughout my time off because I know work is piling up at the office. What can I do alleviate some of this angst?

Women's Speaker First, tell yourself that you are entitled to time out! It's not only a normal right, it is essential for maintaining your health, your efficiency, your brainpower, and on and on.

I hope your boss or coworkers aren't not causing that guilt. It may actually be a symptom of your having given too much to the job, to the point that you can't see who else you are besides that role! Let the work pile up during your time off. When you return, you'll do the best you can, and hopefully be rested enough to see where you might delegate, get additional (even temporary) assistance, or have that chat with the boss!
jeffreygn_WebMD During the holidays, we always spend out time between my in-laws and my own family. It's stressful balancing the demands of two families and it never seems like much of a vacation. How can I make this time more meaningful and pleasant?

Women's Speaker Your question is complex, I wish I had more information about your two families! Basically, I'd suggest you make sure there is time out for you personally so that you approach both families from a reasonably rested place.

  It would also be helpful to have a meeting with your mate as to what YOUR needs are in both situations. Wish I could go on....

Kimmy_10_WebMD My husband is spending more and more time in the office. He seems to be more and more unhappy with his job though. He wants to spend time with our children on the weekends but he spends most of his time dreading Monday. How can I help him face that he might be on the path to burnout?

Women's Speaker Hate to sound like a constant commercial, but I'd suggest you gift him with the audiotapes! He'll likelier "get it" if he hears it from other than you.

And I've found that men really resonate with the tapes because there's a male client on the tapes who tells his burnout story. It's so resonant of most men's plight that they take it more seriously after hearing "Jim." Typically, wives bring burnout info to their husbands, so be unabashed about talking to him. Tell him that I see burnout as a badge of courage, as an indication that he's a giver, an idealist, a high-functioning person who's simply exhausted and disillusion disillusioned.
Kimmy_10_WebMD thank you so much - your description of the stages of burnout really hit home-I am really going to try to do some positive intervention for my husband instead of just being frustrated and taking it personally.

jeffreygn_WebMD The crazy thing is that my job has minimal value in my life, but you are right, I have difficulty letting it take a back seat.

Women's Moderator Ruth, thank you very much for joining us today.

Women's Speaker thanks for your kind words of affirmation. Good luck to you all!

Women's Moderator WebMD Members I encourage you to check out Ruth Luban's audiocassette program: Keeping the Fire: From Burnout to Balance and its companion book 101 Ways to Beat Burnout available at  www.choicepoints.com.