I hated sixth grade.

It was my first year in middle school and I reeked of awkwardness in a very “Deb-from-Napoleon-Dynamite” sort of way. Side ponytail? Check. Fascination with weird homemade lanyards and keychains? Check.

All the older kids were wearing their grunge-inspired flannel shirts and Grateful Dead t-shirts. Most of my wardrobe came from either Kids R Us or a giant garbage bag of hand-me-down clothes that my mother had collected from her co-workers.

One day, while walking home from school, a eighth-grade boy started harassing me. He’d call me names, comment on my clothing, and taunt me nearly the entire ten-block walk. My entire repertoire of comebacks, unfortunately, came straight from Full House.

Everyone feels frustrated and frazzled with their jobs from time to time. But burnout goes beyond the occasional bad day — or bad week.

“Burnout is a ‘silent condition’ induced by chronic stress that is characterized by emotional [or] physical exhaustion, cynicism and a lack of professional efficacy,” according to Christine Louise Hohlbaum, author of The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7 World.

Psychoanalyst Herbert J. Freudenberger coined the term “burnout” in 1974.¹ He defined burnout as ”the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one’s devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results.”

In his book, Freudenberger compared job burnout to a burned-out building.

1. He also coauthored, with Geraldine Richelson, the first book on burnout, called Burn-Out: The High Cost of High Achievement. [↩]

Earlier this week, you may have seen Sandy Naiman’s post about how to bounce back from unemployment stress:

In today’s economy, with soaring unemployment rates, …

Read more… »

As Americans with mental illness struggle to address the financial strain caused by an inability to work, more and more are turning to the important Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program for financial assistance.

According to the Social Security Administration, more than 1.3 million people who are receiving Social Security disability benefits have been diagnosed with a mood disorder. Mental illness has become the second most common diagnostic category for beneficiaries, behind musculoskeletal system disorders and connective tissue disease.

SSDI provides benefits for those who have paid FICA taxes and no longer can work because of a long-term disability (defined as one that lasts at least 12 months or is terminal). Unfortunately, mental health issues can add layers of complexity to an already confusing process. As a Psych Central blogger wrote recently, mental health problems — or even the medications intended to treat them — can make it almost impossible to stay on top of the notoriously cumbersome claims process.

Shame on The Cash Store for firing Sean Reilly because he had bipolar disorder.

After being a model employee for the parent company of The Cash Store, Cottonwood Financial, he asked for some time off in order to deal with his bipolar disorder after having worked for the company for about 6 months. They denied his request, and then fired him shortly thereafter. Reilly was up-front about his disorder before he was even hired, although there’s no requirement to tell a potential employer about any medical condition you may have — including bipolar disorder.

Judge Edward Shea of the US District Court for Eastern Washington agreed with Reilly that he was fired for his bipolar disorder — not for the half-dozen different rationales Cottonwood Financial had given. The judge said such rationales were merely a pretext for their discrimination.

Moving by the seat of our pants isn’t that helpful for efficiency. For one, rushing can mean making silly but time-consuming mistakes, like misplacing important items, locking your keys inside the house or glossing over errors at work.

And we might miss out on life altogether. “When things go too fast, we aren’t cognitively able to process the information, so a lot of our lives literally whizzes by,” according to Christine Louise Hohlbaum, author of The Power of Slow: 101 Ways to Save Time in Our 24/7.

Below, Hohlbaum shares several helpful tips on slowing down and saving time.

Even for people who adore their job, work can still be stressful, exhausting and all-consuming. It can come home with you, lingering through dinner and stealing your supposed relaxation time.

(If you work from home — like I do — unwinding may be trickier because you’re technically physically still at work.)

Maybe you’re like me and reply to emails in your head or rewrite stories you’ve already published. (Yes, I realize this is a problem.) Maybe you check your smartphone before bed and scramble to answer a few emails. Maybe your laptop has a special place on your bed. Or maybe you’ve created strict boundaries between work and home, but you still can’t shake the stress of an upcoming project or the usual day-to-day grind.

If you need some help with leaving work at work, here are four activities from the book Five Good Minutes in the Evening: 100 Mindful Practices to Help You Unwind from the Day & Make the Most of Your Night by Jeffrey Brantley, M.D., and Wendy Millstine, NC. In many of their activities, the authors suggest breathing or listening mindfully.

I’m not a huge fan of Andy Warhol’s visual art, but I’m a devoted fan of his writing. (Sidenote: it’s striking how many visual artists are brilliant writers, for instance, I love Eugene Delacroix’s Journal and Edward Weston’s Daybooks).

What interests me about Andy Warhol is that he makes seemingly obvious observations in very simple language — and yet, upon reflection, I often realize that he has managed to articulate something very subtle. As one of my Secrets of Adulthood holds:

It’s very important, and surprisingly difficult, to grasp the obvious.

This guest article from YourTango was written by Maud Purcell. 

Running a successful business in our current economic climate takes more than just an excellent product or service. If you’re a business owner, one of the most important changes you can make is to run your business with greater “Emotional Intelligence” (EI). EI is a term popularized by Psychologist Daniel Goleman who defines it as “…the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves and for managing emotions well in ourselves and our relationships.”

The notion that using our emotions intelligently could have an impact on the bottom line is relatively new. According to The Institute for Health and Human Potential, research tracking over 160 high performance individuals across a wide variety of industries revealed that EI was two times more important in creating excellence than are intellect and expertise alone. In fact, the use of EI in business significantly impacts return on sales, revenue growth and overall profitability.

Creativity needs nudging and nourishing. And learning from others can help to feed and fuel your imagination. That’s why every month we interview a different person on their creative process and inspirations.

We’ve already interviewed photographer and writer Susannah Conway and creativity coach and author Gail McMeekin.

This month we talked to Laura Simms, a career coach for creatives. I’ve interviewed Simms for several pieces for Psych Central, and she always offers great insight into creativity and pursuing your passions.

Specifically, Simms helps folks discover and cultivate the work meant just for them through career transition and small business coaching. She’s the creator of Roadmap to Action, and enjoys working with emerging and established creatives through one-on-one coaching. She vlogs weekly from her bird’s egg blue chair at createasfolk.com.

Last October I saw a Prezi presentation by a colleague of mine.  The material in the presentation was stellar, but it nearly took a back seat to the dazzling, engaging and, yes, spellbinding mechanics of Prezi.  It is a new zoom-style presentation platform that makes PowerPoint look like a moped up against a Ferrari.

And it is free.

Like anything worthwhile, there is a learning curve that needs to be dealt with, but it is worth the time and trouble to learn it.  Since December, every presentation I have done has been Prezi-based, and literally every person I have shared it with was eager to learn how to do his or her own.

It was developed by Adam Somlai-Fischer, a Hungarian architect, as a tool to help with visualization.  But instead he has developed one of the more interesting storytelling devices yet created.  It follows the speaker with a visual narrative of the material.  True to the developer’s mission to “make sharing ideas more interesting,” this presentation tool does just that.  What it does is give the user complete freedom to exploit the visual experience by using a zoom feature. The techies among you will recognize this as a Zooming User Interface, cloud-based SaaS, (Software as a Service) presentation delivery model.

We usually think of psychologists as seeing clients, conducting research, teaching at universities or holding high administrative positions.

But psychologists also work in many unexpected places and on many unexpected topics — perhaps far more than you’d think.

Here’s a short list of psychologists who have some of the most interesting and odd jobs.

1. Circus Psychologist

Psychologist Madeleine Hallé works at Cirque du Soleil helping performers adjust to their new job, overcome fear and stage fright and recover from injuries and fatigue. In 1998 she began working on an as-needed basis but then went full-time as Cirque du Soleil incorporated performance psychology into its training program. Hallé earned a master’s degree in sport sciences with an emphasis on coaching along with a Ph.D in sport psychology from Université du Montréal.