People Who Hit Bottom When They Reach the Top

Reclaiming the Fire: How Successful People Overcome Burnout
by Steven Berglas, Ph.D.

The definitive work on avoiding burnout, written by the psychologist who is the leading specialist on the issue. An illuminating and useful book for anyone coping with the pressures of work.

In Reclaiming the Fire, Dr. Steven Berglas analyzes the rises and falls of corporate executives, middle managers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, and others as they struggle to handle the trappings of successful careers. How does one deal with encore anxiety, the monotony of having to use talents that are no longer psychologically rewarding? Why is it that our national obsession with wealth traps people in careers that often lead them to wonder, "Is that all there is?" And why do highly successful people often set themselves up for disastrous falls?

Dr. Berglas answers all these questions and many more in this groundbreaking book by discussing real people whose careers have left them feeling pressured, burdened, and jaded.

In his most progressive and striking contribution to the literature on career success, Dr. Berglas debunks the persistent myth that women suffer more stress and burnout than men. He disproves the common claim that women involved both in careers and in family life suffer from trying to have it all, and he demonstrates how the drive to form close interpersonal ties a drive that is intrinsic to women can actually prevent both men and women from experiencing burnout. In a related analysis of the mentoring process, Dr. Berglas shows why it is more important for careerists to build legacies for future generations (a process he terms generativity) than to become obsessed with their own personal success. He proves that the process not only benefits the student but provides the mentor with psychological satisfaction and even improved physical health.

Reclaiming the Fire uses the working world not the psychiatric couch as a venue for understanding the psychological and emotional burdens of success. It is the first comprehensive account of how to balance self-esteem and ambition while maintaining challenge and stimulation throughout your career.

Reclaiming the Fire provides insight into:

• Why baby boomers are currently suffering an epidemic of career dissatisfaction

• Why women are uniquely suited to cope with the pressures that cause men to suffer burnout, and what men can learn from them

• How to escape golden handcuffs: the workaholic devotion to a job that is no longer emotionally satisfying

• How to cope with anger that threatens to sabotage your career

• How all professionals can identify the passions that will allow them to sustain and enjoy success throughout their lives

Chapter 1

Few highly successful people contact a mental health professional unless they experience a crisis. Actually, most successful professionals, even in the throes of a crisis, are loath to admit to needing a "shrink." The vast majority of my clients are referred to me by third parties who sense that without professional help the crisis that their colleague, friend, or lover is suffering will get worse. Given the energy expended to get a successful person to accept the need for a psychotherapist, corporate consultant, or executive coach, some may find it odd that the first thing I do when meeting a new referral is attempt to illustrate the two ironies of his or her situation.

The first irony lies in the fact that no successful person I can think of became successful without conquering some form of crisis. Career success signifies an ability to overcome obstacles, to persevere in the face of competitive threats, to adapt to change, and to endure grueling periods of deprivation. Someone who succeeds must have experienced the travails of (1) acquiring a new or specialized skill, (2) perfecting skills in order to display talents and abilities in a stellar fashion, or (3) deconstructing the status quo (as an entrepreneur, artist, inventor) and creating a new paradigm or prototype of excellence. Successful people are conquerors, so when they come to see me, the first thing I do is remind them of that fact. This reminder sets the stage for helping them understand why they are at a point where they can no longer do-or refuse to do-what they once did superbly.

The second irony involves the self-defeating nuances of meaning every successful person imposes on the idea of "crisis." When I begin treating people who suffer success-induced disorders, I try to help them accept the fact that connotations can kill. I start by showing them the Chinese symbol for crisis, which consists of two intertwined characters: the symbol for "danger" and the symbol for "opportunity." To help successful people in crisis help themselves, my job is to move them away from focusing on danger and help them begin focusing on opportunity.

Finding opportunity in crisis is not a facile fortune cookie cure. Crisis need not connote impending catastrophe; it can be understood as a turning point, a choice point, an opportunity for change. One patient of mine who read tarot cards as a hobby pointed out that the "death card" has a similar duality: loss plus generative potential. As Picasso allegedly observed, "Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction."

We suffer loss and opportunity throughout our lives, yet during our youth these events do not typically precipitate crises. When adolescents lose the protective status of being minors (at approximately the time we begin our search for identity), they typically focus on opportunity and feel elated. What freedoms adulthood holds! To drive a car. To hold an esteem-building job outside the sheltering (and at times restrictive) protection of the nuclear family. To date. It is undeniable that when something familiar dies, the loss arouses anxiety, but it is always possible to find exhilarating challenges before you. The key is to understand them as such and not focus on the potential threats they impose. Being pushed from any nest is unsettling, but contrast the entrapment of the nest with the freedom of flight!

A paradox of success lost on successful people in crisis is how constraining, tedious, and demanding their ostensibly favorable status is. There is great danger in abandoning the tried and true; to be a rookie after enjoying years as a superstar exposes you to humiliation and shame should you fail to live up to the image you've created. But what about the danger inherent in never freeing yourself from Sisyphean monotony? What about the danger inherent in not expanding your horizons or failing to actualize untapped potential? You know what they say about the tortoise who cannot get anywhere without sticking his neck out? It is safer within one's shell of success, but at what cost?

So people come to see me after a proven history of mastering crisis, yet they feel impotent to address a new one. They (or those who have referred them) seek my help to cope with perceived threats, despite knowing that they have mastered the dangers inherent in striving for success. When successful people visit me for the first time, they are aware of only the potential for loss, the potential for pain, the potential for shame. These are the concerns of people coming to grips with the syndrome I call Supernova Burnout.

Supernova Burnout

Supernova Burnout afflicts successful people who find that their vocations are no longer psychologically rewarding or have become threatening to their self-esteem. Our culture glorifies material success. The truth, however, is that this flawed ideal is to blame for the rising number of high-achieving men and women wanting desperately to escape their circumstances after years of arduous work to get there. I am referring to business executives with years of success begging to break the grip of golden handcuffs, professionals willing to discard advanced degrees in order to escape mind-numbing tedium, and performers including athletes, musicians, and actors who report that they are crippled by the demands of constantly needing to answer calls of "encore, encore" when what they want to scream is Ciao!

Everyone knows of at least one rags-to-riches-to-rags saga that ended because someone who had it all (Freddie Prinze, Vince Foster, Robert Maxwell, David Begelman) was overwhelmed by psychological demons and committed suicide. This is not Supernova Burnout. The phenomenon I have studied for over twenty years is pervasive dissatisfaction with a successful career interrupted by often nondramatic, yet incredibly debilitating, symptoms ranging from anxiety about living up to the expectations born of success to a sense of ennui born of the realization that attaining the goal you thought would change your life did no such thing.

Achieving what you want and realizing that no favorable psychological changes have automatically ensued is far worse than failing to reach a goal. With failure you can always go back to the drawing board, or "try, try again"-these are actually energizing conditions. With success that forces you to ask "Is that all there is?" no such second chances exist. The disappointment of exposing the myths that surround success is devastating because we are obsessed with success.

Career success is the objective common to virtually all the heroes who have shaped our capitalist culture, from Horatio Alger's protagonists through Rockefeller, Mellon, and Carnegie to today's heroes like Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Steve Case. All these whites and blacks, men and women, have risen to the top of a professional heap and earned lots of money. Yet in my experience the most compelling common denominator in this population is the vulnerability to deep emotional pain that has the potential to blow the American dream apart.

Supernova Burnout is widespread, yet in spite of the fact that it has been written about for centuries, people are loath to acknowledge its existence. George Bernard Shaw started his professional life battling feelings best described as contempt-laden despair because he felt coopted by success and recognition:

I made good in spite of myself, and found, to my dismay, that Business, instead of expelling me as the worthless imposter I was, was fastening upon me with no intention of letting me go. Behold me, therefore, in my twentieth year, with a business training, in an occupation which I detested as cordially as any sane person lets himself detest anything he cannot escape from. . . . [Ultimately,] I broke loose.1

Shaw wrote these words when he was in his seventies and was asked to reflect upon what life was like before he found, or began to practice, his true calling. Most of the professionals I have worked with in psychotherapy or executives I have coached on the job were not able to "break loose" the way Shaw did in his early twenties, a time in life when golden handcuffs are far less constrictive than they are in later years filled with familial demands and expectations.2 In the main, professionals who suffer Supernova Burnout have long recognized that they are in vocations (or professional circumstances) that they detest, but they are unable to break free until something cataclysmic forces their hand.

Copyright © 2001 by Dr. Steven Berglas. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

About the Author

Dr. Steven Berglas is a clinical psychologist and adjunct faculty member at Harvard Medical School. He formerly wrote the Entrepreneurial Ego column for Inc. magazine, and his work has been profiled in The New York Times, Fortune, Time, The Wall Street Journal, and People. A counselor to hundreds of executives and industry leaders on the perils of success-induced burnout, Dr. Berglas currently resides in Los Angeles, where he teaches at the John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA.