Joan Borysenko - Fried: Why You Burn Out and How to Revive

Fried

Also by Joan Borysenko, Ph.D.

Books

Minding the Body, Mending the Mind

Guilt Is the Teacher, Love Is the Lesson

On Wings of Light (with Joan Drescher)

Fire in the Soul

Pocketful of Miracles

The Power of the Mind to Heal
(with Miroslav Borysenko, Ph.D.)*

A Womans Book of Life

7 Paths to God*

A Womans Journey to God

Inner Peace for Busy People*

Inner Peace for Busy Women*

Saying Yes to Change
(with Gordon Dveirin, Ed.D.)*

Your Souls Compass
(with Gordon Dveirin, Ed.D.)*

Its Not the End of the World*

Audio Programs

Reflections on a Womans Book of Life*

A Womans Spiritual Retreat

Menopause: Initiation into Power

Minding the Body, Mending the Mind*

The Beginners Guide to Meditation*

Its Not the End of the World (five-part seminar)*

Video Programs

Inner Peace for Busy People*

The Power of the Mind to Heal*

Guided-Meditation CDs

Invocation of the Angels*

Meditations for Relaxation and Stress Reduction*

Meditations for Self-Healing and Inner Power*

Meditations for Courage and Compassion*

*Available from Hay House

Please visit:
Hay House USA: www.hayhouse.com
Hay House Australia: www.hayhouse.com.au
Hay House UK: www.hayhouse.co.uk
Hay House South Africa: www.hayhouse.co.za
Hay House India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Copyright 2011 by Joan Borysenko

Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.za Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast: www.raincoast.com Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Editorial supervision: Jill Kramer Project editor: Lisa Mitchell

Design: Jami Goddess

The anecdotes and stories submitted by Facebook friends are reprinted here with their permission and have been edited for length and clarity. In some of the other stories, names and identifying details have been changed to preserve confidentiality or are composites true to the subject matter, but not to the experience of any particular person living or dead.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews without prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Borysenko, Joan.

Fried : why you burn out and how to revive / Joan Borysenko, (with her Facebook Friends). 1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4019-2550-5 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Burn out (Psychology) 2. Stress (Psychology) I. Title.

BF481.B67 2011

158.1dc22

2010030782

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-2550-5

Digital ISBN: 978-1-4019-2951-0

14 13 12 11 4 3 2 1

1st edition, January 2011

Printed in the United States of America

For my Facebook friends. Thank you for the conversation, the inspiration, the information, the laughter... and most heartwarming of all, for your love, prayers, and support when SkyeDancer returned to his home in the stars.

Contents

This is my 15th book, and perhaps it is the most important.

Fried may seem like an innocuous enough word since so many of us use it these days to describe our frenzied, speed-oriented, exhausted state of mind. But innocuous it is not. Feeling fried is an alarm that life has veered seriously off course. Its shorthand for losing our way individually and culturally in a world spinning so fast that it feels like were about to be launched into outer space.

As a Harvard-trained biologist and psychologist, Ive been described as a world expert on stress. However, thats not what this book is about. When youre stressed out, you keep chasing the same old carrot, whatever that may be for you. But when youre burned out, you eventually give up the chase. The hope that you can create a meaningful life fizzles out, and you find yourself sitting in the ashes of your dreams.

In a culture wedded to positive thinking, burnout and its first cousin, depression, are thought of as disorders to be fixed. But what if, borrowing a line from author and social commentator Judith Viorst, they are necessary losses? Perhaps they are losses of navet, false identities, and faulty assumptions that make way for a more authentic life.

Like many self-help authors, I write about what I need to learn. Flirting with burnout, and eventually allowing it to seduce me, is a pattern that I know all too well. When I burn out, my most loving, creative self goes missing; and I contract into a homely homunculus the smallest, most negative version of myself. It is not a pretty picture.

Ive burned out more than onceironically, but predictablytrying to do and be my best. The pain is so great and the available help is so limited that I felt compelled to write a book that describes the inner world of burnout and how it can actually be used as a guide to inner freedom and an authentic life.

My intention is to create a map of burnout that makes the condition accessible and easily identifiable. William Styron, the Pulitzer Prizewinning author, wrote a compelling memoir of his descent into severe depression titled Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness Psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, likewise catapulted manic-depressive illness (bipolar disorder) into full visibility in An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

While Fried is not a memoir in the true sense of the word, my personal experience is central to what youll read here. Like most of my other books, this one is braided from four strands: clinical experience, psychological and biological research, personal recollections, and a larger spiritual view. Unlike any of my other books, however, Fried has a fifth strandreal-time input from social networking.

Sitting alone in a hotel room one night (the fate of a traveling speaker), I logged on to Facebook and asked if anyone had had experience with burnout. A landslide of responses followed. For the next year, our virtual salons deepened as one inquiry led to another and another. As many as 60 or 70 people would respond within a few hours to questions such as: What does burnout feel like? What are its stages? Who is susceptible to it, and why? What are the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of feeling fried? How do you think those relate to depression? Do you have experience with antidepressants that youd be willing to share?