It was not the first time I had spoken with this attractive, fifty-ish woman.  The first time this co-worker had come into my office at the clinic where we both worked “to say hello.”  She occasionally stopped by to report to me one of her great successes with a patient.  Often she would also tell me how wonderful I was.  But this time, her pleasant visit ended with a real break-down, reducing this lady to teary exclamations about how horrible her job was.  The tears and complaints spilled out so fast that she soon was complaining about how rotten her entire life was.

I knew this person was a cracker-jack therapist — one of the best I had known, ever.  Until then, I didn’t know she was also miserable, with the worst and loneliest professional life I had heard of in a while — divorce and abandonment from men who sounded as if they had not been as resourceful and energetic and smart as she was.

It was a clear – and severe – case of professional burnout.  Of course, that’s not a real psychiatric diagnosis. She may have needed something for depression or anxiety or both, but there was no way — none at all — I would ever consider thinking in those terms about a coworker, no matter how much I liked her. Read more on Burning Out On The Job…