depersonalization

Do you ever feel, that input always exceeds output or that you are in perpetual motion yet always craving rest or that your level of caring cannot be sustained in the absence of results or that you have lost the sense that what you do is important or that you don’t have enough feelings left for human beings to do anything for them out of pity or that you have hurry sickness??????

These are all symptoms of depersonalization or better known as burnout . Its where “ . . . happiness equals reality divided by expectations” and it is the “gap between expectation and reward.” Long story short, the pace of our Western lives is insane . . . in a study between American professors and Mexican university professors, the Mexican burnout rate was much lower . . . and the researchers concluded that it was because they came home to eat at noon, saw their families and took a rest. The pace was much more sustainable in the lives of the Mexican professors.

Now where I grew up, they would just be called lazy because they didn’t go go go go go go and go. No wonder people in my family die at the ripe old age of 60. The unrelenting pressure of go go go go go has its price. My friend asked me this week if I felt like the mission put that kind of stress and pressure on me, and I told him no, that it comes from within.

Thus I am practicing the word “no” and “I can’t” and “you will have to find someone else” and so on and so forth. So far I have been having little success. Maybe I should become a vegetarian . . . that seems easier. Burning out . . . is it in my genes?