Top Ten Signs You Are Approaching Burn-Out
For psychologists and mental health workers.
by Storm A. King

10) You think of the peaceful park you like as “your private therapeutic milieu.”

9) You realize that your floridly psychotic patient, who is picking invisible flowers out of mid air, is probably having more fun in life than you are.

8) A grateful client, who thinks you walk on water, brings you a small gift and you end up having to debrief your feelings of unworthiness with a colleague.

7) You are watching a re-run of the “Wizard of Oz” and you start to categorize the types of delusions that Dorothy had.

6) Your best friend comes to you with severe relationship troubles, and you start trying to remember which cognitive behavioral technique has the most empirical validly for treating this problem.

5) You realize you actually have no friends, they have all become just one big case load.

4) A co-worker asks how you are doing and you reply that you are a bit “internally preoccupied” and “not able to interact with peers” today.

3) Your spouse asks you to set the table and you tell them that it would be “countertherapeutic to your current goals” to do that.

2) You tell your teenage daughter she is not going to start dating boys because she is “in denial”, ”lacks insight.” and her “emotions are not congruent with her chronological age.”

And, the number one reason you may be burning out....

1) You are packing for a trip to a large family holiday reunion and you take the DSM-IV with you “just in case.”

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