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Supernova Burnout
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Supernova Burnout is a pervasive dissatisfaction with a successful career.
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We normally associate stress with executive burnout. You say the two are quite different and not necessarily related. How do they differ?
Actually, they are two very different disorders. What often causes confusion between the 2 terms, stress and executive burnout, is the Media’s misuse of the latter terms.. They are assumed to be similar since in the Western Society stress occurs most frequently for executives in connection with their jobs. That said, the disorders are quite distinct.
For example, stress is a term that is constantly misused. The word originally comes from the engineering vocabulary where it refers to a force applied to an entity. Being under excessive stress causes an entity (e.g. a bridge support) to suffer strain or "failure" in the integrity of the material it is composed of. Two things are suggested by this:
- (1) Psychological stress is a force lurking outside us, like fire that has an uniformly adverse effect upon anyone who comes in contact with it
- (2) We get the notion of "cracking-up" from being under too much stress
Point 1 is totally false
Stress does not lurk outside of us, it is not imposed, and it is not uniform in its effects. Actually, psychological stress is an "eye of the beholder" phenomenon. People experience stress only if they view something as posing a threat or harming them in a physical or psychological way. I, for one, experience threat (and stress) at the idea of standing on top of an icy mountaintop on two slats of fibreglass and contemplating on what I will have to do to get down to the bottom. On the other hand, people who enjoy skiing would probably find this situation exciting and, in fact, capable of causing what psychologists call "eustress" or the "good stress" derived from confronting and overcoming challenges.
The way I help clients understand stress is to quote a great thinker, Epictetus, who did his thinking in 40 BC: "Men are disturbed not by things but by the views they take of them."
Point 2 is a totally different experience
As for burnout, according to most researchers, it occurs when a person experiences a "disconnect" between what they define themselves to be and their vocational pursuits. This perspective has a somewhat spiritual underpinning in that a burnout is seen as representing deterioration in values, dignity, spirit and will. Burnout causes people to feel chronically exhausted, cynical, detached from work and increasingly ineffective.
Unlike the person experiencing stress, the person suffering burnout is not anxious about harm but, rather, detached from work and from his colleagues. You're suffering burnout when you're "going through the motions," watching the clock, being passive-aggressive to higher authorities, or fantasizing an escape from work. The bottom-line definition of executive burnout is when my burned-out executive clients tell me: "I'm in it only for the money."
You have written that the term executive stress is often misused and misunderstood. Please explain.
What is commonly referred to as executive stress is usually what I call Supernova Burnout, a disorder that afflicts successful people who find that their vocation is no longer psychologically rewarding or has become a threat to their self-esteem. The reason this is so pervasive among "Top Talent" or executives in corporations, is that Western Society culture glorifies material success as an ideal that we all should strive for. The truth, however, is that this flawed conviction is to blame for the rising incidence of high-achieving men and women wanting desperately to escape the circumstances they are in after years of arduous work to get there.
I am referring to business executives with years of success behind them begging to break the grip of Golden Handcuffs in order to do challenging work and not engage in repetitive work that they mastered decades ago.
Everyone knows of at least one dramatic rags-to-riches-to-rags saga that ended because someone who had it all became overwhelmed by psychological demons and committed suicide (Robert Maxwell, David Begelmen). This is not Supernova Burnout. Supernova Burnout is a pervasive dissatisfaction with a successful career interrupted by often non-dramatic, yet incredibly debilitating, symptoms ranging from anxiety about living-up to the expectations born of success to a sense of weariness and boredom born of the realization that attaining the goal that you thought would change your life did no such thing.
“Supernova Burnout is particular to Top Talent, you have to succeed to suffer it.“
The pain of achieving what you want and realizing that no favourable 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, "live to fight another day," or "try, try, again;" an actually energizing state-of-affairs. With success that forces you to ask the question "is that all there is?”, no such second chances exist. The disappointment derived from exposing the myths that surround success is devastating.
Would you explain your concept of “perceived control“ and its relationship to stress?
Remember Epictetus? What he didn't know was that there is one factor that regulates how much or how little our views of things are likely to result in feelings of stress. Psychologists call it "perceived control". It's perceived, rather than actual, because you don't have to be "in control", you just have to believe you are in order to have it work wonders. The mind is all powerful. If I think I "can overcome," whether I ultimately do or not, prior to the outcome I won’t be stressed.
Let's go back to the mountain. I view skiing as stressful because I have no idea how to do it. On the other hand, I know how to box, so I'll happily climb into a ring with mostly anyone. Now, I won’t be stressed boxing with a man smaller than I am even if his skills are greater. He may pummel me, but I won’t have a "stress syndrome" in advance of getting some hefty wounds. Most people, lacking control in a boxing ring, would be stressed just walking between the ropes. But since I perceive myself to be in control when I box, I experience no stress when sparring, irrespective of who I’m with, unless he’s obviously a powerhouse.
Is the incidence of supernova burnout generally confined to very senior level executives, or do you also see it in middle management.
Supernova Burnout is particular to Top Talent. It is, by definition, a disappointment with the experience of success so you have to succeed to suffer it.
How do executives need to adjust their expectations of the psychic rewards from a career?
Freud, the Bible, and most schools of ancient philosophy noted, you need "Love and Work" to be fulfilled. In Western Society, high achievers believe, "Whoever dies with the most toys, wins," and this just doesn’t work. If you’re not relating well to people, no amount of money will buy love. Actually, the Beatles said it too ("Can’t buy me love..."). But for superachievers, it’s easier to make money than to make friends. That, in a phrase, is the dilemma.
About Dr. Steven Berglas
Dr. Steven Berglas is an executive coach and management consultant who spent twenty-five years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School´s Department of Psychiatry where he also maintained a private psychotherapy practice in Boston. Now based in Los Angeles, his coaching practice draws upon his training in behavioural psychiatry to design interventions that are uniquely suited to resolving the problems of senior level executives at risk for career burnout or the consequences of self-defeating behaviors. His clients range from Fortune 100 CEO’s, to professional athletes, Grammy and Oscar winners and international chess grandmasters.More information
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