How Healthy is Your Relationship With Work?

Equal? Abusive? Fraying at the edges? Why getting clear on your relationship with work is essential to preventing burnout.

Leading researchers Dr. Christine Maslach and Dr. Michael Leiter frame burnout “as a breakdown in the relationship between you and your work context.”

As Dr. Leiter explained to me, “When people enter workplaces, both sides have expectations, and problems occur when expectations are not met.”

Often, the expectations placed on individuals by employers are unreasonable, unfair and incommensurate with the salary and benefits offered in return.

At the same time, as employees, our expectations that work and work alone will shape our identity and satisfy our demand for purpose and existential meaning are high to the point of being unrealistic.

Let’s take a closer look at an example of this relationship.

Tracy & Work: An Example

Tracy is an engineer who has been at a large company for about five years.

Tracy invested most of her early adult life preparing herself for this relationship through education and extra-curricular activities, cultivating an impressive CV. She sacrificed…