In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

195 11 Your Work Resilient Zone Finding Your Positive, Compassionate Self The way to do is to be. —Lao-tzu Art From the time I was eighteen, I stuffed into my hip pocket each day a worn week-at-a-glance. It became my bible and scorecard, dictating every hour of devotion to my disease, ensuring I wouldn’t forget an appointment in my daily frenzied pace. Its margins were crammed with lists of tasks to accomplish between meetings and before going to bed. As long as I was working, thinking about work, or lining up work in my notebook, I felt in control, important, powerful. When I recall it, the fearful, shameful, guilty self of my childhood seems like someone from another planet. At forty-eight, I was in my ninth year of recovery from work addiction. My childhood was the meat of a dysfunctional family sandwich. I was pressed on one side by a tyrannical, workaholic father whom I rarely could please.Around him I was always fearful that I would be (and often was) scolded or punished for some awkward, selfish, or mean-spirited thing I hadn’t intended to do. On the other side was an apprehensive and distant mother, always within arm’s reach of potent prescription drugs. Around her I experienced constant anxiety and rejection, feeling I wasn’t worthy enough for kisses, hugs, or other expressions of love. Confusion and conflict dominated my family communication. Exuberance was criticized. Sadness was ridiculed. Tenderness was wrapped in mock gestures, delivered with sarcasm. Around spontaneous, self-assured kids, I felt puny, ugly, and unpopular. I felt safest and most in control when playing alone. I could then pretend I was one of my favorite heroes: a powerful, cherished champion of justice, battling 196 Your Work Resilient Zone alone (or with some animal companion) against incredible odds on behalf of the unloved and powerless. Thus, my childhood nurtured the lethal seeds that later blossomed into work addiction: self-denial, self-control, poor self-image. When I hit puberty, pouring myself wholeheartedly into school and extracurricular projects enabled me to control my emotions at the same time I was creatingasociallyacceptableself-image.TheonlypriceIhadtopaywastospend every waking hour working hard at something. By the time I was eighteen, I had become a professional musician, seeded tennis player, boxing champion, state-champion track athlete, straight-A student, and National Merit Scholar. I was president of a statewide youth fellowship and a high-school selection for Boys’ State. For two years I went steady with the school’s most popular cheerleader , and a month before graduation I received a scholarship to Harvard. Despite the accolades, my parents’ attitudes toward me didn’t change: my accomplishments were still never enough to impress my father or to win my mother’s warmth. My response? Already deep in my disease, I dug a little deeper, tried a little harder, won more honors. By now I was learning to get strokes elsewhere: from teachers, coaches, and friends. Awards and publicity became replacements for acceptance and affection. Most of all, the constant pace of work numbed my mind to unpleasant, unresolved feelings of shame, powerlessness, and lack of love. College devastated me. My entire sense of self-worth had been robed in the grandiosity of high-school self-images. My view of life was of perpetual conflict, in which only superior people survived and were worthy. At Harvard , however, it seemed every student was better than me! What’s more, they all seemed to know exactly who they were and what they wanted to do with their lives—whereas I hadn’t a clue. Teenage work addiction had been so allconsuming for me that I’d been too busy—and afraid—to discover who I really was or what career might actualize my true self. For three undergraduate years, I battled suicidal depression. At the end of my junior year, I decided to pursue a career in law. As a criminal defense attorney, I could actually wield the power I had fantasized about all my life, fighting real battles in courtrooms for the sake of justice, the powerless , and the oppressed. I finished law school and for the next five years litigated criminal cases. I was proud of not taking a vacation during that entire time. My relentless activity pitched me day and night into preparing and conducting trials, which continued to anesthetize my feelings of self-doubt, while the stakes involved provided me with...

Share