本文原文转载自经济学人《1843》杂志，原文地址：https://www.economist.com/1843/2016/07/28/the-way-out-of-burnout
Jul 28th 2016 | 5 min read
By Josh Cohen
A patient of mine named Elliot recently took a week off from his demanding job as a GP. He felt burnt out and badly needed to rest. The plan was to sleep late, read a novel, take the odd leisurely walk, maybe catch up on “Game of Thrones”. But somehow he found himself instead packing his schedule with art museums, concerts, theatre, meetings with friends in hot new bars and restaurants. Then there were the visits to the gym, Spanish lessons, some flat-pack furniture assemblage.
我有个病人叫埃利奥特，是个工作繁忙的普通科医生，最近他撇下工作请了一周假。他觉得自己精疲力竭，油尽灯枯，急需休息一下。他的打算是睡到自然醒，读读小说，偶尔慢悠悠地散散步，再补一补美剧《权力的游戏》。但不知怎的，他却把日程安排得满满当当：逛美术馆、听音乐会、看戏剧演出、在热门新酒吧和餐厅里与朋友聚会。还有去健身房、上西班牙语课、组装预制板家具。
During the first of his twice-weekly evening sessions, he wondered if he shouldn’t slow down. He felt as exhausted as ever. Facebook and Twitter friends were joking about how it all sounded like harder work than work. “I’m trying to figure out how I’ve managed to be doing so much when I didn’t want to be doing anything. Somehow not doing anything seems impossible. I mean, how can you just…do nothing?!”
他每个星期有两晚上来找我做心理咨询，第一次来的时候，他问我，是不是他不该慢下来。他说他跟以前一样累。脸书和推特上的朋友开玩笑说，他休息起来比上班还累。“我在想，我明明想什么都不做，却不知怎么做了这么多。什么都不做好像根本不可能一样。真的，怎么做才能……什么都不做呢？！”
When Elliot protests that he can’t just do nothing, he is seeing and judging himself from the perspective of a culture that looks with disdain at anything that smacks of inactivity. Under constant self-scrutiny as to whether he is being sufficiently productive, he feels ashamed when he judges himself to have come up short in this regard. But this leaves him at once too drained to work and unable to rest.
埃利奥特抱怨说他做不到什么都不做的时候，其实是站在批判低效无为的文化视角来审视和评判自己。他不断审视自己的效率够不够高，一旦他觉得自己效率不够高，就会感到羞愧而无地自容。但这也让他疲惫不堪无法全力工作，而且根本不能心安理得地休息。
As I describe in my feature for the August/September issue of “1843”, this is the basic predicament of the burnout sufferer: a feeling of exhaustion accompanied by a nervy compulsion to go on regardless is a double bind that makes it very difficult to know how to cope. Burnout involves the loss of the capacity to relax, to “just do nothing”. It prevents an individual from embracing the ordinary pleasures – sleep, long baths, strolling, long lunches, meandering conversation – that induce calm and contentment. It can be counterproductive to recommend relaxing activities to someone who complains that the one thing they cannot do is relax.
我在2016年8月/9月刊《1843》杂志的专题文章中说过，油尽灯枯的人就会面对这种困境：一边觉得自己精疲力竭，一边又神经紧绷地强迫自己继续前进，这种进退两难的处境让人根本不知道该如何应对。油尽灯枯的人，失去了放松的能力，失去了“无所事事”的能力。油尽灯枯的感觉，让人无法享受平淡的乐趣——睡觉、泡澡、散步、悠闲的午餐、漫无目的的闲聊——这些能让人平静和满足的事情。对一个常抱怨自己根本没办法放松的人，建议他们多放松放松，可能会适得其反。
So what does it take to recover the capacity to do nothing, or very little? I might be expected at this point to leap to psychoanalysis as an instant remedy. But psychoanalysis is emotionally demanding, time-consuming and often expensive. Nor does it work for everyone (a basic truth of all therapies, physical or mental).
那么，怎么办才能重新接受无所事事呢？你是不是觉得我要推荐心理分析了？把心理分析吹成特效药，一用就灵？但心理分析是相当消耗心力的，而且费时间费钱。再说了，也不是对每个人都有效（所有治疗都是这样，无论是身体上的还是精神上的，都是这样）。
In less severe cases of burnout, it is often the case that difficulties inducing nervous exhaustion are more external than internal. Time and energy may be drained by life events (bereavement, divorce, changes in financial status and so on) as well as the demands of work.
如果油尽灯枯的症状不算太严重，那让人神经紧张、精疲力竭的困难，通常是外部因素，而不是内部因素。比如，时间和精力可能被生活中的各种事件消耗殆尽（丧亲之痛、离婚、经济状况恶化等等），当然也包括职场上的压力。
In such cases, it is worth turning in the first instance to more external solutions – cutting working hours as much as possible, carving out more time to relax or for contemplative practices such as yoga and meditation. This is as much a matter of discovering a remedy as the remedy itself. Merely listening and attending to the needs of the inner self as opposed to the demands of the outside world can have a transformative effect.
这种情况下，首先可以尝试外部解决方案——尽可能减少工作时间，多挤出一些放松时间，或者做一些静观类的活动，比如瑜伽和冥想。找到解决办法的过程,本身就是一种解决办法。哪怕只是倾听和专注内心的需求，不去一味顺从外部世界的要求，就能产生改天换地的效果。
But such solutions will seem unrealistic to some sufferers both practically and psychologically. Practically in the sense that many of us are employed in sectors that demand punishing hours and unstinting commitment; psychologically in the sense that reducing working hours, and so taking oneself out of the highest levels of the game, is likely to induce more rather than less anxiety in someone driven relentlessly to achieve more.
但对于某些油尽灯枯的人来说，这些方法并不现实，不仅现实不允许，心理上也做不到。现实中，很多人所在的行业，都需要投入极其辛苦的工作时间和毫无保留的身心投入；从心理角度来说，减少工作时间，就意味着退出最高层的竞争，这对于不懈追求更高成就的人来说，不仅不能减轻焦虑，反而会加重焦虑。
So while there are many means by which we can be helped to relax, the predicament of severe burnout is precisely that you cannot be helped to relax. Where burnout has psychological roots, psychoanalysis may be able to help.
所以，虽然有很多办法可以帮我们放松，但油尽灯枯到很严重的时候，问题恰恰就在于，根本不可能放松。如果油尽灯枯的根源是心理问题，那心理分析可能有用。
One way is its “form”. The nervous exhaustion of burnout results from their enslavement to an endless to-do list packed with short- and long-range tasks. In a psychotherapy session, you sit or lie down and begin to talk with no particular agenda, letting yourself go wherever your minds takes you. For portions of a session you might be silent, discovering the value of simply being with someone, without having to justify or account for yourself, instilling an appreciation for what the American psychoanalyst Jonathan Lear calls “mental activity without a purpose.”
首先是心理分析的“形式”有用。油尽灯枯的人神经紧张、精疲力竭，就是因为他们被无穷无尽的待办事项清单所奴役，以完成数不尽的短期和长期的任务。而在心理治疗的过程中，可以坐着或躺着，说话就好了，没有什么特定的目标和时间表，思绪可以随意游走。治疗过程中，也会沉默一段时间，感受和别人单纯呆在一起的意义，不需要为自己辩解，不需要交代什么，从而学会享受美国心理分析师乔纳森·利尔所说的“漫无目的的心理活动”。
Another way is the “content” of psychoanalysis. Talking to a therapist can help us discover those elements in our own history and character that make us particularly vulnerable to specific difficulties such as burnout. In my feature for “1843”, I discuss how two patients came from early childhood to associate their worth and value with their levels of achievement. Under constant pressure from within to “be their best”, they were liable to feel empty and exhausted when, inevitably, they felt they’d failed to live up to this ideal self-image.
其次是心理分析的“内容”有用。和治疗师聊天，能帮我们从自己的经历和性格中找出，是哪些因素让我们特别容易陷入油尽灯枯的困境。我在《1843》杂志的专题文章中说过，有两个病人从小就觉得，自己的成就越高，自己的价值才越高。所处他们内心一直有种压力，逼着自己“做到最好”，所以一旦他们（在所难免地）觉得自己没能实现理想中的自己时，就会感到空虚和精疲力竭。
This was very much the case for Elliot, and goes some way to explaining why the idea of “just doing nothing” so scandalised him. Even today, as they approach old age, Elliot could never imagine his parents putting their feet up talking, reading or watching TV. He remembers family meals taken quickly, with one or both parents in a hurry to rush off to one commitment or another. His own life was heavily scheduled with homework and extra-curricular lessons, and he was never more forcefully admonished by either parent than when he was being “lazy”. “They were kind of compulsively active”, he said, “and made me feel it was shameful to waste time. You could imagine the seats of their chairs were rigged to administer a jolt of current if they sat on them for more than ten minutes.” Only now is he beginning to ask why they, and he in turn, are like this, and why being at rest for any length of time is equivalent in their minds to “wasting” it.
埃利奥特就是这样。这也能在一定程度上解释，为什么“无所事事”这个想法会让他如此反感。即使到了现在，父母都快步入老年了，艾略特还是无法想象他们会坐下来，翘着二郎腿，聊聊天、看看书或者看看电视。他记得小时候家里吃饭，总是匆匆忙忙的，父母中总有一个着急忙慌地干这干那。他自己的生活也被安排得满满当当，作业、课外班，如果他“偷懒”，父母的训斥会格外严厉。“他们好像必须忙起来，”他说，“让我觉得浪费时间是可耻的。就好像，他们的椅子上装了电击装置，只要坐上去超过十分钟，就会被电击。”直到现在，他才开始问自己，为什么他们会这样，为什么他也变成了这样，为什么在他们的观念里，休息一会儿就等于“浪费”时间。
Insight like this can be helpful to challenge our unthinkingly internalised habits of working and our dogmas as to what constitutes a “productive” use of our time. It encourages us to think about what kind of life would be worth living, rather than simply living the life we assume we’re stuck with.
这样的感悟，能帮我们反思那些不假思索就内化的工作习惯，以及什么才算“有效”利用时间的教条。它鼓励我们思考，什么样的人生才值得过，而不是简单地过着我们以为本该如此的生活。
单词短语
disdain
n. the feeling of not liking someone or something and thinking that they do not deserve your interest or respect 轻视，蔑视，鄙视
He regards the process with disdain.
他对这一进程持鄙视态度。
v. to feel disdain for someone or something 轻视，蔑视，鄙视
The older musicians disdain othe new, rock-influenced music.
老一辈音乐家鄙视新出现的摇滚风格音乐。
meandering
adj. moving slowly in no particular direction or with no clear purpose 蜿蜒的，曲折的；不着边际的
a meandering river 蜿蜒曲折的河流
a long meandering speech 东拉西扯的长篇大论
psychoanalysis
n. any of a number of the theories of the human personality that attempt to examine a person's unconscious mind to discover the hidden causes of their mental problems 精神分析学，心理分析学
Sigmund Freud is known as the father of psychoanalysis.
西格蒙德·佛洛依德被誉为精神分析学鼻祖。
bereavement
n. the death of a close relation or friend 丧失亲友
She has recently suffered a bereavement.
她最近刚失去一位亲人。
scandalise
v. shock or horrify (someone) by a real or imagined violation of propriety or morality （不道德的行为）使震惊，使反感，使愤慨
their lack of manners scandalized their hosts 他们的失礼行为让主人家感到震惊
admonish
v. to tell someone that they have done something wrong 告诫；警告；责备
His mother admonished him for eating too quickly.
他妈妈告诫他不要吃得太快。
dogma
n. a fixed, especially religious, belief or set of beliefs that people are expected to accept without any doubts （尤指宗教的）教义，教条信条
the dogmas of faith 信仰的教条
精读精讲——单词短语
threshold
n. the level of point at which you start to experience something, or at which something starts to happen 阈值，界限；七点
e.g. I have a low boredom threshold (=i do feel bored easily.)
我很容易感到厌倦。
aerobically
adv. in an aerobic manner: "with oxygen" or relating to processes that require the presence of free oxygen to occur. 有氧地，需氧地
（形容词形式为aerobic）
e.g. When you work out aerobically, your body burns calories (and fat) in three specific ways.
taper
v. (shape or form) to become progressively smaller or narrower at one end.
e.g. The spire of the building tapers to a point.
v. (athletics and training) to gradually reduce the volume or intensity of a workout routine before a major competition (like a marathon) to allow the body to rest.
e.g. Runners typically taper their mileage in the final two weeks before the race day.
v. (finance and economics) a gradual reduction in the amount of stimulus or central bank actions (like quantitative easing) provided to the economy,
e.g. The Federal Reserve’s decision to taper its bond-buying program caused ripples in the stock market.
v. (healthcare) the act of slowly and gradually reducing a medication or dosage rather than stopping abruptly (”cold turkey”) to safely wean the body off it.
e.g. It is important to taper antidepressants to avoid withdrawal symptoms.
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