Counseling Men Blog - Free Advice for Men

You Might Be a Workaholic if - Take a Work Addiction Test to Find Out

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Part 3 of 3

"You might be a workaholic if..." could easily be a Jeff Foxworthy comedy line.  Just like his famous line, "You might be a redneck if..."

In my counseling men a regular occurrence is hearing guys talk about how much they work and how hard it is to stop thinking about work.  Just this week a guy who owns 10 different businesses said his mind races in bed at night.  Another guy came to his counseling meeting dead tired after working a double shift all night.

Are either of these guys' workaholics or are they just hard workers?  The difference between being a workaholic and not isn't so much about how many hours you work as it is the attitude you have about work.

Are you a workaholic?  Find out by taking the short Work Addiction Risk Test by psychologist Bryan E. Robinson published in the Wall Street Journal.  Click here to find out are you a workaholic.

What did you learn from the test?  I was reminded of a few areas in my life that I can improve.  Don't get too wrapped up in the term workaholic.  Just see what you can learn about how you can live your life in a more healthy way for you and your loved ones.  Below are some other articles on this blog that can help:

• Understanding Men - Why Can't Men Relax?
• Stress Management for the Workaholic on Vacation

* This is the third article of three on the topic of understanding men, their stress management, and being a workaholic.  You can read the first two articles by clicking the links above. Sign-up for our blog on the right side of this page and start getting notified of valuable articles like these (you can get notified by email or RSS feed).

Stress Management for the Workaholic on Vacation

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Part 2 of 3

Do some people really need stress management while on vacation?  Consider these statistics:

• 3%: Suffer from 'leisure sickness' on vacation. Signs include fatigue, muscle pain, nausea and flu-like symptoms.
• 19%: Have canceled or postponed vacation plans due to work.
• 56%: Say they are more in need of a vacation than in past years.

These numbers are from the Wall Street Journal Article, Why Relaxing Is Hard Work.  In the article, Bryan E. Robinson, author of "Chained to the Desk, a Guidebook for Workaholics" and professor emeritus at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, says:

• About one-quarter of the population could be classified as workaholic, though it comes in varying degrees.
• One version is the workaholic who is physically on vacation but mentally still at work. "He may be playing catch with his daughter, but his mind is somewhere else. And she can probably tell, even though she's only 7," he says.

So if you might be a workaholic and you're going on vacation, what do you do for stress management?  Here are some stress management tips from the WSJ article for the guy who needs to relax but has trouble doing so:

1. Try something new. Learning something in a new place can be more relaxing and refreshing than trying to do nothing. While it's good to get outside your comfort zone, it's not necessary to explode out of it. "I don't want to go bungee jumping," says Matthew Edlund, a sleep expert in Sarasota, Fla., and author of "The Power of Rest" who says he'd much prefer walking through Berlin or Beijing. "You decide what your level of adventurousness is and do it."
2. Have a plan, but be flexible. Completely winging it somewhere can be stressful, so have a rough idea of what you're going to do, but be willing to change it. "If you find that you're on a beach and you're bored out of your mind, get up and do something else," says Dr. Edlund.
3. Get physical. Besides releasing endorphins, exercise also burns off excess adrenaline and cortisol. The "flight" can be on the treadmill, after all. If you haven't been exercising, a vacation can be a good time to start. Even a walk on the beach can be invigorating for a chaise potato. At the other extreme, some people relax by doing marathons or triathlons. But overdoing it be stressful as well.
4. Build in a buffer. Don't work right up until the moment you leave and head back to work right off the plane. If possible, schedule an extra day off before you depart and another when you come back to dive back in slowly.
5. Manage expectations. Make sure your colleagues and clients know that you'll be away and checking in only occasionally; tell those back home the kind of matters you want to be bothered about.
6. Breathe. As New Agey as it sounds, meditating and paced breathing can stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, which works to balance the surges of adrenaline and cortisol that accompany stress, says Dr. Rosch.
7. Practice mindfulness: Research suggests that focusing the mind on the present moment can have profound effects. Mostly, it involves observing your surrounds without making judgments. Try observing your own feelings.

Stress management isn't really that hard -- it just takes a little planning and effort.  So which one of these stress management tips could you start using this week?  Remember, you don't need to practice stress management just on vacation.

Read Part 1 Here: Understanding Men - Why Can't Men Relax?

* This is the second article of three on the topic of understanding men.  In the next article we'll take a quiz to find out if you might be a workaholic.  Sign-up for our blog on the right side of this page and be sure not to miss any parts of this series (you can get notified by email or RSS feed).

Understanding Men - Why Can't Men Relax?

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Part 1 of 3

Understanding men isn't easy.  Here's an example:

The water's blue, the waves are lapping. Geez, it's hot. Do I have enough sunscreen on? Why did I wear this bathing suit? How long have we been here? I wonder what's happening at the office. Have they finished that project? Where is that cell phone? Wait, don't tell me there's no service!

Sound like any man you know -- on vacation, but still working and irritable?  Why can't men relax?

The above description is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal Article, Why Relaxing Is Hard Work (For purposes of this article I'm assuming this description is of a man, but I realize it could describe many women as well).

What's going on with this man on vacation that keeps him from relaxing?  Understanding men requires learning what's going on internally.  So let's take a look at some other excerpts from the article:

• Only 53% of working Americans say they come back feeling rested and rejuvenated after vacation, and 30% say they have trouble coping with work stress while they're away, according to an Expedia.com survey of 1,530.
• For some people, the withdrawal of stress can be similar to withdrawing from steroids—including changes in glucose metabolism and dramatic mood swings, says Conor Liston, a psychiatry resident at Weill Medical College in New York City who was the lead investigator of a brain study on stress.
• Other people seem to get so addicted to the adrenaline rush from stress that they gravitate to high-pressure jobs and keep piling on new challenges; some subconsciously push deadlines and complicate projects, creating stress unnecessarily.
• Put someone like that on a beach for a week, and it's no wonder they can't relax. For them, the best vacations involve physical or mental stimulation, anything from hang-gliding to culinary classes.
• "...The workaholic is on the ski slope dreaming about being in the office," says Bryan E. Robinson, author of "Chained to the Desk, a Guidebook for Workaholics." He says true workaholics are driven less by real workplace demands than by low self-esteem and fear of inadequacy. They bring all those feelings with them on vacation, along with added guilt of being away.
• "For a lot of workaholics, work alleviates anxiety, and when you are not working, the anxiety bubbles up," says Dr. Robinson, who says that he used to pretend to rest—and secretly work instead—while his family went to the beach. "It calmed me down, like a drink calms an alcoholic," he says.

In understanding men and answering the question why can't men relax, here are a couple of things to take from this article:

• Men can get addicted to the chemical high of stress
• When addicted, men will seek out even more stress
• Low self-esteem can be an underlying drive for men's obsessive work
• Men can use work to relieve anxiety

If you know a man who this describes, get him some help from a professional counselor who knows men.  Men who can't relax are at risk for high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, chronic pain, and a weakened immune system, as well as depression, anxiety, and exhaustion.

Even men need help understanding men and why they do what they do.

* This is the first article of three on the topic of understanding men.  In the next article we'll look at 7 ways men can learn how to relax.  Sign-up for our blog on the right side of this page and be sure not to miss any parts of this series (you can get notified by email or RSS feed).

Controlling Husbands or Controlling Wives - Dangerous For Your Heart

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Is Marriage Good for Your Health?  Here are some answers from the article Is Marriage Good for Your Health? by Tara Parker-Hope published in The New York Times.  Take note of the affects of having a controlling husband or controlling wife.

• Other researchers have also studied how the "drip, drip" of negativity can erode not only a marriage itself but also a couple's physical health. A number of epidemiological studies suggest that unhappily married couples are at higher risk for heart attacks and cardiovascular disease than happily married couples.
• Smith's results suggest that there are important differences between men and women when it comes to health and the style of conflict that can jeopardize it.
• The women in his study who were at highest risk for signs of heart disease were those whose marital battles lacked any signs of warmth, not even a stray term of endearment during a hostile discussion ("Honey, you're driving me crazy!") or a minor pat on the back or squeeze of the hand, all of which can signal affection in the midst of anger.
• "Most of the literature assumes that it's how bad the arguments get that drives the effect, but it's actually the lack of affection that does it," Smith told me. "It wasn't how much nasty talk there was. It was the lack of warmth that predicted risk."
• For men, on the other hand, hostile and negative marital battles seemed to have no effect on heart risk. Men were at risk for a higher coronary calcium score, however, when their marital spats turned into battles for control. It didn't matter whether it was the husband or wife who was trying to gain control of the matter; it was merely any appearance of controlling language that put men on the path of heart disease.
• The solution, Smith noted, isn't to stop fighting. It's to fight more thoughtfully. "Difficulties in marriage seem to be nearly universal," he said. "Just try not to let fights be any nastier than they need to be."

Here are a 3 of take aways for your next fight:

1. Learn how to fight better;
2. Include some form of affection toward your wife in your disagreements;
3. Watch out for battles for control and don't use controlling language with your husband.

Marriage & Money Stress - How to Stop Money Fights

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Part 1 of 2

Randy's really worried about his family's finances.  They've got one income and are overspending by a large amount every month.  He knows that they're approaching their credit limits and it can't go on much longer.

He wants to sell the house.  Their house is too big and too expensive.  When they bought it several years ago the mortgage and other expenses seemed manageable, even though even then it was a bit of a stretch.  Not anymore.  But they can't sell it, at least not for enough to make moving make sense.

So Randy's been looking for other ways to balance the budget.  He asked his wife, Erin, what she thought about cutting back the Dish Network bill.  She replied, "We can't change that."  He thought that he could handle the pool upkeep, so he suggested cutting the pool service.  Again she replied, "We can't change that."

He told me in our last counseling for men meeting that he doesn't know what to do.  Erin refuses to consider even the possibility of cutting their spending.  And he's even more frustrated because on top of her refusal she still says she can't understand why he struggles with anger.

It's common for those of us in relationships to hope that during difficult times, like the money stress Randy and Erin are experiencing in their marriage, that the two of us will come together as a team and face the challenge as partners.  Sadly, that's only a dream for many of us. 

The reality often is that when stress comes most of us go to our dysfunctional selves rather than our best selves.  We fear change, the unknown, become paralyzed, can't see possibilities, and quite frequently become polarized as a couple.

Money is one of the easiest topics for couples to become polarized about (have opposing view points).  The situation Randy and Erin are in is really common.  So how do they stop their money fights?

* This is the first article of two examining a real couple struggling with money stress in their marriage.  In the next article we'll look at what they can do to stop their money fights.  Sign-up for our blog on the right side of this page and be sure to get the next article (you can get notified by email or RSS feed).

You Need Anger Management Because Anger is Killing You

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Many men are mad as hell.  Our anger isn't just hurting us, such as destroying our marriages, it's also killing us. 

You may think your anger isn't this extreme, or that you don't get angry, but if you're like most of the men I work with, anger is affecting you negatively more than you realize.  All of us, myself included, need to take the destructive aspects of anger seriously and change some of our habits.

Here are some interesting facts about extreme anger from the article Why So Angry? published in Men's Health.  Take a minute and see what you can learn.

• According to a 2006 Harvard study, 10 million adult men in the United States are so angry, they're sick. In fact, their disease has a name: intermittent explosive disorder, or IED.
• Previous estimates put the number of IED sufferers in America at less than 0.5 percent of the population. But if the Harvard researchers are correct, almost 1 in 10 adult men routinely display wildly disproportionate aggression, and are so angry that they're likely to damage property, or threaten or injure others.
• Considered alone, the symptoms of the disorder are easy to dismiss: a commuter flipping off a fellow driver in a traffic jam, a basketball player charging the stands during an NBA game, the guy I saw a few rows back screaming at the hot-dog vendor because he had no mustard left. But there's more behind an IED diagnosis than a few isolated acts of rage. "If you're blowing up a couple of times a week, you probably have the disorder," says Emil Coccaro, M.D., a leading anger researcher at the University of Chicago. "The average person shouldn't be having arguments and temper tantrums."
• "Anger is like cigarette smoking," says Howard Kassinove, Ph.D., an anger researcher at Hofstra University. "In the short run, you feel good. In the long run, you're more likely to die of heart disease or stroke. People think it's macho to be angry. It's more macho to be alive."
• Michael Overstreet used to think his fuse was simply short. When the 46-year-old Minnesota engineer was 15, he chased his sister to her bedroom and booted away at the door until it splintered and he could see inside. Years later, he'd turn from loving husband to drill sergeant in a snap, leaving his 3-year-old son to referee between screaming father and sobbing mother. . . Finally, his wife had enough and ended the marriage.
• Is it any surprise, then, that Overstreet's grandfather used to lash out when his mashed potatoes had too much gravy?
• Most anger is productive. In Anger: Taming the Beast, therapist Reneau Peurifoy proposes a three-part test to decide whether your anger is helpful, rather than hurtful: (1) A real threat existed. (2) The level of your anger was proportionate to the threat. (3) Your actions.
• Dr. Coccaro proposes an easier test to determine whether you should seek help: "Ask yourself: Does it get me into trouble?" he says. "It really is that simple. If people tell you that you have to calm down, or that you have an anger problem, you probably have one."
• In fact, more than 30,000 heart attacks each year are triggered by momentary anger, according to a 2004 Harvard study. "People who have a lot of anger invest a lot of energy in trying to control it, and that kind of friction is likely to increase the probability of a heart attack," says Charles Spielberger, Ph.D., a University of South Florida psychologist who developed the most widely used test to measure anger. "The more intense the anger, the more likely the heart attack."
• Other studies have shown that angry men are three times more likely to develop premature cardiovascular disease, six times more likely to have an early heart attack, and three times more likely to have a stroke.
• In other words, chill or die.
• Last fall, Michael Overstreet felt like he had his anger licked when he took his fiancée to Breezy Point, Minnesota, for a friend's wedding. That night, they returned to the condo they were sharing with other couples, only to find the front door locked.
   
  "Suddenly, I began pounding on the door, and my friend's wife came out and confronted me," Overstreet recalls. "I was screaming at her and calling her a bitch, saying, 'Why the f--- am I locked out?' Some of the guys got protective and stepped in. It was an unsettling event for everyone."
   
  The blowup was textbook IED: A simple argument rapidly escalated. Overstreet was forced to sleep in a separate condo, and, afterward, he wrote personal letters of apology to all his friends and their wives who had witnessed his outburst. The rush of guilt is another telltale sign of IED.
   
  Soon after, his fiancée returned the engagement ring. But he's had no major blowups since then, and now the engagement is back on. He says that maybe, just maybe, he finally has his temper under control. His only regret is that he didn't seek help sooner. His message to men: Don't let anger destroy your life.

If you're a little like Michael, or the partner of someone who is, take his advice and get some help.  Anger management classes can help you both can keep anger from destroying your lives.

Know anyone who's anger looks like this?

How to Get the Husband of Your Dreams

Learn how your husband rates compared to other husbands and help him get back to being the man you fell in love with. Take our Free Husband Rater Quiz (quizzes for both wives and husbands).

Men Got STRESS - Top American Stressors & Stress Management Tips

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Seven in ten Americans cite money as their most significant source of stress.  The American Psychological Association's (APA) 2009 Stress in America survey found that 71% of Americans cited money as their leading sources of stress, 69% said work, 63% the economy, and 55% named family responsibilities.

"According to our survey three quarters of adults in this country already report moderate to high levels of stress," said Katherine Nordal, PhD. "The holiday season can bring with it additional emotional and financial stressors that can negatively impact both physical and mental health."

Of particular importance for parents were the findings that children are nearly two times more likely to worry about financial concerns than their parents realize. The survey found 30% of children reporting that they worry about their family having enough money, while only 18% of parents thought that this is a source of stress for their child.

Clearly, men have got stress, so here are some simple stress management tips from the APA to help you manage holiday stress and enjoy the season:

1. Take Time for Yourself -- By slowing down you will actually have more energy to accomplish your goals.
2. Volunteer -- Helping others who are less fortunate can put hardships in perspective and can build stronger family relationships.
3. Set Realistic Expectations -- Create a realistic budget and remind your children that the holidays aren't about expensive gifts.
4. Remember What's Important -- Commercialism can overshadow the true sentiment of the holiday season.  Remind yourself that family, friends and the relationships in our lives are what matter most.
5. Seek Support -- Consider talking with a professional counselor to help you develop coping strategies and better manage your stress.

Read more about their findings and suggestions here -- Top Stressors for Americans.