Summer Jeirles 

Isn’t that what one song claims Christmas to be? It is not surprising to see how many clients out there do not find this to be the most wonderful time of the year, and in fact, even abhor the holidays.

The only client deaths that I have had to deal with previously; were deaths due to overdoses or alcohol-related conditions. While those deaths were no easier to wrap my brain around and grieve; the part that was different, was that those clients were ones that had already left the facility I was working at by that time.

I had recently read an online article that was almost a startling follow-up from an article that a particular author had written last year. In last year’s article, she chronicled her life-changing decision to leave her $95k/year job as a writer in New York City, to move to the Virgin Islands, and work in an ice cream parlor.

Plenty of people have heard the word “workaholic” before—and many people primarily associate workaholism with one who “works a lot” (Killinger, 2011). In fact, workaholism refers to having an inner compulsion to work, with both work, and work-related issues taking priority over a social life or family time (Killinger, 2011).

Two points discussed in my prior blogs include: people pleasing as a symptom of codependency, and why people enable. As a recap, codependent relationships have a tendency towards a more consistent imbalance in power (Lancer, 2015). When someone is people pleasing, the person on the receiving end of the people pleasing may be the one primarily in power in the relationship—especially if they are controlling or abusive in such a manner that the people pleaser “walks on eggshells” around the other person.