Progressive leaders and organizers are obviously not the only ones who suffer from burnout in our society. Burnout, stress, workaholism, and type-A behavior are ubiquitous in our current economic rat-race and in a culture that privileges the bottom line over the quality of life. The special irony of this syndrome among progressive activists, however, is that we are supposed to be in the business of changing the world in ways that reduce stress, even as we, ourselves, break down under the weight of it. After all, the "good life" for which we're fighting isn't one in which the drum beat of daily life sucks the energy out of the body and soul. Too often, our message seems to be, "Do as we say, not as we do."

The stress and joylessness that so often mark progressive workplaces need not define the whole of life in order for it to be a problem. Obviously, there are material benefits enjoyed by leaders and activists in their work, as well as the even more important satisfactions of doing mission-driven work. In fact, it's a testament to the ways that the work of social change speaks to deep needs for meaning and connectedness that so many of us are willing to forgo better paying jobs outside the movement in the first place. Still, the toll taken on the quality of our lives by the habits and culture of political activism is tragic.

On first glance, such a tragedy doesn't seem avoidable. Progressive leaders live at the intersection of a perfect storm of pressures and demands that make self-care difficult:

1) Their organizations are understaffed, driving leaders to have to do too much, cover too many bases, act too often like the little Dutch boy who almost died holding back the floodwaters by putting his thumb in the damaged dike.

2) The Right is always working to annihilate us. The pressure to be continually fighting a defensive war for survival tends to sap our energies and make "balance" seem like a selfish distraction or pipe dream.

3) Progressive organizations often have a "martyr culture," a way of doing things that privileges the needs of others, views personal sacrifice as ennobling, and condemns as selfish, healthy attempts to put limits around one's time and availability.

Such dysfunctions become incorporated into the everyday culture of progressive organizations and, as a result, become invisible. The fish doesn't know it's in water. And, as if this weren't enough, people who stay in the progressive movement adapt to these external dysfunctions by internalizing them. One senior organizer told me that he trained young organizers the way he'd been trained, namely, he threw them into tough situations to see if they'd sink or swim. Sadly, such adaptation to a debilitating work culture is made easier because those doing the adapting are already predisposed to be self-sacrificial, predisposed by their backgrounds, their families, personalities and temperaments. In other words, too many leaders and organizers are already inclined to view constant conflict and crisis as normal, to readily shoulder feelings of omnipotent responsibility, and to be self-sacrificing martyrs for the "cause."

Social reality, organizational structure and culture, and individual psychology all come to mirror each other, making burnout-now experienced as normal-extremely difficult to change. Self-care itself-mindful and compassionate attention paid to one's own health and well-being at all levels-becomes the outlier, the exception to the rule, and can even be viewed as disloyal. Everyone suffers as a result.

Over the course of my 30 years of studying this phenomenon, I'm convinced that the solution to it has to involve attending simultaneously to its multiple levels. It can't be altered by simply changing organizational practices. And it can't be changed by putting everyone into psychotherapy. In order to make mindful self-care a core feature of our organizations and movement, it has to become a priority at all levels, outside and inside, reflected in the norms of the organization, reiterated as a value and virtue by that organization's leaders, and supported and reinforced by coaching and a culture that values health and self-reflection. And all of these efforts have to be grounded in a deep understanding of the causes of burnout and the difficulties treating it.

It's easy to blame external factors for overwork and burnout, but a deeper analysis reveals that progressive leaders and activists also have an internal conflict about leading physically and mentally healthy lives. Because such ambivalence sounds patently foolish, it's much harder to admit, much less explore. Like everyone else, people active in progressive politics consciously desire health and happiness in their work, strive to achieve their mission while enjoying the fruits of health, love, pride, and joy. The conflict has to arise from a source that's less conscious. At a less conscious level, our normal desires for health are at war with less healthy beliefs and fears that we're not really supposed to have good things and feel entitled to take care of ourselves.

This conflict is extremely common.

Our hope is at war with our fear, our optimism with our pessimism, and our aspirations with our cynicism. We consciously seek the light but unconsciously default to a belief in the darkness.

One of the fundamental discoveries gained from studying child development is that children-all of us-take what is-the reality in which we find ourselves--as equivalent to what is supposed to be. In our childhood minds, minds not yet steeped in left-brain adult reasoning and the rational logic of cause-and-effect, we experience the emotional and social world in which we find ourselves as the way that we and the world are supposed to be. Something that is actually created by particular human beings--our parenting, family dynamics, cultural milieu, etc.--instead feels natural. If our families are unhappy, stressed, dysfunctional, or neglectful, we don't think: "Boy, are they screwed up! I'm sure glad I'm happy and safe and not part of that culture!" Instead, by osmosis, the awesome authority of our parents and families to define reality and morality leads us to take their story, the one unfolding around us, as the true story, the only real story, despite what is said or consciously intended.