Performance Addiction: The Dangerous New Syndrome and How to Stop it from Ruining Your Life

by Arthur P. Ciaramicoli

""The best book I've seen on how we can stop sabotaging our need for balance. Compulsive achievers will find here everything they need to gain the sense of satisfaction that's eluded them. This book is a must-read for men and women struggling with the mystery of why they're not happy. This is a most wise, helpful, and important book, and it's wonderfully readable.""
-Mira Kirshenbaum
author of Everything Happens for a Reason and The Emotional Energy Factor
""Every perfectionistic, hypervigilant person wondering why peace of mind is so elusive should read this book. Dr. Ciaramicoli totally nails the issue of performance addiction and offers all the help you need. A life-changing book.""
-Dr. Charles Foster, author of Feel Better Fast
""A much-welcome, reader-friendly, utterly unpretentious call to sanity. With clarity and disarming simplicity, Dr. Arthur Ciaramicoli exposes the futility and indeed the harm of our collective compulsive ride on the achievement treadmill. . . . Performance Addiction is a crash course in essential wisdom for today. Read it and give it to anyone about whose mental health and happiness you deeply care.""
-P. M. Forni, Professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of Choosing Civility
""Integrating theory with compelling stories from his clinical practice, Dr. Ciaramicoli provides concrete, practical methods to address the growing problem of performance addiction.""
-Richard Kadison, M.D.
Chief, Mental Health Services, Harvard University Health Services
Do you achieve goals without feeling fulfilled?
Do you think your hard work will win you love and respect?
Do you feel as if you're never doing well enough?
In this intriguing and prescriptive guide, Harvard Medical School instructor Dr. Arthur P. Ciaramicoli explains this new psychological issue, revealing the reasons why the label of success so rarely leads to happiness. Performance Addiction gives you action steps for freeing yourself from the obligation to excel, finding new meaning in your work and relationships, and going beyond material reward to obtain genuine, healthy accomplishment throughout your life. Through illuminating self-evaluations and writing exercises, you'll gain a stronger sense of self, learn to balance your work and your personal life, and at long last find the satisfaction that comes from breaking your patterns of addictive behavior and finding new, better ways to accept and give love.

235 pages, Hardcover

First published July 14, 2004

About the author

Arthur P. Ciaramicoli, Ed.D., Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist who has been treating clients for more than 30 years. He is a member of the American Psychological Association and the Massachusetts Psychological Association. Currently in private practice, Dr. Ciaramicoli has been on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for several years, lecturer for the American Cancer Society, Chief Psychologist at Metrowest Medical Center, and director of the Metrowest Counseling Center and of the Alternative Medicine division of Metrowest Wellness Center in Framingham, Massachusetts.

In addition to treating patients, Dr. Ciaramicoli is a consultant to the Johns Hopkins Civility Initiative, and has lectured at Harvard Health Services, Boston College Counseling Center, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore as well as being a consultant to several major corporations in the Boston area.

Dr. Ciaramicoli is also a seasoned media expert. He has appeared on CNN, CNNfn, Fox News Boston, Comcast TV, New England Cable News, Good Morning America Weekend, The O’Reilly Report, and other shows. He has been a weekly radio guest on Your Healthy Family on Sirius Satellite Radio and Holistic Health Today, and has been interviewed on The People’s Pharmacy, The Gary Null Show, and more than two dozen other radio programs airing on NPR, XM Radio, and numerous AM and FM stations.

Dr. Ciaramicoli is the author of Performance Addiction: The Dangerous New Syndrome and How to Stop It from Ruining Your Life (Wiley 2004) and The Power of Empathy: A Practical Guide to Creating Intimacy, Self-Understanding, and Lasting Love (Dutton 2000), which is now published in 7 languages and is soon to be released in Turkey. His first book, Treatment of Abuse and Addiction, A Holistic Approach(Jason Aronson, 1997) was selected as Book of the Month by The Psychotherapy Book News. He is also the coauthor of Beyond the Influence: Understanding and Defeating Alcoholism (Bantam 2000). Dr. Ciaramicoli lives in a suburb of Boston with his wife and two daughters.