Take that Nap! It May Boost Your Learning Capacity Among Other Good Things. By Scott Barry Kaufman for Psychology Today

Anyone who knows me knows that my favorite pastime is napping. In College, I would come back to my dorm room, and like clockwork, would take a nap. My best friend in England, who got quite a kick out of my passion for napping, once tried to persuade me to drink a cup of tea after lunch instead of taking my customary nap. I really tried, but I soon gave in to my nap cravings. Sometimes I feel like I really need to re-charge my brain batteries.

Well, now science is on my side. I just love this new study, which was presented by Matthew Walker, assistant professor at UC Berkeley, at the annual meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conference in San Diego this past Sunday.

At noon, both groups took a learning task thought to recruit the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a region of the brain known to play an important role in the formation of new memories. Over the past few years, various researchers have found that fact-based memories are temporarily stored in the hippocampus before other regions of the brain can operate on the content, especially the regions of the brain responsible for higher-order reasoning and thinking.  At this point in the experiment, both groups showed similar levels of performance. 

Then, at 2pm, the nap group took a 90-minute nap while the no-nap group stayed awake, presumably watching the nap group enjoying their nap. After nap-time both groups then took more learning tests. The nappers did better on the tasks than those who stayed awake, demonstrating their higher capacity to learn.

The researchers interpret these findings as supporting their hypothesis that a major function of sleep is to clear away all the clutter stored in the hippocampus to make room for new information. In the words of Walker:

“It’s as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact e-mails, you’re not going to receive any more mail. It’s just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder.”

Walker also likens the brain to a sponge:

“Sleep is critical for learning. It’s like the brain is a sponge. Sleep wrings certain key regions out so you’re able to soak up new information the next day.”

Short mid-day naps may be good because they get you into a particularly beneficial part of the sleep cycle. EEG studies (that measure the electrical activity of the brain) have shown that this memory-refreshing process occurs during Stage 2 non-REM sleep. We actually spend at least 50% of our sleeping time in this stage, suggesting an adaptive purpose for this stage of sleep:

“I can’t imagine Mother Nature would have us spend 50 percent of the night going from one sleep stage to another for no reason. Sleep is sophisticated. It acts locally to give us what we need,” says Walker.

Now, what about that cup of tea? Was my friend in England right? His advice is usually spot-on, but this time he may have been misguided.  Sara Mednick at the UC San Diego (and author of the book: Take a Nap! Change Your Life) divided her subjects into two groups: one group received 200 mg of caffeine and did not nap and the other group just took a nap. Then both groups underwent a battery of tasks, including measures of typing, and measures of memory recall, tapping into visual, verbal, and motor memory. She found that the day nappers did better on all the tasks than those who popped the caffeiene pill. “Of course, that’s bad news for Starbucks,” says Mednick. Mednick also notes: “Which would you rather be: wired or smart?”

Mednick points out that the time during the day a person should nap varies depending on the person’s age. She says that since teenagers and young adults have a slightly shifted sleep cycle, going to bed late and waking up early, their ideal napping window is in the afternoon, around 4p.m. The ideal napping window for adults, in contrast, is between 1 to 3 p.m., since adults usually sleep between 11 p.m. and midnight and wake up between 6.am. and 8 am.

Walker and his colleagues are also interested in the link between age and the function of sleep. They are now investigating whether the reduction of sleep as we age is associated with the well-replicated decrease in our ability to learn as we age. As noted in the official UC Berkeley University press release, this is fascinating research and could greatly improve our understanding of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Sleeping is Good for You

The Walker and colleagues study is one among a number that show that sleep, more generally, can be very beneficial for a wide range of positive outcomes. At UC Berkeley, both Walker’s research group and Allison Harvey’s group at the Sleep and Psychological Disorder Laboratory have found that getting a good amount of sleep at night is tied to a better immune system, metabolic control, memory, learning, and emotional functioning. Most of us are familiar with the often cited finding that pulling an all-nighter the night before an exam can decrease the ability to remember the information by roughly 40 percent, but it’s really cool to see all these other benefits of sleep.

I can relate. Sometimes when I am learning a new tune on my piano, I get frustrated in the moment when I think I am no longer making progress. Sometimes when I try to tackle the song the next day after a good night’s sleep, I realize I have learnt the whole thing the night before! In fact, research does show that people have 20 to 30 percent better recall of what they learned during a piano lesson if they are tested after a full eight hours of sleep than if they are tested right after the piano lesson.

There are also benefits of sleep for creativity. Multiple threads of research support this notion, and the link between sleeping and creativity has been noted by prominent researchers such as Jerome Singer as well as Walker:

“This starts to sound a lot like the basis for human creativity. The fusing of things that don’t seem to have any connection. That’s what sleep, particularly dreaming does. Like good cooking, when it comes to memory, it’s not enough to chop up the ingredients and put them together. The brain needs time to let things marinate.”

Sleeping may even have important affects on depression. Some researchers now believe that chronic sleep deprivation may lead to depression, rather than depression causing one to sleep less (which was what researchers used to think was the causal link).  In one study, which I believe is still ongoing, Harvey’s research group along with the Kaier Permanente Center for Health Research in Oregon recruited 60 middle and high school students to investigate whether more sleep can lower the risk factor for depression. In their study, the teens will report on their sleep habits for 12-weeks, undergoing 12 one-hour, once-a-week sessions of cognitive behavior therapy that will focus on sleep and mood patterns. 

It’s clear then that sleep is adaptive for many positive outcomes.

“We are getting close to understanding some of the functions of sleep, yet society still treats sleep like a luxury. We say, ‘When I have two weeks’ vacation I’m going to allow myself to sleep eight hours.’ But we would never say that about water or food. If there’s something that gets shortchanged, it’s always sleep,” notes Walker.

In fact, it turns out that people who take regular naps and get a good night’s sleep may have the ability to learn twice as much as those who just get a good night’s rest. This is all important research, especially in light of the fact that about 40% of Americans get less than 7 hours of shut-eye a night (teenagers are advised to sleep about 9 hours a night) and two-thirds of women report having difficulty falling asleep more than three nights a week. As Mednick notes: “We are a sleep-deprived nation.” Mednick and other officials at UC San Diego even organized a “nap-in” last year during International Napping Day (don’t you wish every day was International Napping Day?).

So, to all the napping haters out there, check out the research. But really, doesn’t this research all really just confirm what mothers have been telling us all along? Walker thinks so.

“My research is not revolutionary, because your mother knew it all along.

Hypochondria: The Impossible Illness

It begins innocently enough. Just recently, for example, I woke up with blurry vision in my left eye. I was OK for a while. I rubbed the eye. Tried lubricating drops. But when the vision remained blurred for several days, my mind began to wander. Is something wrong with that side of my brain? Why is my neck hurting? I mentioned it to my wife, who said, “You’re probably fine—don’t go to the computer.” I went to the computer, where I Googled “blurred vision and tumor.” A whopping 199,000 results came up, many of which confirmed my worst nightmares.

On cue, I was overcome by dread. Actually, a blackness. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to think. Or eat. I was dying. I knew I was dying.

My lowest moment came two summers ago, when—in the midst of an otherwise uneventful trip to Florida to see the in-laws—I was overcome by despair about the Lou Gehrig’s disease eating away at my body. What brought it on? I’m not certain. Stress, perhaps. Or anxiety. My arms were heavy, my breathing was strained. I locked myself in a bedroom and told my wife to handle our two children without me. Finally, she insisted I get help. “This isn’t going well,” she said. “You need to talk to someone.”

I immediately contacted a therapist, who convinced me of my irrationality. But now there’s this pain in my stomach.

This damned pain … the greeks invented the term to describe ailments caused by movement of the upper region of the abdomen—from hypo (below) and chondros (breast bone cartilage). By the late 19th century, however, hypochondriasis had come to mean “illness without a specific cause.”

In the year 2010, hypochondriasis is as covert and confounding as ever.

10 Ways to Perk Up Your Relationship

How to Practice Radical Acceptance

These days, with all the bells and whistles at our disposal to make our lives easier and better, it might be easy to think that if we just had a better job, more money, the perfect husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend, or a trip to Hawaii, we would then finally be satisfied. But I wonder how people achieved satisfaction before the invention of dishwashers or trips to Maui? It can’t be a requirement to achieve fulfillment, or at least not for the zillions of people that don’t live on Maui.

So I Googled satisfaction to see if the answer to these questions could be found on the internet. I found links to sites on sexual satisfaction, satisfaction through hypnotherapy, World of Warcraft satisfaction, and surveys showing increased satisfaction with police services in a town I’d never heard of. I don’t know about you, but I’m not feeling satisfied yet.

According to Wikipedia, satisfaction, or contentment, is the freedom from anxiety, want or need, in the Buddhist tradition. Sounds like this is at direct contrast the Western idea that owning the perfect collection of stereo equipment will make all of us perfectly happy.

Now, I understand that the “American Dream” is to be wholly and completely rewarded and enchanted by your job—to find a profession that you love so much that you wake up every morning thrilled to go to work (and this job should also make you obscenely rich, but we’ll get to that later). But somewhere on the road to the perfect job we sometimes get waylaid by other things, like paying the bills. In these tough economic times it can be hard to find a job or even keep a job. That being said, if you can’t find satisfaction between 9 and 5, you can always look for it between 5 and 9–the time after work.

How do we attain satisfaction? I may not have a magical potion to bless people with happiness, but I have a few ideas. Number one, stop and smell the roses….literally. Stop and smell the carnations, if you must, dandelions even. But take 15 seconds every day, or better yet, every hour, to find something nearby to find inspiration in. That charming smile on the toothless old man on the street corner? Heartwarming! The eager puppy jumping up and down and biting your shins as you walk by? Delightful! Sometimes this instruction is easier than others, if you’re suffering from depression, dealing with a divorce, or coping with losing your job, this might be difficult, but that doesn’t mean you can’t try it when you’re feeling better.

As an Existential therapist, one of my biggest concerns is how connected I am, and my clients are, to other people. One of the most satisfying elements in my own life is my connection to my family and the other people I love. Sometimes people may try our patience, but our connections with each other are more important than all the money in the world. Don’t forget how important it is to maintain physical contact, hug someone when you get a chance!

One of the first steps to attaining satisfaction involves slowing…way…down. Take a deep breath, friend. Are you getting carried away with work projects, feeling stressed out and overworked? I’m not telling you to quit your job, but simplify as much as possible. This process can make you a little bit crazy in itself, but you’ll thank me when you’re done. If you are feeling harried and busy most of the time, keep a calendar of what it is you’re spending your time on. If it’s a lot of obligatory phone calls, looking at things on the internet, or watching TV, odds are you can cut that time back some. Try sitting on your couch, without any music or television on, for 15 minutes. Notice what you can perceive with your five senses. What do you see? What do you hear?

Fall is an amazing time to find something to appreciate, the leaves on the trees, at least in the Seattle area, are stunning. Kick some leaves around! Don’t forget, the ultimate feel-good holiday is just around the corner. Find a young kid to go window shopping with. Sing some Christmas songs. I can only hope, after all of these instructions, you might feel a little bit more satisfied than when you started reading this!

60 Tips for Helping People who have Schizophrenia

* Tips for Handling a crisis
* Tips for Communicating
* Tips for Avoiding Relapses
* Setting Boundaries
* How to behave around someone with a brain disease like schizophrenia
* Tips for Coping with Having a Family Member who has Schizophrenia

By Rex Dickens or the NAMI Sibling and Adult Children Network.

If you have a family member with neurobiological disorder (”NBD”, formerly known as mental illness), remember these points:

1. You cannot cure a mental disorder for a family member.

2. Despite your efforts, symptoms may get worse, or may improve.

3. If you feel much resentment, you are giving too much.

4. It is as hard for the individual to accept the disorder as it is for other family members.

5. Acceptance of the disorder by all concerned may be helpful, but not necessary.

6. A delusion will not go away by reasoning and therefore needs no discussion.

7. You may learn something about yourself as you learn about a family member’s mental disorder.

8. Separate the person from the disorder. Love the person, even if you hate the disorder.

9. Separate medication side effects from the disorder/person.

10. It is not OK for you to be neglected. You have needs & wants too.

11. Your chances of getting mental illness as a sibling or adult child of someone with NBD are 10-14%. If you are older than 30, they are negligible for schizophrenia.

12. Your children’s chances are approximately 2-4%, compared to the general population of 1%.

13. The illness of a family member is nothing to be ashamed of. Reality is that you may encounter discrimination from an apprehensive public.

14. No one is to blame.

15. Don’t forget your sense of humor.

16. It may be necessary to renegotiate your emotional relationship.

17. It may be necessary to revise your expectations.

18. Success for each individual may be different.

19. Acknowledge the remarkable courage your family member may show dealing with a mental disorder.

20.Your family member is entitled to his own life journey, as you are.

21. Survival-oriented response is often to shut down your emotional life. Resist this.

22. Inability to talk about feelings may leave you stuck or frozen.

23. The family relationships may be in disarray in the confusion around the mental disorder.

24. Generally, those closest in sibling order and gender become emotionally enmeshed, while those further out become estranged.

25. Grief issues for siblings are about what you had and lost. For adult children the issues are about what you never had.

26. After denial, sadness, and anger comes acceptance. The addition of understanding yields compassion.

27. The mental illnesses, like other diseases, are a part of the varied fabric of life.

28. Shed neurotic suffering and embrace real suffering.

29. The mental illnesses are not on a continuum with mental health. Mental illness is a biological brain disease.

30. It is absurd to believe you may correct a physical illness such as diabetes, the schizophrenias, or manic-depression with talk, although addressing social complications may be helpful.

31. Symptoms may change over time while the underlying disorder remains.

32. The disorder may be periodic, with times of improvement and deterioration, independent of your hopes or actions.

33. You should request the diagnosis and its explanation from professionals.

34. Schizophrenia may be a class of disorders rather than a single disorder.

35. Identical diagnoses does not mean identical causes, courses, or symptoms.

36. Strange behavior is symptom of the disorder. Don’t take it personally.

37. You have a right to assure your personal safety.

38. Don’t shoulder the whole responsibility for your mentally disordered relative.

39. You are not a paid professional case worker. Work with them about your concerns.

Maintain your role as the sibling, child, or parent of the individual. Don’t change your role.

40. Mental health professionals, family members, & the disordered all have ups and downs when dealing with a mental disorder.

41. Forgive yourself and others for mistakes made.

42. Mental health professionals have varied degrees of competence.

43. If you can’t care for yourself, you can’t care for another.

44. You may eventually forgive your member for having MI.

45. The needs of the ill person do not necessarily always come first.

46. It is important to have boundaries and set clear limits.

47. Most modern researchers favor a genetic, biochemical (perhaps interuteral), or viral basis. Each individual case may be one, a combination, or none of the above.

Genetic predisposition may result from a varied single gene or a combination.

48. Learn more about mental disorders. Read some of our recommended books like Surviving Schizophrenia: A Family Manual by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey and Overcoming Depression by Dr. Demitris Papolos and J. Papolos.

49. From Surviving Schizophrenia: “Schizophrenia randomly selects personality types, and families should remember that persons who were lazy, manipulative, or narcisstic before they got sick are likely to remain so as schizophrenic.” And, “As a general rule, I believe that most persons with schizophrenia do better living somewhere other than home. If a person does live at home, two things are essential–solitude and structure.” And, “In general, treat the ill family member with dignity as a person, albeit with a brain disease.” And, “Make communication brief, concise, clear and unambiguous.”

50. It may be therapeutic to you to help others if you cannot help your family member.

51. Recognizing that a person has limited capabilities should not mean that you expect nothing of them.

52. Don’t be afraid to ask your family member if he is thinking about hurting himself.

A suicide rate of 10% is based on it happening to real people. Your own relative could be one. Discuss it to avoid it.

53. Mental disorders affect more than the afflicted.

54. Your conflicted relationship may spill over into your relationships with others. You may unconsciously reenact the conflicted relationship.

55. It is natural to experience a cauldron of emotions such as grief, guilt, fear, anger, sadness, hurt, confusion, etc. You, not the ill member, are responsible for your own feelings.

56. Eventually you may see the silver lining in the storm clouds: increased awareness, sensitivity, receptivity, compassion, maturity and become less judgmental, self-centered.

57. Allow family members to maintain denial of the illness if they need it. Seek out others whom you can talk to.

58. You are not alone. Sharing your thoughts and feelings with others in a support group is helpful and enlightening for many.

59. The mental disorder of a family member is an emotional trauma for you. You pay a price if you do not receive support and help.

60. Support AMI/FAMI and the search for a cure!

Psychotherapy and Counseling
by Donald J. Franklin, Ph.D.

Psychotherapy is a process by which you examine your thoughts, feelings, actions and relationships. With the assistance of a skilled professional, evaluate where problems exist, or where changes are likely to improve your life satisfaction and overall psychological adjustment. You can then learn how to make the changes that are necessary to achieve better life adjustment and satisfaction.

The terms counseling and psychotherapy are interchangeable because they describe the same process, and have similar goals. Counseling has its roots in personal development and life adjustment theory, while psychotherapy has its roots in a more medically oriented model of treating a mental disease process. Health insurance companies use a medical disease model, so insurance reimbursement is for “psychotherapy” not “counseling.” The distinction is unimportant in applying the process to life management problems, although sometimes lesser trained counselors will use the term counseling to avoid being accused of providing treatment services they are not qualified to provide.

Psychotherapy involves:

Guided self-assessment to identify life adjustment problems, personal conflicts, relationship issues, behavioral problems, family conflicts, self-identity issues, emotional problems, and/or life stage development issues that are interfering with overall life adjustment, emotional well-being, and life satisfaction
Exploration and identification of the origins of these problems, conflicts and/or issues, both psychologically and factually
Development of a plan for change to resolve these problems and/or issues, including both personal psychological changes, and situational life changes
Assistance in making the necessary personal and life changes, through coaching, psychological education, ongoing behavioral and emotional analysis and feedback, emotional support, behavioral and cognitive training, and assistance in reformulating life goals and plans to achieve those goals.
Psychotherapy appointments are usually scheduled once per week. This allows for steady progress toward resolving the presenting problem, and allows enough time between sessions for you to work on issues discussed in the session. Occasionally, if a life crisis occurs, or if depression or anxiety are particularly severe, sessions may be scheduled more frequently. Once therapy progress is being made, some psychologists will schedule sessions less than once per week, if they feel that progress will not be hampered by the change in schedule.

Psychotherapy may be helpful to you when:

You feel overwhelmed by life problems
Depression, anxiety or anger are taking over your life
You don’t know how to manage a major life decision
You are having trouble with a major relationship
You are having difficulty coping with a serious illness in yourself, or in a family member or friend
Your job is too stressful and you can’t handle it anymore
You don’t know what to do, or where to turn for help

Life transitions are challenging because they force us to let go of the familiar and face the future with a feeling of vulnerability. Most life transitions begin with a string of losses:

• The loss of a role

• The loss of a person

• The loss of a place

• The loss of your sense of where you fit in the world

Any significant loss makes most people feel fearful and anxious. Since your future may now be filled with questions, it is normal to feel afraid. We live in a culture that has taught us to be very uncomfortable with uncertainty, so we are anxious when our lives are disrupted. On the positive side, these transitions give us a chance to learn about our strengths and to explore what we really want out of life. This time of reflection can result in a sense of renewal, stability, and a new equilibrium.

A life transition can be positive or negative, planned or unexpected. Some transitions happen without warning, and they may be quite dramatic, as in cases of accidents, death, divorce, job loss, or serious illness. Other life transitions come from positive experiences such as getting married, going away to college, starting a new job, moving to a new city, or giving birth to a child. Even though events like these are usually planned and anticipated, they can be just as life-altering as the unexpected events. Whether positive or negative, life transitions cause us to leave behind the familiar and force us to adjust to new ways of living, at least temporarily. They can leave us feeling completely unprepared and we may be thrown into a personal crisis, feeling shocked, angry, sad, and withdrawn.

Examples of Life Transitions

Life transitions can include any of the following:

• Accidents

• Buying a house

• Changing jobs

• Divorce

• Getting married

• Having a baby

• Leaving for college

• Relocation

• Retirement

• Selling a house

• Serious illness

• Significant loss (of a person, job, pet, or anything important)

• Starting a career

Stages of Life Transitions

Successfully moving through a life transition usually means experiencing the following stages:

1. Experience a range of negative feelings (anger, anxiety, confusion, numbness, self-doubt).

2. Feel a loss of self-esteem.

3. Begin to accept the change.

4. Acknowledge that you need to let go of the past and accept the future.

5. Begin to feel hopeful about the future.

6. Feel increased self-esteem.

7. Develop an optimistic view of the future.

The process of moving through a transition does not always proceed in order, in these nice, predictable stages. People usually move through the process in different ways, often cycling back and forth among the stages.

Coping Skills

Life transitions are often difficult, but they have a positive side, too. They provide us with an opportunity to assess the direction our lives are taking. They are a chance to grow and learn. Here are some ideas that may help make the process rewarding.

Accept that change is a normal part of life. People who have this attitude seem to have the easiest time getting through life transitions. Seeing changes as negative or as experiences that must be avoided makes them more difficult to navigate and less personally productive.

Identify your values and life goals. If a person knows who they are and what they want from life, they may see the change as just another life challenge. These people are willing to take responsibility for their actions and do not blame others for the changes that come along without warning.

Learn to identify and express your feelings. While it’s normal to try to push away feelings of fear and anxiety, you will move through them more quickly if you acknowledge them. Make them real by writing them down and talking about them with trusted friends and family members. These feelings will have less power over you if you face them and express them.

Focus on the payoffs. Think about what you have learned from other life transitions. Recall the stages you went through, and identify what you gained and learned from each experience. Such transitions can provide a productive time to do some important self-exploration. They can be a chance to overcome fears and to learn to deal with uncertainty. These can be the gifts of the transition process: to learn more about yourself and what makes you happy and fulfilled.

Don’t be in a rush. When your life is disrupted, it takes time to adjust to the new reality. Expect to feel uncomfortable during a transition as you let go of old ways of doing things. Try to avoid starting new activities too soon, before you have had a chance to reflect and think about what is really best for you.

Expect to feel uncomfortable. A time of transition is confusing and disorienting. It is normal to feel insecure and anxious. These feelings are part of the process, and they will pass.

Stay sober. Using alcohol or drugs during this confusing time is not a good idea. It can only make the process more difficult.

Take good care of yourself. Transitions are very stressful, even if they are supposed to be happy times. You may not feel well enough to participate in your normal activities. Find something fun to do for yourself each day. Get plenty of rest, exercise, and eat well.

Build your support system. Seek the support of friends and family members, especially those who accept you without judging you and encourage you to express your true feelings. A time of transition is also an excellent time to seek the support of a mental health professional. He or she can guide you through the transition process in a safe and supportive environment.

Acknowledge what you are leaving behind. This is the first step to accepting the new. Think about how you respond to endings in your life: Do you generally avoid them, like the person who ducks out early on her last day on the job because she can’t bear to say good-bye? Or do you drag them out because you have such a hard time letting go? Perhaps you make light of endings, refusing to let yourself feel sad. Before you can welcome the new, you must acknowledge and let go of the old.

Keep some things consistent. When you are experiencing a significant life change, it helps to keep as much of your daily routine consistent as you can.

Accept that you may never completely understand what has happened to you. You are likely to spend a lot of time feeling confused and afraid. This makes most of us very uncomfortable. The discomfort and confusion will pass, and clarity will return.

Take one step at a time. It’s understandable to feel like your life has become unmanageable. To regain a sense of power, find one small thing you can control right now. Then break it down into small, specific, concrete steps. Write them down and post them on your computer monitor or mirror. Cross off each step as you accomplish it.

Times of life transitions offer you the chance to explore what your ideal life would look like. When things are in disarray, you can reflect on the hopes and dreams you once had but perhaps forgot about. Take this time to write about them in a journal or talk about them with a trusted friend or therapist. Now is a good time to take advantage of the fork in the road.

By Kate Lorenz
CareerBuilder.com

Do you think you never have or never will experience work burnout? Consider these statistics:

 The American worker has the least vacation time of any modern, developed society. 

 In 2005, 33 percent of workers said they would be checking in with the office while on vacation. 

 One-half of workers reported they feel a great deal of stress on the job. 

 Forty-four percent of working moms admit to being preoccupied about work while at home and one-fourth say they bring home projects at least one day a week. 

 Nineteen percent of working moms reported they often or always work weekends. 

 Thirty-seven percent of all working dads said they would consider the option of taking a new job with less pay if it offered a better work/life balance. 

 Thirty-six percent of working dads reported they bring work home at least one day a week and 30 percent say they often or always work weekends. 

These statistics, taken from CareerBuilder.com surveys of American workers, demonstrate the pressures employees in the United States are under to be available to the office, despite responsibilities — or plans — away from work.

All this, combined with longer work hours and many individuals handling the workloads of two, can easily lead to worker burnout.

If you think burnout on the job is just an excuse used by the weak to get out of responsibilities, think again. Stress and burnout can affect your immune system and have been linked to migraines, digestive disorders, skin diseases, high blood pressure and heart disease. It causes emotional distress as well.

“Job burnout is a response to work stress that leaves you feeling powerless, hopeless, fatigued, drained and frustrated,” writes Dr. Audrey L. Canaff, a UC Foundation Assistant Professor in the Counseling Program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in her article on WorkplaceBlues.com. “But since job burnout is not an overnight occurrence, it’s important to recognize its early signs and to act before the problem becomes truly serious.”

Consider these five warning signs of burnout:

Sign No. 1: Your co-workers are walking on eggshells around you.

If you find yourself becoming cranky and irritable with co-workers you used to get along with, it may be more than just typical interpersonal dynamics.

Sign No. 2: You come in late and want to leave earlier.

You used to wake up in the morning excited for another day, but now every day you dread heading into the office. Once lunch passes you start watching the clock, counting the minutes to the end of the day.

Sign No. 3: Apathy has replaced enthusiasm.

You feel no motivation, no sense of accomplishment and have no desire to be challenged. Those who have burnout lose their motivation to perform, as well as their feelings of pride for a job well done.

Sign No. 4: You’ve lost camaraderie with co-workers.

You’re no longer interested in the company network. You used to go to lunch, go out for drinks and participate in other company functions but now have no interest in socializing in or out of the office.

Sign No. 5: You’re feeling physically sick.

You always feel exhausted, have headaches, feel tension in all of your muscles and are having trouble sleeping. These physical signs are common indicators of job stress, and demonstrate that this can turn into a physical problem.

If you are experiencing these symptoms, it’s time to make some changes. You can start by talking to your boss or someone in your human resources department about how you can confront the problem together by redefining deadlines, delegating or outsourcing a project or two.

In her book “Stress Management for Busy People,” Carol A. Turkington recommends taking these proactive steps:

Heinz Kohut, the creator of Self Psychology, believed that all individuals needed to grow up trusting that their parents/caregivers were competent and able to successfully attend to the their needs. Kohut also believed that a clear sense of identity with the family unit was neccessary, as was mirroring, which is when parents reflect love and acceptance back to the child, embracing who that child is as a person. According to Self Psychology, these three elements are neccessary to develop into a fully functioning, dynamic adult.

Adoption is an interesting case therapeutically because two of these three elements can be shaken up from a very early age. As a therapist specializing in issues of self-acceptance and identity, I find working with adopted folks very interesting. The question of “Who am I?” is never easy to answer, but in these cases the question can take on a different spin.

After Adoption: Creating a Personal Narrative
by Wendy Freund LCSW

A few years ago I was invited to speak at a conference of adoptees, many of whom were searching for their birth‑parents, about my work as head of a record information unit in a large, old, and well established adoption agency. I named my workshop “Saying No: An Agency Perspective.” No one came. At that time I learned that adoptees and search organizations often set themselves in an adversarial relationship with agencies. I receive requests from former clients who are adoptees, former foster children, former birth, adoptive, and foster parents who are looking for bits and pieces of their personal narratives. I am in the unique position either to go personally to the record room, pull the files (some of which date back to the 1800’s), and read the record on microfilm or microfiche or assign the case to another social worker. Most of what I am allowed to reveal is restricted stringently, regulated by New York State law, which assures that all people in the process will have utmost confidentiality, and, therefore, only non-identifying and general information can be released. I did not go into social work in order to say ‘no’ and to withhold information, and I find the legal restrictions extremely frustrating, as do the members of the adoption triangle.

I am in the unusual position of knowing the information that is often desperately sought but not being able to share it. This frequently makes me the target of the client’s anger and leaves me feeling impotent in spite of the fact that, in actuality, I am helping them create a story by providing some of the “missing pieces.”  In this article I want to stress three main points: All people need no have a personal story in order to build a sense of identity. Members of the adoption triad carry real and fantasy stories that are frequently conflicting and confusing. It is the agency’s responsibility through counseling to help their clients construct a solid narrative.

New York State law was written to protect the confidentiality of the members of the triad and to allow them to go on with the secrecy that often begins with the biological mother denying her pregnancy, goes on to the adoptive family denying their infertility, and continues with the person who has been adopted denying his or her status is special in any way. This has not been a workable plan. In reality, the studies show it is largely unnecessary. The current situation may make the problem worse for all concerned. “Withheld data” does not protect adoptees but instead gives them the feeling that full information would reveal “awful truths” (Sorosky et al., 1975, p. 25). Adoptive parents are acutely aware that they did not birth this child and may feel threatened by their belief that they will be punished for separating the child from her biological parents and, therefore, prefer to see themselves part of a “natural” family (Wieder, 1978, p. 563). Adoptive parents may feel especially vulnerable and fear rejection by their adopted child because of unresolved issues relating to their infertility (Sorosky et aL, 1975). Openness is generally curative, and all members of the triad are usually able to confront the issues, sometimes with therapeutic intervention, and empathize with each other.

Almost all people with whom I deal are in crisis because the information itself is so startling that it provokes a crisis where there was none. Moreover, most people begin searching because they are, in fact, already in a crisis involving their career, marriage, children, or health. The most frequent precipitants for searching are marriage, pregnancy, birth of a child, and death of an adoptive parent.

Post legal adoption services would be most helpful if targeted at adolescence and at pregnancy/childbirth. Adolescents frequently have friction with their adoptive parents and fantasies about their biological parents (Kowal & Schilling, 19S5). New York State law does not allow us to release information to children under 18 years of age unless we go through their adoptive parents, and these parents may feel threatened by this information.

Adoptees carry two sets of parents in their minds: the parents who birthed and then rejected them and the parents who raised them. This leads to idealizations and denigrations and many different fantasies, which then get played out in the transference. Adding a twist on Freud’s 1908 paper ‘Family Romances”,  many adoptees fantasize that they were left by their biological mothers to die and were rescued by their adoptive mothers (Wieder, 1977). The idea of two mothers is confusing cognitively and can result in “linguistic interchangeability.”  The word mother itself no longer has a clear meaning and may call up conflicting images that result in cognitive disturbances (Wieder, 1977, p. 10). It is worth noting that professionals trip themselves up as well when they switch terms according to the current political climate and refer to the natural mother, bio mother, biological mother, or first mother.

I first met ZJ when she was searching for her parents; because of legal constraints I was unable to give her the information she requested. Her adoptive parents were extremely supportive of her search. Her adoptive mother even accompanied ZJ to my office. ZJ was unhappy with the information I released and contacted my superiors.

She wrote: “My adoptive parents urged me to write to you, be on the level, and explain my situation outright from the beginning, but I decided not to take their advice because quite honestly… it would’ve been more painful for me to be denied for telling the truth. It would’ve hurt and upset me to receive a ‘Dear John’ response from you saying, ’I’m sorry but I can’t tell you that’ when the truth of the matter is that you can and won’t” I can grant her request only if I am willing to ignore the agency’s policies as determined by the law. This position makes me uncomfortable because I sense her yearning. Later she writes, ‘Everyone suddenly comes down with an acute case of amnesia to what went on years ago…. My feelings are simply a reflection on the system, and the system STINKS…. My husband and l are planning to try and conceive a child within the next year or two, and this scenario is weighing on my mind. I am worried about whether I should anticipate any health problems of my future children.’

This adoptee found her biological mother, who had gone on to marry and have other children who did not know about ZJ. ZJ’s biological mother did not want to continue to have contact with ZJ because she was afraid that it would destroy the life that she had built with her husband and other children. ZJ was able to understand this because she felt that “justice” had been served when she discovered her biological mother. Her biological father, however, warmly welcomed her into his life. ZJ has kept in touch with me for approximately five years and calls almost monthly and sends cards at seasonal occasions. She is no longer angry at me for not meeting her needs and has grown to be supportive of and curious about counseling services provided to other families impacted on by adoption.

On a daily basis l am struck by the importance of my work because people who have no clear sense of their own history are very vulnerable and lack a core identity structure on which to build the rest of their lives. They are left with fantasies instead of reality and with no way to check out their hypotheses and construct their lives. The search process itself frequently involves a major restructuring of an individual’s sense of self. Clients say things like “It’s funny I’ve always been a Mary and I don’t feel like a Diane.” Not surprisingly the fantasies often begin with the biological mother who has surrendered her child soon after birth and was assured that the pregnancy and birth would have no impact on the rest of her life. No attempt is made by the agency to keep up with later developments of any member of the triad. All clients who come back to record information do so voluntarily and at their own initiative. Adoptees feel cheated because they lack significant medial data to share with their doctors. Although I can supply the medical material from the record, it is generally incomplete, is not current, and has all identifying data deleted.

The anxiety an adoptee experiences is palpable and contagious. As I look at the record, I frequently wonder about the accuracy of the information because there are inevitable inconsistencies and no way to verify the data. Social workers made interpretations and selected data based on their own sense of values and also on the times in which they practiced. Diagnosis and vocabulary have changed dramatically. For example; not so many years ago people looked askance at a single father who expressed a desire to raise his out‑of-wedlock child; now he is a hero. It is also easy to get sucked up into the client’s own insecurities and doubts as more and more information from the past get discovered.

In the following case ST did not know she was adopted until she was about to become a godmother in her mid‑thirties and needed a baptismal certificate. (She received no papers when her father died.) Not only was she shocked when the church directed her to my office, but I so over identified with her that l found myself doubting that she was adopted. The record revealed that her adoptive parents were counseled to tell about the adoption and even given literature to read. They had stated that they agreed with openness and would tell her at an appropriate age, but they never did.

ST lost her adoptive mother when she was 18. Her father remarried about five years later, and she had a “nervous breakdown.” She states that she is okay now after receiving 10 years of counseling. It is common for me to see clients who are in long-term therapy elsewhere. I always hope that the therapist knows how to work with the issues raised by adoption but am dismayed by how many do not have a working knowledge of the field. ST is functioning well and has a career in technology and lives on her own. She gets along well with her stepmother and says they have their ups and downs but that in general, she is treated like a daughter. She states that she has had a lot of losses recently. Her father died in February, and her stepmother is selling the house that she grew up in. Her own parents spoiled her and she hypothesized that she got the most of the three children because she was the adopted one and that her siblings are resentful of her. She wondered about her siblings but believed that she remembered both trips to the Foundling and her mother’s pregnancy with her sister. This is an example of how the adoptee uses fantasy because there is not enough information to build on reality. Surprisingly, it turns out her sister and brother were also adopted.

ST became tearful upon hearing she was adopted and wanted to know how other people react. She says, “I don’t feel like myself, my own skin, l am not who I thought I was.” This is an expectable reaction as she begins to rework her identity. She also is upset that her parents lied to her. Adopting parents have often had to deal with the disappointment and hurt of finding themselves infertile and the stress that the information puts on their marriage. In the process of the home study they are scrutinized and may feel humiliated They go on to want to detach from these unpleasant experiences and to deny the fact of adoption and the fact that their child has another set of Parents. The children themselves quickly learn not to upset their parents and collude with the secret. For example, ST was very ill as a child with asthma and now had asthma and diabetes, which she had assumed that she got from her maternal grandmother. She now has to see that there was no blood relationship, and she anxiously wonders about the health history of her birth family. She was glad to hear that her biological mother was of Puerto Rican descent, because her adoptive mother was of the same heritage “and at least that’s not a change.”

This particular client immediately began to wonder about her biological mother as she worked on building dual identity, and she was surprised her mother was only 13 when she was born. “I wonder if she is looking for me. Can you tell me that? I’ve had so many losses, closings this year. At least this is an opening; she may be looking for me.”

One cannot help but hypothesize that they contributed to an unexplained feeling of shame - about which I asked her, and she stated, ‘I feel ashamed about being adopted.” The many years of secrecy compounded her surprise and subsequent feelings of shame, which l tried to dispel.

As it turned out, this adoptee was able to overcome her fear of being rejected by the rest of the family and confided in her younger brother and sister. They learned from their uncle that they were all adopted. Although their mother felt proud of having adopted, their father wanted it kept a secret. It is particularly worth noting that this client had structured a narrative for herself that incorrectly involved her mother being pregnant with her younger sister, and she had only the haziest memories of visits to the agency and blocked out the social work contacts with the family. The younger brother and sister have recently asked to have their records opened. ST is search­ing, and the siblings have begun to support each other in new and better ways with closer family alliances and without further counseling from our agency at this time.

Terminating is unique in this situation because, in some sense, cases have already been terminated in the past and clients are returning to have their cases reopened. Members of the triad request services all through their life span when painful issues and questions come up, and I am frequently left to feel that I am not doing enough, giving them enough time, but have come to realize that service for this population tends to be brief but intense and repetitive rather than long and continuous.

The clients that I have worked with have struggled to reconcile what they know about themselves with what they imagined happened. In the case of the biological parents, they may remember part of the birth and pregnancy; but they do not know how to imagine the future. The adoptive parents may not want to recall the piece of their personal history relating to their infertility. The adoptee may imagine their biological parents, find them very different in real life, and then try to incorporate them into his or her present and future lives. I am not suggesting that information should be shared without mutual consent of the parties involved. Confidentiality was promised and is an important part of the social work code of ethics. In many cases, however, confidentiality would be eagerly waived by all members of the triad. Yet, there is a responsibility of the agency that did the adoption to help all members build their identities based on reality, to live with the inevitable surprises, and to provide the counseling and peer group support systems needed for their clients. Agencies can help members of the triad to approach each other with consideration and respect and the knowledge that all lives have changed and moved on since the time of the birth. As members of the triad build new relationships, they may struggle with conflicting needs and desires; and may need continued help to build appropriate boundaries and form new relationships with the most significant people from their past. I would like to think that social work­ers in agencies could be helpful in opening new lines of communication and respect.

REFERENCES

Andersen, R. S. (1989). The nature of the adoptee’s search: Adventure, cure, or growth? Child Welfare, 68, 623-632.

Freud, S. (1908): Family romances. Standard Edition, 9, 237-241.

Gergen, M. M.. & Gergen, K.J. (1984). The social construction of narrative accounts. In K.J. Gergen & M. M. Gergen (Eds.), Historical Social Psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Associates.

Kowal, K.A., & Schilling, K.M. Adoption through the eyes of adult adoptees. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 55. 354-362.

Sachdev, P. (1989). The triangle of fears: fallacies and facts. Child Welfare, 68, 491-503.

Sorosky, A.D., Baran, A., & Pannor, R. (1975). Identity conflicts in adoptees. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 45,18-27.

White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Wieder, H. (1977). The family romance fantasies of adopted Children. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 46, 185-200.

Wieder, H. (1979). On being told of adoption. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 48, 1-21

Wieder, H. (1978). Special problems in the psychoanalysis of adopted children. In J. Glenn (Ed.), Child Analysis and therapy (pp. 557-577). New York. Jason Aronson.

Wendy Freund, M.S.E.D., LCSW, maintains a private practice in New York City. She is also Administrative Supervisor, Adoption Department, at New York Foundling Hospital.

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