Tag: stress

Energy at Work: What recharges you?

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Last night I saw a great horned owl sitting at the top of a tall pine tree silhouetted against the sky.

We had been hearing the hoots of the owls for the past several weeks. Sometimes we would hear him near bedtime when we walked outside briefly to say good night to departing guests or to pet our front porch cat. A few times I heard him calling early in the morning.

I had looked for him before, but seeing a bird in the dark is a real challenge, especially not really knowing where to look. It can be a challenge to localize the source of a bird call, especially one as loud and deep as that of an owl. The sound bounces off nearby houses and trees.

Last night, I walked out into an open part of my front yard and looked up toward the tops of very tall pine trees a couple of properties away from mine. I saw movement at the top of a tree, then saw a very large bird fly off. As I kept watching, I saw a second bird fly from the same location to the top of a nearby pine tree. It sat on the very top of the tree so I could see its 2+ foot height dark against the lighter sky. I ran inside to get my binoculars and he waited in the same spot. I had no camera with the power to photograph it, so my brain will need to store the image. And it will!

I am not a serious birder. I do not have a life list that I seek to fill. I do get significant pleasure from sighting birds that share my locale. It is a major recharge event for me.

You see, I have long found that I require a great deal of self-care and stress management to function well. When I worked as a psychologist, I used a variety of methods, mostly focused on professional involvement and time spent with other people. After 15 years of practice, I had burned out. I had not done enough to take care of myself.

I believe this is a major problem among behavioral healthcare workers. The job of assisting other people in being mentally healthy is a very difficult one. The chronically and seriously mentally ill can be a very satisfying but very draining population with which to work. Finding ways to recharge and re-energize is crucial to doing this work well.

Now that I work with providers of behavioral healthcare services instead of with patients themselves, I still need to do lots of self-care. Bicycling, gardening, watching the birds in my garden and near my home . . . these have become the ways I energize myself.

How do you take care of yourself? What recharges your batteries? Does your practice or organization have tools to help you with your self-care? When did you last see a great horned owl?

Please share your thoughts and experiences. When you offer your insights, you give other readers additional ideas to explore. Please do so!

Creativity: Running out of ideas…

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I have been struggling with a topic for this week’s blog. The only thing that has come across my path that feels compelling is the hummingbird who showed up at our coral honeysuckle on Sunday. Unfortunately, integrating that ruby throat into my article does not seem like an easy task.

Sometimes, I feel like I have run out of ideas. When that happens, I am reminded of feelings I experienced as a child and young adult. I knew I was not an artist and felt myself also to be not creative.

It took many years before I learned that my creativity takes forms different than that of artistic individuals. At some point in the process of doing psychotherapy with some very difficult clients, I realized that most of my creativity takes the form of what I will call creative alternativism. Generating possibilities…especially possibilities for different types of behavior and different kinds of thinking…was the primary manifestation of that creativity. Helping my clients find different ways to be in the world in order to overcome their pain and problems was the most important way I expressed that creative urge.

I have since realized that I often apply that process to myself as well. Since I can be a pretty rigid person when it comes to my own thinking and behavior, I have found that I need to make systematic efforts to implement the alternatives I generate for myself. I may well come up with many ideas about how to change my behavior, but I need structure to implement those changes.

Three years ago, I knew that adding yoga into my fitness efforts would benefit my arthritic joints and relieve some of my stress. Signing up for a yoga class was the structure that allowed me to make that a regular part of my activities. After three years, I have found other structures to help me extend that one class to two and now into a daily practice. I need and use structure to implement the possible changes I creatively generate for myself.

I had an email this week from a colleague I have not seen in years. I was delighted to learn that for the past year, she has been painting! At age 60, she took a pastels class at her local community college. She was hooked on the medium and has found a new outlet for her creativity. In my experience, she has always been creative. She has been a psychologist and psychotherapist for her entire professional life. She has researched and written and published…an aspect of her professional creativity; and now, she paints!

I am delighted to know that a new aspect of creative expression can manifest itself at any age, as long as we are open to it.

How do you express your creativity? Do you manage to do this within your professional life? Does the place you work benefit from your creative endeavors, or is it just for you?

Please share your thoughts about creativity, regenerating it, and keeping our lives…and blog topics…fresh.

New Phone Systems: Frustrations of an impatient newbie

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The last two weeks have been extremely challenging for me. As many of you know, I am not a techie; I am an end user. Without excellent in-house and outside product and computer support, I would not be a happy computer user most of the time.

We have been using a hosted PBX-style telephone system (Onebox) for the last couple of years. This service gives us the general functionality of a PBX system without the cost. We have extension numbers for each phone. We have automated attendants with different messages at different times of the day and night, as well as for Technical Support vs. Sales and Customer Service. We have multiple voicemail boxes at which customers can leave messages. We told the company what we wanted. They set it up for us. We use it.

Our one frustration has been the length of time needed to transfer a call from one person to another within our organization. It takes so long customers sometimes hang up. And sometimes transferring just does not work at all.

In 2009 and 2010 we have been cost saving fanatics. Since long distance telephone calls and numerous telephone lines are among our biggest expenses, we began to research options other than land lines and long distance contracts. About a year ago, we started using Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) telephone service through T-Mobile for our outgoing technical support calls. It has mostly done the job at a fraction of the cost of long distance service, so this month Seth started to research moving our entire telephone system to a hosted VOIP solution. After a couple of days of intense research, he decided that we should try Vocalocity, a company that focuses on small businesses.

Then Manon, our lead technical support staff person, left for vacation and my headache began. You see, Seth assists with doing tech support when one of our primary staffers is out. That meant the VOIP project was handed over to me…and oh what a mistake that was….because, remember, I am technologically impaired. Much of my other work has been on hold while I tried to make this work.

Seth had begun to set up our Auto Attendants, but they were not working properly. He emailed our phone system flow chart to a support representative at Vocalocity so they would know what we wanted to accomplish. Then, I needed to work with the support representative to make it happen. Over the course of three days, an excellent representative named Nathaniel worked with me to make changes in the setup of our account. It was much more complicated than either Seth or I realized. There were some things that had to be initiated on their end to accomplish our goals; they were not end user configurable. Finally, on Monday we tested all the work Nathaniel had done and the system appears to do what we want it to in the way we want. It even lets us transfer calls from one extension to another without a long wait time.

Today I called our telephone service provider and had our main line forwarded to the number assigned to us by Vocalocity. Tomorrow I expect to start receiving calls on the new system. We will let you know the outcome.

The moral of this story is this: using new technology may be just the way to save your organization lots of money; however, have your most tech-savvy person work to accomplish the goal. Giving the task to a less-than-patient person who just wants the darned thing to work is not the most effective way to adopt the new technology….no matter how cool the technology is.

What technology implementation stories do you have to share? Has your experience taught you some things about how to most effectively adopt new technology in your organization?

Just enter your comment in the box at the bottom of the page. If you don’t see a box, double click on the title of the article then scroll back down to the box to enter your comment. Please share your experience. I must get better at this!

Stress: APA’s 2009 Survey

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In early November 2009, the American Psychological Association released the results of their 2009 Stress in America Survey. The executive summary is an excellent way to review the results of the survey in 20 pages. The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive and included 1,568 adults aged 18 and older who reside in the United States. The report also includes the results of a YouthQuery survey conducted among 1,206 youths aged 8-17 years of age. Those who provide mental health services to either or both adults and children should take a look at the outcome of this survey. The data are distressing and worrisome to those of us with interest in the effects of stress on our physical health.

According to the survey, parents think their own stress does not affect their children and that their children are not stessed. It appears that parents do not see the worries and stress-related symptoms of their children accurately; and while three-quarters of young people say they can talk to their parents about things they worry about, they also indicate that worry is a real problem for them. Either they are not telling their parents about their stress or worry, or their parents are not hearing them when they communicate. As a result, children may not be getting the family support they need to manage stress. Parents also seem to underestimate the severity of the stress teens and tweens experience.

42% of adults indicate that their stress has increased in 2009. This is 7% fewer than those reporting an increase in stress during 2008 (49%) but is still almost half of the adults surveyed. While it is somewhat comforting to know that only 42% of adults said that their stress has increased in the past year, it is difficult to tell from this report whether the 49% who reported an increase last year are now experiencing less stress or whether it is merely the same as in 2008. The summary indicates that “this could be a precursor to serious health consequesces related to chronic stress.”

While 44% indicate they exercise or walk to manage their stress, 49% indicate they rely on sedentary means of managing stress. 43% reported eating too much or eating unhealthy foods because of stress. Only 4% indicate that they see a mental health professional to deal with stress.

Money, work and the economy are still the most important sources of stress for adults.

Two-thirds of U.S. adults have been told by a health care provider that they have chronic health condition(s) and 70% have received recommendations for lifestyle and behavior changes….exercise more (48%), lose weight (38%) and eat healthier (36%). Few were offered or received support to make these changes; half did not even get an explanation for the recommendation. Women seem to be bearing the brunt of the stress…or are more likely to report it. They are also more likely to report physical symptoms along with the stress.

The potential physical effects of stress has long been studied by mental health and medical professionals. Back in 1967 Holmes and Rahe developed their Life Changes questionnaire also known at the Social Readjustment Rating Scale. This simple questionnaire has been used in a multitude of studies and scores correlated with the occurrence of serious physical illness within the next year. Let’s hope that those who become ill following these two years of significant stress will have access to the health care services they need.

A 2008 study detailed a physiological explanation, and an article in Gizmag does a nice, brief discussion, of how stress affects the immune system. Under stress, the body produces cortisol to facilitate the “fight or flight” response. Under chronic stress, there is an overabundance of cortisol, so the body remains on alert long after that is necessary and the immune system is affected. The mechanism at work seems to be the shortening of chromosomal end caps called telomeres which produce telomerase, an enzyme that keeps immune cells “young”. Cortisol diminishes the production of telomerase thus shortening the healthy life of protective T lymphocytes.

Of course, there is a perfect opportunity for development of a drug to reduce cortisol or increase telomerase. As specialists in behavioral change, I would think it incumbent upon mental health professionals to be doing more education about stress management rather than waiting for yet another drug to make us healthy. There are certainly online resources to facilitate such education. If only 4% of adults indicate that they consult with a mental health professional to help them manage stress, it would appear that the opportunities in this area are wide open.

What does your organization do to help your clients and your community better manage stress? Do you believe there are ways that behavioral health providers might more effectively attract the severely stressed into treatment? Should the practice of psychotherapy also include community education in stress inoculation techniques? How do you manage your own stress?

Please enter your comments by clicking on the title of this article and making your entry in the box below.

Yoga: Physical and Mental Health

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Those of you who read this blog regularly might remember that in July I decided to take a more active role in addressing the neck and back pain that is a regular part of my life. I started taking a yoga class. In August, I added a second one. I was all set last week to write my blog article on yoga; then Seth offered to write the week’s entry. I’m glad I waited. You see, I have just learned that September is the first official National Yoga Month, so designated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Now, I can even make a contribution to the observance by a timely blog entry.

Yoga means union. When we think and talk of the postures that are part of the practice of yoga, we are talking about asana, one of the eight limbs of yoga.  While most of the limbs relate to moral and spiritual development, asana and pranayama are very much physical.

Prana means life/breath. Pranayama is one of the eight limbs of yoga focused on the use of breath control to cause relaxation and alteration of mental state. Those of us who have utilized the teaching of progressive relaxation methods as an adjunct to psychotherapy know that the effect of cleansing breath on mental state is real. Diminishing anxiety and depression so a client can take action on life problems is one of the observed benefits of deep breathing, but the effect of breathing deeply is not just on mental state. Fully oxygenating the blood and relaxing the muscles adequately for the blood to circulate properly speeds healing, reduces stress, and increases the acuity of thinking. 

Recently published researchdemonstrates significant emotional and physical benefit from the practice of Iyengar yoga among a group with chronic lower back pain. www.MedicalNewsToday.com quotes the researchers as saying that “low-back pain is the largest category for medical reimbursements in the US, accounting for 34 billion dollars of medical costs every year.” Diminishing the cost of this care could have significant impact on our health care expenditures. This is one case where the use of complementary/alternative medicine can save all of us some bucks while simultaneously increasing the sense of personal responsibility and mastery for the patient.

Iyengar yoga is one of many schools or styles of yoga practice. It focuses on alignment of the body and balance, two crucial requirements for symptom relief. Practitioners utilize props to facilitate the various yoga postures. The use of chairs and blocks and straps to assist getting into and maintaining the positions makes it possible for just about anyone to practice the Iyengar style of yoga. The study found that those who practiced Iyengar yoga had less pain, less disability and less depression than those who did not. Over the longer term, they also used less medication than those who used traditional medical treatment.

My personal experience is that even minimal (twice a week) practice of yoga has had significant effects on my experience. I have chronic lower back pain, neck and shoulder pain. Practice of yoga has resulted in much improved physical and mental well-being.

  1. The focus on posture and lengthening of the spine has resulted in a day-to-day, minute-to-minute awareness of how I am holding my body. The  positions in which I put myself in my chair at my desk, standing talking to a colleague, having a telephone conversation all result in muscle tightening. Using proper posture allows the muscles and bones to work as they were designed.
  2. My twice a week classes have resulted in considerable strengthening of my muscles. While I bicycle each weekend, my upper body and core muscles get very little workout. The yoga classes take care of that. The core muscles that are crucial to proper alignment of the spine are getting strong enough to do the job adequately.
  3. The focus totally on the physical gets me out of my head for two hours a week. The workout tires the muscles getting me into the ideal state to benefit from the deep relaxation at the end of the class.
  4. I am gaining control over my physical comfort. I had come to a feeling of helplessness to control my pain. That is gone. I now have a much better sense of what I must do and how I must feel to minimize my pain.

While yoga may not be the ideal method of exercise for everyone, it is a wonderful tool that can be used by many. Why not consider exploring some of the benefits for yourself?

Talk with us about your experience with yoga. Your comments are always welcome.