ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters have focused largely on adding activities to your days to live the way you want. The next three deal with eliminating those things that bring on stress. This chapter is about uncluttering your world of things that drain you, to give you time for the balanced, rewarding life you deserve. If you feel that you have no time or energy to do the things you enjoy, you are not alone. Time pressures, an excessive workload, and a sense of enormous responsibility are three of the most frequently endorsed occupational hazards for therapists (Kramen-Kahn & Hansen, 1998). Fully 68% of psychologists in clinical practice listed “too much paperwork” and “inadequate time for all obligations” as causing distress or impairment (Sherman & Thelen, 1998). The increasing demands from the changing health environment have resulted in more time pressures and obligations, with insurance companies requiring therapists to document their work with clients in excruciating detail. Modern technology has added to the time urgency, with beepers, emails, fax machines, and cellular phones constantly taking up precious minutes. Many clinicians work at home, where the computer is going, or they try to do their endless paperwork or return phone calls when they should be relaxing. They lead a frenetic life, which can be a major cause of burnout (Grosch & Olsen, 1994). Time pressures affect not only clinicians, but their families as well. Although most children of therapists feel that certain of their parents’ skills, such as empathy and tolerance, may be helpful for them, children decry the long hours that their parents work and the occasional intrusions of patients into their home lives (Golden & Farber, 1998).
