Paying a High Price

Certain high-achieving women are imploded with demands, both external and internal, and lack the skills to filter them. These women complain that the first thing they sacrifice is their private time or private pleasures.
-HARRIET B. BRAIKER, PH.D.

Those of us who don't spend regular time alone to rest and recoup are likely to suffer from what psychologists call "privacy deprivation syndrome." Symptoms include increasing resentment, mood swings, chronic fatigue, and depression.

Sound familiar? Sound grim? It is! Sufferers struggle through their days in a vacuum of unfulfilled exasperation, only to drop into bed too emotionally depleted to sleep well at night. The littlest thing can set them off, bringing tears and tantrums-and not only from the children in the family. Soon work and personal relationships begin to suffer. Why? Because the never-refreshed are really not that much fun to be around. The cycle may continue unabated until physical illness sets in. Remember the flu you had last year for five weeks? The two weeks you were laid up with lower-back pain last summer? The sinus infection you couldn't shake last month?

We don't have to make ourselves sick before we can call a psychic time out.

Unfortunately for many women, it is only when we do get sick that we allow ourselves a dispensation for time and space alone. This may be how real life is for you right now, but it doesn't have to stay that way. If you find yourself secretly looking forward to regular rendezvous with a hot water bottle and NyQuil, then privacy deprivation syndrome is exacting a high price. Let me reassure you there is a better path.

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