You know – the ones who have 100 things to do and get them all done. We work hard and are totally  dedicated to fulfilling our marriage, parenting, career and friendship goals.

We’re superwomen. But there’s a problem.

On the upside it feels amazing to be successful and needed on all fronts. We have a great sense of identity, satisfaction and happiness. On the flip side many of us feel overworked, misunderstood and stressed.

Recognition is great, but the need for it can become a drug.

• Superwomen tend to strive for perfection in how they look, speak and work. They can be people-pleasers, too, always worrying about the other person’s happiness more than their own. The solution: learn to love yourself and to realize that you are valued as much for who you are as for what you do.
• Recognition is great, but the need for it can become a drug. The more you get, the more you want. Practice thinking well of yourself without seeking others’ approval. Be proud of who you are.
• Ask for help! Not many superwomen do this. They might not want to ask because of the fear that others can do it better than they can. Unfortunately, carrying a burden that’s way too heavy can lead to exhaustion and resentment. Start by asking for help in small matters, and work your way up to more major efforts.
• Don’t hesitate to say no. Superwomen often fear that they won’t be wanted or liked if they refuse a request. Learn to think of saying no as a way to share with the other person what you want or don’t want for yourself.
• Learn to express your vulnerability. Reveal your sadness, anger, fear and confusion. That doesn’t represent, as many worry, a loss of control. It’s a way to let people know you better and to understand and meet your needs.
• Take as well as give. Remember how good it feels to give, and let others have that same experience with you.

Superwomen love deeply, give generously and have a tremendous need for belonging and love. But they need to find the other side of themselves: to receive, follow and express their authentic feelings. Life will be much more fulfilling that way.

The study, conducted by investigators from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the University of Texas at Austin, appeared in the journal Psychological Science.

In the analysis, “Undervaluing Gratitude: Expressers Misunderstand the Consequences of Showing Appreciation,” Booth Professor Nicholas Epley and UT Austin’s Amit Kumar discovered a wide gap between how little senders think their letters of gratitude will affect the recipient and the high level of happiness the recipients feel upon reading the letter.

“There’s so much talk in the world–both in academic literature and in the popular press–that expressing gratitude is good for you,” says Kumar, a postdoctoral researcher at Booth at the time of the research. “But that doesn’t seem to line up with how often people are actually articulating their appreciation in daily life. So, we wanted to find out why–what are the barriers holding people back?”

In a series of four experiments, the researchers asked participants to write a letter to another person who had touched their life in a meaningful way. The researchers asked the letter writers to predict how surprised, happy and awkward the recipients would feel, then they followed up with those recipients to measure how they actually felt.

The results: Participants systematically miscalculated how much people appreciated being thanked.

“Expressers significantly underestimated how surprised recipients would be about why expressers were grateful, overestimated how awkward recipients would feel, and underestimated how positive recipients would feel,” the researchers wrote.

The researchers also found that the letter writers were unnecessarily concerned about their ability to express their gratitude skillfully. While the writers worried about choosing the right words, the recipients were happy simply by the warmth of the gesture.

“It suggests that thoughts about how competently people can express their gratitude may be a barrier to expressing gratitude more often in everyday life,” Kumar said.

But, the investigators said, so far “dream researchers” have paid more attention to the dreams of people suffering from disorders than to happy dreams. And happiness researchers have specifically studied happiness, the news release said, but have neglected to investigate peace of mind.

“We wanted to address these important gaps in both dream and well-being research and to study how dream emotions are related to not only different aspects of waking ill-being, but also to different aspects of waking well-being, including peace of mind. In fact, this is the first study to look at how peace of mind relates to dream content,” said Pilleriin Sikka, Doctoral Candidate in Psychology at the University of Turku and Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Skövde, and lead author of the article published in the Nature group journal Scientific Reports. Peace of mind is a state of inner peace and harmony, a more complex and durable state of well-being traditionally associated with happiness in the Eastern cultures, Sikka said.

Co-author Antti Revonsuo added, “Even though it has rarely been directly measured in studies of well-being, in several philosophical traditions and spiritual approaches, peace of mind has always been regarded as central to human flourishing.” Revonsuo is Professor of Psychology at the University of Turku and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Skövde.

For the study, the researchers asked healthy participants to fill in a questionnaire that measured their waking ill-being and well-being. Then, during the following three weeks the participants kept a daily dream diary in which, every morning upon awakening, they reported all their dreams and rated the emotions they experienced in those dreams. Results showed that individuals with higher levels of peace of mind reported more positive dream emotions, whereas those with higher levels of anxiety reported more negative dream emotions.

The researchers propose that individuals with higher levels of peace of mind may be better able to regulate their emotions not only in the waking state but also during dreaming, whereas the opposite may be true for those with higher levels of anxiety.

According to the news release, Sikka said that in the future, the researchers should explore whether better emotion regulation capacity, and self-control in general, is indeed something that characterizes people with higher levels of peace of mind, and whether improving such skills can lead to more peace of mind.

But many people find it difficult to move their attention from the problems in their lives to recognize their blessings. Ritual can provide the framework to evoke a spirit of gratitude and give the holiday season meaning.

For many Westerners, the word ritual has religious connotations, but many non-religious forms of ritual also provide meaning. While ritual is often pushed aside in our modern lives in favor of speed, convenience and self-sufficiency, rituals that we forge for ourselves create a specialness that feels good and provides meaning.

Performing rituals gives people a reason to slow down, connect and feel gratitude. Research backs this up, and shows that ritual impacts people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Ritual can be solemn or light, simple or complex. We invite you to create your own ritual to bring a sense of gratitude to the holiday season. To help you start out, we’ve provided a few guidelines:

1. Explore opportunities. A ritual can be an activity in itself or it can be based around some task or event. For instance, you could create a daily ritual for the specific purpose of setting a positive tone for each day. You could also create a ritual around eating or washing, to make it a more deliberate and special event.

2. Purposely express meaning. Seriousness is not necessary, but respect for the value and significance of what you aim to do makes a real difference in its impact.

3. Create a structure. At the least, give your ritual an opening and a closing. The opening could be as simple as acknowledging what the intention of the ritual is. You could state, “I’m grateful for this meal and I intend to be deeply nourished by it.” The closing could be as simple as restating the purpose, or expressing gratitude for what was done. You might just say, “That was really good, and I am thankful.” Of course, you could get a lot more elaborate, too.

4. Add elements to give significance. Besides the opening and closing, the main thing that makes a ritual stand out from the mundane is that it’s different from the surrounding stuff. The ritual may involve different elements than those of your everyday life, and moreover, your presence is different. Consider incorporating one or more things to make the ritual unique: lighting a candle, putting on a special piece of clothing, taking off your shoes, placing your hands on the earth, looking at a meaningful picture, eating or drinking something special or whatever feels good to you.

5. Make space for gratitude. Conscious ritual is, at its most fundamental, an act of creating space to recognize the blessings that life offers. And the simple yet profound law that follows is this: The more gratitude you feel for your life, the more you find to be grateful for. We humans tend to think that we need to be exceptionally lucky or highly skilled to attain life’s bounty. But it’s not true. That abundance is there, but we’re often too busy or too wrapped up in our own thoughts to notice. This holiday season, make space for ritual and the richness in your life will become clear.

Studies show that people who are chronically lonely have significantly more heart disease, are more vulnerable to metastatic cancer, have an increased risk of stroke and are more likely to develop neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. They also are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely.

Researchers estimate that some 60 million Americans — one fifth of the population — suffer from the pain of loneliness. And with millions of baby boomers now facing a radically shrinking social world as they retire from the workplace, see their children disperse, lose friends and family members to illness and death, the rising tide of loneliness has all the hallmarks of a widespread and costly epidemic.

“Our culture is changing in ways that invite us — in fact, almost require us — to be more lonely and disenfranchised,” says Steve Cole, professor of medicine and psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and director of the UCLA Social Genomics Core Laboratory.

Cole studies the effects of loneliness at the molecular level, a deep dive made possible by the Human Genome Project. He began the work in the early 2000s, after a study revealed that closeted gay men with HIV died at a significantly faster rate than gay men with HIV who were open about their sexuality. The reason, it turned out, was the immune systems of the closeted men were not as robust as those of the openly gay men. Closeted men were far more sensitive to social threats, such as being rejected or even ostracized for their sexuality, than openly gay men.

“The question became, is there something about threat-sensitivity that might make our bodies work differently?” Cole says, according to a UCLA news release. “And that concept turned out to be a very productive key to the biology of how loneliness turns into disease.”

Working with John Cacioppo, founder and director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, Cole studied how gene expression in a small group of lonely people differed from a group of non-lonely people. The results were startling.

“We found the key antiviral response driven by so-called Type 1 interferon molecules was deeply suppressed in the lonely people relative to the non-lonely people,” Dr. Cole says. “But we also found that there was another block of genes that was not suppressed — in fact, it was greatly activated — and this block of genes was involved in inflammation.”

Inflammation fuels disease processes in a host of devastating illnesses, including atherosclerosis, Alzheimer’s and cancer, Cole explains. Inflammation is not the disease itself; rather, it serves as a kind of molecular fuel that helps the disease thrive and grow. The study revealed that not only are lonely people markedly more vulnerable to outside threats such as viruses and bacteria, they also are under attack from within by their own bodies. But why?

“The best theory is that this pattern of altered immunology is a kind of defensive reaction mounted by your body if it thinks you are going to be wounded in the near future,” Cole says.

The findings were published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Participants in the international study felt more alert, calmer and uplifted after – using five-minute video tutorials on their smartphones as a guide – they had, for example, practiced concentrating on their bodies.

The subjects could choose between various established or more modern psychotherapeutic exercise modules known as micro-interventions. Some of the participants, for example, recalled emotional experiences during the exercise, while other test subjects repeated short sentences or number sequences in a contemplative manner, or played with their facial gestures. The subjects recorded their mood on their smartphones, answering short questions by marking a six-step scale both before and after the exercise. Those who succeeded in immediately improving their mood through the brief exercises benefited over the longer term as well: Their mood improved overall during the two-week study phase.

The study, conducted by researchers in associate professor Marion Tegethoff’s team at the University of Basel’s Faculty of Psychology, included 27 healthy young men as part of a larger research program.

“These findings demonstrate the viability of smartphone-based micro-interventions for improving mood in concrete, everyday situations,” explains Tegethoff. Such applications could represent a useful addition to the psychotherapeutic options currently available.

“Now we need to carry out more extensive studies to help us understand the extent to which smartphone-based micro-interventions are responsible for the improvement in mood, and also perform studies on patients with psychological disorders,” Tegethoff said.

The study questions prior claims that resilience is the “usual” response to major life stressors by looking at longitudinal data in a more nuanced way and making less generalization about the human response to such dramatic events.

A paper detailing the research, “Resilience to major life stressors is not as common as thought,” is published in the current issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science.

“We show that contrary to an extensive body of research, when individuals are confronted with major life stressors, such as spousal loss, divorce or unemployment, they are likely to show substantial declines in well-being and these declines can linger for several years,” said Frank Infurna, an ASU assistant professor of psychology and co-author of the new study.

“Previous research largely claimed that individuals are typically resilient to major life stressors,” he said. “Whereas when we test these assumptions more thoroughly, we find that most individuals are deeply affected and it can take several years for them to recover and get back to previous levels of functioning.”

Infurna and co-author Suniya Luthar, an ASU Foundation Professor in psychology, were seeking to replicate prior work that showed among adults, resilience — which is described as stable, healthy levels of well-being and the absence of negative outcomes during or following potentially harmful circumstances — is the prototypical trajectory after potentially traumatic events.

Previous work by others in the field involving people going through traumas ranging from bereavement and deployment in military service to spinal-cord injury and natural disasters had reported that resilience is the most common response following significant negative life events.

“Our findings go against the grain and show there can be more to the picture than that,” Infurna said. “It may not be the case that most people are unperturbed and doing fine.”

Infurna and Luthar used existing longitudinal data from Germany (the German socioeconomic panel study), which is an ongoing survey that began in 1984 and annually assesses participants over a wide range of measures. The outcome that they focused on was life satisfaction, which assesses how satisfied individuals are with their lives, all things considered, as they pass through years of their lives.

Essentially, Infurna and Luthar documented that “rates of resilience” vary substantially based on assumptions applied while running the statistical models.

They explain that in essence, the question that was addressed in previous studies was not, “How many people are resilient?” But instead, “Assuming A and B, how many people are resilient?”

And what were the A and B assumptions applied in previous studies?

One was about how much the groups (resilient and others) differed but within one another. Previous studies assumed that whereas resilient and non-resilient groups differed in life-satisfaction changes over time — steady and high in the former but not the latter — trajectories of change were the same for all people within all of the groups. To illustrate with four hypothetical people, this would mean that Rita and Ralph, in the resilient group, both showed the same steady, high life satisfaction over time; whereas Norma and Nate, both in a non-resilient group who showed declines as a function of their major life event, showed declines exactly at the same time, and then rebounded at exactly the same time. Infurna and Luthar allowed for the possibility that Nate might have recovered two years after the adverse event and Norma immediately after the event (for example, when divorce signaled release from a particularly unhappy marriage).

The second assumption in earlier studies was that “peaks and valleys” over time would be the same within the resilient and non-resilient groups, that is, the degree to which people showed extreme highs and lows around the average of their own subgroups. Back to the illustrative example, this assumption would mean that in prior studies, life-satisfaction scores across all 10 years ranged between 4 and 8 (out of 10) for resilient and for non-resilient groups. Infurna and Luthar, by contrast, allowed for the possibility that Ralph and Rita may have stayed within the range of 6 to 8 over 10 years (that is the definition of resilience — stable good functioning) but that Norma and Nate may have been as low as 2 in one or two years, and as high as 10 in others; again, by definition, these people are “not stable.”

Merely removing the restrictive assumptions applied in previous studies dramatically changed the percentage of people found to be resilient. Using exactly the same database, rates of resilience in the face of unemployment were reported to be 81 percent. With the restrictive assumptions removed, Infurna and Luthar found the rates to be much lower, around 48 percent.

“We used previous research as a basis and analyzed the data based on their specifications,” Infurna explained. “Then we used our own specifications that we feel are more in line with conceptual assumptions and we found contrasting results.”

“The previous research postulated that most people, anywhere from 50 to 70 percent, would show a trajectory characterized by no change. They are largely unperturbed by life’s major events,” Infurna said. “We found that it usually took people much longer, several years, to return to their previous levels of functioning.”

A finding that means giving a person time alone to deal with the stressor might not be the best approach to getting him or her back to full functionality, Infurna said.

“These are major qualitative shifts in a person’s life, and it can have a lasting impact on their lives,” he said. “It provides some evidence that if most people are affected, then interventions certainly should be utilized in terms of helping these individuals in response to these events.”

The findings have implications not just for science but for public policy. According to Infurna, sweeping scientific claims that “most people are resilient” carry dangers of blaming the victims (those who do not rebound immediately), and more seriously, suggest that external interventions are not necessary to help people hit by traumatic events.

Has anger reached a fever pitch in America?

According to a November 2015 national survey conducted by NBC, Survey Monkey and Esquire magazine, half of Americans reported feeling angrier today than they did just a year ago.  Read the complete survey results here and visit this link to take a quiz connected to see how your feelings compare to the survey respondents.

While this increased anger is a concern, it’s important to remember that anger is a natural human reaction tied to the body’s fight or flight response.  The challenge is to find ways to experience these intense feelings but not let them spiral out-of-control.

What’s So Bad About Being Mad?

Here is what happens when the body feels the first flicker of anger:  The brain’s amygdala instantly springs into action, sending an internal alarm and triggering the adrenal glands to release both adrenaline and testosterone.  Sensing these changes, the body responds by tensing muscles, increasing the heart rate, raising blood pressure and flooding the body with stress chemicals.

Internally, these reactions transpire in a matter of seconds.

Signs of the anger then become visible to others as the body displays changes in facial expressions, stance and breathing rates.

“Anger is a survival response that happens automatically when we feel threatened or unsafe,” said Donald Altman, M.A., LPC, speaker and author of “101 Mindful Ways to Build Resilience: Cultivate Calm, Clarity, Optimism and Happiness Each Day.”

Most individuals will experience anger by feeling mad or even livid in the short-term, yet they can moderate these intense emotions and eventually let them go.  They don’t allow their anger to fester and consume their lives.

However, an increasing number of people are being held hostage by their unresolved feelings of rage. If not released, the anger may become ingrained and adversely affect personal and professional relationships as well as mental and physical health.

“If anger happens enough, it gets hardwired into the brain and becomes a habit,” said Altman.

This deeply rooted anger is especially challenging.  To cope, some people have learned how to compartmentalize their wrath.

Donna Highfill, a midlife writer, author, and speaker, describes herself as a passionate person who is quick to react.  She can rage for 30 seconds over a dropped pencil, but she won’t seethe for years over a situation.

As a mom of two adult children, Highfill says she was always able to control anger issues when her kids were growing up, rarely losing her cool.  However, her trigger-quick reactions may have cost her professionally.  “Over the years, I’ve given up on work situations sooner than I should have, primarily due to my impatience with the situation,” she said.

When Feelings of Anger Boil Over

While Highfill has developed an ability to keep a lid on most of her anger, many others cannot.

Chronically angry people are unable to tame their tempers, often lashing out at others and displaying inappropriate behavior.  Unable to modulate their reactions, their behavior can escalate into verbal abuse or physical violence.  These people are usually incapable of seeing how their actions affect others, and they will spend an inordinate amount of time rationalizing and justifying their position and actions.

Over time, their rage develops into a circular, toxic pattern of behavior.

On the flip side, some people experience similar deep-seated fury, but instead of expressing those feelings they repress them.  These individuals are also being held captive by their rage, unable to let it go and move on.

This unmanaged anger – either expressed or repressed – will eventually cause harm to many different systems of the body.  Some conditions include headaches, depression, anxiety, insomnia, lowered immune system and high blood pressure.  If untreated, extreme anger can even contribute to coronary heart disease and stroke.

Learning to Manage and Release Rage

The good news, according to Altman, is that curtailing anger is a learned skill.  He recommends using these four tactics when anger strikes.

1. Rate the anger as small, medium or extreme. An example of extreme anger would be when you lose control, shout, curse, or throw something across the room. Assigning a rate allows a person to detach for a moment rather than acting immediately.
2. Take three calming breaths, relax posture and facial expressions. Smiling is a good idea because it is difficult to be angry when you are smiling.
3. Ask questions about the anger. What and what triggered it? Was my response appropriate?  How old is this anger?  Simply asking can help break old patterns.
4. Identify more effective responses. If this isn’t achievable, then do something calming, such as taking a walk or listening to soothing music.

For long-term help to resolve anger issues, visit a doctor for a physical exam which would rule out any underlying health problems.  Then, seek out a mental health professional or another counselor who can provide perspective and direction.

Helpful tools include meditating, spending time in nature, pet therapy, and exercising regularly.

Anger is an innate human response, and it will never be eliminated. The key is to understand the feelings, manage them and channel them in a way that will benefit the individual as well as our society.

According to Dr. Nzinga A. Harrison MD, Chief Medical Officer for ANKA Behavioral Health Inc.,  the cause for summer sadness isn’t clearly known, but it’s biologically related to the way sunlight is coded in the brain and how your body responds—the same phenomenon as hibernation. Those with the disorder anticipate feeling terribly in the summertime year after year, often as soon as March; as a result, their daily routines and mental health suffer.

Here, Harrison describes five common symptoms of summer sadness, as well as lifestyle tips for coping and prevention.

1. Irritability. Identify the activity gives you an immediate mood boost, whether it’s jogging or watching a funny movie, and go do it as soon as you start to feel down. Even five minutes of it can make you feel better.

2. Decreased appetite. Our bodies operate on patterns, so if you schedule small healthy snacks around the same time every day, you’ll learn to build up your appetite again.

3. Decreased ability to sleep. If you engage in the same routine every night before bed (i.e., washing your face and folding clothes), your brain will send chemical signals to sleep as soon as you begin the ritual. Also, try to go to bed around the same time each night.

4. Decreased memory and concentration. Mental performance is directly linked to a good night’s sleep, so aim to get eight hours a night. Additionally, try this easy meditation technique that helps calm the brain: Stare at an orange peel, noting every single dimple, detail and color; start with 30 seconds and work your way up to two minutes.

5. Social isolation. Identify the type of socializing that makes you happy, as well as with whom and for what length of time, and schedule it in once a week. If big group dinners overwhelm you, opt for a quick coffee break with your best friend instead.

To learn more, visit Harrison’s website, www.letsgetmentallyfit.com, and watch their free monthly webinar episode on summertime sadness.

Brooke Sager is a New York City-based writer who specializes in health, lifestyle and beauty. To read more of Brooke’s work, visit www.brookelsager.com.

Much attention is paid to the issue of depression, but there is another mental illness that people know much less about. They may be suffering from it, or living with a person who has it. And not being aware of borderline personality disorder in cases like that can lead to serious consequences.

Here, from the experts at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships. It affects about 1.6 percent of adults in the U.S. in any given year.

Some characteristics of BPD include: problems with regulating emotions and thoughts; impulsive and reckless behavior; and unstable relationships.

The NIMH experts say that people also have high rates of other disorders such as depression, substance abuse and eating disorders. (That pattern is more common in women than men.)  Other illnesses that often occur with BPD include diabetes, high blood pressure, chronic back pain, arthritis, and fibromyalgia. These conditions are associated with obesity, which is a common side effect of the medications prescribed to treat BPD and other mental disorders.

Additionally, they may harm or even kill themselves. BPD is also characterized by self-harming behaviors such as cutting and head banging.

Although the research on possible causes and risk factors is still in its early stages, experts agree that both genetic and environmental factors are probably involved. There may be social and cultural factors as well.

Unfortunately, the NIMH experts say, BPD is often underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed. They recommend an expert in diagnosing and treating mental disorders, as well as an exam by an M.D. that can rule out other possible cause of the symptoms.

Although experts have often thought of BPD as difficult to treat, recent research shows that some treatments can be effective and that many BPD sufferers improve over time.

The condition can be treated with psychotherapy; there is no FDA-approved medication to treat it.  Families of people with BPD may also benefit from therapy. This is especially important because, the NIMH says, members may unknowingly act in ways that worsen symptoms. The NIMH says more research is needed to determine the effectiveness of family therapy involving both the patient and family.

Helping Someone with BPD

If you know someone who has BPD, the experts say, it affects you as well. The best thing you can do is to help your friend or relative get the right diagnosis and treatment. The NIMH experts say that you  may need to make an appointment and accompany your friend or relative.

Other steps that can help:

Offer emotional support, understanding, patience, and encouragement

Learn about mental disorders, including BPD.

Never ignore comments about someone’s intent or plan to harm himself or herself or someone else. Report such comments to the person’s therapist or doctor. In urgent or potentially life-threatening situations, the NIMH experts emphasize, you may need to call the police.

If You Think You Have BPD

Talk to your doctor about treatment options and stick with treatment

Try to maintain a stable schedule of meals and sleep times

Engage in mild activity or exercise to help reduce stress

Set realistic goals

Break up large tasks into small ones, set some priorities, and do what you can, as you can

Try to spend time with other people and confide in a trusted friend or family member

Tell others about events or situations that may trigger symptoms

Expect your symptoms to improve gradually, not immediately

Identify and seek out comforting situations, places, and people

Continue to educate yourself about this disorder.

For more information on mental disorders from the National Institute of Mental Health, click here.