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Being a working parent or grandparent is hard—especially when you’re a nurse. You spend your entire shift caring for other people, and when you come home, you’re greeted by a houseful of people who need some TLC of their own.

Then there’s the issue of a split focus. When you’re at work, it’s common for your mind to fill up with thoughts about home: errands to run, bills to pay, birthday parties to prep for. And when you’re at home, issues and challenges from work bleed over into your personal life.

You enjoy your roles, but that doesn’t mean the balance between the two is easy.

One important thing you can do to help alleviate the stress is create for yourself what I call a “Detox Zone.” The idea is to implement a simple, tangible trigger that gives you an espresso of energy and helps you transition between work and home.

Here are a few examples of what a Detox Zone might look like for a nurse:

On your drive home from your shift, do a mental recap of the day’s events. Odds are you already do that anyway. Let’s pretend that there is a gas station somewhere just after the halfway point of your commute. That gas station becomes your Detox Zone. Once you pass it, it’s time to switch mental gears. Leave thoughts of work behind and shift your mind into home mode. Mentally prepare yourself for what lies ahead once you walk in the front door. I highly recommend having some quiet, soothing instrumental music on to help facilitate your transition. Songs with lyrics or talk radio are bad news in this case because your brain doesn’t need to be bombarded with any more “noise” to process. It needs a breather, and it needs some space.

I heard a story about a mother who took a different approach that also works well. She knew she had a problem when she started to dread walking through her front door. No doubt she’d encounter the frenzied activity of hyperactive kids who were eager to talk to her, share projects they completed at school or have her referee the latest skirmish that was already underway.

One day, she decided to enter through the back door. There was a small area—a Detox Zone—where she could hear the buzz of her kids without them knowing she was home. She took a few moments to gently acclimate herself to the new environment, let go of her thoughts about work, take a few deep breaths and say a short prayer. Those three minutes made a world of difference. Stress levels dropped, and she was better able to fully enjoy being in the presence of her family and delight in the lightness that came with leaving work at work.

It’s a simple concept, but what makes it so effective is the tangible trigger that reminds you to switch gears.

Chances are busyness is a constant companion for you. But by creating a Detox Zone, whether it’s a trigger point on your way home from work, the decision to sneak in a back door or even just staying in your car for a few extra minutes before heading inside, you’ll lower your stress levels dramatically and experience a more peaceful balance between work and home.

In a previous article, I shared four secrets from childhood that can help you keep “Adultitis” at bay. Here are four more.

1. Play.

You routinely see some pretty heavy, unpleasant stuff. It can get downright depressing at times. The best way to navigate these choppy waters is by adopting a playful spirit. Now I’m not suggesting you write out your charts in crayon or do cartwheels down the hall while doing rounds (which would actually be kind of cool). You’ve got an important job that should be taken seriously and handled professionally.

However, that doesn’t mean you have to take YOURSELF seriously. Assuming competency is equal, who’s the better nurse: the one who addresses the patient with a smile on her face and a funny anecdote to share, or the one with the scowl and the grumpy complaints about how understaffed the clinic is? Wearing fun scrubs, bringing cupcakes in for your coworkers or simply just smiling more (even if you don’t feel like it) will add some much-needed sunshine to the lives of your patients and colleagues, as well as your own life. Plus, what’s more fun than having fun?

2. Dream Big.

If you’ve been a nurse for a while, odds are there’s something you’d like to see changed in your clinic, hospital or profession. It might be something small, such as a simple tweak to the nurse’s station to improve efficiency, or something more ambitious, like a system-wide initiative that upgrades the care patients receive. Many nurses see the job of initiating change as rocking the boat. They figure it’s not worth the extra hassle and rationalize that they got into the profession to help patients, not to fight bureaucracy.

To be sure, you have to pick your battles, but you don’t have to accept the status quo. If your question “Why do we do things this way?” is met with the typical (and lame) “Because we’ve always done them this way,” you’ve just encountered proof that people have stopped asking questions. If you believe a proposed change could dramatically help 50, 100 or even 1,000 patients, isn’t that worth the effort? Throughout the course of history, impossible things have been accomplished by people who refused to accept the the idea that something couldn’t be done. Kids dream big—so should you.

3. Be Honest.

Children have a knack for telling it like it is (especially when they are behind a morbidly obese man in a supermarket checkout aisle, right?). It is said that the truth will set you free, and sometimes the best medicine we can receive is being honest with ourselves. I’m going to assume that you actually care about your patients and want to be the best nurse you can be. I’m also going to assume you have a family. Maybe just a spouse, maybe a houseful of kids, maybe a gaggle of grandkids. And then there’s the house, for which there’s a to-do list a mile long. Finding balance is a battle. When you’re concentrating on one thing, you feel like everything else is going to pot.

Give yourself permission to let go. You can’t do it all. No one can. Quit trying to live up to the impossible standard cobbled together from the expectations of your mom, Grandma, the media and Martha Stewart. All you can do is figure out what’s most important to you. (Hint: Not everything is equally important.) Focus your time and energy on those things, and let the rest go. If that means a layer of dust builds up on the dining room chairs or laundry gets put off for another few days, oh well. You’re not a superhero. You don’t have to save the world. You just have to do the best you can with what you’ve got.

4. Have Faith.

Kids have the faith to believe that after they skin their knee on the sidewalk, a kiss from Mom can heal all wounds. When Dad tells them that babies come from storks, who are they to question his all-knowing well of knowledge? Children are eager to believe, but as we grow older, that belief commonly turns into cynicism.

Sometimes you have one of those days where everything seems to go wrong and nothing makes sense. Questions bubble up to the surface and doubts cloud your mind. Maybe you want to throw in the towel. On days like this, take a deep breath. Make a commitment to give it one more day. Just one. When I have the Worst Day Ever—when things look bleak and all hope is lost—and I decide that I will keep going for one more day, it’s amazing how things always seem a little bit better the next day. Dust off that childlike faith, and have the courage to believe that everything always works out for the best. It’s not so far-fetched, after all. Because you know what? It does.

Image: © iStockphoto.com

Nursing, like almost every other profession (with the possible exception of professional beachcombers), is threatened by Adultitis. In case you’ve never heard of it, Adultitis is a deadly disease that depletes your childlike spirit, causes loads of stress and robs you of your zest for life. To put it mildly, a person with a full-blown case is not a pretty picture. (You can check your level of Adultitis here: adultitis.org/intake.php.)

Happily, Adultitis is treatable and can be brought into a controllable state of remission. There are eight “secrets” from childhood that are the key to keeping Adultitis at bay. Here are four to get you started:

1. Delight in the little things.
It’s not uncommon for a walk around the block to take about four hours for a four-year-old. That’s because they notice and delight in the little things, like pennies on the sidewalk and ladybugs perched on a blade of grass. As we get older, we often take on a cynical, “been there, done that” attitude, and it takes increasingly more to impress us. In our pursuit of the next big thing, we miss out on the joy hidden right under our noses. The next time you’re working, take that extra effort to slow down and notice the little things—the bright rays of sunshine spilling through a window…the vivid, sweet-smelling flowers sitting on the nightstand…the gentle, warm smile from the appreciative patient.

2. Be curious.
It’s important to keep a childlike curiosity burning within you. The best nurses are the most curious ones. You may have heard the saying “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Asking your patient thoughtful questions—and not just the ones like “Does it hurt when I do this?”—is a great way to communicate caring. I’m not saying you have to put on a Barbara Walters special, especially when you have a heavy patient load. But sprinkling in a few curiosity-inspired questions (Who’s your hero? When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? What was your favorite toy?) goes a long way toward making the patient feel like she’s not just a number.

3. Live with passion.
Long shifts and endless paperwork—and so much red tape that the world is experiencing a global shortage of red—can suck the passion right out of you. When the passion fades, Adultitis sets in. It’s harder to get up and go to work, the days drag on and on, and Oscar the Grouch thinks you need an attitude adjustment. If this sounds like you, stop. Just for a minute. Close your eyes, and call to mind why you went into this profession on the first place. Who inspired you to become a nurse? How excited were you when you finally graduated? Think about your all-time favorite patient. Do you feel that excitement, that joy, that sense of fulfillment? This, my friend, is why you are a nurse: to help people and to make a difference. The other stuff can gunk up the works and bring you down, but taking the time to remind yourself why you do what you do might just give you the spark you need.

4. Maintain perspective.
Even though their stature and life experience may be short, kids have an otherworldly understanding of what’s really important in life. Adultitis has a way of muddying things up. It’s easy to worry about stuff we can’t control and focus on the stuff that doesn’t really matter. Let’s face it; when it comes to healthcare, doctors get all the credit, accolades and people like George Clooney playing them on TV. Doctors are certainly important, but most people I’ve talked to who have stayed in a hospital said it was the nurse who did the bulk of the caregiving and made the biggest impact on whether the visit was healing or hellish. Let the doctors hog the glory. Never forget that you’re in one of the most important, admirable and heroic professions in the world. You are a nurse.