Sarah Schnitker

But then when it comes to our own families, when we get home, I think there's two things

working against us.

First, we are tired at the end of the day, right?

We've been practicing our patience and are starting to lose our motivation to continue.

But then the second thing is that we might have higher expectations for our family members.

And when we get home, we also expect it should be time to relax, right?

that now I can stop having to feel like I'm working and instead move into the relaxation portion of my day.

But that's often not the case.

That can be when maybe the second shift begins and there's a lot of new work to do.

I think it's a really interesting question of whether it gets more and more difficult as we encounter more and more of these daily hassles.

But I think what we know from other research studies on self-regulation and emotion regulation is that when the pressures accumulate, we don't always have the resources available to meet those pressures.

And so there might be an optimal level

of daily frustrations that will help us build patience but not fall prey to impatience.

And it might be once we get past that optimal level, we start to just kind of deteriorate into impatience and just struggle to get out of it.

Well, I think the first thing I would say is my heart goes out to Vic.

It sounds like this has been a really challenging diagnosis and that Vic is just dealing with a lot of changes and losses.

I think it is possible to grow more and more patient.

Many of us experience loss.

growth in patients over time.

Not always, but sometimes.