Jana, a 17 year old swimmer, came in to see me just after returning from an intensive training week of swimming. Now, she was seriously contemplating retirement from this sport that had been her passion for the past 8 years. At the swim camp, she had spent hours every day swimming. As the week progressed, her performance deteriorated, she was exhausted but couldn't sleep, she had lost her appetite and was feeling emotionally empty. Now, back home, she was biting everyone's head off. Yes, major competitions were coming up in a couple of months-but she didn't know if she wanted to do this any more.

The clinical psychologist part of me heard a number of the tell-tale signs of depression. But the sport psychologist part of me heard something else: overtraining, also described as overuse or, at times, burnout. Rather than making a decision about this important aspect of her life, I encouraged Jana to take a week off from training and then begin looking at her options.

Jana bounced into my office two weeks later. She was back to her old self, engaged, happy, eager to get back to the pool. She had missed her friends, sure. But she had also missed the feel of water on her skin, the chlorine smell, the passion of pushing herself to her limits and beyond. She had made her decision for herself-and learned a whole lot about what happens when the body gets pressed beyond its capacity over a period of time.

Recently, I read about multi-instrumentalist David Bromberg, sometimes called a "musician's musician" because of his collaborative work over the years with-among others-Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Willie Nelson, and Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. At one point, he was on the road for two years, performing almost continuously, only home for two weeks. Reflecting, he recognized: "I got burnt out....And being too stupid to recognize burnout - I never thought I could burn out - the only conclusion that I could reach was that I was no longer a musician.

His reasoning? Like Jana's, it was his interpretation of his feelings: "When I wasn't travelling, I wasn't practicing, I wasn't writing. I wasn't jamming. So I wasn't playing. I felt that whatever made me a musician was gone."

Bromberg's nearly twenty year detour became a deep engagement in making and selling violins. He came back to performing a few years ago, with CDs and tours. Perhaps he's learned something about pacing.

Is the resolution for those negative feelings always a matter of "just take some time off"-whether that's a week or 20 years? No, it's not so easy. I've been working with another high-performance adolescent athlete, Margi. In some ways, her initial story was similar to Jana's. She had been very intensely involved, for a chunk of time, in her sport. In this case, it involved international travel and a competitive tournament. She came back home with a sense of let-down, exhaustion, tearfulness, dread, and hopelessness. She had been competing in her sport long enough that, in a way, she wasn't surprised to have these feelings.

Margi took a couple of weeks off from practice. But she still didn't feel that energetic spark. She was now back in training, but just felt discouraged and like she was going through the motions. Our conversation was mostly about her sense of aloneness and isolation. A brief paper and pencil assessment confirmed what she and I were both aware of: she really was (clinically) depressed. Time off from her sport wasn't going to be sufficient.

Margi is now continuing with her sport routine. After all, physical activity is an important anti-depressant. She is also journaling regularly, spending a bit more time with friends, and talking with me about some ways of feeling less burdened by her family dynamics.

So what do these examples tell us about Santa? Well, I'm not going to diagnose him...yet. Instead, I'll make some recommendations to him:

• The first and most obvious is to take some time off. Are there some things he's been wanting to do but hasn't made time for? This would be the perfect moment for him to indulge. Perhaps there's one left-over present that he might choose for himself, an opportunity to play. Maybe there's a favorite book he's been eager to read. Or he might hang out with the reindeer, patting and grooming them in the quiet of their stalls.
• Cross-training is also an excellent anti-burnout strategy. In sports, it means doing a different, complementary activity. Doing something connected but different was Bromberg's solution to his situation.
• It's also important to maintain some connection with others. Unless you are intentional in your planning, if you discontinue an activity that has been central to your life for a while, you're also likely to social involvements. What are Santa's elves up to?
• Sometimes, it's the pressure of performance that has created some of the symptoms. Are there ways of doing the activity for the sheer enjoyment of it, coming back to the reason that you got involved in the first place?
• And sometimes, one needs time to reflect, to stand still. Perhaps Santa will write in his journal, thinking about what gives him pleasure, how he wants to live his life, how to pace himself, and what he's learned.

And of course, Santa's got another 364 days until he needs to repeat his amazing, astounding, and wondrous feat!