January 27, 2025 • 43 mins
Stress can suck, but it's part of life - it’s normal and even useful. Many of us drown in our stress - worrying about past events and fearing upcoming challenges. We even stress about feeling stressed. So how can we reset our relationship with stress - benefitting from its positives and avoiding those negatives?
Dr Jenny Taitz has some effective tips to help you greet stress more healthily. A clinical psychologist and the author of Stress Resets: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes, Dr Jenny explains that if we think differently about challenges and tough situations and take action, then stress can become a friend rather than a foe.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Hey, doctor Laurie Santo's here here at the Happiness Lab.
We spend a lot of time talking about the happiness
benefits of being a fan, and it just so happens
that another Pushkin podcast has gone deep into this topic.
It's a show called Against the Rules, hosted by best
selling author Michael Lewis. Michael Lewis is the brains behind
(00:38):
books like Moneyball, The Big Shore, and Liar's Poker. This
season of Against the Rules is all about sports fandom,
but also sports gambling, which was legalized in the US
just a few years ago. From a happiness perspective, this
is a fascinating topic. Michael talks with gambling addicts, but
also pro basketball stars, Vegas bookies, and even experts in
(00:59):
casino design. I also get to make an appearance. I
really enjoyed our conversation, So if you're a little bit curious,
I urge you to check out Against the Rules and
subscribe time wherever you get your podcasts. Stress sucks, but
(01:27):
it's also a normal part of life and one that's
also kind of useful. Our stress response is just the
body's natural reaction to a perceived threat. Whenever we detect
an incoming challenge, the limpic systems of our brains kick in.
We switch from our usual breathing and digesting to a
physiological state that's revved up for action. Our stress response
is there to prepare us for big, scary events like
(01:48):
fighting off a tiger, giving an important presentation, or having
a tough conversation with our boss. But once less stressful
events are over, our bodies are supposed to return to normal.
Our breathing should slow down, and we should go back
to digesting lunch.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
At least that's the idea.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Sadly, our modern stress responses aren't all that great at
turning off, especially since we keep challenges alive, ruminating about
past events and worrying about problems that haven't even come
up yet. Thought patterns like these cause our bodies to
react as if we're in immediate danger even when we are.
And what's most ironic, since we know that stress is
bad for us, we often get stressed out about just
(02:26):
feeling stressed. So how can we stop stressing about stress?
To figure that out, I've turned to one of my
favorite experts.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
My name is doctor Jenny Tates. I'm a clinical psychologist,
and i am the author of stress resets how to
soothe your body and mind in minutes.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
You're kind of an expert on this, But what is
stress like? How would we define it?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So, stress is when there's like this mismatch between our resources,
what we have internally and the demands that we're facing.
It's almost like our bandwidth. It's when there's just too
much coming at us and we feel like there's not
enough in us to cope. But the good news is
there's a lot we can do to improve our relationship
with stress. Small things can make a huge difference in
(03:06):
how we face stress. And the most common measure of
stress is actually the perceived stress scale, which says so
much about how stress is a lot about our perception.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And so give me a sense of like how stressed
out people are these days? Like, what are some stats
on what we're self reporting about our stress?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Recorders of people say that stress is a huge issue
in their lives, and stress is the most commonly searched
term that people want help with that they're asking Google
to help them solve. And that's kind of why I
wrote this book, because you shouldn't have to ask Google
for help with this. There are experts and there's a
lot of counterintuitive wisdom that a lot of people just
don't know about that I want people to know, and
(03:42):
a lot of it was even surprising to me and
researching this book.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
As we think about stressors in some way, it sort
of makes sense evolutionarily, right, Like all animals have stress,
they've defined food, or maybe there's predators and so on.
But an interesting thing about humans is that we seem
to do it a little bit differently. We seem to
kind of exacerbate the normal kinds of stress. And so
explain why this is, like how humans make things worse
by the way we think about stress.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I love this. I mean, I think a downside to
being human is we have an when stress shows up
in our lives for inadvertently making it so much worse.
I mean it's almost like if you imagine you have
a small stain and you start trying to remove it
in a way that only spreads it. I mean, it's
painfully ironic. It's like people that are worried about money
can easily go into overspending. People that have a tough
(04:26):
deadline that there is ambitious to reach go into like
hyper perfectionism or total avoidance. And so I think one
of the reasons that stress excites me is when the
limbic system is on fire, we just don't think clearly.
But people are incredibly good at getting better if they're
given the right tools. And so if you even just
take a step back and think about it, I want
(04:46):
to first start by validating stress is a lot of
us are stressed for very good reasons right now. And
also that's all the more reason that we deserve to
be really kind to ourselves and compassionately. Notice if once
stress shows up in our lives, we fall into patterns
like overthinking and avoiding or acting in ways that keep
stress afloat. That could even be avoiding the thing that
(05:09):
might help you, like spending time with family or sticking
with a nice plan for yourself or an exercise goal,
even if the work is really piling on. And so
I think stress is real. And also we as people
animals don't overthink. We overthink, and that's a deep downside
to being human. But with the right strategies, we can
reduce our stress, I think exponentially.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
And this is why I love your book so much,
because it's like this, like almost like a medicine cabinet
of different strategies that we can use when we're feeling
stressed out, Like if I'm feeling sick, like I could
go to my medicine cabinet and there are some like
cough drops, or I view profit or if I need
a band aid if I'm cut, and like your book
is almost like a version of this for stress. I
took away so many very practical tips that I've been using,
(05:52):
and then I'm so excited to share with my Happiness
Lab listeners. And so I want to go through my
favorite tips that we get from your book, starting with
tip number one, which is that there are strategies we
can use when we need to reevaluate stress. Explain why
how we think about stress.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Seems to matter. What we think about stress is so impawt,
so much so that people who have stress and believe
stress is bad for their health actually are forty three
percent more likely to die do to stress related causes.
And so worrying about stress just compound stress and make
stress more harmful and stresses you out more. It's almost like,
once you're really stressed, then someone tells you to calm
(06:27):
down might write you out more. And on the flip side,
normalizing stress seeing it as an opportunity for growth, almost
seeing it as a pop quiz in life about your
ability to manage emotions and live by your values. Seeing
stress as normal and adoptive, and also framing your body
stress response as helpful and useful and supporting you and
(06:47):
moving towards your goals actually reduces the negative impacts of corticol,
reduces your corticel levels and allows you to persist in
pursuing meaningful goals.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And so any specific strategies for helping us to reappraise
stress is a more positive thing.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I think to really believe, and this is something that
I wholeheartedly believe that stress is the price of a
meaningful life. That is not sitting on the couch watching
sports all day and eating whatever and barely having any
steps taken. That is doing hard things. And we know
when we treat patients with depression that behavioral activation creating
a schedule full of opportunities for both pleasure and accomplishment
(07:25):
and social connection which can be stressful, that is the
path forward. And so really changing your mindset about stress
and also looking at yourself of like what am I
doing when I'm living my best life? Maybe the things
that are most meaningful are also kind of stressful.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
You've also talked about how we can reevaluate how our
emotions work. I think when we're in the thick of
really strong emotions like anxiety or kind of frustration, it
can feel like we're going to feel like that forever.
But what does the research really show about how quickly
emotions change? I love this, So emotions are really transient.
I was going to get a tattoo, which I'm not
going to get. It would be a small little picture
(08:00):
of a wave because this is one of my favorite
things to remind myself of Emotions come in waves, and again,
the downside to being human is when something's upsetting.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Our brain goes to I'm going to feel this way forever.
It's getting worse. This is how I feel now, I'll
never be able to survive. But that's just not life.
Our emotions really ebb and flow, and psychologists call this
effective forecasting. We're notoriously bad at predicting how we're going
to feel in the future, and we grossly underestimate our
ability to bounce back. And one of the interesting things
that I do with my clients is we watch movie clips.
(08:30):
I mean, people don't go to therapy expecting to watch
short movie clips, And we watch short clips of a
deathbed scene, which will make any person with a heart
you'll move to tears in a matter of sixty seconds.
We watch a scene where there's a gunshot and that
also understandably would evoke fear, so we go from sadness
to fear. There's a short clip on the cost of
(08:51):
college tuitions and how difficult it is to pay off
your college loans, which if evokes anger in most people.
Then we watch something happy and the Pharrell Happy song,
and people are dancing in their chair, and in a
mere matter of minutes people have gone through so many
different emotions, and in our own lives, we might get
really disappointing news. But then also if we're able to
anchor ourselves in the present moment, be fully present. We
(09:14):
might have a moment of awe when looking at an
adorable puppy passing us by, but the key is really
anchoring ourselves in the present moment.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
It's time to take a quick break, but we'll soon
be back with another top tip, one that's especially helpful
if you let stress throw you into a doom loop.
The Happiness Lab will be right back. Clinical psychologist doctor
Jenny Tates believes that stress is the price of a
meaningful life. But what we do need to guard against,
(09:43):
she says, is dwelling on what's stressful, worrying about it,
and fearing it.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Rumination is what turns something briefly stressful into something chronically stressful.
So an event could have been a two minute exchange
with someone at work, and literally two weeks later it
could still be replaying on your mind. And this is
one of the habits that really correlates with an increased
risk of depression and anxiety. It is just awful for
(10:08):
our mental health. And as many of us know, we
could ruminate almost constantly. I talk about this myself, noticing
earlier in my career that I used to be in
yoga cross and notice that my mind was totally somewhere else.
And so this is such a sneaky habit that we
could have an internal news ticker that's going all the time,
that's very unpleasant, that steals any opportunity for present joy.
(10:29):
And if a person is asked in a research setting
to talk about in detail the most upsetting thing that
happened to them, even if it occurred decades ago, their
body recreates the same physiological stress response decades later. And
so even talking about your stressors in a lot of
detail might seem therapeutic and cathartic, but it actually can
be kind of a version of reminating out loud. And
(10:52):
even if you feel like you are a professional ruminator,
there are a lot of things that you can do
to break free of this noxious, sneaky habit.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So give us the details. How can we break for you?
What are some strategies we give you.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I think the first thing is taking a step back
and asking yourself what do you make of your thinking habit?
Because a lot of people have very interesting metacognition, these
beliefs about their thoughts. Some people think if there's a
problem that hasn't been solved, thinking about it is somehow
inching me closer to some sort of big solution or epiphany.
Other people think, I'm going to drive myself crazy. And
(11:25):
what's interesting is like the same person can have both
very negative and very positive beliefs about their thinking. So
I think taking a step back and really taking a
look at is this habit helping you? Are you getting
closer to your goals? Or is this removing you from
the ability to have a better perspective and managing your
emotions for a better problem solving. So I think the
first thing is really deciding that this is something you
(11:45):
want to put two feet into working on. And of
course if you do want to think about it, they're
constructive ways to think in a more thoughtful way. Problem
with solving is very different than this circular, vicious loop
that's unproductive. And if someone wants to start to work
on this and they feel like they do this all
the time, I think it's helpful to get really clear
on a specific goal. And so if you find that
(12:07):
you're repeating and upsetting work exchange age after hours and
it's coming up in your dinner conversations and it's gnawing
at you before work, really setting a goal of like
from six to seven thirty pm, I am going to
be present from seven am to eight am during my
morning commute and getting ready, I'm going to be setting
myself up for a better day. So setting reasonable goals.
(12:28):
I also really love swapping why thoughts with how thoughts?
Why did this happen? Why was I assign this annoying
assignment and someone else got a promotion. The why thoughts
with how how can I move forward? Because one is
kind of the tornado and a dead end and another
is kind of an empowered plan.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
One of the ones I really love, and one that
we've talked about on the Happiness Lab before, is the
importance of switching from ruminating in your head to ruminating
maybe on paper, to kind of get into the mode
of expressive writing. How can writing help us kind of
get out of the ruminutative loop.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, so I would say that writing is a little
bit different than rumination because rumination is pretty circular, and
writing has a beginning, middle, and end, so it kind
of closes things out rather then keeps things in a spiral.
And the goal with expressive writing is to actually go
deeper into your feelings and so instead of just glossing
over things. The instruction that's given to people college students
(13:21):
who were given an assignment to write about the most
upsetting thing that happened to them in detail for twenty minutes,
and then go back the next day for twenty minutes
and write about how it had affected their life in
the past, and write again a third day for twenty
minutes about how it's affecting them in the present how
it might affect them in the future. People that wrote
in this very detailed, structured way, going deeper into their
(13:42):
feelings and actually like processing, were much less likely to
be depressed and had reductions on scores and rumination even
six months later, because writing is actually creating some working
distance and allowing you to feel rather than kind of
glossing over details with no structure.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So those are awesome tips for nipping your rumination in
the bud. Now we get to tip number three, which
is that we can reduce our stress by engaging in
a little distress tolerance. What's distress tolerance? Stress tolerance is
a combination of things. Distress tolerance is I like to
think about if you step back and think.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
About, how are you making your life worse? You're usually
not accepting, overthinking and doing things that make you feel
better short term, but that are like high interest credit cards,
you pay a big price for it later. And so
distress tolerance is all about learning to radically accept what
is just as it is in this very moment that
sounds overwhelming, even accepting with your face, just relaxing your face.
(14:35):
The facial expression of acceptance actually creates this mindset that
allows you to be more accepting. If I'm sitting in
traffic and clenching and tensing, that's just creating a space
for me to get more judgmental in my mind. But
relaxing my face for myself, not for other people, actually
kind of starts from the outside and I start to
feel more accepting. I love the story. I have to
tell you. I just taught radical acceptance in a prison
(14:57):
last week, and I learned something so brilliant from one
of the people in my class who said it shouldn't
be called radical acceptance, it should be called radical options,
because when you stop fighting so many options. Oh my gosh,
it's so insightful.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I mean, you've also talked about how we can do
this simply through the act of labeling, just by kind
of being a little bit more specific about which kinds
of distress tolerance we're going through.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Right, Even labeling your emotions, just putting a word onto
what you're feeling, whether that's angry, then getting really specific
about it. I'm feeling angry, like on a zero to
a ten scale, at a five. Just putting labels on
your emotions actually activates the part of your brain that
will help you regulate your emotions. And so it seems
very simple, like putting a word on your emotion, but
(15:40):
it actually starts the process of regulating your emotions. And
I even just think about it as like you go
from kind of swimming in it to getting some working
distance from it.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Using your example of the traffic, this is something that
I learned from your book. Is like the last time
I was sitting in really terrible traffic, I was likeugh,
limpic systems, you know, going ridiculously crazy. I'm going to
just use the effect labeling. I was just like frustrated,
like really frustrated and you know, kind of like annoyed,
a little bit sad, And it was so funny. It
sounds so silly, and I think even when I first
(16:10):
started it, I was almost doing it a little like facetiously,
like I'm doing effectly, but I'm kind of not sure
it's going to work well. Like ultimately I'm like, yeah,
it's it's frustrated, Like that's what it is, Like, it's
just an emotion. I'll kind of get through it. So
it has this this active labeling has this power that
I think we often don't expect where it really takes
like the own thlot of our emotions when we realize,
you know, it's just a thing I'm experiencing.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Totally and one thing that I like to do. That's
kind of the next step to this, even just noticing
beyond the specific emotion. We all have different states of mind.
We all have a kind of an emotional mind where
we're governed by our feelings. We all have a reasonable
mind where we're just focused on the facts, and then
we all also have like wise mind, which is the
integration of head and part and our intuition. And so
(16:53):
sometimes we're feeling really intense emotions and we keep them
afloat by we're really angry, and then we're thinking more
angry thoughts and getting more suspicious and agitated. And even
just simply categorizing I feel angry, and an emotion mind
very likely to be like velcrow or quicksand for all
sorts of content that is going to exacerbate that feeling.
(17:16):
We have spam filters in our inboxes, but we need
kind of test spam filters in our minds. And this
is one of the first most practical steps to mindfulness
is just noticing I'm an emotion mind. I feel anxious,
I'm in emotion mind, and there's nothing wrong. By the way,
emotion mind is amazing. If you are at a concert,
if you're dancing, if you're watching an amazing movie, emotion
mind is amazing. We just want to make sure that
(17:37):
you're in the right state of mind at the right time.
So if you're about to go into a meeting and
you feel angry, noticing that you're on an emotion mind
is going to be a path towards freedom and wisdom.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And so that's a tip of we can like navigate
our distress. But you've also argued that we don't just
need to sit with our distress. We can do something different.
We can take action so that we feel less stressed.
Why is it so hard to remember that we can
kind of change our stressor out and take action to
fix things.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
When we're stressed, we're just not thinking clearly. Our mind
goes to like big fixes. But I think we need
to remember that, like small wheels on a big suitcase,
a little can go a long way. And so because
we're bad at remembering this, I like to encourage people
to create a hope kit, like a collection of items
that you can keep handy that just reminds you about
the things that have enriched your life and give you
(18:29):
a sense of faith and perspective and joy and just
looking at them. And this sounds kind of silly, but
even people that are struggling with suicidality or people who
are facing a cancer diagnosis, having a hope kit actually
significantly increased hope. So again, our mind goes to kind
of selectively filtering. Everything is terrible. I need to do
(18:49):
something big that's going to make me feel better right
now and make me feel so much worse later. But
if we do something small that's less sexy, we've created
in a time of wisdom that we can access quickly,
we can make so much headway. And so for me,
just having a couple of notes people have written to
me handy and a picture of my grandma holding me
when I was a baby me bounce back so much
(19:10):
more in the face of rejection than what my mind
wants to do, which is like love every rejection on
top of the one that I'm experiencing in this moment.
And different things work for different people, and for people
thinking about what would I want to put in a
hope kit, I think really thinking about things that touch
your senses that help you be mindful. But it's really
hard to be mindful. But if you can be mindful
by really taking a few minutes to look at photos
(19:30):
of you and your friends and maybe have a nice
playlist going with the photos, and have your favorite scented candle,
you know, right at your desk so you don't have
to grab it from a closet, or like being truly
self compassionate. That the thing that I want to tell
people is like the difference between healthy self soothing or
having a hope kit, And what we often want to
do is we often kind of totally avoid and don't
do things to kind of give ourselves a quick pick
(19:51):
me up. We take a total like detour. We you know,
maybe we need a little bit of gas, but we
don't want to like park ourselves in the gas station
and not go to our final destination. And so the
hope kit is kind of a little pick me up
that can then actually bring you forward.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Another way that we can take action is to literally
act with the opposite. You've actually referred to this as
the ultimate mental health hack, this idea of behavioral activation.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
What does this mean? So all Emotions aren't just something
that we feel. Emotions are created when we have thoughts,
and then the thoughts create physical sensations in our bodies,
and then we have action urges. And so if I
feel sad, I'm probably thinking thoughts about not being good
enough for things or too much for me to handle,
and I'm really overwhelmed and lonely, and then maybe in
(20:35):
my body I feel heaviness and tension, and then my
behavior might be something like withdrawing or overthinking or just
mindlessly doom scrolling. And so emotions don't just happen to us,
but we have a huge role in co creating them,
the same way we can co create our stress. And
so a lot of times people think that acting how
they feel will kind of help them, but these are
(20:56):
actually technically known as emotion driven behaviors, and what they
do is they intensify our feelings. And so you need
to take a step back and notice what is the
emotion that you're feeling, what is the emotion driving you
to do, and is doing that thing ultimately going to
help you? And so short term, it might feel kind
of nice to do the thing that your emotion wants
you to do, but if you actually want to change
(21:18):
the course of your life, you need to act differently
than how you feel. So if you feel ashamed and
you withdraw, you're giving into shame. Shame is winning, you
are losing. You're going to maintain shame. You're going to
grow shame. Shame is going to be the defining quality
of your life. You're going to continue to feel like
the biggest loser. But if you feel shame and put
your phone away and make eye contact with people at
a party and introduce yourself to the people that you
(21:40):
actually want to speak to, like it's hard to believe,
like I'm okay. But when you have lived experience that
people are nodding and people are validating you, your shame
starts to shrink, and so across all mental health conditions.
The evidence based treatment is what an emotion is not justified.
Acting opposite the emotion will significantly improve not only how
you feel, but your quality of life. And so, if
(22:02):
you're unhappy in your marriage, maybe you want to like
replay the pass with mistakes and send angry text messages
and complain to people, but doing something slightly nice for
your partner that feels like something you could do without
being resentful or begrudging. And the trick is that you
need to do this all the way. Opposite action is
like not the splits. It's two feet in it's mind
and body. So if you're doing something nice, you're not
(22:23):
having an inner narrative of no one does this for me,
This isn't right. It's with your head and heart that
I care about this person. I want them to have
a delicious cup of coffee when they wake up, and
see if my feelings will change as a result of this.
So opposit action is helpful with couples therapy. Opposite action
is the cornerstone of all treatments for anxiety disorders. When
your fear does not fit the situation you're in, acting
(22:44):
different than how you feel, whether that's actsing panic as
a cure for panic, or taking up public speaking if
that makes you want to run the other way.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
And I think even kind of the typical emotions that
often go with stress, right like even when you're feeling overwhelmed,
I think sometimes acting opposite has been the sort of
thing that helps me, right Like I'll look at my
calendar and the calendar will just be feeling like, oh
my god, it's overflowing. I'll take a moment and think like, well,
what are we doing If my calendar wasn't overflowing and
I was feeling overwhelmed, like I'd text a friend and
(23:13):
sort of check in. I'd use these five minutes and
there's sort of durishing ways rather than sort of rumitting
and checking my email and all of a sudden, When
you act like that, it doesn't change the overflowing schedule,
but it just puts you in a better mindset so
that your physiology is not feeling kind of overflowing and
overwhelmed in the same way. It's like such a powerful hack,
like even when you don't expect it to work, and
it's different than faking it. I think this is one
(23:35):
of the things that people get wrong about, this idea
of acting opposite. You think, well, I'll just pretend like
I'm not feeling overwhelmed.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
No.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
No, it's really about engaging in the actions right and
just to come back to the stress, because I think
that's so powerful. When we're stressed, we're often juggling too much.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
We're again putting ourselves in this place where we can't
possibly meet the demands because we're juggling too many things.
We're carrying too many bags. Something's going to break. But
what if we just do one thing at a time.
Oftentimes when we're stressed, also we start doing like pseudo productivity,
which is called procrestivity, which is like clearing out your
inbox rather than working on the dog that you need
to do. And so just starting with a workable goal
(24:12):
and doing it with your singular focus and being clear
on like what is the thing I would do if
I felt capable of doing this, or if I really
was being a good friend to myself and a good cheerleader.
And so I love this because I think the only
way out of stress is doing what you would do
if you were acting spacious, which is, you know, not
being overly perfectionistic and actually facing the thing that you
need to face, one thing at a time.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
And stopping this procrastivity. I had not heard that word,
and it's like my new favorite word for twenty twenty five.
That is a thing I need to reject very very much.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
The cool thing about that is even noticing it is
kind of like labeling your emotions. It's like this light
bulb moment where it's like, oh no, I think I
need to start cleaning up my desk procrastivity, and then
it's like a nice pivot. The thing about faking it
is faking it is And when I think about that,
it's that sounds almost like suppressing your emotions. So it's
like pretending that you feel really calm when you're giving
(25:02):
a keynote, and that is going to be really stressful
if you feel really stressed. If instead you accept it
makes total sense that I feel a little shaky because
this situation really matters to me. And allow yourself to
feel those feelings, you're going to be in a much
better position to actually speak and sign up for those
kinds of opportunities. And so it's not faking it. And
some of my clients tell me that they don't feel
(25:22):
like their emotions are changing right away, and what I
tell them is it's okay. Like if you feel really
annoyed with someone in your family, but it matters to you.
Part of one of your values is including them in
your life, it's okay the first time you meet up
with them for coffee, don't immediately have more feelings. The
goal of opposite action is not just to feel better,
it's to have the life that you want to live.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Taking opposite action is such a clever strategy. If you're
feeling flustered and panicky, just act relaxed and you can
slow your role. If you're feeling like you want to
scream and let out your inner hulk, force yourself to
speak as calmly.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
And gently as possible.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
It's time for another short break, but Jenny will be
back with more tips when the Happiness Lab returns in
a moment.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Welcome back.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
This final portion of the Happiness Labs guide on how
to Stop Stressing about stress is presented by Amazon. So far,
doctor Jenny Tates has explained that we need to acknowledge
and accept our stress response. But our next tip was
a big revelation, at least for me. Jenny says, we
deal better with stressful situations if we can keep in
mind that we're enduring the stress for some greater noble cause.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I think when we're stressed, we're just zooming in on
what's immediately in front of us, and we don't have
a broad perspective about what matters. And there's like a
Zen story about a man riding a horse and someone
asks him where you're going, and he says, I don't know.
Asd a horse, and that is a really stressful way
to live. The only reason to work in a job
that you don't necessarily like might be to feed your family.
(26:55):
And connecting the dots that I'm willing to do this
even though it's uncomfortable because I care about putting food
on the table actually makes something that's difficult a little
bit more tolerable and meaningful. And so having a larger
sense of purpose actually helps us me in out our
emotions and studies people that have a clear sense of
their life purpose actually bounce back faster when they're faced
with emotional content, like looking at painful pictures. People that
(27:18):
have a clear sense of purpose, their body stress response
bounces back faster. I just think if we just practically,
we all deserve to have kind of a sense of
what we want our lives to stand for. And one
of my favorite things to do when stress feels like
it's all consuming is simply taking a step back and listing.
If you like, I'm too busy, I don't have time
to think about my life purpose in like a big
(27:39):
way or like a mission statement that's really solidified, simply
taking a step back and thinking about, Okay, these are
the things in my life that matter to me. You know,
I would love for people to take a moment to
think about this right now. You know, health, relationships, hobbies,
giving back, career, and there's so many things that matter
to us, right and taking a step back to write
out what matters to you and then maybe how you
(28:01):
want to show up in each of those domains, and
then depicting the relative weight of each of those facets
of your life in a pie chart can even help
give me some perspective. If things are not going well
right now with a specific relationship, maybe that's ten percent
of your life II, but in our minds it can
easily become eighty five percent of our life by And
(28:22):
so having a clear purpose helps us see our lives
more holistically and helps us be more willing to do
the things that are hard.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
As we talked about these strategies, like you've given us
so many awesome evidence based tips, but I know that
sometimes what happens when I'm stressed is like I know
these tips, but it can still feel like really overwhelming
to kind of engage with them.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
There's this sort of hesitation that creeps in that even
though I know these strategies. It's like, Oh, I don't
have time to think about my purpose. I just need
to do something that's an incredibly quick hack. And one
of the reasons I really love your book is that
you also have strategies for that too. When everything is
feeling really overwhelming. And that gets to tip number six,
which is it when all else fails, we can sort
of hack our body. Why is hacking our body so
(29:04):
helpful when it comes to stress?
Speaker 2 (29:06):
So many people think that they need something outside of
themselvescation or drink to feel better. But your body's actually
your best pharmacy, and we often forget how to lean
into our body being our best pharmacy. But in a
matter of minutes, you can dramatically improve how you feel
if you know how.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
And so what are some like super simple hacks of
changing the way our body is responding.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
There's one that I introduce called TIP, which I think
about as almost like the control all delete for your body.
And TIP is an acronym. TEA stands for temperature, I
is intense exercise, PA is paste breathing. At the final
PA is progressive muscle relaxation. And we'll go through those.
The first thing with the temperature is taking a salad
bowl and filling it with ice water and setting a
(29:49):
timer for thirty seconds, holding your breath, and submerging your
face in the ice water. This sounds like some sort
of weird TikTok trend, but there's a lot of research
behind it. We all have a minmilion diver reflex, and
when the human body is submerged in cold water without oxygen,
it slows down our heart rate and redirects blood flow
from not a sen to essential organs. And so even
(30:11):
if this sounds really weird, if you are wearing an
Apple watch, your heart rate will decrease significantly when you
do this. And yes, the point of life is not
to be submerging your face in ice water. But if
you're in a moment and you're making things worse for yourself,
and you feel like you're panicking, and you have thoughts
that aren't serving you, in thirty seconds, you can do
something that shifts your physiology and also shifts your mental
(30:32):
state and also reminds you that you can do something
difficult and that you can feel different in a matter
of seconds. I should just say that this is not
a good strategy for people that have part conditions, because
your heart rate will come down quickly. But the ice
face is something that people are really surprised when they're
in a vicious cycle of rumination or if they feel frozen.
Freezing your face will surprisingly unfreeze you. And then eye
(30:54):
is intense exercise. And this is not running a marathon
or going to a sixty minute workout class, just briefly
doing something like burpies for a minute or two, or
running in place, but bringing your knees up to your
nose as best you can. I'm doing something like that.
These things are changing your body and also in your mind,
you're not going to be able to be thinking the
same thoughts. Is peace. Breathing is slowing down your respiratory rate.
(31:17):
On average, we breathe about eighteen breaths per minute, and
if we slow our breath to about a third of
that by breathing in for five, we can all do
this together through your nose. You could gently close your
lips in for five and out for five. You do
that for several minutes, that actually lowers your blood pressure, or.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Even just once. Honestly, I just did that with you,
and now all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, I
actually do feel better.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Just so funny.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
It's one of these things where people tell you if
you're upset, like take a deep breath, and it sounds
so kind of frustrating, but what it's really doing is
it's hacking a part of your body that's kind of
incredibly hard to hack. You really hacking your parisipittic nervousness totally.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I think the only qualifiers if you feel like you
can't breathe, that is not the one I would go to.
But other than times when you're feeling panic, yeah, taking
a deep breath. And I have to tell you, Laurie,
I was blown open working on this book. I interviewed
doctor Richard Brown and doctor Patricia Gerbarg, who or psychiatrists
affiliated with Columbia University who moved away from prescribing medications
to prescribing breath work, who are teaching breathing all over
(32:22):
the world, therapeutic breathing exercises, even right now to people
in Ukraine. And they are telling me that people in
war zones are actually finding tranquility within. And I was
so moved by this fact that a portion of the
proceeds from my book is going to their foundation. Because
we think, yeah, taking a breath is not going to
really change my reality, but it does. It expands your
(32:43):
ability to cope with your reality. And we need to
strengthen our inner system to deal with a stressful outer system.
And then the final p is progressive muscle relaxation. And
so a lot of times it might feel like the
only way for you to relax is to get a massage,
but you couldn't give yourself a quick massage. Even if
this isn't something you've tried before, this is quite easy
to do by tensing your forehead and releasing and noticing
(33:06):
the difference between tension and relaxation your forehead, then with
each in and out breath, releasing more, and then doing
the same with your lips, tensing your lips by bringing
your lips together releasing. A lot of us don't even
realize that we're our shoulders are touching our ears, and
we're scowling, and we're tightening our fists especially, and there's
so many things we can do to just create a
little bit more space in our bodies. And again, the temperature,
(33:29):
intense exercise, pacee breathing, and progressive muscle relaxation are things
we can all do really quickly in a matter of minutes,
and I don't think that you're going to have anything
but a sense of expansiveness and present focus.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Another thing we can do in a matter of minutes
is your tip number seven, which is that we can
hack our senses. One of my favorite versions of this
is your idea that we can comfort ourself with touch,
which is something that I've taken from your book, just
kind of remembering like, oh, I can put on some
fuzzy socks, you know, I can give myself a little
self hug. Talk about why our senses can be so
powerful for changing our stress response.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
We get into this two punch of our mind is
bowling us and then our bodies feel like they're rebelling
it us. But doing something like if you just received
difficult feedback, like putting two hands on your heart can
really feel like a hug. And this sounds corny, but
there are studies that showed us to be true and
doing small things to self validate that communicate that our
feelings are moramal and to be expected. And I mean,
(34:26):
I think self compassion is so key and finding ways
through touch and from the moment we're born we're comforted
by touch, and this is something that people really crave
and really complained about during periods of isolation during the pandemic,
and giving your friends a hug is so lovely. And
if you're on your own, you know, massaging your shoulder.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Given yourself a hug works pretty well too. Yeah, so
those are all strategies we can use maybe after something
stressful happens, but your book also goes through things we
can do to get ahead of things before stress starts,
so we can kind of beat it. And one of
my favorite strategies in this, which is my tip number eight,
is that we could mentally rehearse to kind of protect ourselves.
(35:06):
What do you mean my mental rehearsal here, So.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
There's this incredible thing that when we imagine a situation
in our mind, if we actually rehearse ourselves in that situation,
we use the same parts of our brain that will
actually use in the situation. And so oftentimes we're facing
something that seems overwhelming and we do the opposite of this.
We worry, we dread, we expect the worst. But if
we swap dread with coping ahead actually imagining, not overly idealistically,
(35:33):
but realistically, this thing is going to come up. I'm
going to sit down at my desk. I'm going to
want to go bounce around social media and news sites,
but instead I'm going to close everything out, set a
time or for this amount of time that actually sets
us up to do just that. The mental rehearsal, this
is something that a lot of sports psychologists use. It's
really helpful. I found it personally helpful with writing this book,
(35:53):
or just like the mental rehearsal of sitting down to
do deep work. But I think it's a powerful way
to use our resources to set us up for success
rather than to set us up for not believing in
ourselves and struggling.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Another resource we can use to help ourselves kind of
ahead of time is we can use a little bit
more humor. We can find humor before the stress kicks in.
How is humor so hopeful for fighting stress?
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Oh? I love this. I just feel like if you
can make someone laugh and a hard moment, that really
shifts their perspective. I find humor so personally liberating and
joyful and we all need. I mean, I think it's
almost like life is like a seesaw. The more positive
emotions we elevate, the more negative emotions come down. And
this is something that's true even in the research people
that are focused on a newer treatment called positive ethic therapy,
(36:35):
they reduce their anxiety and depression, even if that's not targeted,
and so be able to laugh and play with yourself
and giving your anxiety of funny Like I don't know,
when I was living in New York, I lived on
top of a candy store, and in the window of
the candy store there was this big stuffed animal called
grumpy cat. Mayven just you know, noticing like, okay, grumpy
cats coming around. That's a quick way to kind of
(36:58):
get some distance and perspective and to play with it.
And I think going through life looking for funny things
kind of shifts your perspective and humor is not only
good for you, but also for the people around you.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, it's a way of kind of regulating not just
your stress, but the stress of the people that you
happen to find yourself with. It's such a good tip
Number nine. Now we get to my final tip, which
sort of builds on this idea of bringing in positive emotions.
We can protect ourselves by plotting out our joy, and
you argue you should even make appointments with our joy
kind of explain what.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
You mean there. It's so easy to feel like when
I have time, then I will call that friend or
finally go to see a movie in the theater, or
figure out a nice hiking trail in my neighborhood. But actually,
like we need to plot joy to have the energy
we need to again expand our inner resources and doing
things to cultivate positive emotions actually reduces our vulnerability to
(37:52):
negative emotions and creates a buffer for stress. And so
intentionally planning things to look forward to and then learning
to actually really savor them. So if you did something pleasant,
to repeat it in your mind or even actually say
it out loud is what experts say to do the
specific highlight of that experience, like if you met up
with a friend, like even just the moment of your
eyes catching one another's across the room and then running
(38:15):
to give each other a hug, like in this cute
coffee shop that smelled like I don't know a fall.
That is so helpful because again, I think we just
go from hard time to hard time, and we need
to realize that planning and savoring moments of pleasures like
putting money in your bank account that offsets your stress
and also allows you to enjoy your life. And a
(38:36):
huge thing that we need to remember is doing these
things is not just good for us, but good for
the people around us. And it's really hard to bring
positivity to the people that you care about if you
are running low.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
One of my favorite things about the strategy is that
you talk about planning this ahead of time, because I
know that for me, especially when I'm feeling really stressed
and overwhelmed, there can be some friction about adding in
these pleasant things. But if it's already in the calendar,
right I already have a movie night with my friends,
or I've already planned dinner, you know, with people I
really care about, I'm going to have a really fun
time with weeks in advance, then it winds up sticking around.
(39:07):
So I love the sort of antsicipiatory adding the pleasure
in ahead of time so that it's there when you
really need it.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, And I think what you're saying is so impactful
because we can anticipate it and savor it and then
re experience it afterwards. And then I think also just
strategically having it in your calendar. This happens to me
all the time. If I know that I have a
hard stop time, that makes the time right before that
much more productive. And so I think just knowing I
got to be finished by this time because I have
this dinner on the calendar actually leads to less you know,
(39:37):
bouncing around between tasks and more monotasking, and so I
think it's good for joint. It's also good for the
things that are stressing us out to actually tackle those.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
So we've talked about kind of ways that we can
deal with stress, but you know, sometimes stress dips into
the clinical right for example, if somebody is going through
a moment of total panic, any particular tips for tackling
that when things get really out of hand for.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
People that have panic. One of the most surprising things
people don't realize is that practicing panic is the path
out of panic. And so rather than worrying, I'm going
to be on the freeway and I'm going to start sweating,
and I'm going to feel like I can't breathe, and
I'm going to feel like I can't drive safely. Rather
than waiting for that moment to surprise you and catch
you off guard. If you can practice panic, if you
(40:19):
can recreate those very physical sensations that you are I
will never pop up in your life if you can
actually practice those on purpose in a safe space, spend
a minute hyperventilating surprisingly introceptive exposure or facing those physical
sensations that you want to avoid is one of the
most proven paths out of panic, and it works surprisingly well,
and it works in a relatively short amount of time.
(40:40):
Doing this in a safe environment helps you kind of
metaphorically put out a welcome that when these things show up,
because we often do as almost like a Chinese finger trap,
we feel physically uncomfortable, we judge it, we feel more constrictive.
The more we fight, the more stuck we are. But
if we can lean in and have an attitude of
been there, done that. I've practiced this at home, I
know what this is, just like my emotions come in waves,
(41:01):
my physiology changes when I don't hyper focus on it.
It's a really liberating technique that I've been blown away
by its impact on my clients.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
So listeners should definitely check out the book, and they
should also check out this stress reset deck you have,
which is just like little cards I explain these things,
you don't have to flip through a whole book to
find them. I'm just so curious writing this book has
kind of having all these strategies that they're ready helped
you get through really stressful periods.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
I wrote this book because having these strategies that I've
learned over the past couple of decades has changed my life.
I mean, these are like beads of a necklace that
I wear constantly, and I feel like they're too precious
to keep to myself and I want everyone to access them.
And certainly in moments when I stressed out, I take
a step back and notice what am I doing? How
is my thinking not serving me? And what is a
change in my behavior that I can quickly pivot towards.
(41:49):
Because we all deserve to improve our moments, and these
improve our days, and this improves our whole life, and
this creates a positive ripple effect not only in us,
but with the people around us. And so they certainly
have changed my life and opposite action is a total
way that I live my life lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
That final part of my interview with Jenny Tates on
how to Stop Stressing about stress was presented by Amazon
Pharmacy and Amazon one Medical Healthcare just got less painful.
Learn more at health dot Amazon dot com. I can't
recommend Jenny's Stress Resets book enough.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
It's packed with so much.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Good advice, far more than we've been able to fit
into the show. Well, let's recap the wisdom that Jenny's shared.
Tip one sounds simple, but it's hard. You have to
accept that stress is the price of a fulfilling life.
Challenging things give us purpose and fun and all the
social connection we need. The next tip is to stop
all that rumination. Letting your mind think about a stressful
(42:46):
situation over and over doesn't do you any good. Nip
these looping thoughts in the butt by asking yourself how
you're going to move forward. Tip three is all about
building up distress tolerance. Practice accepting tough feelings when they
arise so you don't drown in them. Tip number four
is not to let stressors dictate your behavior. If you're
feeling down, do the opposite and try something fun and energetic.
(43:08):
If you're feeling in aged with someone, do something nice
for them, even if you actually want to be a
bit mean. Tip number five zoom out from your stress
and remember why you're doing what you're doing. Are you
enduring a difficult situation to improve your life or the
life of someone you love. A bit of stress might
start to seem worth it for that long term gain.
Tip number six, Hack your body. Don't reach for a
(43:29):
drink or a pint of ice cream to change your mood.
Shock yourself with a blast of water, a deep breath,
or even a burst of exercise to halt that stress
response in its tracks. Tip number seven follows along from
that
Pushkin. Hey, doctor Laurie Santo's here here at the Happiness Lab.
We spend a lot of time talking about the happiness
benefits of being a fan, and it just so happens
that another Pushkin podcast has gone deep into this topic.
It's a show called Against the Rules, hosted by best
selling author Michael Lewis. Michael Lewis is the brains behind
(00:38):
books like Moneyball, The Big Shore, and Liar's Poker. This
season of Against the Rules is all about sports fandom,
but also sports gambling, which was legalized in the US
just a few years ago. From a happiness perspective, this
is a fascinating topic. Michael talks with gambling addicts, but
also pro basketball stars, Vegas bookies, and even experts in
(00:59):
casino design. I also get to make an appearance. I
really enjoyed our conversation, So if you're a little bit curious,
I urge you to check out Against the Rules and
subscribe time wherever you get your podcasts. Stress sucks, but
(01:27):
it's also a normal part of life and one that's
also kind of useful. Our stress response is just the
body's natural reaction to a perceived threat. Whenever we detect
an incoming challenge, the limpic systems of our brains kick in.
We switch from our usual breathing and digesting to a
physiological state that's revved up for action. Our stress response
is there to prepare us for big, scary events like
(01:48):
fighting off a tiger, giving an important presentation, or having
a tough conversation with our boss. But once less stressful
events are over, our bodies are supposed to return to normal.
Our breathing should slow down, and we should go back
to digesting lunch.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
At least that's the idea.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Sadly, our modern stress responses aren't all that great at
turning off, especially since we keep challenges alive, ruminating about
past events and worrying about problems that haven't even come
up yet. Thought patterns like these cause our bodies to
react as if we're in immediate danger even when we are.
And what's most ironic, since we know that stress is
bad for us, we often get stressed out about just
(02:26):
feeling stressed. So how can we stop stressing about stress?
To figure that out, I've turned to one of my
favorite experts.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
My name is doctor Jenny Tates. I'm a clinical psychologist,
and i am the author of stress resets how to
soothe your body and mind in minutes.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
You're kind of an expert on this, But what is
stress like? How would we define it?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So, stress is when there's like this mismatch between our resources,
what we have internally and the demands that we're facing.
It's almost like our bandwidth. It's when there's just too
much coming at us and we feel like there's not
enough in us to cope. But the good news is
there's a lot we can do to improve our relationship
with stress. Small things can make a huge difference in
(03:06):
how we face stress. And the most common measure of
stress is actually the perceived stress scale, which says so
much about how stress is a lot about our perception.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
And so give me a sense of like how stressed
out people are these days? Like, what are some stats
on what we're self reporting about our stress?
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Recorders of people say that stress is a huge issue
in their lives, and stress is the most commonly searched
term that people want help with that they're asking Google
to help them solve. And that's kind of why I
wrote this book, because you shouldn't have to ask Google
for help with this. There are experts and there's a
lot of counterintuitive wisdom that a lot of people just
don't know about that I want people to know, and
(03:42):
a lot of it was even surprising to me and
researching this book.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
As we think about stressors in some way, it sort
of makes sense evolutionarily, right, Like all animals have stress,
they've defined food, or maybe there's predators and so on.
But an interesting thing about humans is that we seem
to do it a little bit differently. We seem to
kind of exacerbate the normal kinds of stress. And so
explain why this is, like how humans make things worse
by the way we think about stress.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I love this. I mean, I think a downside to
being human is we have an when stress shows up
in our lives for inadvertently making it so much worse.
I mean it's almost like if you imagine you have
a small stain and you start trying to remove it
in a way that only spreads it. I mean, it's
painfully ironic. It's like people that are worried about money
can easily go into overspending. People that have a tough
(04:26):
deadline that there is ambitious to reach go into like
hyper perfectionism or total avoidance. And so I think one
of the reasons that stress excites me is when the
limbic system is on fire, we just don't think clearly.
But people are incredibly good at getting better if they're
given the right tools. And so if you even just
take a step back and think about it, I want
(04:46):
to first start by validating stress is a lot of
us are stressed for very good reasons right now. And
also that's all the more reason that we deserve to
be really kind to ourselves and compassionately. Notice if once
stress shows up in our lives, we fall into patterns
like overthinking and avoiding or acting in ways that keep
stress afloat. That could even be avoiding the thing that
(05:09):
might help you, like spending time with family or sticking
with a nice plan for yourself or an exercise goal,
even if the work is really piling on. And so
I think stress is real. And also we as people
animals don't overthink. We overthink, and that's a deep downside
to being human. But with the right strategies, we can
reduce our stress, I think exponentially.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
And this is why I love your book so much,
because it's like this, like almost like a medicine cabinet
of different strategies that we can use when we're feeling
stressed out, Like if I'm feeling sick, like I could
go to my medicine cabinet and there are some like
cough drops, or I view profit or if I need
a band aid if I'm cut, and like your book
is almost like a version of this for stress. I
took away so many very practical tips that I've been using,
(05:52):
and then I'm so excited to share with my Happiness
Lab listeners. And so I want to go through my
favorite tips that we get from your book, starting with
tip number one, which is that there are strategies we
can use when we need to reevaluate stress. Explain why
how we think about stress.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Seems to matter. What we think about stress is so impawt,
so much so that people who have stress and believe
stress is bad for their health actually are forty three
percent more likely to die do to stress related causes.
And so worrying about stress just compound stress and make
stress more harmful and stresses you out more. It's almost like,
once you're really stressed, then someone tells you to calm
(06:27):
down might write you out more. And on the flip side,
normalizing stress seeing it as an opportunity for growth, almost
seeing it as a pop quiz in life about your
ability to manage emotions and live by your values. Seeing
stress as normal and adoptive, and also framing your body
stress response as helpful and useful and supporting you and
(06:47):
moving towards your goals actually reduces the negative impacts of corticol,
reduces your corticel levels and allows you to persist in
pursuing meaningful goals.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And so any specific strategies for helping us to reappraise
stress is a more positive thing.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I think to really believe, and this is something that
I wholeheartedly believe that stress is the price of a
meaningful life. That is not sitting on the couch watching
sports all day and eating whatever and barely having any
steps taken. That is doing hard things. And we know
when we treat patients with depression that behavioral activation creating
a schedule full of opportunities for both pleasure and accomplishment
(07:25):
and social connection which can be stressful, that is the
path forward. And so really changing your mindset about stress
and also looking at yourself of like what am I
doing when I'm living my best life? Maybe the things
that are most meaningful are also kind of stressful.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
You've also talked about how we can reevaluate how our
emotions work. I think when we're in the thick of
really strong emotions like anxiety or kind of frustration, it
can feel like we're going to feel like that forever.
But what does the research really show about how quickly
emotions change? I love this, So emotions are really transient.
I was going to get a tattoo, which I'm not
going to get. It would be a small little picture
(08:00):
of a wave because this is one of my favorite
things to remind myself of Emotions come in waves, and again,
the downside to being human is when something's upsetting.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Our brain goes to I'm going to feel this way forever.
It's getting worse. This is how I feel now, I'll
never be able to survive. But that's just not life.
Our emotions really ebb and flow, and psychologists call this
effective forecasting. We're notoriously bad at predicting how we're going
to feel in the future, and we grossly underestimate our
ability to bounce back. And one of the interesting things
that I do with my clients is we watch movie clips.
(08:30):
I mean, people don't go to therapy expecting to watch
short movie clips, And we watch short clips of a
deathbed scene, which will make any person with a heart
you'll move to tears in a matter of sixty seconds.
We watch a scene where there's a gunshot and that
also understandably would evoke fear, so we go from sadness
to fear. There's a short clip on the cost of
(08:51):
college tuitions and how difficult it is to pay off
your college loans, which if evokes anger in most people.
Then we watch something happy and the Pharrell Happy song,
and people are dancing in their chair, and in a
mere matter of minutes people have gone through so many
different emotions, and in our own lives, we might get
really disappointing news. But then also if we're able to
anchor ourselves in the present moment, be fully present. We
(09:14):
might have a moment of awe when looking at an
adorable puppy passing us by, but the key is really
anchoring ourselves in the present moment.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
It's time to take a quick break, but we'll soon
be back with another top tip, one that's especially helpful
if you let stress throw you into a doom loop.
The Happiness Lab will be right back. Clinical psychologist doctor
Jenny Tates believes that stress is the price of a
meaningful life. But what we do need to guard against,
(09:43):
she says, is dwelling on what's stressful, worrying about it,
and fearing it.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Rumination is what turns something briefly stressful into something chronically stressful.
So an event could have been a two minute exchange
with someone at work, and literally two weeks later it
could still be replaying on your mind. And this is
one of the habits that really correlates with an increased
risk of depression and anxiety. It is just awful for
(10:08):
our mental health. And as many of us know, we
could ruminate almost constantly. I talk about this myself, noticing
earlier in my career that I used to be in
yoga cross and notice that my mind was totally somewhere else.
And so this is such a sneaky habit that we
could have an internal news ticker that's going all the time,
that's very unpleasant, that steals any opportunity for present joy.
(10:29):
And if a person is asked in a research setting
to talk about in detail the most upsetting thing that
happened to them, even if it occurred decades ago, their
body recreates the same physiological stress response decades later. And
so even talking about your stressors in a lot of
detail might seem therapeutic and cathartic, but it actually can
be kind of a version of reminating out loud. And
(10:52):
even if you feel like you are a professional ruminator,
there are a lot of things that you can do
to break free of this noxious, sneaky habit.
Speaker 1 (11:00):
So give us the details. How can we break for you?
What are some strategies we give you.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
I think the first thing is taking a step back
and asking yourself what do you make of your thinking habit?
Because a lot of people have very interesting metacognition, these
beliefs about their thoughts. Some people think if there's a
problem that hasn't been solved, thinking about it is somehow
inching me closer to some sort of big solution or epiphany.
Other people think, I'm going to drive myself crazy. And
(11:25):
what's interesting is like the same person can have both
very negative and very positive beliefs about their thinking. So
I think taking a step back and really taking a
look at is this habit helping you? Are you getting
closer to your goals? Or is this removing you from
the ability to have a better perspective and managing your
emotions for a better problem solving. So I think the
first thing is really deciding that this is something you
(11:45):
want to put two feet into working on. And of
course if you do want to think about it, they're
constructive ways to think in a more thoughtful way. Problem
with solving is very different than this circular, vicious loop
that's unproductive. And if someone wants to start to work
on this and they feel like they do this all
the time, I think it's helpful to get really clear
on a specific goal. And so if you find that
(12:07):
you're repeating and upsetting work exchange age after hours and
it's coming up in your dinner conversations and it's gnawing
at you before work, really setting a goal of like
from six to seven thirty pm, I am going to
be present from seven am to eight am during my
morning commute and getting ready, I'm going to be setting
myself up for a better day. So setting reasonable goals.
(12:28):
I also really love swapping why thoughts with how thoughts?
Why did this happen? Why was I assign this annoying
assignment and someone else got a promotion. The why thoughts
with how how can I move forward? Because one is
kind of the tornado and a dead end and another
is kind of an empowered plan.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
One of the ones I really love, and one that
we've talked about on the Happiness Lab before, is the
importance of switching from ruminating in your head to ruminating
maybe on paper, to kind of get into the mode
of expressive writing. How can writing help us kind of
get out of the ruminutative loop.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, so I would say that writing is a little
bit different than rumination because rumination is pretty circular, and
writing has a beginning, middle, and end, so it kind
of closes things out rather then keeps things in a spiral.
And the goal with expressive writing is to actually go
deeper into your feelings and so instead of just glossing
over things. The instruction that's given to people college students
(13:21):
who were given an assignment to write about the most
upsetting thing that happened to them in detail for twenty minutes,
and then go back the next day for twenty minutes
and write about how it had affected their life in
the past, and write again a third day for twenty
minutes about how it's affecting them in the present how
it might affect them in the future. People that wrote
in this very detailed, structured way, going deeper into their
(13:42):
feelings and actually like processing, were much less likely to
be depressed and had reductions on scores and rumination even
six months later, because writing is actually creating some working
distance and allowing you to feel rather than kind of
glossing over details with no structure.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So those are awesome tips for nipping your rumination in
the bud. Now we get to tip number three, which
is that we can reduce our stress by engaging in
a little distress tolerance. What's distress tolerance? Stress tolerance is
a combination of things. Distress tolerance is I like to
think about if you step back and think.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
About, how are you making your life worse? You're usually
not accepting, overthinking and doing things that make you feel
better short term, but that are like high interest credit cards,
you pay a big price for it later. And so
distress tolerance is all about learning to radically accept what
is just as it is in this very moment that
sounds overwhelming, even accepting with your face, just relaxing your face.
(14:35):
The facial expression of acceptance actually creates this mindset that
allows you to be more accepting. If I'm sitting in
traffic and clenching and tensing, that's just creating a space
for me to get more judgmental in my mind. But
relaxing my face for myself, not for other people, actually
kind of starts from the outside and I start to
feel more accepting. I love the story. I have to
tell you. I just taught radical acceptance in a prison
(14:57):
last week, and I learned something so brilliant from one
of the people in my class who said it shouldn't
be called radical acceptance, it should be called radical options,
because when you stop fighting so many options. Oh my gosh,
it's so insightful.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I mean, you've also talked about how we can do
this simply through the act of labeling, just by kind
of being a little bit more specific about which kinds
of distress tolerance we're going through.
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Right, Even labeling your emotions, just putting a word onto
what you're feeling, whether that's angry, then getting really specific
about it. I'm feeling angry, like on a zero to
a ten scale, at a five. Just putting labels on
your emotions actually activates the part of your brain that
will help you regulate your emotions. And so it seems
very simple, like putting a word on your emotion, but
(15:40):
it actually starts the process of regulating your emotions. And
I even just think about it as like you go
from kind of swimming in it to getting some working
distance from it.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Using your example of the traffic, this is something that
I learned from your book. Is like the last time
I was sitting in really terrible traffic, I was likeugh,
limpic systems, you know, going ridiculously crazy. I'm going to
just use the effect labeling. I was just like frustrated,
like really frustrated and you know, kind of like annoyed,
a little bit sad, And it was so funny. It
sounds so silly, and I think even when I first
(16:10):
started it, I was almost doing it a little like facetiously,
like I'm doing effectly, but I'm kind of not sure
it's going to work well. Like ultimately I'm like, yeah,
it's it's frustrated, Like that's what it is, Like, it's
just an emotion. I'll kind of get through it. So
it has this this active labeling has this power that
I think we often don't expect where it really takes
like the own thlot of our emotions when we realize,
you know, it's just a thing I'm experiencing.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Totally and one thing that I like to do. That's
kind of the next step to this, even just noticing
beyond the specific emotion. We all have different states of mind.
We all have a kind of an emotional mind where
we're governed by our feelings. We all have a reasonable
mind where we're just focused on the facts, and then
we all also have like wise mind, which is the
integration of head and part and our intuition. And so
(16:53):
sometimes we're feeling really intense emotions and we keep them
afloat by we're really angry, and then we're thinking more
angry thoughts and getting more suspicious and agitated. And even
just simply categorizing I feel angry, and an emotion mind
very likely to be like velcrow or quicksand for all
sorts of content that is going to exacerbate that feeling.
(17:16):
We have spam filters in our inboxes, but we need
kind of test spam filters in our minds. And this
is one of the first most practical steps to mindfulness
is just noticing I'm an emotion mind. I feel anxious,
I'm in emotion mind, and there's nothing wrong. By the way,
emotion mind is amazing. If you are at a concert,
if you're dancing, if you're watching an amazing movie, emotion
mind is amazing. We just want to make sure that
(17:37):
you're in the right state of mind at the right time.
So if you're about to go into a meeting and
you feel angry, noticing that you're on an emotion mind
is going to be a path towards freedom and wisdom.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
And so that's a tip of we can like navigate
our distress. But you've also argued that we don't just
need to sit with our distress. We can do something different.
We can take action so that we feel less stressed.
Why is it so hard to remember that we can
kind of change our stressor out and take action to
fix things.
Speaker 2 (18:06):
When we're stressed, we're just not thinking clearly. Our mind
goes to like big fixes. But I think we need
to remember that, like small wheels on a big suitcase,
a little can go a long way. And so because
we're bad at remembering this, I like to encourage people
to create a hope kit, like a collection of items
that you can keep handy that just reminds you about
the things that have enriched your life and give you
(18:29):
a sense of faith and perspective and joy and just
looking at them. And this sounds kind of silly, but
even people that are struggling with suicidality or people who
are facing a cancer diagnosis, having a hope kit actually
significantly increased hope. So again, our mind goes to kind
of selectively filtering. Everything is terrible. I need to do
(18:49):
something big that's going to make me feel better right
now and make me feel so much worse later. But
if we do something small that's less sexy, we've created
in a time of wisdom that we can access quickly,
we can make so much headway. And so for me,
just having a couple of notes people have written to
me handy and a picture of my grandma holding me
when I was a baby me bounce back so much
(19:10):
more in the face of rejection than what my mind
wants to do, which is like love every rejection on
top of the one that I'm experiencing in this moment.
And different things work for different people, and for people
thinking about what would I want to put in a
hope kit, I think really thinking about things that touch
your senses that help you be mindful. But it's really
hard to be mindful. But if you can be mindful
by really taking a few minutes to look at photos
(19:30):
of you and your friends and maybe have a nice
playlist going with the photos, and have your favorite scented candle,
you know, right at your desk so you don't have
to grab it from a closet, or like being truly
self compassionate. That the thing that I want to tell
people is like the difference between healthy self soothing or
having a hope kit, And what we often want to
do is we often kind of totally avoid and don't
do things to kind of give ourselves a quick pick
(19:51):
me up. We take a total like detour. We you know,
maybe we need a little bit of gas, but we
don't want to like park ourselves in the gas station
and not go to our final destination. And so the
hope kit is kind of a little pick me up
that can then actually bring you forward.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Another way that we can take action is to literally
act with the opposite. You've actually referred to this as
the ultimate mental health hack, this idea of behavioral activation.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
What does this mean? So all Emotions aren't just something
that we feel. Emotions are created when we have thoughts,
and then the thoughts create physical sensations in our bodies,
and then we have action urges. And so if I
feel sad, I'm probably thinking thoughts about not being good
enough for things or too much for me to handle,
and I'm really overwhelmed and lonely, and then maybe in
(20:35):
my body I feel heaviness and tension, and then my
behavior might be something like withdrawing or overthinking or just
mindlessly doom scrolling. And so emotions don't just happen to us,
but we have a huge role in co creating them,
the same way we can co create our stress. And
so a lot of times people think that acting how
they feel will kind of help them, but these are
(20:56):
actually technically known as emotion driven behaviors, and what they
do is they intensify our feelings. And so you need
to take a step back and notice what is the
emotion that you're feeling, what is the emotion driving you
to do, and is doing that thing ultimately going to
help you? And so short term, it might feel kind
of nice to do the thing that your emotion wants
you to do, but if you actually want to change
(21:18):
the course of your life, you need to act differently
than how you feel. So if you feel ashamed and
you withdraw, you're giving into shame. Shame is winning, you
are losing. You're going to maintain shame. You're going to
grow shame. Shame is going to be the defining quality
of your life. You're going to continue to feel like
the biggest loser. But if you feel shame and put
your phone away and make eye contact with people at
a party and introduce yourself to the people that you
(21:40):
actually want to speak to, like it's hard to believe,
like I'm okay. But when you have lived experience that
people are nodding and people are validating you, your shame
starts to shrink, and so across all mental health conditions.
The evidence based treatment is what an emotion is not justified.
Acting opposite the emotion will significantly improve not only how
you feel, but your quality of life. And so, if
(22:02):
you're unhappy in your marriage, maybe you want to like
replay the pass with mistakes and send angry text messages
and complain to people, but doing something slightly nice for
your partner that feels like something you could do without
being resentful or begrudging. And the trick is that you
need to do this all the way. Opposite action is
like not the splits. It's two feet in it's mind
and body. So if you're doing something nice, you're not
(22:23):
having an inner narrative of no one does this for me,
This isn't right. It's with your head and heart that
I care about this person. I want them to have
a delicious cup of coffee when they wake up, and
see if my feelings will change as a result of this.
So opposit action is helpful with couples therapy. Opposite action
is the cornerstone of all treatments for anxiety disorders. When
your fear does not fit the situation you're in, acting
(22:44):
different than how you feel, whether that's actsing panic as
a cure for panic, or taking up public speaking if
that makes you want to run the other way.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
And I think even kind of the typical emotions that
often go with stress, right like even when you're feeling overwhelmed,
I think sometimes acting opposite has been the sort of
thing that helps me, right Like I'll look at my
calendar and the calendar will just be feeling like, oh
my god, it's overflowing. I'll take a moment and think like, well,
what are we doing If my calendar wasn't overflowing and
I was feeling overwhelmed, like I'd text a friend and
(23:13):
sort of check in. I'd use these five minutes and
there's sort of durishing ways rather than sort of rumitting
and checking my email and all of a sudden, When
you act like that, it doesn't change the overflowing schedule,
but it just puts you in a better mindset so
that your physiology is not feeling kind of overflowing and
overwhelmed in the same way. It's like such a powerful hack,
like even when you don't expect it to work, and
it's different than faking it. I think this is one
(23:35):
of the things that people get wrong about, this idea
of acting opposite. You think, well, I'll just pretend like
I'm not feeling overwhelmed.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
No.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
No, it's really about engaging in the actions right and
just to come back to the stress, because I think
that's so powerful. When we're stressed, we're often juggling too much.
Speaker 2 (23:49):
We're again putting ourselves in this place where we can't
possibly meet the demands because we're juggling too many things.
We're carrying too many bags. Something's going to break. But
what if we just do one thing at a time.
Oftentimes when we're stressed, also we start doing like pseudo productivity,
which is called procrestivity, which is like clearing out your
inbox rather than working on the dog that you need
to do. And so just starting with a workable goal
(24:12):
and doing it with your singular focus and being clear
on like what is the thing I would do if
I felt capable of doing this, or if I really
was being a good friend to myself and a good cheerleader.
And so I love this because I think the only
way out of stress is doing what you would do
if you were acting spacious, which is, you know, not
being overly perfectionistic and actually facing the thing that you
need to face, one thing at a time.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
And stopping this procrastivity. I had not heard that word,
and it's like my new favorite word for twenty twenty five.
That is a thing I need to reject very very much.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
The cool thing about that is even noticing it is
kind of like labeling your emotions. It's like this light
bulb moment where it's like, oh no, I think I
need to start cleaning up my desk procrastivity, and then
it's like a nice pivot. The thing about faking it
is faking it is And when I think about that,
it's that sounds almost like suppressing your emotions. So it's
like pretending that you feel really calm when you're giving
(25:02):
a keynote, and that is going to be really stressful
if you feel really stressed. If instead you accept it
makes total sense that I feel a little shaky because
this situation really matters to me. And allow yourself to
feel those feelings, you're going to be in a much
better position to actually speak and sign up for those
kinds of opportunities. And so it's not faking it. And
some of my clients tell me that they don't feel
(25:22):
like their emotions are changing right away, and what I
tell them is it's okay. Like if you feel really
annoyed with someone in your family, but it matters to you.
Part of one of your values is including them in
your life, it's okay the first time you meet up
with them for coffee, don't immediately have more feelings. The
goal of opposite action is not just to feel better,
it's to have the life that you want to live.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Taking opposite action is such a clever strategy. If you're
feeling flustered and panicky, just act relaxed and you can
slow your role. If you're feeling like you want to
scream and let out your inner hulk, force yourself to
speak as calmly.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
And gently as possible.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
It's time for another short break, but Jenny will be
back with more tips when the Happiness Lab returns in
a moment.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Welcome back.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
This final portion of the Happiness Labs guide on how
to Stop Stressing about stress is presented by Amazon. So far,
doctor Jenny Tates has explained that we need to acknowledge
and accept our stress response. But our next tip was
a big revelation, at least for me. Jenny says, we
deal better with stressful situations if we can keep in
mind that we're enduring the stress for some greater noble cause.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I think when we're stressed, we're just zooming in on
what's immediately in front of us, and we don't have
a broad perspective about what matters. And there's like a
Zen story about a man riding a horse and someone
asks him where you're going, and he says, I don't know.
Asd a horse, and that is a really stressful way
to live. The only reason to work in a job
that you don't necessarily like might be to feed your family.
(26:55):
And connecting the dots that I'm willing to do this
even though it's uncomfortable because I care about putting food
on the table actually makes something that's difficult a little
bit more tolerable and meaningful. And so having a larger
sense of purpose actually helps us me in out our
emotions and studies people that have a clear sense of
their life purpose actually bounce back faster when they're faced
with emotional content, like looking at painful pictures. People that
(27:18):
have a clear sense of purpose, their body stress response
bounces back faster. I just think if we just practically,
we all deserve to have kind of a sense of
what we want our lives to stand for. And one
of my favorite things to do when stress feels like
it's all consuming is simply taking a step back and listing.
If you like, I'm too busy, I don't have time
to think about my life purpose in like a big
(27:39):
way or like a mission statement that's really solidified, simply
taking a step back and thinking about, Okay, these are
the things in my life that matter to me. You know,
I would love for people to take a moment to
think about this right now. You know, health, relationships, hobbies,
giving back, career, and there's so many things that matter
to us, right and taking a step back to write
out what matters to you and then maybe how you
(28:01):
want to show up in each of those domains, and
then depicting the relative weight of each of those facets
of your life in a pie chart can even help
give me some perspective. If things are not going well
right now with a specific relationship, maybe that's ten percent
of your life II, but in our minds it can
easily become eighty five percent of our life by And
(28:22):
so having a clear purpose helps us see our lives
more holistically and helps us be more willing to do
the things that are hard.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
As we talked about these strategies, like you've given us
so many awesome evidence based tips, but I know that
sometimes what happens when I'm stressed is like I know
these tips, but it can still feel like really overwhelming
to kind of engage with them.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Right.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
There's this sort of hesitation that creeps in that even
though I know these strategies. It's like, Oh, I don't
have time to think about my purpose. I just need
to do something that's an incredibly quick hack. And one
of the reasons I really love your book is that
you also have strategies for that too. When everything is
feeling really overwhelming. And that gets to tip number six,
which is it when all else fails, we can sort
of hack our body. Why is hacking our body so
(29:04):
helpful when it comes to stress?
Speaker 2 (29:06):
So many people think that they need something outside of
themselvescation or drink to feel better. But your body's actually
your best pharmacy, and we often forget how to lean
into our body being our best pharmacy. But in a
matter of minutes, you can dramatically improve how you feel
if you know how.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
And so what are some like super simple hacks of
changing the way our body is responding.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
There's one that I introduce called TIP, which I think
about as almost like the control all delete for your body.
And TIP is an acronym. TEA stands for temperature, I
is intense exercise, PA is paste breathing. At the final
PA is progressive muscle relaxation. And we'll go through those.
The first thing with the temperature is taking a salad
bowl and filling it with ice water and setting a
(29:49):
timer for thirty seconds, holding your breath, and submerging your
face in the ice water. This sounds like some sort
of weird TikTok trend, but there's a lot of research
behind it. We all have a minmilion diver reflex, and
when the human body is submerged in cold water without oxygen,
it slows down our heart rate and redirects blood flow
from not a sen to essential organs. And so even
(30:11):
if this sounds really weird, if you are wearing an
Apple watch, your heart rate will decrease significantly when you
do this. And yes, the point of life is not
to be submerging your face in ice water. But if
you're in a moment and you're making things worse for yourself,
and you feel like you're panicking, and you have thoughts
that aren't serving you, in thirty seconds, you can do
something that shifts your physiology and also shifts your mental
(30:32):
state and also reminds you that you can do something
difficult and that you can feel different in a matter
of seconds. I should just say that this is not
a good strategy for people that have part conditions, because
your heart rate will come down quickly. But the ice
face is something that people are really surprised when they're
in a vicious cycle of rumination or if they feel frozen.
Freezing your face will surprisingly unfreeze you. And then eye
(30:54):
is intense exercise. And this is not running a marathon
or going to a sixty minute workout class, just briefly
doing something like burpies for a minute or two, or
running in place, but bringing your knees up to your
nose as best you can. I'm doing something like that.
These things are changing your body and also in your mind,
you're not going to be able to be thinking the
same thoughts. Is peace. Breathing is slowing down your respiratory rate.
(31:17):
On average, we breathe about eighteen breaths per minute, and
if we slow our breath to about a third of
that by breathing in for five, we can all do
this together through your nose. You could gently close your
lips in for five and out for five. You do
that for several minutes, that actually lowers your blood pressure, or.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
Even just once. Honestly, I just did that with you,
and now all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, I
actually do feel better.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
Just so funny.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
It's one of these things where people tell you if
you're upset, like take a deep breath, and it sounds
so kind of frustrating, but what it's really doing is
it's hacking a part of your body that's kind of
incredibly hard to hack. You really hacking your parisipittic nervousness totally.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
I think the only qualifiers if you feel like you
can't breathe, that is not the one I would go to.
But other than times when you're feeling panic, yeah, taking
a deep breath. And I have to tell you, Laurie,
I was blown open working on this book. I interviewed
doctor Richard Brown and doctor Patricia Gerbarg, who or psychiatrists
affiliated with Columbia University who moved away from prescribing medications
to prescribing breath work, who are teaching breathing all over
(32:22):
the world, therapeutic breathing exercises, even right now to people
in Ukraine. And they are telling me that people in
war zones are actually finding tranquility within. And I was
so moved by this fact that a portion of the
proceeds from my book is going to their foundation. Because
we think, yeah, taking a breath is not going to
really change my reality, but it does. It expands your
(32:43):
ability to cope with your reality. And we need to
strengthen our inner system to deal with a stressful outer system.
And then the final p is progressive muscle relaxation. And
so a lot of times it might feel like the
only way for you to relax is to get a massage,
but you couldn't give yourself a quick massage. Even if
this isn't something you've tried before, this is quite easy
to do by tensing your forehead and releasing and noticing
(33:06):
the difference between tension and relaxation your forehead, then with
each in and out breath, releasing more, and then doing
the same with your lips, tensing your lips by bringing
your lips together releasing. A lot of us don't even
realize that we're our shoulders are touching our ears, and
we're scowling, and we're tightening our fists especially, and there's
so many things we can do to just create a
little bit more space in our bodies. And again, the temperature,
(33:29):
intense exercise, pacee breathing, and progressive muscle relaxation are things
we can all do really quickly in a matter of minutes,
and I don't think that you're going to have anything
but a sense of expansiveness and present focus.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Another thing we can do in a matter of minutes
is your tip number seven, which is that we can
hack our senses. One of my favorite versions of this
is your idea that we can comfort ourself with touch,
which is something that I've taken from your book, just
kind of remembering like, oh, I can put on some
fuzzy socks, you know, I can give myself a little
self hug. Talk about why our senses can be so
powerful for changing our stress response.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
We get into this two punch of our mind is
bowling us and then our bodies feel like they're rebelling
it us. But doing something like if you just received
difficult feedback, like putting two hands on your heart can
really feel like a hug. And this sounds corny, but
there are studies that showed us to be true and
doing small things to self validate that communicate that our
feelings are moramal and to be expected. And I mean,
(34:26):
I think self compassion is so key and finding ways
through touch and from the moment we're born we're comforted
by touch, and this is something that people really crave
and really complained about during periods of isolation during the pandemic,
and giving your friends a hug is so lovely. And
if you're on your own, you know, massaging your shoulder.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Given yourself a hug works pretty well too. Yeah, so
those are all strategies we can use maybe after something
stressful happens, but your book also goes through things we
can do to get ahead of things before stress starts,
so we can kind of beat it. And one of
my favorite strategies in this, which is my tip number eight,
is that we could mentally rehearse to kind of protect ourselves.
(35:06):
What do you mean my mental rehearsal here, So.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
There's this incredible thing that when we imagine a situation
in our mind, if we actually rehearse ourselves in that situation,
we use the same parts of our brain that will
actually use in the situation. And so oftentimes we're facing
something that seems overwhelming and we do the opposite of this.
We worry, we dread, we expect the worst. But if
we swap dread with coping ahead actually imagining, not overly idealistically,
(35:33):
but realistically, this thing is going to come up. I'm
going to sit down at my desk. I'm going to
want to go bounce around social media and news sites,
but instead I'm going to close everything out, set a
time or for this amount of time that actually sets
us up to do just that. The mental rehearsal, this
is something that a lot of sports psychologists use. It's
really helpful. I found it personally helpful with writing this book,
(35:53):
or just like the mental rehearsal of sitting down to
do deep work. But I think it's a powerful way
to use our resources to set us up for success
rather than to set us up for not believing in
ourselves and struggling.
Speaker 1 (36:04):
Another resource we can use to help ourselves kind of
ahead of time is we can use a little bit
more humor. We can find humor before the stress kicks in.
How is humor so hopeful for fighting stress?
Speaker 2 (36:15):
Oh? I love this. I just feel like if you
can make someone laugh and a hard moment, that really
shifts their perspective. I find humor so personally liberating and
joyful and we all need. I mean, I think it's
almost like life is like a seesaw. The more positive
emotions we elevate, the more negative emotions come down. And
this is something that's true even in the research people
that are focused on a newer treatment called positive ethic therapy,
(36:35):
they reduce their anxiety and depression, even if that's not targeted,
and so be able to laugh and play with yourself
and giving your anxiety of funny Like I don't know,
when I was living in New York, I lived on
top of a candy store, and in the window of
the candy store there was this big stuffed animal called
grumpy cat. Mayven just you know, noticing like, okay, grumpy
cats coming around. That's a quick way to kind of
(36:58):
get some distance and perspective and to play with it.
And I think going through life looking for funny things
kind of shifts your perspective and humor is not only
good for you, but also for the people around you.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yeah, it's a way of kind of regulating not just
your stress, but the stress of the people that you
happen to find yourself with. It's such a good tip
Number nine. Now we get to my final tip, which
sort of builds on this idea of bringing in positive emotions.
We can protect ourselves by plotting out our joy, and
you argue you should even make appointments with our joy
kind of explain what.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
You mean there. It's so easy to feel like when
I have time, then I will call that friend or
finally go to see a movie in the theater, or
figure out a nice hiking trail in my neighborhood. But actually,
like we need to plot joy to have the energy
we need to again expand our inner resources and doing
things to cultivate positive emotions actually reduces our vulnerability to
(37:52):
negative emotions and creates a buffer for stress. And so
intentionally planning things to look forward to and then learning
to actually really savor them. So if you did something pleasant,
to repeat it in your mind or even actually say
it out loud is what experts say to do the
specific highlight of that experience, like if you met up
with a friend, like even just the moment of your
eyes catching one another's across the room and then running
(38:15):
to give each other a hug, like in this cute
coffee shop that smelled like I don't know a fall.
That is so helpful because again, I think we just
go from hard time to hard time, and we need
to realize that planning and savoring moments of pleasures like
putting money in your bank account that offsets your stress
and also allows you to enjoy your life. And a
(38:36):
huge thing that we need to remember is doing these
things is not just good for us, but good for
the people around us. And it's really hard to bring
positivity to the people that you care about if you
are running low.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
One of my favorite things about the strategy is that
you talk about planning this ahead of time, because I
know that for me, especially when I'm feeling really stressed
and overwhelmed, there can be some friction about adding in
these pleasant things. But if it's already in the calendar,
right I already have a movie night with my friends,
or I've already planned dinner, you know, with people I
really care about, I'm going to have a really fun
time with weeks in advance, then it winds up sticking around.
(39:07):
So I love the sort of antsicipiatory adding the pleasure
in ahead of time so that it's there when you
really need it.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, And I think what you're saying is so impactful
because we can anticipate it and savor it and then
re experience it afterwards. And then I think also just
strategically having it in your calendar. This happens to me
all the time. If I know that I have a
hard stop time, that makes the time right before that
much more productive. And so I think just knowing I
got to be finished by this time because I have
this dinner on the calendar actually leads to less you know,
(39:37):
bouncing around between tasks and more monotasking, and so I
think it's good for joint. It's also good for the
things that are stressing us out to actually tackle those.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
So we've talked about kind of ways that we can
deal with stress, but you know, sometimes stress dips into
the clinical right for example, if somebody is going through
a moment of total panic, any particular tips for tackling
that when things get really out of hand for.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
People that have panic. One of the most surprising things
people don't realize is that practicing panic is the path
out of panic. And so rather than worrying, I'm going
to be on the freeway and I'm going to start sweating,
and I'm going to feel like I can't breathe, and
I'm going to feel like I can't drive safely. Rather
than waiting for that moment to surprise you and catch
you off guard. If you can practice panic, if you
(40:19):
can recreate those very physical sensations that you are I
will never pop up in your life if you can
actually practice those on purpose in a safe space, spend
a minute hyperventilating surprisingly introceptive exposure or facing those physical
sensations that you want to avoid is one of the
most proven paths out of panic, and it works surprisingly well,
and it works in a relatively short amount of time.
(40:40):
Doing this in a safe environment helps you kind of
metaphorically put out a welcome that when these things show up,
because we often do as almost like a Chinese finger trap,
we feel physically uncomfortable, we judge it, we feel more constrictive.
The more we fight, the more stuck we are. But
if we can lean in and have an attitude of
been there, done that. I've practiced this at home, I
know what this is, just like my emotions come in waves,
(41:01):
my physiology changes when I don't hyper focus on it.
It's a really liberating technique that I've been blown away
by its impact on my clients.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
So listeners should definitely check out the book, and they
should also check out this stress reset deck you have,
which is just like little cards I explain these things,
you don't have to flip through a whole book to
find them. I'm just so curious writing this book has
kind of having all these strategies that they're ready helped
you get through really stressful periods.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
I wrote this book because having these strategies that I've
learned over the past couple of decades has changed my life.
I mean, these are like beads of a necklace that
I wear constantly, and I feel like they're too precious
to keep to myself and I want everyone to access them.
And certainly in moments when I stressed out, I take
a step back and notice what am I doing? How
is my thinking not serving me? And what is a
change in my behavior that I can quickly pivot towards.
(41:49):
Because we all deserve to improve our moments, and these
improve our days, and this improves our whole life, and
this creates a positive ripple effect not only in us,
but with the people around us. And so they certainly
have changed my life and opposite action is a total
way that I live my life lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
That final part of my interview with Jenny Tates on
how to Stop Stressing about stress was presented by Amazon
Pharmacy and Amazon one Medical Healthcare just got less painful.
Learn more at health dot Amazon dot com. I can't
recommend Jenny's Stress Resets book enough.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
It's packed with so much.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Good advice, far more than we've been able to fit
into the show. Well, let's recap the wisdom that Jenny's shared.
Tip one sounds simple, but it's hard. You have to
accept that stress is the price of a fulfilling life.
Challenging things give us purpose and fun and all the
social connection we need. The next tip is to stop
all that rumination. Letting your mind think about a stressful
(42:46):
situation over and over doesn't do you any good. Nip
these looping thoughts in the butt by asking yourself how
you're going to move forward. Tip three is all about
building up distress tolerance. Practice accepting tough feelings when they
arise so you don't drown in them. Tip number four
is not to let stressors dictate your behavior. If you're
feeling down, do the opposite and try something fun and energetic.
(43:08):
If you're feeling in aged with someone, do something nice
for them, even if you actually want to be a
bit mean. Tip number five zoom out from your stress
and remember why you're doing what you're doing. Are you
enduring a difficult situation to improve your life or the
life of someone you love. A bit of stress might
start to seem worth it for that long term gain.
Tip number six, Hack your body. Don't reach for a
(43:29):
drink or a pint of ice cream to change your mood.
Shock yourself with a blast of water, a deep breath,
or even a burst of exercise to halt that stress
response in its tracks. Tip number seven follows along from
that
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