May 2, 2024 • 33 mins
Allan joins Jana to tackle a subject on everybody’s minds… stress. She’s talking to Dr. Aditi Nerurkar to learn about the different kinds of stress, and what it means to have the “healthy” and positive stress.
We hear the truth about how to form and break habits, and Dr. Aditi has to break the news to Jana that a skill she’s the most proud of… is actually a myth.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heart Radio Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This week's Thursday Therapy, we have doctor Adit, She's a
Harvard physician nationally recognized stress expert. We also have my
amazing fiance joining this Thursday Therapy episode. How would you
say you'd handle stress? You're thrown that question and welcome
to wind Down Baby.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
How do I handle stress? I handle it deffinitely now
as I've got older. I think, first of all, you
can you become better to choose and what you stress
over and the volume of things that you can stress
over and what you can control. But I think taking
(00:48):
time to yourself and even like I know it's cliche
and it's overused, but meditation and breathing techniques really help
me in stressful situations. Like even in the moment of stress,
whether it's a trigger of something, just deep breaths within
that moment just help to calm me and control my emotions,
(01:10):
which then helps control the stress.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
It's interesting that you mentioned the age thing, because that
was going to be one of my questions to her,
because I feel like a lot of people even they
say when you're an older parent, they you like, let's
say a parent has a child at a young age
and having an older age, Oh well you had a
like for example, I'll say, like my dad was way
(01:33):
less chill with my sisters as opposed to me. So
it's it's interesting when we can handle stress better with age.
And I'm curious actually why that is, because you would
think with age comes more stress.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I think you'll learn to prioritize what affects you, and
maturity tends to do that, Like there'll be far more
things will affect you, and now at the age of
forty excuse yourself. Excuse yourself, at the age of forty,
and there would have been in your twenties.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yes, And there's also things that stress me out more
now in my forties and in my twenties, like I
have the weight of the world in forties, just you know,
support in children, and so that stress is so different
than when I didn't have that, you know, obviously that responsibility.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
But that you now have the tools to manage it sure,
Whereas if you had this responsibility, this amount of responsibility
in your early twenties, you probably wouldn't have had the
tools to manage it properly.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
How do you think I handle stress?
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I think you manage stress really well because you're I mean,
there's so many, so many variants of stress, but you're
so busy all the time, and you're constantly juggling everything podcasting, acting, marketing, stuff,
influencing and stuff, so your plate's always full. So therefore,
(03:12):
but I think you're really good on managing Okay, I'll
allow this to affect me or I won't allow it
to affect me, And like everyone, you have your moments,
but I think you handle and whether it's stress. I
think there's a difference between stress and pressure, A big difference.
Your pressure to get things done, your pressure to perform,
your pressure to look after the kids. I think that's
(03:33):
really different from stress.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Oh interesting, what do you tell me? What? Why?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Well, a pressure is mostly something that you put on yourself,
like your pressures in life will be mostly the ones
that you put on yourself.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
But isn't that stress?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
No, I mean, just about to speak to an expert
on it, but I think there's a really big difference
between pressure and stress. Pressure. You you can a lot
of people thrive on pressure, but a lot of people
will deem stresses onhealthy.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I guess I don't know them. What the difference is
because it feels like the same to me.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
It's totally different. And the professional world like the difference
between pressure and stresses, Like I.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Get the pressure, like, Okay, I have to study all
these lines. That's pressure. But to me that's also stress,
Like I'm stressed to have to learn all these lines.
I'm pressured to learn all these lines. It feels like
to me, the same effect or the same weight.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I would say, I think there's a big difference.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
So well, luckily we've got a stress expert that just
jumped down the zoom. Let's get her on, Doctor Adit.
I'm Janna. This is my fiance Alan.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Nice to meet you.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Hi, guys. I know all about you because I've been
binging it your podcast for the past few weeks, so
I am like, I'm a true fan.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
It's very sweet, thank you, and I'm I'm excited to
talk to you because we were just having a little
bit of a conversation before you came on about stress,
and you know, he was saying how pressure is different
than stress, and I you know, I'm very happy to
have you on because when he was saying that, I'm like, man,
I get pressure and stress maybe being different, but it's
the same effect for me. So like if I feel
(05:16):
like I was an example I was using, was I
felt pressure to learn all my lines for the last
movie I was in, but it was also stressful the
same thing. So I guess what is your take on
that pressure versus stress? And then yeah, then let's just
dive into all of it.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
That's a great place to start. So when you say
pressure versus stress, what you guys are really talking about
is that there are two kinds of stress and not
all stress is created equals. So when you say pressure,
you're talking about healthy, good stress. And then when you
say stress, like most of us when we throw that
(05:51):
word around, like I've had a stressful week or I've
had a stressful day, what we're talking about is unhealthy stress.
So there's two distinct types of stress, and they both
impact your brain and body in different ways. You know,
healthy positive stress. In scientific terms, it's known as adaptive stress.
We won't use too many scientific words. And then the
unhealthy stress is known as maladaptive stress. Everything that moves
(06:12):
your life forward was created because of a little bit
of healthy stress. So, like you said you were learning
lines for your movie, or you're rooty for your favorite
sports team, you make a new friend, get a new job,
or a promotion, or a new movie role, or I
don't know, buy a new car or a home, or
planning for your next vacation. All wonderful positive things in
(06:33):
your life, but they are stressful. Though they are a
healthy form of stress. They help move your life forward.
Unhealthy stress is things that we already know about when
we say, oh I'm so stressed, or it's a stressful week,
that's that unproductive, dysfunctional stress that really stops you in
your tracks. The goal of life is not to live
a life without stress. That is a myth and it's
(06:54):
actually biologically impossible to do that. It's to live a
life with healthy, manageable stress. And what often happens is
when healthy stress gets out of hand, it can become unproductive.
So it's about raining it in back to healthy levels
so that I can serve you rather than harm you.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Mm hm that makes sense, yeah, absolutely absolutely? And how
what are the key aspects for someone to know when
stress becomes unhealthy? If you talk about healthy stress and
unhealthy stress, what are the key the key points that
then recognizing that okay, this is now unhealthy and it's
(07:35):
halting me.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah. So you know when you think about how stress
or healthy stress influences your brain. When you're feeling a
sense of healthy stress, right, it is like a sense
of excitement or those healthy positive nerves. Excitement and fear
reside in the same part of our brain, which is
a good kind of reframe. When you're feeling like, oh,
there's this new thing coming up and I'm not really
(07:57):
sure if I can do it, and you want to
keep it in healthy bounds, you can think to yourself, oh,
it's excitement rather than a fear. That's one reframe. But stress,
the unhealthy kind of stress. There's like a million flavors.
So you can have body manifestations of unhealthy stress like
I don't know, headaches, neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain,
(08:19):
abdominal pain, feeling dizzy or nauseous, and then the mental
health manifestations of too much stress, too much unhealthy stress, anxiety, depressions,
sleep disturbances, dirtability, a quick sense of anger, emotional reactivity,
and in some cases feeling a sense of fatigue or
low energy. So it really depends. Every person is different,
(08:42):
and what seems like a stress event or a stress
symptom to me is really different for a stress symptom
for you for example, or even between you, there's probably
something that you do is really different than you know,
than your partner. So it really does depend. The key
is to know what your baseline. So when you're feeling
good and you know, if you're not feeling a lot
(09:03):
of stress, then how do you feel? And then it's
kind of like your tell. So I talk about this
idea of the canary in the coal mine, which is
a historical reference. I am so not into history. I'm
not a history buff, but I love this metaphor. Back
when there were coal miners in like World War two,
they would go into the mines and they would bring
a canary, a caged bird with them. The air would
(09:26):
turn bad, but the coal miners were just toiling away
and working for you know, sixteen twenty hour days. When
the canary would stop singing, that's when they were like,
oh wait a second, the air is bad. We need
to leave the mines. And we as humans were like
historically really bad at knowing what our canary song is
like when is it too much? And only when our
(09:48):
canary we all have one, when it starts belting a tune.
That's when we pay attention, and that's like, really the
sign of unhealthy stress that's gotten way out of hand.
Everyone has its own everyone has their and canary song.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, that's interesting, that's really cool. I love that. I
have a friend who she went through years of infidelity.
(10:23):
She ended up getting cancer. A lot of people said, well,
it's because the stress. You know, your body keeps a score.
Is there anything scientifically backing what stress like a stress
can cause cancer or anything that to that effect.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So I'm really sorry for your friend for having gone
through that. And you know, so many times with patients
that I've seen, they get a chronic illness and then
they're in my office and they're weeping saying it's because
of this that happened, or you know, like you blame yourself.
There's a lot of self blame and you often gaslight yourself,
(11:00):
right like thinking, oh, it's my fault and it's never
your fault. And if something happens, I would say, the
science shows that it's not necessarily a cause. Like she
had a lot of stress in her life, that is
not what caused her cancer, but stress contributes to chronic
medical conditions. So One startling statistic is that sixty to
eighty percent of all doctor's visits have a stress related component,
(11:24):
even though only three percent of doctor's visits have stress
management counseling. That's not to say that like sixty to
eighty percent of doctor's visits are caused by stress. But
let's say you have a history of migraines, which is
really common thing for people to have. Stress will make
your migraines worse, will make your flares worse, You'll have
more pain, more frequency of flares, or if you have
rheumatoid arthritis, that can happen, you know, if it does
(11:48):
have an impact on your chronic conditions. But it's not
to say that for your friends, particularly that years of
stress caused her cancer. I think it's really unfair because
it makes the person who is going through that difficult experience,
they're already struggling and they're already suffering. And so you
know that lens of self compassion is so important when
(12:08):
you are feeling a sense of stress, right because it's
like when you're feeling that deep sense of stress and
you can't get out of that, it's really you against you,
and you're often in your own way, and so when
you use that lens of self compassion, it can really help.
And so I would say, you know, it's so easy
because of the stress response. Your inner critic is so loud,
(12:29):
and she was probably thinking, it's probably my fault and
everything that happened to me, and it's never your fault.
It is so so not your fault. When something you know,
when you get a funny condition, it's not because of stress,
but stress once you have a particular condition, it's a
good idea to manage your stress and keep it in check,
even prior to a medical condition. It's a good idea
only because it can worsen conditions.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Right, Okay, I have a question which links to which
links to athletes and field and the link between so,
as an athlete, every day, particularly on match days of
the high performance days, on match days, you're constantly dealing
with stress of hormones. Court is all adrenaline every single
(13:14):
day because of the pressors and stress of being an athlete,
both emotionally and physically. Do you think there's a huge
link between professional athletes. They learn how to try and
manage the stress of hormones every single day of the life.
So every day they're dealing with it, and there's a
link between that becoming a habit of dealing with it.
(13:35):
But then when they retire, they no longer have that
adrenaline and court is all kicking in every day that
there no longer having to manage it and there's a
big void in a life now. So do you think
there's a link between the mental health of athletes upon
retirement to stress during their careers.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I love that question because I think a lot about
athletes because I practiced in Boston and it's a real
sports town with lots of athletes that I've taken care
of over the years. You know, what is fascinating about
top tier athletes is that they live and breathe the
mind body connection and mere mortals like we're living in
(14:20):
our heads or neck up people and athletes really have
tuned into their mind body connection and what the mind
body connection is. It's really important for stress management. It's
that your brain and your body aren't constant communication and
inextricably linked. What's good for your body is good for
your brain, and vice versa. When it comes to athletes
and the stress response, there is an habituation process and
(14:42):
what that means is when these athletes are put into
situations that are high stress, because they are so tuned
in and in sync with their brain and their body
and that mind body connection, they are able their brain
it responds accordingly. They are used to that high level.
Of course is all an adrenaline and they're moving their
body and they're connecting their mind and their body. You know,
(15:04):
our brain is a muscle. So your brain is just
like a bicep that when you train it in certain ways,
it responds. It's not like the brain you had at
birth is the brain you're going to have for life.
And so your brain can learn new things and can
grow and adapt in the face of life's challenges. Being
an athlete, you have a physical challenge and a mental
challenge on the field, and so your brain adapts to that.
(15:27):
And so then when you retire as an athlete and
you get off of the field, there is a habituation,
like your brain is used to a certain level of stress,
and it depends on the athlete. So I have known
athletes who have retired and then they have something called
the delayed stress reaction, which is what a lot of
us have gone through over the past several years. We're
(15:48):
not athletes. I mean I exercise, but I'm not an athlete.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It's basically that like you keep it together at all costs,
and then the minute that acute stress is gone or
that like stressful time is gone, you just fall apart.
It's the dam breaks because your brain is built like
a dam. You keep it together, and then immediately afterwards
you feel psychologically safe and then you release, right, and
it's like all of those pent up emotions come out.
So that's one avenue, that's one path that could happen.
(16:14):
Or you know, often what happens with elite athletes is
that they channel that energy because it's very positive energy.
It's healthy stress, right, that's gotten them to that level
the mind body connection. They channel that energy to another area.
So then they become entrepreneurs or they do all of
these wonderful things and you see them really thrive in
(16:35):
another area because it's skill building. They've built a whole
sense of skills on the field, and then they can
use them and transfer them off the field. But it
takes time and practice. And you know, for those of
us who are not elite athletes, we can do that too.
You can tap into your mind body connection. You can
learn to harness all the power of neuroplasticity to help
(16:57):
decrease your stress. Because the mind body connection, you can
pay attention to it and tap into it off the
field as a regular person me or mortal. And the
other thing about the mind body connection is that you
can influence it to serve you, which is what athletes
do all day every day, rather than harm you.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
So you have your new book, The Five Resets rewire
your brain and body for less stress and more resilience.
What is one of the biggest things that you want
people to take away from your book? Like? What is
and what's the biggest Like if you could tell someone
just one big takeaway, like hey, I this is going
to help you with your daily stress, you know, to
(17:35):
feel better, what would that be?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I think the biggest takeaway is to use a lens
of self compassion when you are thinking about your own
stress and burnout, understanding that if you are feeling a
sense of stress or burnout, you are not the exception,
You're the rule. Data shows that seventy percent of people
have at least one feature of stress and burnout. That's
like in a room of thirty people. Twenty one people
(17:58):
are struggling right now. So if you're struggling with your
mental health right now, you are not alone, and it
is not your fault. There are so many things. We've
had an onslaught of things, one after the other over
the past several years, and your brain and your body
you're expertly designed to handle short bursts of stress. But
what we've experienced has been chronic and ongoing. So your
(18:18):
brain isn't broken. There's nothing wrong with you. All of
these messages that you may have been told through you know, society,
or yourself or your friends, if you are struggling with
stress and burnout, you are having a normal, healthy reaction,
in fact, to an abnormal situation that we are living in.
So that's kind of the first thing to normalize and
validate the difficult experience you're going through. And then the
(18:40):
other big myth I want to debunk is this idea
of resilience. Right like you hear that word resilience, and
I don't know about you guys, but I bristle, like
I cringe. It's such a cringe you word to me,
because resilience back in twenty eighteen was a positive thing.
It's like your innate biological ability to adapt, recover, and
grow in the face of life's challenges, but now it's
(19:02):
morphed into toxic resilience, which is why we hear that
word and we're like, oh, don't tell me to be resilient.
It's the last thing I want to do, because true
resilience honors your boundaries, honors your human limitations, and really
respects your need for rest and recovery, your brain and
bodies need for rest and recovery. Toxic resilience, which is
a manifestation of hustle culture, is productivity at all costs,
(19:25):
a mind over matter mindset, and it's like the energizer
bunny in the US, like just keep going, or in
the UK, keep calm and carry on. It's this idea
of a toxic, sinister version of resilience. And I think
the biggest takeaway is that if you are feeling burned
out or stressed, it is a myth to say that, oh,
(19:46):
resilient people don't feel burnout and stress. That has been
scientifically debunked. In fact, you can still be resilient and
still experience stress and burnout. They are not mutually exclusive.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
When it comes to. So I'm always like, oh, I'm
such a great multitasker and I thrive in, you know,
having a million things at one time. But I'm reading
how You're like, that's actually not a good thing to
be like bragging about. So what do I do?
Speaker 3 (20:26):
So multitasking is a myth. I hate to break into you.
I am a recovered multitasker, and there's no such thing. Scientifically,
multitasking doesn't exist. When you are multitasking, what you are
doing is task switching, meaning you are doing two separate
tasks in rapid secession, and your brain is wired to
do one thing at a time. Multitasking what it does
(20:48):
is it weakens a certain part of your brain right
here behind your forehead called the prefrontal cortex, and that
area is really important for solving complex problems, memory, cognition, attention,
and ironically, productivity. Multitasking or task switching, weakens all of
these elements, particularly your productivity, and so instead of multitasking,
(21:11):
it is important the antidote to multitasking is monotasking, that
means doing one thing at a time. So when I
suggest that, people laugh, like, come on, it's modern. You know,
we got the slack channel and the emails and a
million things competing for our attention. How can you monotask?
You can practice something called time blocking. So let's say
you guys have an hour to finish four tasks. Instead
(21:32):
of doing all four tasks at the same time, do
one task for ten or fifteen minutes and take a
five ten minute break. Then start tests two and take
a five or ten minute break, and by the end
of that hour, you will have completed all four tasks.
You have made headway on them, maybe not completed, but
you will have made progress on all four tasks, and
you have taken a break. And the reason those breaks
(21:53):
are important for your brain is because the sigence shows
that when we learn new information, and we're always learning right,
when we learn new things, it's not actually the activity
that is when the learning happens, it's during rest, and
that period of rest is really important for another big
concept called neural consolidation, another fancy word. It simply means that,
(22:15):
like new information floating in your head, becomes cemented deep
into knowledge. So it's the move is the movement from
information to knowledge. So multitasking is in fact bad for
the brain. And even though one hundred percent of us
think we are excellent musciligh taskers. The truth is only
two percent of human brains can effectively multitask. So instead
(22:36):
of multitasking, I love it, I love it, try to monotask.
That's the antidote.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Okay, I've got one question, one last question. So for
someone like yourself who's taken a deep dive into your
field and are incredibly knowledgeable, I think it's a real
art for someone like I specialize in a certain field,
I think it's a real art for someone to simplify
the knowledge. So what you've done is you've taken all
(23:09):
these thousands and thousands of hours of speaking to people
and tracing people, and you've put it into five steps.
Did you find that difficult to take all best knowledge
and compact it into just five simple steps? Was that
difficult for you or was it an easy process?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
That is a beautiful question and probably the highest compliment
I can receive. So thank you for saying that. That
is always what I strive for. In fact, when I
give my talks or even in this book, when people
say like you've just made it so simple for me.
You know, we all have lots of gifts, and we
all have many flaws, right, Like we're human beings. We're flawed,
(23:48):
imperfectly perfect. But one of the things that I have
always enjoyed doing because I like communication, is taking complex
information and making it simple. We're easy to digest understand.
It took me twenty five years to write this book,
so of course it wasn't overnight. But I think when
you talk to people when you're a doctor, and I
always prided myself on not using doctor language as a doctor,
(24:13):
because I used to hate that. It's called affected speech.
You know, when people who are doctors speak and they
like sound like aliens because they're not talking like regular
everyday people. I loved my doctors or my teachers when
I was in medical school who just talked to me
like a regular person, and they spoke like regular people.
I think it's so much more effective in terms of
communication when you lead with authenticity and vulnerability. And so
(24:35):
it took me twenty five years to get to this
place of wanting to write the book. For ten years
people have been asking me to write like patients and
other people and media people, and I was like, no,
it's not the right time. It was a process, so
now it's a skill like anything else. I think simplifying
complex information seems really hard in the beginning, but like
(24:57):
if you just keep doing it over and over and
over anything, right, like sports, there's things that you do
that I could never do in sports, but it just
is a skill and I just continued to build it.
But it is truly something I love doing. Like the
more complicated the better because then I can distill it
down into manageable, bite sized chunks for all of us
(25:18):
to digest. Because ultimately, it's like if something feels really
far away or aspirational, that's the thing with stress. It's
like often you get these messages about stress and burnout
and they're so like out there, like go to Bali
for six months and learn how to surf. Yes, I
would love it, sign me up for that life plan,
But that's not real life.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
We have financial obligations and parenting obligations and responsibilities and
all these roles that we fulfill. And so it's about
finding ways to build in stress relief and burn out
recovery and reset some of these things in our brains
and our bodies in the here and now, in the
messy middle. And so that is what I've aspired to
do making it as simple as possible and of course
(25:57):
science based.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Sure, yeah, I love that you with all of your
studies and interviewing people. What does the biggest mistake people
make when it comes to stress? Like, what is the
one thing that's like, oh, that is that's the constant
thing that you see with people doing you know, wrong with.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Doing too many things all at once. So everything but
the kitchen sink, right, So, like it takes a while
to get that awareness of wait a second, I think
get stressed or do I have burnout? And then you
have that like light bulb moment of yes I have
burnout or yes I have stress, and then you do
everything with the kitchen sake. And I've had so many
patients come in with binders like okay, doc, here's what
(26:37):
I did, and like, you know, and same thing with
NER's resolutions. People take on twenty things and then by
like week two or three, you're down to one, probably zero,
because the human brain cannot sustain huge lifestyle overhauls during
periods of stress, and even positive change, like making a
positive change in your life is a stress on your brain,
(27:01):
so even positive things, So instead aim for two small
changes at a time. If you want those changes to stick,
work with your biology rather than against it. It takes
eight weeks to create a habit, and part of habit
formation is actually falling off the wagon and getting back up.
So like in week two and three, if you're like, oh,
I'm not going to do that, like there's no way
(27:21):
you follow that. You know, for three days, you don't
do it. Four days and you're like, you know what,
maybe I'll start again. You're not a failure. It's just
part of the learning process and part of your brain
circuitry actually wiring in a new and different way. That's
called neuroplasticity, right, And so that is probably the biggest
mistake doing too much all at once. Nothing sticks. So
follow the rule of two. It's called the resilience rule
(27:43):
of two. It's how your brain responds to change. It's
why during the pandemic, like you may have had huge,
lofty goals to do all of these things, and now
it's a wonder if you shower once a day. It
needs some vegetables because you can't sustain huge lifestyle aperhols
during periods of stress. Two small changes at a time
eight weeks let them fold into your life, and then
you can add two more and so by the end
of the year you will have perfected. You know, there's
(28:06):
fifteen strategies in the five resets, five main principles and
fifteen strategies, and by the end of the year you
will have brought in all of those strategies, but not
all at once because your brain and body can't handle it.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
In one of the resets, a second reset, it's find
Quiet in a Noisy World? Are then, are you a
fan of Does that mean meditation or what is your
best tool for that?
Speaker 3 (28:29):
I personally have meditated for a long, long time, several decades.
It's not for everyone, and it's certainly not something I
recommend in that particular reset Find your Quiet in a
Noisy World. It is all about digital boundaries and sleep.
Those are the two biggest buckets of finding your quiet.
And what are digital boundaries? We have boundaries in every
(28:51):
other relationship in our life, right like our partners, colleagues, friends, children,
and yet we have no boundaries or as boundaries when
it comes to our relationships with our digital devices, and
the science shows that creating a sense of a boundary.
This is not about becoming a digital monk because the
science also shows that our health and well being is
(29:13):
actually improved by decreasing our reliance on devices rather than
giving them up entirely. That doesn't seem to have as
much benefit. But it's about creating some boundaries. And why
do you want to create boundaries? So there's some geographical
boundaries you could create, and some logistical boundaries you could create.
Think about what you do first thing in the morning,
before your second eye is even open. Most of us,
like me and all of us, over fifty percent of
(29:35):
people scroll subtle device. Right, you're checking your phone first
thing in the morning and before your second eye is
even open. Think about what that's doing to your brain.
These are not benign entities. You are scrolling the headlines,
social media, your work email, all of these things. You've
just had a good night's sleep, or if you have
a lot of stress, you've had a fragmented or disruptive
sense of sleep. Your brain and your body are fresh,
(29:57):
you're awake, and you're scrolling, and that is activating the
stress response in your brain. And instead, create a digital boundary.
Keep your phone off your nightstand, invest in a low
cost alarm clock instead. This is not about being a
digital monkt abstinence. You can check your phone, but you know,
wake up. Take in the light of day, look at
your bed partner, if you have one, brush your teeth,
(30:19):
and then check your phone, so creating a little buffer.
And then at night, same thing. When it's off your nightstand.
You're not scrolling in the middle of the night. During
the day, keep it off, out of arms reach and
out of sight. And the reason you want to do
that is because when you are feeling a sense of
stress or burnout, you have a primal urge to scroll.
We've all been there when you're feeling a sense of stress,
(30:39):
like you're like this, you're scrolling and scrolling. You don't
know why. It doesn't feel good, but you can't stop.
The reason you can't stop is because it's a biological
wiring of our brain. You know. Evolutionarily, when we all
lived as strive as people, when we were all cave people,
there was a night watchman who kept watch on the
tribe while everyone slept right and now we have all
(31:01):
become our own night watchmen. And when you are feeling
a sense of stress, you're a migdala, which is a
small almond shape structure deep in the brain is what's
creating that fight or flight response and the stress response,
that sense of hypervigilance. Your middala is focused on survival
and self preservation, immediate needs, immediate sense of safety, and
(31:22):
a sense of danger. And so you scroll because it's
a way to keep yourself safe. You're scanning for danger.
You're scrolling, You're seeing what's in the news, what's in
the headlines, what's on social media. And so how can
when you're amygdalas on and you're feeling a sense of stress,
how can you shut that off by creating digital boundaries,
by letting the other part of your brain what we
(31:42):
talked about earlier, that prefrontal cortex take over again. And
so it's a scientific principle, but it doesn't have to
feel scientific. You just take your phone and keep it
out of arms reach, keep it off your nightstand. So
creating those boundaries can really do wonders for your sleep,
your energy, your mental bandwidth. It also decreases something called
popcorn brain, which is a phenomenon that many of us have.
(32:05):
Most of us have. It's not internet addiction. Internet addiction
is when you are consuming and you're online, and it's
affecting your relationships, for your work and other things. That's
not most of us. Most of us have popcorn brain,
which is a real biological phenomenon where you are spending
so much time online that your brain circuitry starts. You
have that sensation of popping. It's not truly popping, but
(32:27):
it's that sensation. It's hard to live offline because you
are just like always, you know, hyper stimulated, over stimulated.
So it decreases that sense of popcorn brain, which in
turn decreases your stress. So it's like this loop and
you have to break that cycle. And the circuit breaker
is a digital boundary.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I love that boundary. Up. We have boundaries like no, no,
the phone's the dinner table, the bits, right, that's a
big one, the big boundary. And the kids. I love
that because for some reason, no, you remember, they like
hid your phone the other day.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah, they love it.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Oh yeah, that's like they get to like have that,
which is which is cute. But thank you so much
for coming on. Everyone, go get the five resets, rewire
your brain and body for less stress and more resilience.
We appreciate you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
It was such a fuss, so sweet guys. Thank you
so much. Guys.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Bye,
Wind Down with Janet Kramer and I'm Heart Radio Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
This week's Thursday Therapy, we have doctor Adit, She's a
Harvard physician nationally recognized stress expert. We also have my
amazing fiance joining this Thursday Therapy episode. How would you
say you'd handle stress? You're thrown that question and welcome
to wind Down Baby.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
How do I handle stress? I handle it deffinitely now
as I've got older. I think, first of all, you
can you become better to choose and what you stress
over and the volume of things that you can stress
over and what you can control. But I think taking
(00:48):
time to yourself and even like I know it's cliche
and it's overused, but meditation and breathing techniques really help
me in stressful situations. Like even in the moment of stress,
whether it's a trigger of something, just deep breaths within
that moment just help to calm me and control my emotions,
(01:10):
which then helps control the stress.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
It's interesting that you mentioned the age thing, because that
was going to be one of my questions to her,
because I feel like a lot of people even they
say when you're an older parent, they you like, let's
say a parent has a child at a young age
and having an older age, Oh well you had a
like for example, I'll say, like my dad was way
(01:33):
less chill with my sisters as opposed to me. So
it's it's interesting when we can handle stress better with age.
And I'm curious actually why that is, because you would
think with age comes more stress.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
I think you'll learn to prioritize what affects you, and
maturity tends to do that, Like there'll be far more
things will affect you, and now at the age of
forty excuse yourself. Excuse yourself, at the age of forty,
and there would have been in your twenties.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Yes, And there's also things that stress me out more
now in my forties and in my twenties, like I
have the weight of the world in forties, just you know,
support in children, and so that stress is so different
than when I didn't have that, you know, obviously that responsibility.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
But that you now have the tools to manage it sure,
Whereas if you had this responsibility, this amount of responsibility
in your early twenties, you probably wouldn't have had the
tools to manage it properly.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
How do you think I handle stress?
Speaker 1 (02:49):
I think you manage stress really well because you're I mean,
there's so many, so many variants of stress, but you're
so busy all the time, and you're constantly juggling everything podcasting, acting, marketing, stuff,
influencing and stuff, so your plate's always full. So therefore,
(03:12):
but I think you're really good on managing Okay, I'll
allow this to affect me or I won't allow it
to affect me, And like everyone, you have your moments,
but I think you handle and whether it's stress. I
think there's a difference between stress and pressure, A big difference.
Your pressure to get things done, your pressure to perform,
your pressure to look after the kids. I think that's
(03:33):
really different from stress.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Oh interesting, what do you tell me? What? Why?
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Well, a pressure is mostly something that you put on yourself,
like your pressures in life will be mostly the ones
that you put on yourself.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
But isn't that stress?
Speaker 1 (03:50):
No, I mean, just about to speak to an expert
on it, but I think there's a really big difference
between pressure and stress. Pressure. You you can a lot
of people thrive on pressure, but a lot of people
will deem stresses onhealthy.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
I guess I don't know them. What the difference is
because it feels like the same to me.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
It's totally different. And the professional world like the difference
between pressure and stresses, Like I.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Get the pressure, like, Okay, I have to study all
these lines. That's pressure. But to me that's also stress,
Like I'm stressed to have to learn all these lines.
I'm pressured to learn all these lines. It feels like
to me, the same effect or the same weight.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
I would say, I think there's a big difference.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
So well, luckily we've got a stress expert that just
jumped down the zoom. Let's get her on, Doctor Adit.
I'm Janna. This is my fiance Alan.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Nice to meet you.
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Hi, guys. I know all about you because I've been
binging it your podcast for the past few weeks, so
I am like, I'm a true fan.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
It's very sweet, thank you, and I'm I'm excited to
talk to you because we were just having a little
bit of a conversation before you came on about stress,
and you know, he was saying how pressure is different
than stress, and I you know, I'm very happy to
have you on because when he was saying that, I'm like, man,
I get pressure and stress maybe being different, but it's
the same effect for me. So like if I feel
(05:16):
like I was an example I was using, was I
felt pressure to learn all my lines for the last
movie I was in, but it was also stressful the
same thing. So I guess what is your take on
that pressure versus stress? And then yeah, then let's just
dive into all of it.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
That's a great place to start. So when you say
pressure versus stress, what you guys are really talking about
is that there are two kinds of stress and not
all stress is created equals. So when you say pressure,
you're talking about healthy, good stress. And then when you
say stress, like most of us when we throw that
(05:51):
word around, like I've had a stressful week or I've
had a stressful day, what we're talking about is unhealthy stress.
So there's two distinct types of stress, and they both
impact your brain and body in different ways. You know,
healthy positive stress. In scientific terms, it's known as adaptive stress.
We won't use too many scientific words. And then the
unhealthy stress is known as maladaptive stress. Everything that moves
(06:12):
your life forward was created because of a little bit
of healthy stress. So, like you said you were learning
lines for your movie, or you're rooty for your favorite
sports team, you make a new friend, get a new job,
or a promotion, or a new movie role, or I
don't know, buy a new car or a home, or
planning for your next vacation. All wonderful positive things in
(06:33):
your life, but they are stressful. Though they are a
healthy form of stress. They help move your life forward.
Unhealthy stress is things that we already know about when
we say, oh I'm so stressed, or it's a stressful week,
that's that unproductive, dysfunctional stress that really stops you in
your tracks. The goal of life is not to live
a life without stress. That is a myth and it's
(06:54):
actually biologically impossible to do that. It's to live a
life with healthy, manageable stress. And what often happens is
when healthy stress gets out of hand, it can become unproductive.
So it's about raining it in back to healthy levels
so that I can serve you rather than harm you.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Mm hm that makes sense, yeah, absolutely absolutely? And how
what are the key aspects for someone to know when
stress becomes unhealthy? If you talk about healthy stress and
unhealthy stress, what are the key the key points that
then recognizing that okay, this is now unhealthy and it's
(07:35):
halting me.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah. So you know when you think about how stress
or healthy stress influences your brain. When you're feeling a
sense of healthy stress, right, it is like a sense
of excitement or those healthy positive nerves. Excitement and fear
reside in the same part of our brain, which is
a good kind of reframe. When you're feeling like, oh,
there's this new thing coming up and I'm not really
(07:57):
sure if I can do it, and you want to
keep it in healthy bounds, you can think to yourself, oh,
it's excitement rather than a fear. That's one reframe. But stress,
the unhealthy kind of stress. There's like a million flavors.
So you can have body manifestations of unhealthy stress like
I don't know, headaches, neck pain, shoulder pain, back pain,
(08:19):
abdominal pain, feeling dizzy or nauseous, and then the mental
health manifestations of too much stress, too much unhealthy stress, anxiety, depressions,
sleep disturbances, dirtability, a quick sense of anger, emotional reactivity,
and in some cases feeling a sense of fatigue or
low energy. So it really depends. Every person is different,
(08:42):
and what seems like a stress event or a stress
symptom to me is really different for a stress symptom
for you for example, or even between you, there's probably
something that you do is really different than you know,
than your partner. So it really does depend. The key
is to know what your baseline. So when you're feeling
good and you know, if you're not feeling a lot
(09:03):
of stress, then how do you feel? And then it's
kind of like your tell. So I talk about this
idea of the canary in the coal mine, which is
a historical reference. I am so not into history. I'm
not a history buff, but I love this metaphor. Back
when there were coal miners in like World War two,
they would go into the mines and they would bring
a canary, a caged bird with them. The air would
(09:26):
turn bad, but the coal miners were just toiling away
and working for you know, sixteen twenty hour days. When
the canary would stop singing, that's when they were like,
oh wait a second, the air is bad. We need
to leave the mines. And we as humans were like
historically really bad at knowing what our canary song is
like when is it too much? And only when our
(09:48):
canary we all have one, when it starts belting a tune.
That's when we pay attention, and that's like, really the
sign of unhealthy stress that's gotten way out of hand.
Everyone has its own everyone has their and canary song.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah, that's interesting, that's really cool. I love that. I
have a friend who she went through years of infidelity.
(10:23):
She ended up getting cancer. A lot of people said, well,
it's because the stress. You know, your body keeps a score.
Is there anything scientifically backing what stress like a stress
can cause cancer or anything that to that effect.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
So I'm really sorry for your friend for having gone
through that. And you know, so many times with patients
that I've seen, they get a chronic illness and then
they're in my office and they're weeping saying it's because
of this that happened, or you know, like you blame yourself.
There's a lot of self blame and you often gaslight yourself,
(11:00):
right like thinking, oh, it's my fault and it's never
your fault. And if something happens, I would say, the
science shows that it's not necessarily a cause. Like she
had a lot of stress in her life, that is
not what caused her cancer, but stress contributes to chronic
medical conditions. So One startling statistic is that sixty to
eighty percent of all doctor's visits have a stress related component,
(11:24):
even though only three percent of doctor's visits have stress
management counseling. That's not to say that like sixty to
eighty percent of doctor's visits are caused by stress. But
let's say you have a history of migraines, which is
really common thing for people to have. Stress will make
your migraines worse, will make your flares worse, You'll have
more pain, more frequency of flares, or if you have
rheumatoid arthritis, that can happen, you know, if it does
(11:48):
have an impact on your chronic conditions. But it's not
to say that for your friends, particularly that years of
stress caused her cancer. I think it's really unfair because
it makes the person who is going through that difficult experience,
they're already struggling and they're already suffering. And so you
know that lens of self compassion is so important when
(12:08):
you are feeling a sense of stress, right because it's
like when you're feeling that deep sense of stress and
you can't get out of that, it's really you against you,
and you're often in your own way, and so when
you use that lens of self compassion, it can really help.
And so I would say, you know, it's so easy
because of the stress response. Your inner critic is so loud,
(12:29):
and she was probably thinking, it's probably my fault and
everything that happened to me, and it's never your fault.
It is so so not your fault. When something you know,
when you get a funny condition, it's not because of stress,
but stress once you have a particular condition, it's a
good idea to manage your stress and keep it in check,
even prior to a medical condition. It's a good idea
only because it can worsen conditions.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Right, Okay, I have a question which links to which
links to athletes and field and the link between so,
as an athlete, every day, particularly on match days of
the high performance days, on match days, you're constantly dealing
with stress of hormones. Court is all adrenaline every single
(13:14):
day because of the pressors and stress of being an athlete,
both emotionally and physically. Do you think there's a huge
link between professional athletes. They learn how to try and
manage the stress of hormones every single day of the life.
So every day they're dealing with it, and there's a
link between that becoming a habit of dealing with it.
(13:35):
But then when they retire, they no longer have that
adrenaline and court is all kicking in every day that
there no longer having to manage it and there's a
big void in a life now. So do you think
there's a link between the mental health of athletes upon
retirement to stress during their careers.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
I love that question because I think a lot about
athletes because I practiced in Boston and it's a real
sports town with lots of athletes that I've taken care
of over the years. You know, what is fascinating about
top tier athletes is that they live and breathe the
mind body connection and mere mortals like we're living in
(14:20):
our heads or neck up people and athletes really have
tuned into their mind body connection and what the mind
body connection is. It's really important for stress management. It's
that your brain and your body aren't constant communication and
inextricably linked. What's good for your body is good for
your brain, and vice versa. When it comes to athletes
and the stress response, there is an habituation process and
(14:42):
what that means is when these athletes are put into
situations that are high stress, because they are so tuned
in and in sync with their brain and their body
and that mind body connection, they are able their brain
it responds accordingly. They are used to that high level.
Of course is all an adrenaline and they're moving their
body and they're connecting their mind and their body. You know,
(15:04):
our brain is a muscle. So your brain is just
like a bicep that when you train it in certain ways,
it responds. It's not like the brain you had at
birth is the brain you're going to have for life.
And so your brain can learn new things and can
grow and adapt in the face of life's challenges. Being
an athlete, you have a physical challenge and a mental
challenge on the field, and so your brain adapts to that.
(15:27):
And so then when you retire as an athlete and
you get off of the field, there is a habituation,
like your brain is used to a certain level of stress,
and it depends on the athlete. So I have known
athletes who have retired and then they have something called
the delayed stress reaction, which is what a lot of
us have gone through over the past several years. We're
(15:48):
not athletes. I mean I exercise, but I'm not an athlete.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It's basically that like you keep it together at all costs,
and then the minute that acute stress is gone or
that like stressful time is gone, you just fall apart.
It's the dam breaks because your brain is built like
a dam. You keep it together, and then immediately afterwards
you feel psychologically safe and then you release, right, and
it's like all of those pent up emotions come out.
So that's one avenue, that's one path that could happen.
(16:14):
Or you know, often what happens with elite athletes is
that they channel that energy because it's very positive energy.
It's healthy stress, right, that's gotten them to that level
the mind body connection. They channel that energy to another area.
So then they become entrepreneurs or they do all of
these wonderful things and you see them really thrive in
(16:35):
another area because it's skill building. They've built a whole
sense of skills on the field, and then they can
use them and transfer them off the field. But it
takes time and practice. And you know, for those of
us who are not elite athletes, we can do that too.
You can tap into your mind body connection. You can
learn to harness all the power of neuroplasticity to help
(16:57):
decrease your stress. Because the mind body connection, you can
pay attention to it and tap into it off the
field as a regular person me or mortal. And the
other thing about the mind body connection is that you
can influence it to serve you, which is what athletes
do all day every day, rather than harm you.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
So you have your new book, The Five Resets rewire
your brain and body for less stress and more resilience.
What is one of the biggest things that you want
people to take away from your book? Like? What is
and what's the biggest Like if you could tell someone
just one big takeaway, like hey, I this is going
to help you with your daily stress, you know, to
(17:35):
feel better, what would that be?
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I think the biggest takeaway is to use a lens
of self compassion when you are thinking about your own
stress and burnout, understanding that if you are feeling a
sense of stress or burnout, you are not the exception,
You're the rule. Data shows that seventy percent of people
have at least one feature of stress and burnout. That's
like in a room of thirty people. Twenty one people
(17:58):
are struggling right now. So if you're struggling with your
mental health right now, you are not alone, and it
is not your fault. There are so many things. We've
had an onslaught of things, one after the other over
the past several years, and your brain and your body
you're expertly designed to handle short bursts of stress. But
what we've experienced has been chronic and ongoing. So your
(18:18):
brain isn't broken. There's nothing wrong with you. All of
these messages that you may have been told through you know, society,
or yourself or your friends, if you are struggling with
stress and burnout, you are having a normal, healthy reaction,
in fact, to an abnormal situation that we are living in.
So that's kind of the first thing to normalize and
validate the difficult experience you're going through. And then the
(18:40):
other big myth I want to debunk is this idea
of resilience. Right like you hear that word resilience, and
I don't know about you guys, but I bristle, like
I cringe. It's such a cringe you word to me,
because resilience back in twenty eighteen was a positive thing.
It's like your innate biological ability to adapt, recover, and
grow in the face of life's challenges, but now it's
(19:02):
morphed into toxic resilience, which is why we hear that
word and we're like, oh, don't tell me to be resilient.
It's the last thing I want to do, because true
resilience honors your boundaries, honors your human limitations, and really
respects your need for rest and recovery, your brain and
bodies need for rest and recovery. Toxic resilience, which is
a manifestation of hustle culture, is productivity at all costs,
(19:25):
a mind over matter mindset, and it's like the energizer
bunny in the US, like just keep going, or in
the UK, keep calm and carry on. It's this idea
of a toxic, sinister version of resilience. And I think
the biggest takeaway is that if you are feeling burned
out or stressed, it is a myth to say that, oh,
(19:46):
resilient people don't feel burnout and stress. That has been
scientifically debunked. In fact, you can still be resilient and
still experience stress and burnout. They are not mutually exclusive.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
When it comes to. So I'm always like, oh, I'm
such a great multitasker and I thrive in, you know,
having a million things at one time. But I'm reading
how You're like, that's actually not a good thing to
be like bragging about. So what do I do?
Speaker 3 (20:26):
So multitasking is a myth. I hate to break into you.
I am a recovered multitasker, and there's no such thing. Scientifically,
multitasking doesn't exist. When you are multitasking, what you are
doing is task switching, meaning you are doing two separate
tasks in rapid secession, and your brain is wired to
do one thing at a time. Multitasking what it does
(20:48):
is it weakens a certain part of your brain right
here behind your forehead called the prefrontal cortex, and that
area is really important for solving complex problems, memory, cognition, attention,
and ironically, productivity. Multitasking or task switching, weakens all of
these elements, particularly your productivity, and so instead of multitasking,
(21:11):
it is important the antidote to multitasking is monotasking, that
means doing one thing at a time. So when I
suggest that, people laugh, like, come on, it's modern. You know,
we got the slack channel and the emails and a
million things competing for our attention. How can you monotask?
You can practice something called time blocking. So let's say
you guys have an hour to finish four tasks. Instead
(21:32):
of doing all four tasks at the same time, do
one task for ten or fifteen minutes and take a
five ten minute break. Then start tests two and take
a five or ten minute break, and by the end
of that hour, you will have completed all four tasks.
You have made headway on them, maybe not completed, but
you will have made progress on all four tasks, and
you have taken a break. And the reason those breaks
(21:53):
are important for your brain is because the sigence shows
that when we learn new information, and we're always learning right,
when we learn new things, it's not actually the activity
that is when the learning happens, it's during rest, and
that period of rest is really important for another big
concept called neural consolidation, another fancy word. It simply means that,
(22:15):
like new information floating in your head, becomes cemented deep
into knowledge. So it's the move is the movement from
information to knowledge. So multitasking is in fact bad for
the brain. And even though one hundred percent of us
think we are excellent musciligh taskers. The truth is only
two percent of human brains can effectively multitask. So instead
(22:36):
of multitasking, I love it, I love it, try to monotask.
That's the antidote.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Okay, I've got one question, one last question. So for
someone like yourself who's taken a deep dive into your
field and are incredibly knowledgeable, I think it's a real
art for someone like I specialize in a certain field,
I think it's a real art for someone to simplify
the knowledge. So what you've done is you've taken all
(23:09):
these thousands and thousands of hours of speaking to people
and tracing people, and you've put it into five steps.
Did you find that difficult to take all best knowledge
and compact it into just five simple steps? Was that
difficult for you or was it an easy process?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
That is a beautiful question and probably the highest compliment
I can receive. So thank you for saying that. That
is always what I strive for. In fact, when I
give my talks or even in this book, when people
say like you've just made it so simple for me.
You know, we all have lots of gifts, and we
all have many flaws, right, Like we're human beings. We're flawed,
(23:48):
imperfectly perfect. But one of the things that I have
always enjoyed doing because I like communication, is taking complex
information and making it simple. We're easy to digest understand.
It took me twenty five years to write this book,
so of course it wasn't overnight. But I think when
you talk to people when you're a doctor, and I
always prided myself on not using doctor language as a doctor,
(24:13):
because I used to hate that. It's called affected speech.
You know, when people who are doctors speak and they
like sound like aliens because they're not talking like regular
everyday people. I loved my doctors or my teachers when
I was in medical school who just talked to me
like a regular person, and they spoke like regular people.
I think it's so much more effective in terms of
communication when you lead with authenticity and vulnerability. And so
(24:35):
it took me twenty five years to get to this
place of wanting to write the book. For ten years
people have been asking me to write like patients and
other people and media people, and I was like, no,
it's not the right time. It was a process, so
now it's a skill like anything else. I think simplifying
complex information seems really hard in the beginning, but like
(24:57):
if you just keep doing it over and over and
over anything, right, like sports, there's things that you do
that I could never do in sports, but it just
is a skill and I just continued to build it.
But it is truly something I love doing. Like the
more complicated the better because then I can distill it
down into manageable, bite sized chunks for all of us
(25:18):
to digest. Because ultimately, it's like if something feels really
far away or aspirational, that's the thing with stress. It's
like often you get these messages about stress and burnout
and they're so like out there, like go to Bali
for six months and learn how to surf. Yes, I
would love it, sign me up for that life plan,
But that's not real life.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
You know.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
We have financial obligations and parenting obligations and responsibilities and
all these roles that we fulfill. And so it's about
finding ways to build in stress relief and burn out
recovery and reset some of these things in our brains
and our bodies in the here and now, in the
messy middle. And so that is what I've aspired to
do making it as simple as possible and of course
(25:57):
science based.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Sure, yeah, I love that you with all of your
studies and interviewing people. What does the biggest mistake people
make when it comes to stress? Like, what is the
one thing that's like, oh, that is that's the constant
thing that you see with people doing you know, wrong with.
Speaker 3 (26:17):
Doing too many things all at once. So everything but
the kitchen sink, right, So, like it takes a while
to get that awareness of wait a second, I think
get stressed or do I have burnout? And then you
have that like light bulb moment of yes I have
burnout or yes I have stress, and then you do
everything with the kitchen sake. And I've had so many
patients come in with binders like okay, doc, here's what
(26:37):
I did, and like, you know, and same thing with
NER's resolutions. People take on twenty things and then by
like week two or three, you're down to one, probably zero,
because the human brain cannot sustain huge lifestyle overhauls during
periods of stress, and even positive change, like making a
positive change in your life is a stress on your brain,
(27:01):
so even positive things, So instead aim for two small
changes at a time. If you want those changes to stick,
work with your biology rather than against it. It takes
eight weeks to create a habit, and part of habit
formation is actually falling off the wagon and getting back up.
So like in week two and three, if you're like, oh,
I'm not going to do that, like there's no way
(27:21):
you follow that. You know, for three days, you don't
do it. Four days and you're like, you know what,
maybe I'll start again. You're not a failure. It's just
part of the learning process and part of your brain
circuitry actually wiring in a new and different way. That's
called neuroplasticity, right, And so that is probably the biggest
mistake doing too much all at once. Nothing sticks. So
follow the rule of two. It's called the resilience rule
(27:43):
of two. It's how your brain responds to change. It's
why during the pandemic, like you may have had huge,
lofty goals to do all of these things, and now
it's a wonder if you shower once a day. It
needs some vegetables because you can't sustain huge lifestyle aperhols
during periods of stress. Two small changes at a time
eight weeks let them fold into your life, and then
you can add two more and so by the end
of the year you will have perfected. You know, there's
(28:06):
fifteen strategies in the five resets, five main principles and
fifteen strategies, and by the end of the year you
will have brought in all of those strategies, but not
all at once because your brain and body can't handle it.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
In one of the resets, a second reset, it's find
Quiet in a Noisy World? Are then, are you a
fan of Does that mean meditation or what is your
best tool for that?
Speaker 3 (28:29):
I personally have meditated for a long, long time, several decades.
It's not for everyone, and it's certainly not something I
recommend in that particular reset Find your Quiet in a
Noisy World. It is all about digital boundaries and sleep.
Those are the two biggest buckets of finding your quiet.
And what are digital boundaries? We have boundaries in every
(28:51):
other relationship in our life, right like our partners, colleagues, friends, children,
and yet we have no boundaries or as boundaries when
it comes to our relationships with our digital devices, and
the science shows that creating a sense of a boundary.
This is not about becoming a digital monk because the
science also shows that our health and well being is
(29:13):
actually improved by decreasing our reliance on devices rather than
giving them up entirely. That doesn't seem to have as
much benefit. But it's about creating some boundaries. And why
do you want to create boundaries? So there's some geographical
boundaries you could create, and some logistical boundaries you could create.
Think about what you do first thing in the morning,
before your second eye is even open. Most of us,
like me and all of us, over fifty percent of
(29:35):
people scroll subtle device. Right, you're checking your phone first
thing in the morning and before your second eye is
even open. Think about what that's doing to your brain.
These are not benign entities. You are scrolling the headlines,
social media, your work email, all of these things. You've
just had a good night's sleep, or if you have
a lot of stress, you've had a fragmented or disruptive
sense of sleep. Your brain and your body are fresh,
(29:57):
you're awake, and you're scrolling, and that is activating the
stress response in your brain. And instead, create a digital boundary.
Keep your phone off your nightstand, invest in a low
cost alarm clock instead. This is not about being a
digital monkt abstinence. You can check your phone, but you know,
wake up. Take in the light of day, look at
your bed partner, if you have one, brush your teeth,
(30:19):
and then check your phone, so creating a little buffer.
And then at night, same thing. When it's off your nightstand.
You're not scrolling in the middle of the night. During
the day, keep it off, out of arms reach and
out of sight. And the reason you want to do
that is because when you are feeling a sense of
stress or burnout, you have a primal urge to scroll.
We've all been there when you're feeling a sense of stress,
(30:39):
like you're like this, you're scrolling and scrolling. You don't
know why. It doesn't feel good, but you can't stop.
The reason you can't stop is because it's a biological
wiring of our brain. You know. Evolutionarily, when we all
lived as strive as people, when we were all cave people,
there was a night watchman who kept watch on the
tribe while everyone slept right and now we have all
(31:01):
become our own night watchmen. And when you are feeling
a sense of stress, you're a migdala, which is a
small almond shape structure deep in the brain is what's
creating that fight or flight response and the stress response,
that sense of hypervigilance. Your middala is focused on survival
and self preservation, immediate needs, immediate sense of safety, and
(31:22):
a sense of danger. And so you scroll because it's
a way to keep yourself safe. You're scanning for danger.
You're scrolling, You're seeing what's in the news, what's in
the headlines, what's on social media. And so how can
when you're amygdalas on and you're feeling a sense of stress,
how can you shut that off by creating digital boundaries,
by letting the other part of your brain what we
(31:42):
talked about earlier, that prefrontal cortex take over again. And
so it's a scientific principle, but it doesn't have to
feel scientific. You just take your phone and keep it
out of arms reach, keep it off your nightstand. So
creating those boundaries can really do wonders for your sleep,
your energy, your mental bandwidth. It also decreases something called
popcorn brain, which is a phenomenon that many of us have.
(32:05):
Most of us have. It's not internet addiction. Internet addiction
is when you are consuming and you're online, and it's
affecting your relationships, for your work and other things. That's
not most of us. Most of us have popcorn brain,
which is a real biological phenomenon where you are spending
so much time online that your brain circuitry starts. You
have that sensation of popping. It's not truly popping, but
(32:27):
it's that sensation. It's hard to live offline because you
are just like always, you know, hyper stimulated, over stimulated.
So it decreases that sense of popcorn brain, which in
turn decreases your stress. So it's like this loop and
you have to break that cycle. And the circuit breaker
is a digital boundary.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
I love that boundary. Up. We have boundaries like no, no,
the phone's the dinner table, the bits, right, that's a
big one, the big boundary. And the kids. I love
that because for some reason, no, you remember, they like
hid your phone the other day.
Speaker 3 (32:59):
Yeah, they love it.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Oh yeah, that's like they get to like have that,
which is which is cute. But thank you so much
for coming on. Everyone, go get the five resets, rewire
your brain and body for less stress and more resilience.
We appreciate you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
It was such a fuss, so sweet guys. Thank you
so much. Guys.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Bye,
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