November 5, 2025 • 43 mins
On National Stress Awareness Day we've pulled a popular episode from our archive. Stress can suck. Many of us drown in it - 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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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. Today is National Stress Awareness Day.
While we all face different challenges in life, there's one
thing we can all agree on. We are stressed. In
honor of National Stress Awareness Day, I wanted to reshare
this episode with author and clinical psychologist doctor Jenny Taits.
(00:36):
Doctor Taits explains what happens in our bodies and minds
when we're stressed, and what we can do to think
differently about the challenges we're facing. She'll give you some
strategies that you can use to make stress work for you,
not against you. I hope you enjoy rehearing this throwback
episode as much as I did, and here's to a
healthier relationship with stress. Stress sucks, but it's also a
(01:00):
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 income challenge, the
limbic 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 fighting off a tiger,
(01:21):
giving an important presentation. We're 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.
At least that's the idea. Sadly, our modern stressed responses
aren't all that great at turning off, especially since we
keep challenges alive, ruminating about past events and worrying about
(01:44):
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 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 (02:05):
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 (02:13):
You're kind of an expert on this, But what is
stress like? How would we define it?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
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
is there's a lot we can do to improve our
relationship with stress. Small things can make a huge difference
in how we face stress. And the most common measure
(02:40):
of stress is actually the perceived stress scale, which says
so much about how stress is a lot about our perception.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
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 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.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
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 a lot of it
was even surprising to me and researching this book.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
As we think about stressors in some way that 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 (03:37):
I love this. I mean, I think a downside to
being human is we have a knack when stress shows
up in our lives for inavertently 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
(03:58):
deadline that there is ambitious to reach, going to 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
(04:19):
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 things that
(04:41):
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 (05:01):
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 viewprofen 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,
(05:24):
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 seems to matter.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
How we think about stress is so impactful, so much
so that people who have stress and believe stress is
bad for their health actually or forty three percent more
likely to die due 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 and someone tells you to calm down,
(05:59):
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 and manage emotions and live by your values, seeing
stress as normal and adopted, and also framing your body
stress response as helpful and useful and supporting you and
(06:19):
moving towards your goals actually reduces the negative impacts of cortisol,
reduces your corticel levels and allows you to persist in
pursuing meaningful goals.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And so any specific strategies for helping us to reappraise
stress is a more positive thing I think.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
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 and social connection,
(06:58):
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 (07:09):
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?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I love this, So emotions are really transient. I was
going to get a tattoo, which I'm not going to get,
but it would be a small little picture 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, 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
(07:45):
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. I mean,
people don't go to therapy expecting to watch short movie clips.
(08:06):
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 college tuitions and
how difficult it is to pay off your college loans,
(08:26):
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 might have a
(08:46):
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 (08:54):
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. Psychologist doctor Jenny
Tates believes that stress is the price of a meaningful life.
But what we do need to guard against, she says,
(09:16):
is dwelling on what's stressful, worrying about it, and fearing it.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
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
(09:40):
our mental help. 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.
(10:01):
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 a 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 remaining out loud and
(10:24):
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 (10:32):
So give us the details. How can we break for you?
What are some strategies we give you.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
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
(10:57):
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? 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 want
(11:18):
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 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 you're repeating
(11:39):
and upsetting work exchange 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
ahm 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. I also really love swapping why
(12:02):
thoughts with how thoughts? Why did this happen? Why was
I sign this annoying assignment? And one 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 (12:17):
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 (12:32):
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 an end, so it
kind of closes things out rather than 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
(12:52):
college students 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
(13:13):
deeper into their feelings and actually, like processing, we're 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 (13:31):
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 distressed tolerance. Distress tolerance is
a combination of things.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Distressed tolerance is I like to think about if you
step back and think 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
(14:05):
your face, just relaxing your face, 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
(14:27):
radical acceptance in a prison 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,
there's so many options. Oh my gosh, it's so insightful.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
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 (14:52):
Right, even labeling your emotions just putting a word onto
what you're feeling, whether that's angry, then getting really specific
about I'm feeling angry, like on a zero to 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. So it seems very simple, like putting
a word on your emotion, but it actually starts the
(15:13):
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 (15:21):
Using your example of that traffic. This is something that
I learned from your book is like the last time
I was sitting in really terrible traffic, I was like
limpic systems, you know, growing ridiculously crazy. I'm going to
just use the effic 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
(15:42):
started it, I was almost doing it a little like facetiously,
like I'm doing effect labeling, 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. And
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 flot of our emotions when we realize,
you know, it's just a thing I'm experiencing totally.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
And one thing that I like to do that's kind
of the next step to this is even just noticing
beyond this 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
(16:25):
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, I'm in emotion mind.
I'm very likely to be like velcrow or quicksand for
all sorts of content that is going to exacerbate that feeling.
(16:48):
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 in 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
(17:09):
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 (17:22):
And so that's a type 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 stress around and take action to
fix things.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
When we're stressed, we're just not thinking clearly, and we
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 whole kit, like a collection
of items that you can keep handy that just reminds
you about the things that have enriched your life and
(18:00):
give you a sense of faith and perspective and joy
in just looking at them. And this sounds kind of silly,
but even people 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
(18:21):
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, it'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 helps me bounce back so
(18:42):
much 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
(19:02):
of you and your friends and maybe have a nice playlist,
going with the photos and have your favorite scented candle,
you know, 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 me up.
(19:24):
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 (19:37):
Another way that we can take action is to literally
act the opposite. You've actually referred to this as the
ultimate mental health act, this idea of behavioral activation. What
does this mean?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
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 my body I feel
(20:08):
heaviness and 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 actually technically known as
(20:30):
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 the course of your life,
(20:51):
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 contact with
people at a party and introduce yourself to the people
(21:11):
that you 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 when an emotion
is not justified, acting opposite the emotion will significantly improve
not only how you feel, that your quality of life.
(21:34):
And so if you're unhappy in your marriage, maybe you
want to like replay the passim 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,
(21:55):
you're not 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 apostash is with couples therapy.
Opposite action is the cornerstone of all treatments for anxiety disorders.
When your fear is not fit the situation you're in,
(22:16):
acting 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 (22:24):
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 I be doing if my calendar wasn't overflowing and
I was feeling overwhelmed, Like I'd text a friend and
(22:45):
sort of check in. I'd use these five minutes, and
there's sort of durishing ways rather than sort of ruminating
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
(23:07):
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. No, 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. 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,
(23:27):
something's going to break. But what if we just do
one thing at a time. Oftentimes when we're.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Stressed, also we start doing like pseudo productivity, which is
called like procrastivity, which is like clearing out your inbox
rather than working on the dog that you need to give,
and so just starting with a workable goal 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
(23:52):
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 (24:04):
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 (24:13):
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 procrestivity, And then
it's like a nice pivot. The thing about faking it
is faking it is when I think about that, that
sounds almost like suppressing your emotions. So it's like pretending
that you feel really calm when you're giving a keynote,
(24:34):
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 like their emotions
(24:54):
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, I 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 (25:16):
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 and.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Gently as possible.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
It's time for another short break, but Jenny will be
back with more tips when the Happiness Lab returns.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
In a moment.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
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 (25:58):
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 where you're going, he says, I don't know as
the 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, and
(26:20):
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 make something that's difficult a little bit
more tolerable and meaningful. And so having a larger sense
of purpose actually helps us manage 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,
(26:40):
like looking at painful pictures. People that have a clear
sense of purpose, their body stress response bounces back faster.
And 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
(27:02):
think about my life purpose in like a big way
or like a mission statement that's really solidified, simply taking
a step back and thinking of out, 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
(27:23):
out what matters to you and then maybe how you
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 you some perspective. If things are not going well
right now with a specific relationship, maybe that's ten percent
of your life five, but in our minds it can
(27:44):
easily become eighty five percent of our life. Hi, And
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 (27:54):
As we talk to all 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. Right, 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
(28:16):
reasons I really love your book is that you also
have strategies for that too. What everything is feeling really overwhelming?
And that gets to tip number six, which is it
what all else fails? We can sort of hack our body?
Why is hacking our body? So helpful when it comes
to stress.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
So many people think that they need something outside of themselves,
a medication or a 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 (28:46):
And so, what are some like super simple hacks of
changing the way our body is responding.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
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. T stands for temperature. I
is intense exercise, P is paste breathing at the final
P is progressive muscle relaxation, and we'll go through those.
The first thing with the temperature SURE is taking a
salad bowl and filling it with ice water and setting
(29:13):
a time work 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 min miilion
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 essential to essential organs.
(29:35):
And so even 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
(29:56):
shifts your mental 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 an a vicious cycle of rumination or
if they feel frozen, Freezing your face will surprisingly unfreeze you.
(30:18):
And then eye is intense exercise, and this is not
running a marathon or going to a sixty minute workout class,
just briefly doing something like urbis 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 or 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
(30:41):
your respiratory rate. 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.
(31:01):
If you do that for several minutes, that actually lowers
your blood pressure.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Or 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. Just so funny. 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 parasympathetic nervousness totally.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
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 away 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
(31:47):
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
(32:07):
ability to cope with your reality. And we need to
strengthen our inner system to deal with a stressful adder 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 can 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
(32:31):
the difference between tension and relaxation your forehead, and 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,
(32:52):
the temperature, intense exercise, pace 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 (33:06):
Another thing we could do at a matter of minutes
is your tip verse 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 (33:29):
We get into this two punch of our mind is
bullying us, and then our bodies feel like they're rebelling
against 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
their 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, I
(33:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
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.
(34:30):
What do you mean my mental rehearsal here.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
So 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 we'll 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,
(34:56):
not overly idealistically, 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 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 find it personally helpful with writing
(35:17):
this book, 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 (35:29):
Another resource we can use style ourselves kind of ahead
of time is we can use a little bit more
humor and we can find humor before the stress kicks in.
How is humor so helpful for fighting stress?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
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 in your treatment called positive ethic therapy,
(36:00):
they reduce their anxiety and depression, even if that's not targeted.
And so being 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. In the window of the
candy store there was this big stuffed animal called grumpy cat.
Even just you know, noticing like, okay, grumpy cats coming around.
(36:21):
That's a quick way to kind of 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 (36:34):
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 you mean there.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
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 negative emotions
(37:17):
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 to
(37:39):
give each other a hug, like in this cute coffee
shop it 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 huge
(38:00):
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 are running low.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
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.
(38:32):
So I love the sort of anticipatory adding the pleasure
in ahead of time so that it's there.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
When you really need it. 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
(38:57):
time because I have this dinner on the calendar actually
leads to less you know, 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 (39:09):
So we 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 (39:22):
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
(39:43):
you 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,
bend 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
(40:04):
of time. 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 constricted. 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 practice
this at home, I know what this is my just
like my emotions come in waves, my physiology changes when
(40:27):
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 (40:34):
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 that 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 (40:50):
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 by
thinking not serving me? And what is a change in
(41:11):
my behavior that I can quickly pivot towards. 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, a lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
I can't recommend Jenny's Stress Resets book enough. It's packed
with so much 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
(41:53):
is to stop all that rumination. Letting your mind think
about a stressful 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 arrive so you don't drown in them.
Tip number four is not to let stressors dictate your behavior.
(42:14):
If you're feeling down, do the opposite and try something
fun and energetic. If you're feeling enraged 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
(42:36):
term gain. Tip number six hack your body. Don't reach
for a drink or a point 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. It's give yourself a hug. A
loved one's embrace can help you when you're struggling, so
if that's not possible, give yourself an encouraging squeeze. Your
(42:58):
brain won't know the difference. The next tip is to
plan ahead. Don't just stress about an upcoming challenge. Imagine
what you'll do to cope with that stressful situation. Rehearsing
really does pay off. Tip number nine is to see
the funny side. Actively looking for the humor of a
situation can lift your spirits and put your problems in
a more manageable perspective. And tip number ten is to
(43:20):
seek joy in times of stress. Don't hunker down and
be miserable. See a friend, catch a movie, and try
out that hike. Remember that joy is available to fill
your fuel tank.
Pushkin, Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. Today is National Stress Awareness Day.
While we all face different challenges in life, there's one
thing we can all agree on. We are stressed. In
honor of National Stress Awareness Day, I wanted to reshare
this episode with author and clinical psychologist doctor Jenny Taits.
(00:36):
Doctor Taits explains what happens in our bodies and minds
when we're stressed, and what we can do to think
differently about the challenges we're facing. She'll give you some
strategies that you can use to make stress work for you,
not against you. I hope you enjoy rehearing this throwback
episode as much as I did, and here's to a
healthier relationship with stress. Stress sucks, but it's also a
(01:00):
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 income challenge, the
limbic 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 fighting off a tiger,
(01:21):
giving an important presentation. We're 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.
At least that's the idea. Sadly, our modern stressed responses
aren't all that great at turning off, especially since we
keep challenges alive, ruminating about past events and worrying about
(01:44):
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 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 (02:05):
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 (02:13):
You're kind of an expert on this, But what is
stress like? How would we define it?
Speaker 2 (02:18):
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
is there's a lot we can do to improve our
relationship with stress. Small things can make a huge difference
in how we face stress. And the most common measure
(02:40):
of stress is actually the perceived stress scale, which says
so much about how stress is a lot about our perception.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
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 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.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
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 a lot of it
was even surprising to me and researching this book.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
As we think about stressors in some way that 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 (03:37):
I love this. I mean, I think a downside to
being human is we have a knack when stress shows
up in our lives for inavertently 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
(03:58):
deadline that there is ambitious to reach, going to 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
(04:19):
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 things that
(04:41):
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 (05:01):
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 viewprofen 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,
(05:24):
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 seems to matter.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
How we think about stress is so impactful, so much
so that people who have stress and believe stress is
bad for their health actually or forty three percent more
likely to die due 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 and someone tells you to calm down,
(05:59):
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 and manage emotions and live by your values, seeing
stress as normal and adopted, and also framing your body
stress response as helpful and useful and supporting you and
(06:19):
moving towards your goals actually reduces the negative impacts of cortisol,
reduces your corticel levels and allows you to persist in
pursuing meaningful goals.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And so any specific strategies for helping us to reappraise
stress is a more positive thing I think.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
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 and social connection,
(06:58):
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 (07:09):
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?
Speaker 2 (07:24):
I love this, So emotions are really transient. I was
going to get a tattoo, which I'm not going to get,
but it would be a small little picture 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, 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
(07:45):
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. I mean,
people don't go to therapy expecting to watch short movie clips.
(08:06):
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 college tuitions and
how difficult it is to pay off your college loans,
(08:26):
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 might have a
(08:46):
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 (08:54):
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. Psychologist doctor Jenny
Tates believes that stress is the price of a meaningful life.
But what we do need to guard against, she says,
(09:16):
is dwelling on what's stressful, worrying about it, and fearing it.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
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
(09:40):
our mental help. 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.
(10:01):
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 a 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 remaining out loud and
(10:24):
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 (10:32):
So give us the details. How can we break for you?
What are some strategies we give you.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
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
(10:57):
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? 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 want
(11:18):
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 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 you're repeating
(11:39):
and upsetting work exchange 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
ahm 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. I also really love swapping why
(12:02):
thoughts with how thoughts? Why did this happen? Why was
I sign this annoying assignment? And one 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 (12:17):
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 (12:32):
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 an end, so it
kind of closes things out rather than 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
(12:52):
college students 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
(13:13):
deeper into their feelings and actually, like processing, we're 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 (13:31):
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 distressed tolerance. Distress tolerance is
a combination of things.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Distressed tolerance is I like to think about if you
step back and think 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
(14:05):
your face, just relaxing your face, 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
(14:27):
radical acceptance in a prison 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,
there's so many options. Oh my gosh, it's so insightful.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
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 (14:52):
Right, even labeling your emotions just putting a word onto
what you're feeling, whether that's angry, then getting really specific
about I'm feeling angry, like on a zero to 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. So it seems very simple, like putting
a word on your emotion, but it actually starts the
(15:13):
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 (15:21):
Using your example of that traffic. This is something that
I learned from your book is like the last time
I was sitting in really terrible traffic, I was like
limpic systems, you know, growing ridiculously crazy. I'm going to
just use the effic 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
(15:42):
started it, I was almost doing it a little like facetiously,
like I'm doing effect labeling, 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. And
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 flot of our emotions when we realize,
you know, it's just a thing I'm experiencing totally.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
And one thing that I like to do that's kind
of the next step to this is even just noticing
beyond this 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
(16:25):
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, I'm in emotion mind.
I'm very likely to be like velcrow or quicksand for
all sorts of content that is going to exacerbate that feeling.
(16:48):
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 in 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
(17:09):
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 (17:22):
And so that's a type 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 stress around and take action to
fix things.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
When we're stressed, we're just not thinking clearly, and we
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 whole kit, like a collection
of items that you can keep handy that just reminds
you about the things that have enriched your life and
(18:00):
give you a sense of faith and perspective and joy
in just looking at them. And this sounds kind of silly,
but even people 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
(18:21):
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, it'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 helps me bounce back so
(18:42):
much 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
(19:02):
of you and your friends and maybe have a nice playlist,
going with the photos and have your favorite scented candle,
you know, 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 me up.
(19:24):
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 (19:37):
Another way that we can take action is to literally
act the opposite. You've actually referred to this as the
ultimate mental health act, this idea of behavioral activation. What
does this mean?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
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 my body I feel
(20:08):
heaviness and 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 actually technically known as
(20:30):
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 the course of your life,
(20:51):
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 contact with
people at a party and introduce yourself to the people
(21:11):
that you 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 when an emotion
is not justified, acting opposite the emotion will significantly improve
not only how you feel, that your quality of life.
(21:34):
And so if you're unhappy in your marriage, maybe you
want to like replay the passim 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,
(21:55):
you're not 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 apostash is with couples therapy.
Opposite action is the cornerstone of all treatments for anxiety disorders.
When your fear is not fit the situation you're in,
(22:16):
acting 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 (22:24):
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 I be doing if my calendar wasn't overflowing and
I was feeling overwhelmed, Like I'd text a friend and
(22:45):
sort of check in. I'd use these five minutes, and
there's sort of durishing ways rather than sort of ruminating
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
(23:07):
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. No, 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. 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,
(23:27):
something's going to break. But what if we just do
one thing at a time. Oftentimes when we're.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
Stressed, also we start doing like pseudo productivity, which is
called like procrastivity, which is like clearing out your inbox
rather than working on the dog that you need to give,
and so just starting with a workable goal 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
(23:52):
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 (24:04):
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 (24:13):
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 procrestivity, And then
it's like a nice pivot. The thing about faking it
is faking it is when I think about that, that
sounds almost like suppressing your emotions. So it's like pretending
that you feel really calm when you're giving a keynote,
(24:34):
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 like their emotions
(24:54):
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, I 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 (25:16):
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 and.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Gently as possible.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
It's time for another short break, but Jenny will be
back with more tips when the Happiness Lab returns.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
In a moment.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
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 (25:58):
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 where you're going, he says, I don't know as
the 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, and
(26:20):
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 make something that's difficult a little bit
more tolerable and meaningful. And so having a larger sense
of purpose actually helps us manage 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,
(26:40):
like looking at painful pictures. People that have a clear
sense of purpose, their body stress response bounces back faster.
And 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
(27:02):
think about my life purpose in like a big way
or like a mission statement that's really solidified, simply taking
a step back and thinking of out, 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
(27:23):
out what matters to you and then maybe how you
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 you some perspective. If things are not going well
right now with a specific relationship, maybe that's ten percent
of your life five, but in our minds it can
(27:44):
easily become eighty five percent of our life. Hi, And
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 (27:54):
As we talk to all 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. Right, 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
(28:16):
reasons I really love your book is that you also
have strategies for that too. What everything is feeling really overwhelming?
And that gets to tip number six, which is it
what all else fails? We can sort of hack our body?
Why is hacking our body? So helpful when it comes
to stress.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
So many people think that they need something outside of themselves,
a medication or a 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 (28:46):
And so, what are some like super simple hacks of
changing the way our body is responding.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
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. T stands for temperature. I
is intense exercise, P is paste breathing at the final
P is progressive muscle relaxation, and we'll go through those.
The first thing with the temperature SURE is taking a
salad bowl and filling it with ice water and setting
(29:13):
a time work 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 min miilion
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 essential to essential organs.
(29:35):
And so even 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
(29:56):
shifts your mental 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 an a vicious cycle of rumination or
if they feel frozen, Freezing your face will surprisingly unfreeze you.
(30:18):
And then eye is intense exercise, and this is not
running a marathon or going to a sixty minute workout class,
just briefly doing something like urbis 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 or 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
(30:41):
your respiratory rate. 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.
(31:01):
If you do that for several minutes, that actually lowers
your blood pressure.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Or 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. Just so funny. 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 parasympathetic nervousness totally.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
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 away 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
(31:47):
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
(32:07):
ability to cope with your reality. And we need to
strengthen our inner system to deal with a stressful adder 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 can 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
(32:31):
the difference between tension and relaxation your forehead, and 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,
(32:52):
the temperature, intense exercise, pace 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 (33:06):
Another thing we could do at a matter of minutes
is your tip verse 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 (33:29):
We get into this two punch of our mind is
bullying us, and then our bodies feel like they're rebelling
against 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
their 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, I
(33:51):
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.
Speaker 1 (34:09):
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.
(34:30):
What do you mean my mental rehearsal here.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
So 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 we'll 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,
(34:56):
not overly idealistically, 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 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 find it personally helpful with writing
(35:17):
this book, 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 (35:29):
Another resource we can use style ourselves kind of ahead
of time is we can use a little bit more
humor and we can find humor before the stress kicks in.
How is humor so helpful for fighting stress?
Speaker 2 (35:39):
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 in your treatment called positive ethic therapy,
(36:00):
they reduce their anxiety and depression, even if that's not targeted.
And so being 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. In the window of the
candy store there was this big stuffed animal called grumpy cat.
Even just you know, noticing like, okay, grumpy cats coming around.
(36:21):
That's a quick way to kind of 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 (36:34):
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 you mean there.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
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 negative emotions
(37:17):
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 to
(37:39):
give each other a hug, like in this cute coffee
shop it 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 huge
(38:00):
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 are running low.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
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.
(38:32):
So I love the sort of anticipatory adding the pleasure
in ahead of time so that it's there.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
When you really need it. 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
(38:57):
time because I have this dinner on the calendar actually
leads to less you know, 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 (39:09):
So we 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 (39:22):
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
(39:43):
you 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,
bend 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
(40:04):
of time. 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 constricted. 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 practice
this at home, I know what this is my just
like my emotions come in waves, my physiology changes when
(40:27):
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 (40:34):
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 that 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 (40:50):
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 by
thinking not serving me? And what is a change in
(41:11):
my behavior that I can quickly pivot towards. 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, a lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
I can't recommend Jenny's Stress Resets book enough. It's packed
with so much 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
(41:53):
is to stop all that rumination. Letting your mind think
about a stressful 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 arrive so you don't drown in them.
Tip number four is not to let stressors dictate your behavior.
(42:14):
If you're feeling down, do the opposite and try something
fun and energetic. If you're feeling enraged 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
(42:36):
term gain. Tip number six hack your body. Don't reach
for a drink or a point 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. It's give yourself a hug. A
loved one's embrace can help you when you're struggling, so
if that's not possible, give yourself an encouraging squeeze. Your
(42:58):
brain won't know the difference. The next tip is to
plan ahead. Don't just stress about an upcoming challenge. Imagine
what you'll do to cope with that stressful situation. Rehearsing
really does pay off. Tip number nine is to see
the funny side. Actively looking for the humor of a
situation can lift your spirits and put your problems in
a more manageable perspective. And tip number ten is to
(43:20):
seek joy in times of stress. Don't hunker down and
be miserable. See a friend, catch a movie, and try
out that hike. Remember that joy is available to fill
your fuel tank.
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