Stress

In this insightful episode, Caroline and host Rick converse deeply with long-time friend and monthly guest Caroline Phipps. Caroline, who has been contributing her wisdom to the show for many years, delves into the timely topic of stress—its causes, manifestations, and effective ways to manage it.

Caroline begins by sharing her observations on how current affairs and the state of the world are causing heightened stress levels among people. She emphasizes that while it's natural to feel overwhelmed by external events, it's crucial to recognize that stress is often a result of our resistance to the present moment. This perspective shift can empower us to regain control over our stress.

Throughout the episode, Caroline and Rick explore various manifestations of stress, including psychological and physical symptoms like headaches, insomnia, and increased anxiety. They discuss how common coping mechanisms—such as exercise, massages, and even indulging in comfort foods—often address the symptoms rather than the root causes of stress.

Caroline offers practical advice on reframing our internal narratives and focusing on gratitude. Changing how we perceive and react to stressful situations can reduce our overall stress levels. She also highlights the importance of recognizing our triggers and understanding how our reactions contribute to our stress.

Rick and Caroline share personal anecdotes and examples to illustrate how different scenarios can be stressful for some but not for others. They emphasize the importance of living in the moment and finding joy in the present rather than worrying about future uncertainties.

Join Rick and Caroline as they provide valuable insights and actionable tips to help you manage stress more effectively. Whether you're dealing with daily challenges or broader concerns, this episode offers a fresh perspective on maintaining mental well-being and finding peace amid chaos.

To connect with Caroline Phipps, you can reach her via email at [e-mail]. Tune in and discover how to bring more calm and positivity into your life.

 

Read Article: https://www.carolinephipps.com/stress

 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Music.

(00:08):
It's the up and running morning show, 98.1 KZE.
I'm Rick, your host. It's always a great pleasure to be here with you all.
And joining us now live on the telephone is our good friend,
monthly guest for many years, our good friend, Caroline Phipps.
Good morning, Caroline.

(00:29):
Hey, good morning, Rick. It's so great to hear you this morning.
Same here. I wish you were here.
I know. I know. It's very stressful not being with you.
I could definitely feel your presence, though.
Well, that's a beautiful thing. Thank you. You're welcome.

(00:52):
So what do you have in store for the people this morning, Caroline?
Well, I think as you know, I tend to sort of sit and think each month about
the topic that comes to mind,
which I feel many people are dealing with.
You know there's often a sense of sort of collective sense of what we're all

(01:18):
going through and recently I met a number of people who were talking to me about
how stressful they were finding current affairs.
And the state of the world. And we're saying things such as,

(01:38):
well, I went for a six-mile run this morning to try to calm myself down,
and I booked a massage to try and cope with my stress, and so on and so forth.
And it's all stressing me out.
And it occurred to me that what we what we tend to do, which is perfectly natural,

(02:04):
is think those things out there are stressing me.
So not only at the
moment are we dealing with our own
you know issues in our own life that
have to be dealt with children and summer camp and getting to work and organizing

(02:28):
something and helping somebody else and somebody's poorly and on it goes but
i think what's happened is also that
there is a layer of stress going on about the bigger picture in life.
Yeah. And so much talk about that's stressing me out, they are stressing me out.

(02:51):
And so what happens when we consider stress in that way is we,
in a way, make it external to ourselves.
Ourselves and the minute we do that we lose all our power because what's happening

(03:13):
out there is something that we can't control and we are at the mercy of it and.
Led me to thinking a little bit about the fact that we talk a great deal about
the psychological and physical manifestations of stress.

(03:37):
It made me eat ice cream.
It's given me a headache. Oh, now it's raised my blood pressure.
I couldn't sleep last night and so on.
So we have all of of these physical and psychological manifestations that we focus on,

(03:57):
and then dealing with our stress, we tend to try to work out ways of dealing
with the manifestations.
It's interesting that when people say that I'm stressed out,
you're really stressed in.
Yeah, good, very good point, exactly. Exactly.

(04:18):
And so then we think, well, I need to have a drink because I need to calm down.
I'm very, very, very stressed out.
I need to smoke a joint. I need to go and lie on my yoga mat.
You know, whatever it is that we do to calm ourselves down and all of which is fine.

(04:41):
But if we don't get to the root cause of what's causing the stress in the beginning,
if we don't really think about what is stress.
We're going to endlessly be trying to search for the answer outside of ourselves.

(05:01):
The bottom line about stress is that it's our resistance to what is happening.
It's our inability to accept the present moment.
And a lot of it is the outside stimulus, of course, that corrupts your inside

(05:27):
and makes you think different things.
Exactly. So what we can do is start to think a little bit about what it is that's
happening with us that we are resistant to the present moment.
And what can be stressful for us may be not stressful for somebody else.

(05:54):
And it reminded me that when I was back in school, I loved school and it was really fun.
And, you know, you go to school and have a social time and it's all groovy until
you have to go to math class in my case.
And i really really hated

(06:15):
it we had a mythology in my family that
we we you know read books and we were sort of literary people but that we couldn't
add up for a lick yeah so i actually went to school program with this idea that
maths was going to be a nightmare and i wasn't going to be able to do it.

(06:35):
So what happened? Math was a nightmare and I wasn't able to do it.
And then thinking about it afterwards, I always thought, oh,
it's the math. It's so horrible. It's so dreadful.
And then I realized, of course, that, you know, other students were lapping up math class.

(06:56):
You know, they were finding it. They were finding it wonderful and fun and full
of discovery and isn't it marvelous and so on.
So it sort of takes us to that place of one man's meat is another man's poison.
So, for example, if you come home from a busy day at work and there's a lot of loud music playing,

(07:22):
you and you perhaps even have a headache, you may be inclined to think,
you know, dial the music down.
It's really stressful but if you go to a concert or a dance party and the music isn't loud enough,
It's stressful, right? You want loud music. That's part of the experience.

(07:44):
Turn it up. Turn it up.
So it's really interesting to think that it's not the loud music and it's not
what's going on outside of us as much as how we are resistant and reacting to it.

(08:04):
Again that's that's what goes on inside you
if you walk into a house where there's music playing the
kids are running around mama's cooking dinner or
something in my case and and you walk in and there's all this outside stimulus
and you're quote having a stressful day unquote well you're bringing yourself
into that scenario so you can't truly blame what's going on for your inner feeling No, that's right.

(08:33):
So I think a way to help
this collective stress response at the moment is to realize that it's our resistance
to what is happening and to try to take a look at what it is that's causing that.

(08:54):
And I'm not talking about not having any resistance to what is in the world,
because I think for many of us, there are things going on in the world that
seem not right to us at all.
You know, when we don't see love and kindness and care for the planet and civil

(09:20):
rights for everybody and so on and so forth, you know, we rightly are.
By that because everybody deserves a
dignified life and we need to care for our
planet so that level
of resistance i believe to make things better is
fine but when we are getting sucked into the vortex of the stress response to

(09:48):
everything that's going out on out there and then bringing Bringing it home
into our own lives and wearing ourselves out when,
you know, we have a lot to do in terms of living our own lives in a way that
is kind and caring and helpful for other people.

(10:10):
And I think my main concern at the moment, and this is very,
very easy to do, is that we need every ounce of energy we have at the moment
to try to make things better.
So, like, how can you offer up a solution? How can people do that?

(10:33):
Well, I think one thing we can do is to reframe some of the stories that we tell ourselves.
So we may be feeling, oh, you know, I've just put on a lot of weight.
Maybe I've been eating because I'm stressed.

(10:56):
And now I've got some extra pounds that I don't want.
And that is stressing me out and so on and so forth.
Those are places where we can say, okay, I know why I did that.
I know why I've gotten myself out of shape. It's understandable.

(11:18):
Let's be kind to ourselves and say, but now it's going to be a different story.
I understand why I did that. And I'm going to head in a healthier kind of direction
for myself and just bring these levels of stress down and we can we can reframe our stories and,

(11:45):
look at things in a different way another
important thing to do is to focus on the gratitude for the things that are working
very important it feels at the moment as if there's a lot that's not working
but you know here we are in the beautiful Hudson Valley in the middle of the
summer with fantastic things going on.

(12:07):
And there's a lot that's wonderful and marvelous.
True. Very true. And so much to be grateful for and thankful for.
Yes. And gratitude is hugely helpful because the sort of collective stress response
at the moment keeps keeps dragging us over into into the negative it's to the point where if,

(12:32):
I were to say to somebody what's a beautiful day often people say to me now
yeah but you know it's going to rain tomorrow.
You know, and it's already, and you know, maybe we need a little bit of rain,
but it's sort of, you know, already there's a kind of yes, but you know,
no, it's not going to stay good.

(12:52):
Yeah, it's almost they're looking forward to let down. Yeah.
Instead of enjoying what's present and right in front of them.
A beautiful day. They're worried about the next day.
You got to live in the moment. and maybe if you come home and the family's all
excited and there's cooking going on and the TV's on and the stereo's on and

(13:14):
there are kids running around,
maybe you could take a breath before you walk in the door and catch this energy
and turn it around in a way that it's positive, in a way that you go, huh,
I'm gonna leave all that stress behind and when I walk through this door,
I'm gonna join the celebration that's going on and I'm gonna make it better.

(13:36):
Yes, exactly. Exactly. So a lot of it is taking that deep breath,
sort of getting into that elegant space that we have and saying,
what is it about this scenario that is stressing me out right now?
Now, what am I bringing into this situation?
Because then when we come in through that door with a whole lot of stress that

(13:59):
we're carrying, we know how contagious it is.
We arrive home, we're in a black dog mood, and it's not very long before we
can, you know, transfer that to everybody else.
And then suddenly everybody is feeling disgruntled and miserable and, you know, so on.

(14:21):
Because that is as contagious as love and kindness is, you know.
And you have a choice about which you're going to put out there.
But the idea that all of the trouble is outside of us.
You know, we can bring the power back if we start to recognize our own triggers

(14:45):
and what is happening with us and why.
Yes. And don't be a buzzkill.
Exactly.
Give that one up right now. Yeah. Caroline, it's truly a pleasure to talk with
you each and every month.
You bring uplifting information and vision. to people who definitely need it.

(15:09):
You seem to have your finger on the pulse of what's going on in the psyche of
our listeners and the people around you.
So keep up the good work. And now, how can folks get in touch with you, Caroline?
Send me an email, caroline at carolinephipps.com.

(15:30):
I love hearing from people. It looks as if, Rick, we have fans from really all
over the globe these days with streaming and live streaming and so on.
And it's just so wonderful to hear how tuning in and getting some elegant wisdom
and so on can help people to navigate the next month.

(15:53):
And I feel very humble about that and very, very grateful that you and I can do this together.
Well, again, keep up the good work and keep on, you know, living a healthy and
happy life and finding out what's kind of bugging us.
And we'll talk to you next month and see what you come up with.

(16:14):
Thank you very much. And who knows? Yeah, because each time you keep on connecting
with the listeners and well with me, of course, and it's always a pleasure.
So Caroline, nothing but the best to you and the family and enjoy your summertime.

(16:35):
And we look forward to talking with you in August.
Thank you so much, Rick. All right. All the best.
And folks, this is the Up and Running Morning Show on 98.1 KZE.
Our guest, Caroline Phipps. Again, the email, caroline at carolinephipps.com.
All the best to you, Caroline. Bye-bye.

(16:57):
Bye-bye. Thank you. It's the Up and Running Morning Show.
Music.