Dougal Sutherland: The long-term effects of everyday stressors

When it comes to managing stress, we often think about the big things —job loss, death of a loved one— but what about the everyday stressors? 

Things like buying a house, getting married, and speaking in public occur much more regularly, and can potentially have a bigger cumulative effect over time. 

Dr Dougal Sutherland joined Jack Tame to discuss the long-term impact of everyday stressors and what can be done to mitigate potential harm. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks, that'd be time.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
To catch up with our clinical psychologist, Google Sutherland is
here this morning and tackling a very interesting issue indeed,
the long term effects of every day stresses. So these
are not the acute, big one off stresses you have
in life. This is the accumulation of the stuff that
you're dealing with every day.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Kilder, Google Cyder Jack. Yes, indeed, it's often those that
sort of building up of the small, everyday things that
has that sort of slow impact on our health rather
than necessarily those huge, huge, big things. And actually this
was sparked by a survey from trade me that showed
that I think it was over eighty percent of people

(00:51):
found the process of buying a new house super stressful,
which mirrors a lot of sort of psychology research which
says everyday stresses like buying a house, getting married, and
public speaking are some of the most stressful events people
talk about in there in there in their everyday lives.
And if you remember last time we were talking, we
talked about how to live to be one hundred and

(01:13):
one of those things was managing stress. And so maybe
if you can manage it everyday stress, you might you
might even live a little bit longer.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, that's interesting because I don't know, like I I
feel like I have a stressful job I have, you know,
I have a stressful career, and there are lots of
stresses that come with the job and the kind of
you know, regular slash semi regular stresses that I have.
I often get stressed about what kind of what kind
of impact there might be having on my health. But

(01:40):
really it's like it can be any situation, right that
is there's kind of new or or you know, ambiguous,
we you're feeling outside of your comfort zone, that can
contribute to an everyday stress.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Yeah. Absolutely, those three things that you've just named there,
that sort of newness or novelness, the ambiguity and unpredictability
of a situation that those are really the key ingredients
for us as as humans to expect variance stress. And
that can be you know, anything that crops up, you know,
for you know, getting into a relationship and new relationships

(02:15):
like well, that's new and ambiguous. I don't know how
this person's going to react, and I can't really control
it or not completely control it. Anyway. So, yeah, any
any time where you have those three ingredients ambiguity, newness,
and uncontrollability, it's it does result or it's the recipe
for stress for us to feel stressed.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
And so using the circles of control model can be
a good way to try and manage it. Just to
explain to us, what what is the circles of control model?

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yeah, well a lot of people are familiar with it
when I talk to people that there. Oh yeah, yeah,
I'm kind of familiar with that. So if you imagine
a sort of a three circles, almost like a dart
bought that sort of shape, and the outside circle is
things of concern. Those are things that you that that
that might worry you but you have no kind of

(03:05):
control over at Also, that's the outside circles. The next circle,
in the middle circle is things that you can influence,
and then the middle circle is things that are completely
in your control. And arguably you could split any situation
up into those using those three circles. And the idea

(03:26):
being that if you can focus yourself on the things
that you can firstly control and also those things that
you can influence, it gives you a bit of a
game plan to get active and to do something rather
than focusing on the things that are of concern, which
was a completely understandable that you're concerned about them. It's

(03:47):
sort of a waste of mental energy to be focused
on them because you can't really do anything about them.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, right, that makes sense. Okay, So to go back
to the survey you do with trade me for people
buying houses and finding it stressful, can you apply that
model to housing into the post of buying a house,
then what you can get on et cetera.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
Absolutely, So things have concerned that's the outside circle, that's
the house market and other buyers like you've got You've
got no control or even influence on who else is
looking for a house or what houses are out here.
So so actually, don't worry too much about that, right.
Things you can influence, well, you can influence the seller's
decision when you put in you know, you can put
in a good offer, you can write a nice letter,

(04:30):
you can influence somewhat the mortgage rate that you get.
You can shop around between banks and get a better
get a better mortgage rate. And then the things that
you can control those are your budget, where you look,
you know, your preparation. So those are all completely under

(04:50):
your control. So if you if you if you're in
that in the active buying a house, think about you know,
even I often say to people, do what we call
is prescribed worry time. So so take twenty or thirty
minutes about the thing that to really focus on the
thing you worry about and draw out those circles of control. Yeah,
and see how you can apply and we just apply

(05:10):
them to that to buying a house, but you could
do that for any any kind of situation really, and
it does give you a bit of an action plan.
And once you've got an action plan, it can help
reduce your anxiety or stress somewhat because you feel like
you've got a bit more control and you're a bit
more things are a bit more predictable, so it dials
down your stress amitter a little bit.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah, and you know there are things you can do
obvious things, so you could use a bit of technology
that kind of thing wherever possible so that you're not
always checking stuff that you can try and set up
alerts and that kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, one hundred percent. And and just going back to
the trade me idea, they you know, They've got a
nice little filter there on their search engine around houses,
so it keeps you sort of focused on the price
range and the areas that you want to focus on.
Because I don't know about you, but I can remember,
you know, last time we bought a house. If you
miss out something that's like, oh my god, yeah, we've
got a quick but by that one, it's like we're

(06:03):
going to We're not going to live in haste things.
There's nothing wrong with it.

Speaker 4 (06:05):
Yeah, Wellington House will sell there quick quick quick community. Yeah,
yeah it would be, but you do get a bit panicky.
So having those sort of any sort of tech that
you can use just can help you sort of folks
stay focused and not sort of get swept away with
that sort of buyers remorse that we get sometimes. So
they can be really really useful just helping you stay

(06:27):
focused on those things that you can control.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Love your work, doogle as always. Thank you so much.
Clinical psychologist Google Sutherland from Umbrella Well Being with us
this morning.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
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