Stress Researcher: What Person A Does That Person B Doesn’t (Avoid Burnout) | Joana De Calheiros Velozo - Live Well Be Well with Sarah Ann Macklin | Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
How stressed are we as a nation?We're incredibly stressed.
Over 60% of people report so much stress that it completely
effects their daily lives. We've noticed that one of the
things people struggle the most is identifying how they feel.
People are not really able to name their emotions the.
Wheel of emotions that has like 200 emotions on it.
And it's when I show them that you see their faces just go,

(00:22):
wow, actually, maybe I do feel this.
Emotional granularity is. Incredibly important.
Being able to really identify bythe emotion is already half the
battle to be able to regulate appropriately.
Stress can feel really overwhelming, but stress can
translate into multiple emotions.
Was there a moment in your life that got you super interested in

(00:42):
this? I'm Joanna, a researcher in
biomedical science with a background in mental health.
In my life, I myself suffered tremendous amounts of stress.
Actually, I used to suffer from panic disorder and I had the
grow phobia and it was so incredibly debilitating that I
couldn't leave the house. I love this line.
Dose makes the poison because a bit of stress builds you too

(01:03):
much breaks you. And like weightlifting, it's the
recovery that makes you stronger, not the strain itself.
How important is recovery? That's.
Really where we see the differences in people who
develop health concerns over people who don't.
What's person A doing that Person B isn't doing in those
moments to handle stress? I think the biggest thing would
we talk about is this locus of control.

(01:24):
I don't know if you've ever heard about.
That no. What's the locus of control?
The locus of control is. If you are a regular listener to
the show Olivia be well or this is your first episode you're
listening to, I really want to ask just a very small quick
favour if you could please hit the subscribe button or leave a
review. This helps the show more than
you can imagine. It means the world to help

(01:46):
growing this show and you all know that.
I have a huge thing to want to hit 100,000 on YouTube this year
and I can't do that without yoursupport.
I really aim to bring you the best guess possible out there
and I pride myself in doing thatfor the show because it's so
important. But to keep the guests coming,
to get them to be bigger and to bring more helpful information

(02:08):
to your ears and your eyes. I really would love to ask you
to subscribe to the show. Thank you.
I want to start with a question on is there really such a thing
as good stress or is it just clever branding?
Yes, there is. Actually, stress is essential
for you to do things in life. Stress is actually a sign of a

(02:30):
healthy stress response system. It means that your body is
regulating effectively. OK, so that's interesting
because I think a lot of us can talk about stress as the enemy.
I think one of the most common statements that I use is I'm
just feeling very stressed. Many people will relate to that.
But then I was thinking like, what if stress isn't the problem

(02:52):
and it's actually like our relationship to stress itself?
And so how much of stress is what happens to us, and how much
is it that we interpret it? First, I think it's important
for us to define stress just as your body's response to
something that's destabilizing your homeostasis.

(03:12):
Your normal equilibrium, let's say it being destabilized, is
normal, but how you respond to that disturbance is really what
matters. I think that's the thing, right?
It's not being afraid of it. And I think a lot of us,
especially having doctor Lisa Feldman Barrett on here, the
neuroscientist, she talked a lotabout how we have emotions and

(03:34):
how it's predictions of past memories.
And it really made me think a lot about our relationship to
stress. So is it possible to be addicted
to stress? Addicted to that like high
feeling that so many of us can have when it comes to stress
without us knowing it? I mean, stress can be confused
with excitement and adrenaline, right?

(03:54):
They all elicit the same stress response, but the feelings we
associate with that response are, are different, right?
When you're addicted to stress, you are excited all the time.
You're always on the move, always wanting to feel it's
energy. Basically, stress is is energy,
and you can direct that energy into something really positive

(04:16):
or something really debilitating.
That differentiation happens in your mind actually.
Yeah, I want to decode that a lot today, like the mind and the
body. And it's quite like a stoic
saying, but I love this. We suffer more in imagination
than in reality. But maybe the modern version is
that we suffer the most when we don't understand the pattern of

(04:37):
our own stress. So I think about like, the
landscape of stress today, Like how stressed are we as a nation?
We're incredibly stressed, to put it very mildly, but we
actually see that the statisticsare incredible, right?
Over 60% of people report so much stress that it completely
effects their daily lives, right?
About 30% experience chronic stress, right?

(05:01):
So we really see that it affectsus all outside the statistics
you just now that virtually everyone experiences phases of
more or less stress, but we all handle it very differently and
that's what's really important to recognize.
Yeah, that's really interesting.Actually.
It's a question I was thinking about coming here.
Why do two people respond to stress so differently?

(05:23):
Because one person might it might send them spiralling and
the other person they seem to not collapse at all.
Like why is there two different responses to stress from?
So I'd like to dive a little bitinto stress before answering
that question because I'd like to explain a little bit what is
stress in the sense that people often think of stress as
specific events or behaviors, you know, things people think

(05:47):
that things are objectively stressful.
This interview is stressful. That accident was stressful,
that meeting that feedback, you know, we have these objective
events, right? But actually that's, that's not
the case at all, right? Stress is entirely subjective,
right? It is really in the eye of the
beholder, if you will. Anything can be stressful or

(06:09):
not. And what is stressful to you
might not be stressful to me. And what's stressful to me today
might not be stressful to me tomorrow.
The first thing that's importantto recognize is that stress is
actually not external to us. Stress is entirely internal to
us, right? It is our perception, our
experience of things that dictates whether something is

(06:30):
stressful or not, right? Yeah.
So actually we're going to this through two kind of phase
approach and that you first appraise A stimuli as being one
important to you and posing sometype of threat to you.
So there's something that can happen out of this that might
affect me. It could be a physical threat or
it could be an emotional threat,like my self esteem will be

(06:52):
hindered. And two, I appraise is the
situation something that I'm able to handle or not, right?
And it's in the second part thatit's really important, right?
In the second part, if you feel that you can handle it, you
approach it quite differently. But then what I want to go into
is once you've established that,OK, this situation is quite
stressful and it's triggering mybody to respond, right, to

(07:14):
allocate a lot of resources intohandling this, you can.
This is stress response has 2 dimensions.
Let's talk one is the physical dimension, right?
Your body responds to the stressform.
Yeah, like the fast heartbeat, the sweaty palms, like the
shakes. Yeah, you feel it in your body,
but then you have the emotional response to the stressor.

(07:36):
And it's the emotional response to the stressor that will
dictate how it will shape you and how it will affect you.
Wow, there's so much about mindset with stress, isn't
there, that we don't see. Do you think a lot of this is
like tied to how we're brought up from a young age, like how
we've perceived our parents to understand stress?

(07:56):
Or do you think that as the world's feeling more heavier,
there's more demand, there's less time to switch off?
The constant pressure, the financial constraints, like all
of these other ways that we're living in a a very stressed
dominated world that mean we never turn off.
Unlike my parents who would comehome after work and there wasn't
a phone and there was no way to contact you.

(08:16):
Like you would have stress at work in in one isolated area and
then you'd come back and then you would just be at the family
because there was no way to contact you.
So with those two dimensions, like, how do you think it's
shaping our stress today with that emotional response as it
seems to be a real mindset approach then with like a
physiological reaction? It's really interesting that you

(08:37):
say that because a lot of peopledo associate work as stress and
home as not stress. But like I said, it's, it's
actually not that objective. And actually, yes, we are in an
environment that is more stimulating than ever.
But actually if you look at previous generations, there was
tremendous amount of stress as well.
You know, the shaping of our mind comes in, it is not so much

(08:59):
in the environment that we're in, but it's something that we
call this diathesis stress model.
So if you think about the fact that when you are born, you're
actually already have a higher or lower predisposition to
experience, to be more or less sensitive to stress, that's the
first thing. Wow.
Just from the moment you were born, it's like genetics.
Yes, of course genetics play an important role.

(09:20):
If your parents are more sensitive to stress, you're also
more likely to be more sensitiveto stress.
That's normal. That's the first thing.
But the second thing is that caneither be exacerbated or
minimized by your environment, right?
If your parents not only are more sensitive to stress, but
they also exhibit these types ofresponses in their behavior.
And if you go through events that can be traumatic or

(09:44):
difficult and you're witness around you certain ways in which
people respond to stress, you will also emulate that.
So that will exacerbate The thing is that if you start at a
place where you're already a bitmore sensitive, it means that
they stressors will you will experience more things as
stressful and that in turn will play a heavier role on you,
right. So it's it's kind.

(10:05):
Of a A. Loop, right, So when you see
people going through similar events and some of them coming
out fantastic and other people coming out with all kinds of
troubles, there's already that whole background there right on
how they have learned and grown to be more or less sensitive to
stress. Now the great thing about it is
that. You can cut that right?

(10:26):
You're not a victim to that situation.
You have a power to kind of cut that loop for yourself.
Yeah. I love that you just use the
word victim because I think that's so important when
thinking about the word resilience.
Yeah. And stress and resilience to me
kind of go hand in hand. I think some of my hardest

(10:47):
moments and even speaking to a lot of people, people that
listen to the show and write in and tell me their stories.
So resilience is built through stress, but like how do you
balance that? How is how important is stress
to building resilience? And when is it too much and
resilience kind of then just becomes broken?
So first I'd like to ask you maybe how do you define

(11:08):
resilience? I define.
I define resilience in the sensethat each time that you step
into the moment of not letting asituation define you and you can
have a more of a reflective process, you can have the
strength and courage to move forward.

(11:29):
And each time you take those learnings and each time the
situations appear smaller and smaller and smaller, it's like
approaching a mountain, Like at the beginning you can see the
mountain that feels so humongousand terrifying and that you've
got to climb this huge peak. But each step of that journey,
it becomes a little less hard and a little bit more
manageable. That's my understanding of it,

(11:50):
and I think that's maybe my own personal journey with it.
But I think you can't be resilient without having
compassion connected to it. And that's a big part of it
because I think if you're constantly beating yourself up
and then you're getting all the external resources of people
beating you up or the environment or things getting
too much like that will always feel very distant, that peak.

(12:14):
But if you've kind of got your own back, that helps you build
the resilience. That's my interpretation.
So that is not how I define resilience.
That's why I wanted to ask because then it also helps
understand better your question because the way that I look at
resilience and actually the way that we define resilience and
stress. Research is.
That your body exhibits the appropriate stress response for

(12:37):
the appropriate situation so that actually you are body is
regulating itself effectively. So that in a situation that
demands you to experience a stress response, that demands
you to gather all of your resources and energy to face
some challenges, it does so appropriately and then recovers

(12:58):
appropriately, right? Or doesn't exhibit the stress
response when there is no need for one.
So resilience is really about having an effective regulatory
system in a way. And if you have them, then
you're also much more capable ofhandling these challenges,
right? Yeah, I guess I, I, I, I totally
can align with that. But I also think that unless you

(13:19):
experience stress, you don't build resilience.
I kind of see resilience as a muscle that's you have to push,
which is why I think about it seeing a mountain, because I
think, you know, these people, people have experienced and I've
had heard amazing stories of people that experience such
hardships through their life andthey have this amazing amount of
resilience in them. So if to.

(13:39):
But I think the thing where it can go a bit wrong, and I think
I've gone into this before, it'slike the hustle culture, you
know, like we're very much now in maybe there is a toxic
resilience culture building where it's all about go, go, go,
go. And burnout is a very common
word now. You hear that like all over

(14:00):
social media and LinkedIn and you know, a lot of people
building companies or, you know,even like, you know, doctors and
think about COVID, like the amount of people that were burnt
out. How do we understand stress in
this environment of like the hustle culture?
Yeah, well, the environment is areally big role.
Of course, if we're always on, we never have the time to

(14:23):
recover. I think what happens, and I
think that's where also social media and all of these new
technology that we are lucky to have, but that also probably
growing our our health. They really disconnect us from
ourselves in this, in this hustle culture.
I think what we see happening isactually people stop tuning in,
stop paying attention to the signs that their bodies are

(14:46):
telling them, right? So people don't just wake up and
are in the burnout, right? There's normal many sides
leading up to that and we just fail to listen and intervene
earlier, right? And that's often because we feel
that we should be always on, right?
That the society demands that ofus and that we should be
capable, right? It's almost a badge that we

(15:08):
carry, right? That we keep going despite the
fact that maybe we shouldn't andit's not good for us, right?
How can someone interpret if they're under chronic stress?
How you respond to the small daily hassles, that's really the
type of stress that we're looking at and that really
builds up, right? So if everything is causing you

(15:28):
to respond and you're unable to recover after that, that piles
up, right, That starts loading on the system.
Eventually that can really overload the system.
But that build, as it builds up,what you will notice is one more
things will cause you stress, right?
So things that didn't feel important before not start being
causing you to respond, right? So you used to have your daily

(15:51):
Monday meeting and now you're stressed to go there to, it will
take you longer to recover, right?
Things will be harder to manage,right?
It means that your stress systemis actually no longer resilient.
It's, it's struggling to regulate effectively.
Three, you'll start experiencingsomatic things as well, right?

(16:12):
You, you might get migraines, back pain.
So you know the, the 9 out of 10people that go to the GP, it's
due to stress actually. And it's normally by the time
that you get physical complaints, it's your body
physically telling you, please stop, pay attention, something's
going on. You'll be tired a lot more
often. You need more to sleep, you're

(16:34):
fatigued quicker, your emotions will be a lot more volatile.
It's it'll be harder for you to.You might feel that your
emotions are more negative or that you go from positive to
negative a lot quicker. And if you have a menstrual
cycle, you really notice it in your menstrual cycle, right?
You might feel more cramps, you might get miss a cycle.

(16:58):
So you it's really is intimatelyrelated to that.
So there's lots of signs in yourbody that things are are
happening that need attention and that's all in the build up
to burnout. And by the time you reach
burnout, you've completely overloaded the system, so much
so that it's sort of shuts down.As someone who has spent a long

(17:18):
time studying the mind body connection, I'm constantly asked
what do I use to track my healthsince April?
You've probably seen, if you're watching the show, me wearing a
piece of tech on my arm, and that is no.
Watch. Because I genuinely believe it
has been one of the most thoughtful and mind aware pieces
of tech that you can wear. Unlike most wearables that focus
just on your steps or your sleep, no watch is a bit

(17:40):
different and gives you real time insights into your nervous
system. The invisible engine that
calibrates everything from your stress to your sleep, to your
recovery, your rest, and ultimately your health.
With its stress recovery metric,it doesn't just show you how
long you were stressed for, but also how long you were covered.
It shows you your homeostatus. And that to me is where real

(18:01):
health begins. And I think it's all something
that we're craving. And most importantly, it does
this without dragging you back to your phone, because that
motion just depletes you. It delivers meaningful health
insights to you only when something genuinely matters,
using AI to turn complex signalsinto clarity that you can
understand. And in just five days, it

(18:22):
calibrates to your body and creates your personalized health
fingerprint. You can try it for 30 days
completely free. And if you're curious, now's the
time because they're giving you guys 15% off with my code LW
BW15. If you head to know watch.com
and you guys know as listeners of Live Well, Be Well and this
whole community, that understanding yourself in the

(18:44):
most mindful way is one of the most powerful things that you
can do for your health. And this little gadget helps you
on your journey. Do you see from your own
research, because you've done a lot of research on stress and I
kind of want to get to you in ina second about why we're here
talking about this, but do you see a lot of people that are

(19:05):
just disengaged from noticing how stressed they are?
I think there's a couple of things.
I think people are not so comfortable thinking and talking
about stress. That's the first thing.
And there's a lot of misunderstanding around stress.
And two, I think they, they're not so much disengaged with how
stressed they feel, but actuallyI think they're disengaged with

(19:27):
how they feel periods. So actually we noticed that one
of the things people struggle the most is identifying how they
feel, right? People are not really able to
name their emotions or, you know, recognize what's happening
in their body. So I think there's really a
disconnect between people and themselves.
Yeah, I think that's a really big thing that the vocabulary

(19:48):
around language and emotions, because if you think about when
we're at school, we're never taught how with how we feel.
So we kind of go into this weirdemotional landscape of Bernie
Brown always says, you know, andI don't know this is
scientifically completely correct, but that we only really
have language for three emotions, sadness, fear and
happiness. And we kind of put them into

(20:12):
that one bucket where actually there's so many, there's like
200 emotions, but we don't have the literature and our own
language to be able to describe that.
So that creates a big block. And I give my patients in clinic
this the wheel of emotions that has like 200 emotions.
On it. And it's when I show them that

(20:32):
you see their faces just go, wow, actually maybe I do feel
this. And it's that moment of like,
feeling seen. And all of a sudden you just see
their shoulders, like, relax because they themselves have
understood it. And I think about that as a
child. You know, when you're a child,
you're very frustrated because you can't have the vocabulary to

(20:53):
tell your parents or tell your caretakers who's looking after
you how you're feeling. And it feels like that's very
similar to what you just said around stress.
Absolutely. And and you know that emotional
granularity is incredibly important, right?
Being able to really identify the emotion is already half the
battle to being able to regulateappropriately, right?

(21:14):
And that's intimately connected stress.
So stress can feel really overwhelming, but stress can
mean can translate into multipleemotions.
It could be excited, scared, frustrated, happy, you know it.
It could be a multitude of things and helping pinpoint
exactly the emotion associated with the body is feeling really

(21:35):
helps. But we don't take time for it.
No. How can you get people on here
to connect to understanding their emotions a bit more in
relation to stress? Actually, there's a lot of, a
lot of my research was actually on that also how to track
emotions of people throughout the day.
And one of the big things that we actually notice is just by

(21:58):
starting to ask people how they feel throughout the day, it
already helps them feel better, better mood.
Like overall, there's a tremendous amount of health
outcomes by just stopping the question for yourself.
So that's where we start actually.
And when we actually ask about how do people feel?
We want people to think of emotions in these two dimension.

(22:18):
I don't know if you've ever heard of the circumplex model of
emotion, but really emotions arenot just emotional, but they
also have very much a physical physiological component, right?
So when you check in, we think, OK, first think how was your
body feeling right Does. That mean that you're connecting
more to like the interception. So only which I think people
might not know, but it's more about connecting internally to

(22:40):
like the bodily sensations. Yeah, absolutely.
So that's the first level indeed, interception, what is my
body saying? And two, what is the valence
associated with that? What is the specific emotion
associated with what my body is expressing?
And that's where you can start understanding stress better
because stress is not just I'm afraid of this, it's also, I'm

(23:02):
excited about this. It's sometimes a mix of both,
right? And that will help manage it and
also use it as a resource because stress can mean a
fantastic and powerful resource,right?
If you don't experience stress, you're also not engaged with
life, you're not motivated. You will not go out and do the
things that you actually really want to do.

(23:24):
So it's important to also harness that energy.
I love that. It's like using stress as a
compass basically. So I was just thinking about
what you were saying there. So I guess like somebody could
interpret this because journalling is such a big thing
now. Everyone's, you know, which is
great, Everyone's, you know, doing morning pages or
journalling and a lot of people write to me and say, well, I
just don't quite know what to journal about.

(23:46):
This could be an amazing way that to help you understand your
stress response better. I guess it's like, how am I
feeling? Could be the first question,
what am I feeling, which is the interception?
And then the third question, which was remind me, what's my
buddy telling me? Those three things could be
quite a good indicator because Ithink sometimes we always try

(24:07):
and demand an answer. Yeah, you know, we kind of,
we're all problem solvers at theend of the day.
We kind of really want to get tothe solution.
And also you have to think that there's no right answer, right?
It's, it's whatever makes sense to you in that moment.
And you become better as you practices.
It also helps you being much more able to identify when

(24:29):
things are OK and when things are actually not OK.
When should you go visit the doctor?
Right? That's so true.
I think so many people listen tothis will connect to moments
when I don't know, maybe they'vehad like GI distress or they're
feeling constant nausea or the migraines or, you know, they're
so anxious that they're not going to sleep as all these
signals. And maybe they're in the wrong

(24:51):
relationship, but they're like, no, I'm really going to push
through this. Or they're really unhappy at
work, but they're determined to not give up.
And they're like pushing againstall these signals where their
bodies, like, maybe this isn't right for you and that's your
internal compass, but it's so easy for the mind to override
those signals. Yeah, I think it's so

(25:11):
interesting. So I want to go a little bit
into stress phenotypes. But before I do, you know, I
always find it really interesting when every guest who
sits here as an expert in their field, and I don't think we'll
just walk into the job that theydo, especially if it's in
research. Like normally there is such a
passion behind why somebody is so interested in Sarah.

(25:33):
So Joanna, just give everyone a small introduction to like who
you are and why you entered thisfield.
Like, was there a moment in yourlife that got you super
interested in this? Well, I'm, I'm Joanna.
I'm a researcher in biomedical science with a background in
mental health. And I actually got very
passionate about stress because I really see it as the lynchpin

(25:55):
to everything else in my life. I myself suffered tremendous
amounts of stress. Actually, I used to suffer from
panic disorder and I had the chorophobia and it was so
incredibly debilitating that I actually couldn't leave the
house for quite a lot of time because it caused panic attacks.
And it got me really interested in the topic and how, of course,

(26:16):
I think when you suffer from something, you will search for
answers on how to, to deal with it.
So at the time, it felt that my life was so tied to this disease
really that I, I was looking foranswers.
And so as a researcher, I, I went on to research these

(26:37):
answers and it's actually been very liberating because once you
start understanding what's happening in your body and how
your mind influences things, then you realize that there's
actually nothing to be afraid of.
So I always really looked at stress as something that's
happening to me, but actually I have a big role to play in this
relationship. What helped you?

(26:58):
Kind of flip that and go from somebody who had panic attacks,
and I think so many people will relate to this.
I think a lot of times people also don't realize how extreme
their panic attacks can be. And I'm just so confused.
And then to not leaving the house to sat here now as a
researcher talking about a superconfident, you know, working

(27:18):
with an amazing company. Like how, what what helped you
get from that stage to Stage 2? So I think one of the things
with panic attacks and I think with stress in general is this
feeling that things are really beyond your control, right?
That you don't have the resources to do something about.
It and it can be really, really scary.
So no matter how much you can tell yourself, well, this is a

(27:39):
safe situation and nothing is going to happen to me, sometimes
the, the body isn't listening also, because this relationship
actually goes both ways. The body sends signals, the
mind, the mind sends signals to the, to the body, right?
So sometimes the body has received messages and has
reinforced messages that are notcorrect anymore and we need to

(28:00):
unlearn them basically. But in that process, it can be
very scary because you don't have the tools.
For me, what has been incrediblyliberating is to so it's a
couple of things. I think one thing is actually
just letting go. Like really that things are,
yes, I do not have control over them and that's actually OK.

(28:23):
So one thing with stress is thatyou are always trying to look
for things that you can control.And it's stressful because you
don't have. And for me, the answer has been
to stop looking for ways to control it, but accept that I
cannot control it. And the second step is to
recognize that no matter what happens, I will be able to

(28:47):
handle it. So if you think before a big
event, I used to ruminate a lot,right?
And when you ruminate, that's actually a stress on its own.
So you're actually already having a stress response before
the event has. Happened.
I'm interrupting for one moment to ask one small favour.

(29:07):
Please subscribe to the show. This helps it grow more than you
know. And I'm so bad at asking this
from you. I'm so bad at thinking about
this, but you know, my goal was 100,000 to get to on YouTube and
I really want to bring you more content and better guests and
bigger episodes and we can only do that with your help together.

(29:28):
So please do hit subscribe. Thank you.
I love this line. The dose makes the poison
because a bit of stress builds you too much breaks you.
And like weight weightlifting, it's the recovery that makes you
stronger, not the strain itself is kind of my interpretation of
that. And it was really interesting
hearing you talk about it because a couple of years ago I

(29:51):
started introducing into clinic the words, how would you feel if
you just let go? And so many people would come
back to me and say, that's been so powerful just to say to
myself, like just actually like letting go of it.
Because I do think and I, and I might be completely wrong and I
might be stereotyping. I put myself in this category,
which is why I say as an opinionand anecdotal, but like, I'm

(30:16):
very Taipei and I'm very perfectionist and I think those
types of people type tend to want to have more control.
And so stress can build when we don't naturally see things
filling to place properly. And I've always been quite
jealous of those people that feel way more laid back and like
are laying horizontal. I have some friends where I just

(30:37):
think, wow, you're so relaxed and realise that that was so
much of my own interpretation about stress.
And so the word letting go and actually knowing that you can't
control every situation is really, really powerful.
And then I think, you know, going back to the resilience
conversation that we had, there's those moments in our

(30:59):
lives that like just hit us likea bus and everyone will have
that in their lives. But actually what I found is
those moments are like the most defining moments of your life.
Absolutely. And actually what you just
described here, it's a very adaptive stress response system.
It's very resilient system. So if you experience something
once that caused tremendous stress, but it works out well,

(31:20):
the second time, you actually shouldn't experience much of A
stress response is actually called habituation.
Your body habituates to that situation.
Wow, OK, so how how for any of those people that are listening
and go, Oh my gosh, that's me. I actually had a conversation
with a friend yesterday where her sister is not leaving the
house at the moment because she has extreme amounts of

(31:43):
depression and anxiety and panicattacks.
For those people that are experiencing that high magnitude
of stress, like what advice would you give them?
So something that I like to always remind people is that the
situation that you're in today will not last forever.
It's temporary. It's temporary.
And as we forget about that, andthat can be really scary, but

(32:03):
actually this will not be like this forever.
It will pass. The second thing is start small.
You don't have to get into a life full on right, and those
can also start help your body real learn new things, right,

(32:26):
because basically your body alsohas just learned something that
it needs to learn something new.So give it the opportunity.
Starting sport was such an important thing.
Like any habit or any lifestyle change or anything, you kind of
have to be able to layer, otherwise it collapses.
It's like thinking building a foundation to a house.
You've got to layer those those parts on.

(32:49):
Something that I'm really interested in when it comes to
stress is stress phenotypes, which people might be like, what
is that? And it's quite similar to having
your own fingerprint. Like stress is kind of your own
individual experience. So what do you mean when or what
does one mean when somebody sayseveryone has their own stress

(33:10):
fingerprint? Yeah, we often think of stress
as just your body is doing this,right?
And indeed, there's a certain amount of things that are
expected of the body, right? Your heart rate will go up.
Your skin connects, it will go up.
Your heart rate will go down. Your cortisol will pick after a
few minutes. So all of those are expected.
However, what that looks like for everyone is slightly
different, right? Some people will respond very

(33:31):
intensely with heart rate, otherpeople won't, right?
And it's important to understandwhat does this response look
like for you? So when we're thinking about
stress generally, I mean, you'vementioned the physical symptoms
that we can get and I think everyone shows up in different
ways. I know when I'm rundown and
stress, I always get a stye. Yes, interesting.
That's like a really common symptom for me or my glands come

(33:52):
up. I know a lot of my friends get
very bad migraines, GI distress,There's lots of different areas.
But if we're trying to like really connect to our health,
what are the ways, other ways that we can try and understand
where our stress status is? Yeah, I think first by starting
paying attention because I thinkmost people have no idea when

(34:12):
they are stressed or not. So first recognize what does
stress feel like to you. I often hear people say I'm not
stressed at all when everything in their body is screaming.
So first just stop and pay attention and then you will, you
will notice right? You, you will have people who
experience a lot of skin rashes and if you ask them to start

(34:33):
tracking those skin rashes, theywill be able to pinpoint with
certain periods in their life that are more stressful.
So it's just about starting to pay attention with what's
happening in your body. So.
You're thinking about when it comes to recovery, how important
is recovery? Because a lot of people talk
about the stress bucket. It's a very like famous analogy
and that I always think about itwith a bathtub that makes me

(34:55):
find it somehow more attainable.And I can think about, you know,
opening up the plug and allowingthe water to drain when I want
to top up with some more hot water when the bath gets cold.
And I can kind of keep it at a level where I'm in control.
But if a phone rings or someone answers the door and I'm not
keeping an eye on the bath and the plugs down, then all the

(35:17):
water overflows. And that's how I try and think
about stress. How important is recovery in
relationship to our stress? I'll say it's the most important
actually, in the sense that whatwe see is it's not so such a big
problem. It's normal that you experience
stress, right? It's it's only human.
If you weren't experienced stress, I'd be worried.

(35:38):
But what matters is that you're able to effectively recover once
the event has passed. And that's really where we see
the differences in people who develop health concerns over
people who don't, right? So if you experience a stressor
and immediately your body comes back to normal, well, that's a
very healthy stress system, right?
But if that stress event prolongs for hours, then you're

(36:01):
really loading your body, right?That's very maladaptive, and
that's what causes a lot of strain on your body and what
leads you to develop all kinds of health concerns.
It's interesting because I thinkabout some people that I know
the there's two different types of people here.
There's people that run very bigcompanies that have very intense

(36:21):
schedules and will reduce their sleep time to work out in the
morning because they feel like they need that energy to get
pumped up to go into work and have a big day.
And then I also flip it to a really busy mum who I think is
like has exactly the same amountof stress as as I'm running a
big company because their sleepsdisturbed and they have very
little time for themselves. But then they also are trying to

(36:43):
keep themselves healthy and they're hearing all this
overwhelming of information so that I've got to try and get to
a class or, you know, running with the buggy to get any kind
of moment of exercising. Kind of two very similar people,
very different situations for these people.
How would you talk to them aboutrecovery?
Yeah, interesting. First, I want this to maybe talk
a little bit more about what we mean by recovery, because I hear

(37:05):
you mentioned sleep, which is indeed really important for
recovery. But actually what we also look
at in terms of recovery is how long it takes you to go back to
homeostasis once you've responded to an event.
So once your requirement has been disrupted, like how long
does it take you to come back? And those are two different
aspects of recovery that are important to consider.

(37:26):
So one is indeed that bucket. I have a limited amount of
resources. How much do I still have and how
much can I still recover? But in your daily lives, when
you're awake, you also should bemindful of the resources that
you're wasting, right? So it's not just about resting,
but also that you don't strain your system during the day,

(37:48):
right? So that you quickly come back
down. And so those two very different
people where sleep plays a really big role is that if you
don't sleep enough, it also makes it harder for you to
recover from stress. But the problem that people have
is not so much what's in their bucket, but it's how are they
handling the things that are in their bucket.

(38:09):
So that soccer mom who's having 10 things to do at the same
time, you might have one that has those things and is
completely overwhelmed and a bucket is drowning, and another
one that's going through the exact same things and feels
excited and joyful and energized, right?
And situation is the same, but how you're coping with those is
very different. And I would like to challenge

(38:32):
people to not run away from things, but rather handle them
differently. What tools can they use though
to handle this? What's person A doing that
Person B isn't doing in those moments to handle stress?
She's recovering, she's able to to navigate the ebbs and full of
the demands that are put in front of her on a daily basis.

(38:57):
Well, the other one is finding everything more difficult.
Everything's more negative, everything's more against her.
I think the biggest thing would we talk about what about is this
locus of control? I don't know if you've ever
heard about. That no.
What's the locus of control? The locus of control is how much
do you think that life happens to you or that you have control

(39:18):
over what happens right and overwhelmed soccer mom probably
has very external locus of control.
All of these things are happening to me, right?
And that can be really overwhelming.
While the soccer mom who feels more energized, she feels more
in control over the things that are happening.
And that's I think the the biggest difference.

(39:40):
And of course it's not that you shouldn't drop things when there
are too many things, but it's about knowing when to drop and
what to drop, not running away. Yeah.
That connects really, really well to the victim approach that
we spoke about earlier on when we started like the victim
mindset. I think that's our protective
mode, right? That's like the warrior kind of
coming out and being like, no, no, no, no.

(40:01):
Why did this happen to me as opposed to like, what do I learn
from that situation? Which is just a very like
interesting reframe, which is why I find the conversation and
mindset so, so important around stress.
And we haven't really dulled down on that.
Like what has your research found and you personally found

(40:22):
on on the mindset piece in relation to stress?
Yeah, mindset is, is the most important actually.
But what we see is that if it takes your body a lot of time to
recover, you magnify the effect that it has on on your health,
right. And prior to that, we see that

(40:44):
your mindset really predict how long it takes you to recover,
right? So if you experience things as
very negative, it will take you much longer to recover.
You will extend the life of the stressor tremendously and that
in turn will hold your system much more and have much more
detrimental effect on your health.

(41:05):
It takes me to a really interesting thought where just
in time interventions, yeah, people might not have heard of
that. Can you explain what just in
time interventions are? Because I feel like this can be
very much connected to 1's mindset when they connect to how
they're feeling. This is the control piece that

(41:26):
would the autonomy, basically. And then the Just in Time
interventions feel like they play quite a key role here.
Where interventions happen is indaily life, right is as you
experience things repeatedly, you need to intervene and build
up that resilience muscle. And just in time, adaptive
interventions have come in because we have more access to,

(41:49):
to wearables and passive monitoring.
So we're much more able to effectively identify when are
good moments to intervene. And where we see really the
field going. And which I find incredibly
exciting is that we'd be able tofind what are the moment to
intervene for you and what are the right interventions for you.
So being able to recognize, OK, this is a moment where this

(42:09):
person is experiencing quite a bit of stress and what do they
need to do in this specific moment that's appropriate.
And sometimes the tools are different.
Sometimes you need to reframe a thought, or sometime you need to
do something that's a bit more physiological.
It depends. But being able to adapt to the

(42:30):
situation and find the right intervention for the right
moment, for the right person, that's where we really want to
go. Gosh, I think the word
adaptability is so critical to stress.
Just thinking about like psychological flexibility, how
one can adapt to situations, pivot, all those moments are so

(42:50):
integral. Because actually if I think
about stress, I I normally thinkabout it, it's quite rigid.
So you just mentioned there about wearables, which feels,
you know, connected to this justin time.
How can we understand our stressin connection to wearables?
So like we spoke about earlier, people are a bit out of touch

(43:12):
with how they feel, so wearablescan really help shed a bit of
light. I really see wearables as a tool
to help you tune in, basically, because it's really hard to know
where to start, right? If you feel disconnected from
your body, where do you go to start reconnecting?
So helping to see what's happening and helping you

(43:32):
interpret and navigate it, it can be really powerful.
Yeah. Well, I think about wearables.
I've had like an interesting journey with them that we all
want to feel better, right? And we want to live better and
we want to have more happier content lives overall.
But when wearables came out, I struggled with them because I

(43:53):
would then obsess over them. And if I had a black bad sleep
score, it would make me feel terrible.
And sometimes I would sleep really well.
I thought I'd set really well. So when the mindset's really
interesting and I'd look at my wearable and go, oh, but I
haven't and then I'd be more tired.
And so I had this love hate relationship.
And then I spoke to Brian Johnson, who I'm sure many

(44:16):
people away, he's been on the show.
So has his son Talmud, and so has his Co founder and CMO Kate.
And they're all obsessive about wearables and analysing every
inch of their data. So if there's like an extreme
person to connect to in this area, it's them.
And they always say, well, it's really important to know where
your data is. And I agree with that.
I do think, you know, getting a blood test like once a year,

(44:40):
seeing where your minerals are and things like that, having a
baseline. But you can tip into
obsessiveness. And I find it interesting that
that can also shape your health if you're constantly.
So how do we How can we have a compassionate, caring, relatable

(45:00):
relationship with wearables? What's that landscape look like?
Yes, that's a question. I mean, I'd like to go back a
little bit what you said about your sleep score, because it's
such an important thing in that a lot of the research has
actually shown that how you feelyour sleep is actually more
meaningful for your health than what your objective data says.

(45:22):
So it's actually very troubling that you're seeing a negative
score changes how you're perceived at sleep and then
we'll have a negative impact on your health.
And actually we see that changing the score by just about
5% has a direct impact on your mood, which is really quite,
quite important. So we really don't take that

(45:43):
lightly at all. And like we've spoken quite a
bit at length, your mindset willreally shape how your body
responds to things and will really then shape the outcome,
the impact that it has on your on your health.
So we need to be quite cautious about what variables are are
telling you. And I think there are ways that

(46:05):
you can have a wearable without making it obsessive, without
making it addictive, without it disempowering you from yourself
actually. Because I think what a lot of
wearables are doing right now isactually distancing you further
from your body, right? Because it's almost you become
over reliant on what it's sayingand you stop actually paying
attention to what you feel. So that's, that's more harmful

(46:27):
than it is useful. Ways in which you can mitigate
that is by well, there's severalways, but one I think is
important is to stop focusing somuch on the now actually.
So, so I think what's really fantastic about wearables is
that they allow for this long term passive muttering.

(46:52):
And actually what you want is this long term tracking.
It's not so much about what is happening right now, but it's
about how you are doing over time.
It's a lot more about trends than it is about daily scores,
right? What you want to know is are you
going through a period in your life in your life that requires
more attention or are you going to appear in your life where

(47:15):
everything's fine? So that's the first thing we
really want people to zoom out and not worry so much about
these day-to-day fluctuations. As in a bad sleep won't wreck
your day and it won't wreck yourlife.
It's, it's normal, no worries about it.
And actually it's very healthy that you go through these ebbs
and flows, right? If you were always feeling

(47:35):
fantastic, then you're fantasticwould be your normal and you
would need something else to feel better actually.
So be comfortable with these ebbs and flows.
When it becomes problematic is if you are in this chronic state
and that's why you need to zoom in a little bit more.
So that's the first thing. The second thing is scores are
actually quite problematic. And I look at scores a little

(47:58):
bit like T-shirt sizing. It's a bit, I guess, and it's
very manipulative. So I don't know that you know,
but in, in, in Europe, for instance, we added like XXS
instead to kind of give people this perception that they have
smaller sizes than they actuallyare, right?
So T-shirt sizing can be very manipulative, right?

(48:18):
It's also trying to say something scores are a little
bit like that as well. And we need to be cautious about
it because while it may seem that it is an easy way for you
to interpret your data and to get to understanding what the
body is saying, it's actually a barrier between you and what
your body is saying, right? Because there's a whole layer

(48:41):
that's kind of masking what's really happening.
And that layer, a lot of things can go into it.
So it's not a very straightforward thing, right?
The score is very arbitrary value, right?
And you don't really know what goes into it.
It's a series of things that youdon't know how much each of them
weighs. So instead of doing that, we

(49:01):
want to empower you. And the way that you do that is
by giving the data as is actually.
So while a sleep score of 90 seems fantastic, you knowing
that you slept 7 1/2 hours and that's the amount of time that
you feel good is also very meaningful.
Or that you didn't wake up a single time tonight as opposed

(49:23):
to previous nights where you woke up four or five times.
You know those things. Data that is contextualized is
much more empowering, right? What you want is people to see
their heart rate and understand their heart rate. 82 beats per
minute. My average is normally 74.

(49:44):
I'm a little bit high, maybe I'ma little bit stressed.
What can I do? So really recognize what the
body is saying for what it is rather than over interpreted it.
I think what's the most powerfulthing of that, which was really
interesting when I spoke to Doctor Andy Galpin on here,
who's been on recently. He's the human performance
expert because he was saying like every wearable is

(50:05):
different. Like you're not really sure if
that technology and how it's going to be used.
And so you're going to be getting lots of different
mismatched scores. The most important thing is the
long term data, like understanding like over the
week, how has that looked? Over the months, how has that
looked? And I, I think a lot about that
in relation to weight gain and weight loss and your weight
stability. If you're constantly weighing

(50:26):
yourself every day, you're goingto have water retention, you
might be dehydrated, menstrual fluctuations, All of these
things are going to make your weight fluctuate up and down.
Like you never say the same way every single day.
Yeah, If you're giving yourself a mean average and you're
looking this over like the month, the next month, the three
months, like is your weight stable?

(50:48):
That's a really good indicator of health.
And I think this is how we should be tracking with our
wearables. A lot of people post like 100%
sleep score last night. Brilliant.
But like, how was it looking at the three months feels like the
more compassionate way and also,I guess like the more reliable
data because if you're also HRV,which is your heart rate

(51:11):
variability, which we did speak a lot to Andy Galpin, I'd say go
and listen to that episode. You want to know more about it.
He was like, if your HRV is going up and down so erratically
constantly, then that's actuallyan indicator that something's
going on, you know, rather than it just being, maybe you are
naturally more on the low side, but are you stable?
Exactly, and I think a lot of. Data isn't always translated in

(51:36):
that way, so it confuses, and then the irony is it stresses
out the user where all of a sudden people are worried
because something's plummeted, which weirdly adds more stress.
Yeah, yeah, Beautifully described it.
So you know, we're talking aboutthis and you're saying the word
we, which is definitely that I'mnot involved in this research,

(51:57):
but I came across and people have probably been, if you've
been watching this on YouTube oryou've been following me on
Instagram or wherever there's a picture or a video of me in the
last six months, I've been wearing something really
interesting on my wrist, which, you know, it's different to most
of the wearables that you guys are making, but it's a very
special one and it's one that has no face to it.

(52:20):
So everyone always, the amount times I've been stopped with
this thing on my wrist is unbelievable.
Like I can't say when I was first handed this from one of
your founders, Tim, when we met Ted in Vancouver, we
automatically connected very deeply because I am doing a lot

(52:40):
of my work and all of my this is1 of this in self compassion.
And that's kind of, for me like the biggest pillar of health.
It's like once you have that, the next step becomes a little
bit easier in your health decisions.
It's more about the mindset, which is why I connect so much
to this and understanding how the body reacts to our thoughts
and our feelings and everything and our perception and

(53:01):
interpretation of the world and ourselves.
And obviously this is everythingthat Tim and you guys have been
building at the company No Watch, which is compassionate
tech. And I was really angry because I
was like, there was going to be something I was going to build.
It was going to be this. And so we had this like really
interesting conversation and I was obviously insanely curious
about what you guys were building.

(53:24):
You know, it's, it's really interesting that being in this
like health world that I've beenin for so long, compassion has
been so overlooked. And I think it's so important
for health. So hearing compassionate tech
obviously for me, I really wanted to know more.
And so I've got to know you guysa lot over the last six months
and it's been a massive part of my life.
And I've never, ever taken this off in six months, which has

(53:46):
been really interesting also just because, not just for
health, just because I love how it looks.
And so I think everyone's been writing to me going, what is
that on your wrist? Because I mean, it's such an
amazing piece and it's really cool.
This one I love more because also it's special.
It's got a precious stone that connects the mind and the body
and all of that stuff, which I won't go into, but I find it

(54:06):
really interesting because it's definitely allowed me to have a
better relationship with wearables in that sense where it
is giving me data over the longer period.
And it's not telling me every single day if I've been good or
bad with my sleep or good and bad with my stress levels.
It's actually trying to allow meto be more connected to my mind,

(54:27):
my body. And there's like somatic
experiences just say like people, because I think this is
such a new area of health. You know, I know this from when
I speak to people around the word compassion and, you know,
understanding their bodies, you do feel people connect to it
more. And we're starting to come into
that realm of that, like, talk to me a little bit about just

(54:50):
the understanding of No Watch and the concept for people to
really get what this means. Yeah, we really want to redefine
your relationship with technology, which we find that
is really obtrusive and unhealthy.
But I think what's really interesting is you give like
mean averages as well, like you do like long, you do the long
term understanding you do don't always look at your phone and

(55:14):
get the instant reactions and hits and dopamine hits that
other wearables get, which I think that's for me, the
connection to this that I felt calmer with because I have to, I
do have to have barriers and boundaries put in for me because
I will find ways of getting through them.
I will find hacks and be like, no, I really want to know what

(55:34):
that is. And what I like about this is
that I kind of can't do that. It gives me that barrier to
entry. It creates the friction for me.
So I don't get obsessive about my health.
And I think that's the thing that is really healthy because I
can still have, you know, and itit buzzes, it tells me, it
alerts me when I'm stressed. You know, all of these things is

(55:54):
really interesting. I mean, it's, it's helpful
seeing a wearable saying, Oh, you've been really stressed
today or your HRV is 10 and you're like, OK, that's not
helped me at the end of the day.Whereas, you know, what I love
about this is it, it gives me a,a mental check in to like
breathe and stop. And, and that's really helpful
because I think, you know, I canwork a lot on my own sometimes

(56:17):
or in isolation. And actually it's like a friend
just being like, Hey, you're a little bit stressed right now.
And that's what this wearable does, which is different to to
any other wearable. And the most exciting thing for
me is that you're about to kind of explore more into the woman's
health and connect more to the menstrual cycles.
That's like the 2.0 addition that's coming very soon, which

(56:38):
I'm very excited about because for me, that shapes so much
about how I feel with my stress levels and of course, PMS and
hormonal changes. And when I know where I am in my
cycle, it gives me that control back because I have the autonomy
to go, ah, exactly. That's why I feel stressed.
Something's happening in my bodyhormonally.

(56:58):
OK, I now know I need to do these things to help restore my
recovery and I need it more thanusual.
So I think that's really like, you know, how you can grasp.
For me anyway, that's been my relationship change with
wearables because I do find thatmindset of perceptions so
interesting about stress. And I don't think we talk about
it enough. And I think we're always trying

(57:21):
to define and box things. But actually the perception and
understanding and. And to be fair, Doctor Lisa
Feldman Barrett's conversation with me over a year ago really
changed my understanding with this.
It's such a interesting way thatwe do have more autonomy than we
realize when it comes to stress.Yeah.

(57:42):
So thinking for anyone who wantsto take, you know, an action
towards having a healthier stress response to having more
autonomy, you know, with all of your research, maybe data that
you're getting, what advice would you give to to that person
listening? Hers is you can do something
about it. That's the thing.

(58:03):
You have agency over this and that's what I want people to
really recognise as stress is not happening to you.
Yeah. That's true.
Stress is not happening to you. Yeah.
This perception, the mind body conversation that we're talking
about is that things are marketed to us to make us feel
that we're like losing control and that we've got to get these

(58:23):
things to get us back in control.
But actually the whole entirety of this conversation has been
based on like the controls within us.
Yeah, there's not these externalthings that are going to make us
feel less stressed because it's such a marketable strategy.
Yeah, yeah, that's what they want you to.
Believe, I know, I know this figures itself, YouTube
algorithms, but they're like just just scare the shit out of

(58:43):
them and then you'll get them in.
And actually we kind of want to be giving hope.
And that is actually what's sadly not sadly excitingly
within us. But sadly you can't market that.
So I think like that's somethingthat I'm leaving this
conversation with is that there's so much about having

(59:07):
that autonomy, which is so powerful.
I do think, you know, we talk about wisdom and I think that's
one of the most like wisest things.
Maybe if we teach people in their 90s that hopefully they
would tell us that it all kind of resides within you.
So Joanna, thank you for coming on.
We have an amazing discount of 15% off to anyone that wants to
try it with LWBW code. I have to put that in there

(59:31):
because you know it's only goingto be for a limited time.
I am obsessed with my no watch. Like generally it also goes with
all my outfits. So thank you for making it
fashionable. But I always ask my last
question to all of my guests, which is Joanna, what does Live
Well be well mean to you? Yeah, I think it just means
being being comfortable with TheWho you are and where you're at.

(59:53):
Yeah. Presence.
Yeah. Amazing.
Great. Then it's a great word to some.
Yeah. Thank you, thank you.
Thanks. I hear this hasn't been too
stressful for you. No, my hope it hasn't been for
you.

All Episodes

Stress Researcher: What Person A Does That Person B Doesn’t (Avoid Burnout) | Joana De Calheiros Velozo

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

Betrayal: Weekly

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Stress Researcher: What Person A Does That Person B Doesn’t (Avoid Burnout) | Joana De Calheiros Velozo