July 2, 2024 • 54 mins
Step into the enlightening world of stress management and resilience with this powerful episode of The Pain Game Podcast. Lyndsay is joined by the esteemed Dr. Stephen Sideroff, an internationally recognized psychologist and expert in resilience, longevity, and optimal performance. Together, they delve into the intricate ways stress affects our health, the importance of resilience, and practical steps to master stress and enhance vitality.
Dr. Sideroff shares his extensive knowledge on how stress throws our bodies out of balance, the significance of a healthy relationship with oneself, and the transformative power of acceptance. They explore the concept of emotional balance, the impact of childhood trauma on adult stress responses, and the importance of creating "islands of safety" in our daily lives.
This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone looking to navigate the complexities of stress and resilience, offering actionable insights and a proven path to a healthier, more balanced life.
Find Dr. Stephen Sideroff Here:
Website: DrStephenSideroff.com
Instagram: @drstephensideroff
Facebook: Stephen Sideroff
LinkedIn: Dr. Stephen Sideroff
YouTube: Dr. Stephen Sideroff
Episode Highlights:
(00:00) This podcast focuses on living with chronic pain and trauma, getting to the heart of healing
(02:10) Introduction to Dr. Steven Sideroff and his expertise in resilience and stress management
(10:30) The immediate impact of stress on chronic pain
(15:45) Why stress magnifies pain and its dangers to health
(20:20) The concept of resilience and its importance
(25:50) The nine pillars of resilience and their significance
(30:15) The role of acceptance in managing stress
(35:00) Developing a healthy relationship with oneself
(40:10) Emotional balance and mastery
(45:20) The impact of childhood trauma on adult stress responses
(50:30) Creating "islands of safety" in daily life
(55:00) The importance of positive self-talk and internal voice
(01:00:00) Final thoughts and words of encouragement for listeners
Dr. Sideroff shares his extensive knowledge on how stress throws our bodies out of balance, the significance of a healthy relationship with oneself, and the transformative power of acceptance. They explore the concept of emotional balance, the impact of childhood trauma on adult stress responses, and the importance of creating "islands of safety" in our daily lives.
This episode is a treasure trove of wisdom for anyone looking to navigate the complexities of stress and resilience, offering actionable insights and a proven path to a healthier, more balanced life.
Find Dr. Stephen Sideroff Here:
Website: DrStephenSideroff.com
Instagram: @drstephensideroff
Facebook: Stephen Sideroff
LinkedIn: Dr. Stephen Sideroff
YouTube: Dr. Stephen Sideroff
Episode Highlights:
(00:00) This podcast focuses on living with chronic pain and trauma, getting to the heart of healing
(02:10) Introduction to Dr. Steven Sideroff and his expertise in resilience and stress management
(10:30) The immediate impact of stress on chronic pain
(15:45) Why stress magnifies pain and its dangers to health
(20:20) The concept of resilience and its importance
(25:50) The nine pillars of resilience and their significance
(30:15) The role of acceptance in managing stress
(35:00) Developing a healthy relationship with oneself
(40:10) Emotional balance and mastery
(45:20) The impact of childhood trauma on adult stress responses
(50:30) Creating "islands of safety" in daily life
(55:00) The importance of positive self-talk and internal voice
(01:00:00) Final thoughts and words of encouragement for listeners
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
This is Your Pain Game podcast wherewe talk about the game of living in
and with chronic pain and trauma getinto the heart of how to heal.
I am your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show, I plan on
discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, holistic practitioners, loved ones, and
anybody that is interested in having theirvoice heard in the chronic pain and trauma
(00:27):
world that we live in. Iam a stress ball. I worry about
things that I shouldn't worry about.I worry about things that I have already
happened to me but I've absolutely nocontrol over. I worry about the next
(00:50):
ten seconds of this conversation. Iworry about what's going to be happening in
ten years from now. I havealways been like that has that stemmed from
childhood trauma. Probably is just howI'm wired. Probably, but we're going
to find out today a little bitmore as to why we are wired for
stress so much and how bad itis for our health. And I am
legitimately under chronic stress and I havebeen for most of my life. You
(01:14):
know, I'm riddled with traum anxiety, sprinkle with a sprinkle out with a
little depression and top that off withsome addictions. No wonder I'm sick and
that I live in pain, Andas I mentioned, I worry like nobody's
business. But we're here today toheal. We're always here to heal on
this show and to find solutions.We can talk and talk and talk,
but if we don't have some steps, some tips, some solutions for ways
(01:38):
that we can better handle our stress, then I'm doing a disservice and I
might as well just quit doing myjob here. So today we're going to
talk a little bit about why stressaffects our health, our well being,
our relationships, my gosh, therelationships with especially in my world. I
know that stress is a big,mega part of our relationship. We're working
on that with my sweetie. Howit affects our jobs and more of course,
(02:02):
and we're here to provide a provenpath to overcome stresses, mental,
physical, emotional, all of itto help us achieve that happiness that we
all strive and thrive for. So, without further ado, I would like
to introduce you to my amazingly darlingguest today, doctor Steven Sitterov. Hello,
(02:22):
darling, Hi there, good tobe with you, Good to be
with you too, so oh mygosh, his accolades, they go on,
So everybody take a deep breath.He is an internationally recognized psychologist,
executive, and medical consultant, andexpert and resilience, longevity, optimal performance.
I don't even know what optimal performanceis for me in my life,
(02:43):
but we're going to find out addiction, neurofeedback, and mental health. He
is an associate professor in the Departmentsof Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Rheumatology at
UCLA's Deathen School of Medicine here inLos Angeles. He was the founder and
formal clinical director of the Stress StrategiesProgram, also at UCLA and Santa Monica
(03:04):
Hospital, and former clinical director ofMoonview Treatment and Optimal Performance Center. He
has helped establish innovative training and treatmentapproaches in optimal functioning, mind, body,
medicine, mind and body. It'snot just our bods, guys in
the US, China, and europeAn it's hosted summits and longevity, resilience
and leadership. I'm exhausted, andnot to mention his new book, which
(03:30):
is amazing, The Nine Pillars ofResilience, the proven path to master stress,
slow aging, and increase vitality.So within about forty five minutes today,
we're going to get out of ourstress and we're going to be good
to go. Right, We're goingto find the path. There we go
the path. All you have todo is step on to the path,
(03:53):
because if you understand taking a fewsteps, then the path is alongside you
every day. And so if youtake a few steps onto the path every
day, you can achieve success everyday and ultimately you will begin to notice
feeling better. Yeah. And Ithink one of the things that I find
(04:15):
so interesting about stress and my body. And I'm going to speak for myself
because I really can only speak formyself here, but when something stressful happens
in my life, it is almostimmediate that my pain that I have,
my chronic pain with CRPS and LMEdisease and all the other coinfections with that,
my pain magnifies almost in an instant, and it's nuts. In fact,
(04:39):
last night I had a situation thathappened with an old friend of mine
raised my stress level like crazy.There was a reason why I do not
have her in my life anymore.She came in in a whim and my
stress level went up, my painlevel went up, and my sleep went
down. And it happened in aninstant. Why does that happen? Why
does stress magnify pain so and whyis it so dangerous to our health?
(05:02):
Those are very good questions, andthat's because when you engage in stress,
you throw your body out of balance. When you engage in stress, you're
putting more demands on all of theaspects of your body, and if you
are already experiencing symptoms, it magnifiesthe impact of those symptoms. But the
(05:30):
other way that it has that stresshas an impact is it takes your body
away from its ability to heal,So it doesn't only magnify the symptoms.
But you know, we have achoice. We have limited personal energy,
and the brain and body are alwaysmaking choices. Do I send this energy
(05:53):
into my kidneys to purify my bloodor do I send it into my muscle
to protect because there's danger and sothe more we go into the fight or
flight response, the more we gointo the stress response, the more we
take energy away from the healing processthat serves us so well if we give
(06:16):
it a chance. Well, whenyou're talking about within your your path that
you that you mentioned, you talkabout it in your book, these nine
pillars of resilience. I know,resilience sounds like, oh my gosh,
about to climb this mountain and I'vegot it. You know, you think
you think about these you know,these athletes, the endurance athletes, like
it's almost daunting when you think abouthaving to be resilient, you know,
(06:41):
and that to me is almost stressful. So how can we take stress out
of resilience? And can we talka little bit about this path of yours
and these nine pillars, because that'sthe big scoop that we've got going on
here today with you. So,as I just said, we do feel
a sense of overwhelm simply thinking aboutall that needs to be done to become
resilient. And as my book laysout, there are nine pillars to optimal
(07:08):
functioning that I've identified. But youdon't have to do it all at once.
You don't have to feel like,oh I have so much I have
to do. This is how weget ourselves stuck. First, is very
important for all of us to startfrom a place of acceptance, and which
is difficult to begin with. Howcan I accept that I have chronic pain.
(07:31):
How can I accept that I haveanxiety? There? These are things
that are difficult to accept, andthat's the first place we get ourselves stuck,
right A fear for starters, fearbased on I like to say that
we're on this journey through life,and at any time we're someplace along this
(07:55):
journey, like we're right here rightnow. But most of us come along
and say, well, I shouldbe here. It's not okay where I'm
at. It's not good enough.I should be here. Why did I
make that mistake? I shouldn't havemade that mistake. I should know better.
I should All these shoulds that welay on us create additional stress.
(08:16):
But they old to do also dosomething very insidious. They are undermining.
If I'm here and I keep tellingmyself I should be further along, I'm
saying this is something wrong with me. Is I'm not okay? And that
gets in our way of growth.And so the first step for everybody is
(08:39):
to be accepting of where you're at. Doesn't mean you like it, it's
just an acceptance of reality. Here'swhere I'm at. I can't find my
keys because I'm so distracted by otherstuff that I don't really, I don't
notice when I put them down.That's why I can't find my keys.
(09:00):
Okay, that's where I'm at rightnow, here's my starting point. And
now let me learn and grow,but all the while accepting myself instead of
being hard on myself. And that, by the way, ties into my
first pillar of resilience, which isour relationship with ourselves. Some of our
(09:22):
stress is created because we can behard on ourselves. We could be critical
of ourselves, judgmental. And sowe start off by wanting to create establish
a healthy relationship with ourselves, meaningthat we cultivate an internal voice that's loving,
(09:46):
accepting, compassionate, supportive, andcaring. Okay, and now,
people in your audience, that's thefirst step. How do you talk to
yourself? Notice if you're overly critical, judgmental, what happens when you make
a mistake? Do you beat yourselfup for it? You get angry with
(10:07):
yourself? Or what I'm suggesting iswe switch into a voice that's loving,
accepting, and compassionate. Because themore we talk to ourselves from that loving
place, the better we handle thestresses in our lives. So there's are
a couple of approaches that are soimportant for people to begin with. That
(10:30):
is a huge component from where Iwas a couple of years ago to where
I am today, that little voiceinside me that I've always been an overachiever.
I come from an overachieving family.Both of my dads, both of
my moms, my spouse, allof us all overachievers, very successful,
very educated. I mean we justcome from now, we're both from la
so there's a lot of that too. We're keeping up with the Joneses,
(10:54):
where you know, we all haveto look perfect from Instagram. I mean,
we've got all of these things thatare going on around us. We've
got kids and grandkids and nices andnephews, and it's like, oh my
gosh. I had to find aplace of acceptance within me, acceptance of
my diagnosis, acceptance that I spendsome time in a wheelchair where I used
to be a downhill skier and racerand biker and hiker and all of these
(11:16):
things, and right now I can'twalk my dogs. And so coming to
that place of acceptance was a darkand twisty place to get through. But
now that I'm here, I amalready feeling the joy that is coming from
accepting where I am right now,not where I want to be in two
weeks from now, not where Iwas two weeks ago, but right now
(11:37):
in this space with you. Ilove that so much because that's where we
have to start if we can't acceptourselves, and we're not going to go
anywhere right right. But you justdescribed the sort of like the type a
approach to life where it's about dodo, and that does lead to success.
(11:58):
And that's the problem for most ofus because if you think about all
the successes in your life, Iguarantee that all of them have been associated
with stress. Think of all thesuccesses, whether it's getting taking an exam,
speaking in front of a group,having a meeting, et cetera.
(12:22):
All of our successes have been associatedwith stress. So one of my original
mentors, Donald Hebb, one ofthe pioneers in neuroscience, said that neurons
that fire together wire together. Sothat's what's happened in our brains. We
have wired together success with stress,and so there's an unconscious drive in all
(12:48):
of us, unconscious drive in allof us for stressful experiences because in our
history, in our lives, they'vebeen associated with success and So my seventh
pillar of resilience's presence. If youwant to make any changes in your life
and your behavior, with one requirement, you have to be present to notice
(13:13):
that you're following the old pattern,the old path of striving for stress in
your life, looking for stress inyour life. So it's about being present
to notice and going hold on,I don't have to be stressed all the
time. I can relax, Ican take a break and that's okay.
And then we support that with strengtheningthat positive, loving voice that I encourage
(13:41):
in my book people to develop thathealthy internal parent And how do we do
that? Because I mean, we'veall been raised differently in our lives,
so we've been parented different, ourchildhoods have all been different. How how
do we how do we find that? M Yeah, it's it's different for
different people. And I go intomany different strategies in my book for how
(14:05):
to do that. But for example, sometimes I'll be talking with a parent
who's very could be very hard onthemselves, and I say to them,
do you do that with your child? No? No, no, I'm
much more accepting of my child andloving of my child. And then I
(14:26):
say, if your child makes amistake. How do you deal with that
mistake? I say, well,I let them know that first, that
I still love them even though theymade the mistake. And I say that
this is the way we learn frommistakes. And then I say, is
that how you talk to yourself?And I say no, And I say,
(14:46):
why should you treat yourself any differentthan you treat your child who you
love so much? And they'll go, I don't know, but that's but
that's one of the that's one ofthe pathways to starting to talk well to
yourself is by noticing how you're capableof doing it with your child, with
(15:13):
your partner, or with somebody else. And if you can do it with
them, you could do it withyourself. And it shows you that you
know how to do it. That'strue because you know our self talk.
I mean, I have those thosemoments, especially with my with my diagnosis
and my body have gone through somany changes with my bod and I just
like, I hate my body.I hate the way I look. Eh,
(15:35):
it's just that such negative. Andthen the other day I caught myself
doing it, and my Sweedie andI were sitting and I was like,
I need to say I love youbody. You are wonderful, you are
beautiful, like all the woo wooon the planet. To try to kind
of like slip out of that thatnegative narrative that we have because my body
has changed. I'm upset with itsome days, you know, I'm upset
(15:58):
with God or source or whoever itis, the spirit of the world,
whatever, whoever, what your beliefsare. And you know that anger and
that vulnerability and that you know,all of that like why me, why
me? Stuff? I have toI've had to curb that enthusiasm for lack
of a better term, and youknow, because I've been enthusiastically frustrated with
(16:21):
my body and with that and allthe stress that it is caused, not
just myself, but also the relationshipsthat are within my world too, because
my sweetie and my parents and myfriends and stuff. They take a little
bit of a beating too when itcomes to having to deal with me living
and pain. You know, Imean, I handle it like a badass
most of the days, but thereare times where there's no chance, like
(16:44):
I can't walk well. You know, in my book, I talk about
I frame the problem from talking abouttwo important mismatches that we all deal with.
So the first mismatch is the environmentin which we evolved our stress response,
(17:07):
which is the hunter gatherer environment,with our current environment, which is
very, very different. So westill have the fight or flight response to
danger and stress that our hunter gatherersdid, but yet our environment is totally
different. How many of the stressesin your life in your day can you
(17:30):
effectively deal with by either fighting themor running from them? None? But
that's what our bodies do every timewe experience a threat or danger. So
that's the first mismatch. We overactivatethe body, We use up more resources
than we need to in mobilizing forthe stresses of our lives. But the
(17:52):
second one is much more insidious,and that has to do with a developmental
mismatch. Learned to use our responsein our childhood environment. How we learn
to deal with the world is basedon the lessons of our childhood. We
adapted to the small little world ofour primary family, and so if we
(18:17):
had, for example, a parentthat was anxious as an example, the
unspoken message to us is the worldis dangerous. If we see a parent
who's anxious, that's telling us there'sdanger. And so we grow up believing
that the world is dangerous. Thisis just one example of the lesson how
the lessons of childhood set us upas adults. So now we start our
(18:42):
day on guard. Where's the dangergoing to come from? Okay? And
so we mobilize our stress response beforethere is even any stress in our day.
And this touches into my fifth pillarof resilience, which is mental balance
and mastery. So how do youstart your day? Do you start your
(19:07):
day looking for what can go wrong, looking for the danger again mobilizing your
stress response. Where do you startyour day looking for what can go right,
expecting good things to happen. Apositive mindset helps us better deal with
stress. A growth mindset helps usin our lives because it says that if
(19:33):
we experience some shortcoming in ourselves,with a growth mindset, we look at
it and say, okay, howcan I develop myself so I no longer
have the shortcoming. So a growthmindset tells us engage with learning the learning
process so that I keep getting betterand better, and I will handle these
(19:55):
stresses in my life better and better. And that's a choice. I mean,
every morning we have a choice tolive our life a certain way,
and you know, like I haveto wake up every morning and go,
okay, I had to name mylegs. People that listen to the show,
they know Thelm and Louise, SoTHEMB and Louise and I have to
make a choice together. We sit, we lay in bed before I can
(20:18):
even put weight on my feet onthe floor, and we have like a
chit chat with each other. Ihad to humanize them because I felt very
detached from my body. It's it'slike almost like I have phantom whim even
though they're here, and so Ihad my acupuncturists. Actually is like it
humanize them, make them a partof you have a relationship with your legs.
I'm like, this is ridiculous.It is the best advice that I've
(20:41):
ever been given. Quite frankly,I swear, because in the morning,
I have a chit chat with themand we make a choice. We know
it's gonna hurt a little bit today. We know that the weight of your
body on your feet is going tohurt. You might not be able to
walk all day. You might haveto roll around in your chair and make
these choices so that the things thatpop into my day throughout are less stressful
that I handle them as they comein a much better healthy way than immediately
(21:07):
going after and trying to fight it. Because I know my personality type.
I mean, obviously everybody knows I'ma lunatic. I'm wild and crazy.
So that part of me is stillthere, driving this body that doesn't support
it quite as well as it didbefore, and that stresses me out.
So that anxiety of the thought ofme not necessarily being able to ski again,
(21:30):
or run again, or do longterm yoga again, that scares the
crap out of me. But Ishifted my mindset to believe in myself and
accept myself more and have a muchbetter narrative. So can I give you
some feedback? Yes? Please,that's why you're here. I love all
right. So a lot of timeswe use words to describe ourselves that are
(21:52):
not positive. Self deprecation number onething I do right, And so it's
important to catch yourself when you dothis, such as a moment ago you
use the word lunatic. Okay,so you want like a wild child?
You know, even though we maybe saying it in jest or kidding around,
(22:17):
those words go in unconsciously, andso it's very important to notice any
negative self talk, any ways thatyou refer to yourself, any words that
you use that are as you justsaid, self deprecating, because they do
go in and they land somewhere andthey don't serve us. So we want
(22:40):
to catch ourselves and how we talkto ourselves as well as about ourselves.
And literally, when I said theword lunatic, I knew you were going
to come back and get me bythe way I said it, And as
I was coming out of my mouth, I knew I was going to get
a little bit of a little snackon the rest. Yeah, hold on
one more second, not a smackon the wrist. I'm giving you loving
(23:06):
feedback. He's giving me loving feedbackbecause I care about you. There's no
judgment in it. It's just something, you know. When I do biofeedback,
biofeedback's a way of monitoring some aspectof my physiology that I feedback to
myself, so I could literally learnto get my physiology under my control.
(23:27):
And so if my tension goes down, I get feedback letting me know my
tension has gone down, which ismy goal, and it encourages my body
to do more of that but ifmy tension goes up, I'll get feedback
saying my tension has gone up.Now my goal is to not get upset
(23:49):
that my tension went up, butto use that as neutral feedback. Okay,
that's information for me. My tensionjust went up. Now that's telling
me what not to do, becauseif it goes up and I go,
oh my god, it went up, it's going to go up more more
good? Right, yeah, Soif I give you feedback or the goal
(24:12):
is for it to simply be informationthat you then use, not a judgment,
not something negative. And we talkeda little bit about childhood, right
and where we get a lot ofthese lessons. And I've got my nieces
five years old, and my familyis in the middle of a little bit
of something with their living situation,and this poor little girl is running around.
(24:34):
She doesn't have a home to livein. They're in an airbnb.
They're basically displaced. And I'm watchingthis little girl and I'm seeing developmental things
happening like every moment with this littlegirl. And I immediately thought about her
when you were talking, how she'sforming her views of the world, how
(24:55):
she's fearful at five years old,of being homeless and how that's going to
affect her down the road, andwhat place I can play, what role
I can play to help her notbe afraid of the world. Because I
was a pretty scared little girl.That was the childhood trauma stuff that happened
fairly early on in my in myyears, so I always was. I
was always very, very scared,and that those safety issues have followed me
(25:19):
into adulthood because of childhood trauma.And it was adulthood trauma as well,
But the childhood stuff is what reallyhas stuck with me, and it formed
my opinions of myself. It formedmy opinions of the world around me.
I didn't trust very many people,or I was overly trusting because I wanted
to be loved. I wanted tofeel safe. I wanted to feel secure.
(25:41):
I want, you know, Iwanted So a lot of that is
in, you know, in thepromiscuity and in drinking and drugs and all
of that, because we're trying tofind something that makes you feel okay.
And so I went through all thegamut of all of that, and I
am worried for my niece and mynephews right now. I'm worried for all
of the children right now that arefeeling displaced, that are feeling stressed at
such a young age. How canwe help guide ourselves to help kids in
(26:06):
that way and also speak to ourown little child inside to help pull us
out of that. Because those stressresponses, like you said, are just
like they're like innate in me.So first off, you know, I
feel for what you just described alot what you just described, And yeah,
the best thing you can do withthat for that little girl is just
give her love, love, attentionand positive feedback, positive affect. Let
(26:34):
her know that she is loved.That's the best thing you can do for
her. But for ourselves, Ibrought up the notion of our internal voice,
because the lessons of our childhood,they all get distilled into that internal
voice. That internal voice, orI like to refer to it as an
(26:57):
internal parent, because it plays thatrole with us, is the distillation of
all those lessons. And so thoselessons, to a great degree are not
healthy lessons, as we've been saying, but they play this unconscious, ongoing
(27:18):
role. So it's important for allof us to start noticing how we talk
to ourselves. You know, there'sa psychologist at the University of Washington,
John Gottman, who does a lotof work with couples. There's one key
statistic of his that's very relevant here. You found that when couples have a
(27:42):
twenty to one positive to negative interactions, that's a healthy relationship. When that
ratio drops down to about five toone positive to negative, the relationship is
in trouble. So I like totell people that that I work with to
start monitoring their relationship with themselves,how they talk to themselves, and to
(28:07):
notice, am I at twenty toone positive to negative? Am I down
to five to one? Or forfor many of us, am I more
negatively talking to myself than positive?So that's pointing out how you're hurting yourself
on a moment by moment basis becauseof how you talk to yourself. And
(28:32):
that's why as my first pillar ofresilience, I identify the qualities of a
healthy internal voice, a healthy internalparent. So the qualities of a healthy
internal parent is that they come froma place of love, compassion, acceptance,
support, care and joy. We'vegot to have the joy there now
(29:02):
everybody out there. Now you havea guide, Now you have a model.
Could start comparing how you're talking toyourself with the way a healthy internal
voice would talk with you, becauseultimately, you want to find a way
to migrate from over here to overhere, and the way to migrate is
(29:23):
that every time you hear your negativevoice, you say, Okay, wait
a second, how how would myhealthy internal voice talk to me right now
and speak from that place? Andthe more you speak from that place,
the more power you develop over therenow. In my book, I lay
(29:44):
out how to do this, andin fact, to a great extent,
my book is sort of like ahandbook for resilience because you can read five
pages in a day and then justfollow the idea of those five pages that
whole day, and it guides youonto the path. Yeah, because this
isn't a book that you're gonna sitdown and whip or snap through, like
(30:06):
I got it like a week anda half ago or something, and I'm
like, I need to give thisbook care and love and process with it
and work with it, not justtry to read it so I can do
an interview with you, because I'musually fairly good about reading the books of
my guests before they come on.But this is a lot of work for
(30:27):
me in particular. I'm like,like I told you before we saw the
interview to day, I was like, just turning the pages and that there's
more highlighted than is not. I'mlike, maybe I should just highlight the
things I shouldn't be concerned about,things that would be yellow by the end
of this. And it really showedhow quick quickly it showed me how I
(30:48):
have let stress drive almost my entirelife. It almost made me sad for
a minute because I was like,wow, I have missed out on a
lot of things because I'm so controlling. A lot of that is fear based.
I know that, you know I'mOCD. Everything's just so everything's color
coordinating. You know, I wasbored. I didn't sleep since I was
nine, and so I was boredall night, talk about childhood stuff keeping
(31:12):
me up. And now I'm here. And it took me to be forty
six years old to go, Okay, well, you love yourself and I
never have until just recently. Soit's pretty neat. So that takes a
level of stress an anxiety off whenyou start to talk better to yourself.
(31:36):
So you've gone through three of yourpillars and out of order, which I
love about this. So are wegoing to talk about more of them?
Well? I started out by highlightingwhat are the most important, So the
men, we did one, seven, and five right right, So,
and I'll get to another one thatWell, they're really important. They are
(32:00):
all important. I know exactly you. Now. Another pillar that's very important
for us to address is the sixthpillar, which is emotional balance and mastery.
That one sounds very daunting for me. Well, the good news about
all of these is I lay outthe steps to achieving emotional balance and mastery.
(32:25):
And it's based on how you know. When something happens in our lives
and we have an emotional reaction,we are designed to stay on something until
we reach completion, okay, Andso if we have a conflict with somebody,
(32:45):
let's just say, and we're upset, we will carry that upset until
we find a way to get resolution. And for this reason, we carry
a lot of unfinished emotional business,resentments, ups sets, anger, sadness,
and we're not able to hold thosefeelings in just in our minds.
(33:07):
We literally have to hold those feelingsin in our bodies because emotions have energy
to them, right, and sowe have to hold in that energy,
and that is a distraction and ittakes us away from being present and focused.
And so it's very important for usto identify, recognize emotions that we're
(33:30):
carrying and hold the intention to workthrough them, to express the feelings,
express the emotions so we can letthem go. I feel like I've got
a bunch of suitcases sitting at laxright now of emotional unfinished business. Seriously,
(33:52):
Like my example of this girl that'sin my life that caused this enormous
pain boost yes, last night andthis morning, that's baggage that I thought
I had already opened, tookn out, donated to the Salvation Army, like
I thought I was done and Iwas good, and I am not.
(34:13):
And it was cleared just by mybody's an instant response. And so that
shows I have so much more workto do to clear through that. I'm
holding on to it like nobody's business. I mean, it's almost a twenty
year relationship. That's a long timeto be affected by somebody. And I'm
an EmPATH, so I take oneverybody's everything. I know that about myself.
(34:34):
It's a blessing and a curse.And you know it's one of those
things that I find with relationships thatwe do man, we do hold on
to those things, and in yourbook explains how we can help navigate through
that because man holding onto it isn'tgood for anybody. So a couple of
things on what you just said.Anytime that where you know, there's a
(34:58):
lot of pain in the world,and it's very easy to start feeling upset
about the pain in the world.But the first question we have to ask
ourselves because if we are feeling upsetby stuff that's going on out there,
it's using our own and we're usingour own precious energy, our resources,
(35:20):
and we are creating tension in ourbodies. So the first thing we have
to say is is this use ofmy energy having any constructive purpose? Because
if it isn't, then you wantto let go of it. Otherwise,
why keep being upset about something thatyou can't do anything about. Oh well,
people say, well, I'm agood person, I care about that.
(35:44):
I get it, I get it. But you want to care about
what's going on, But then youwant to let go. You don't want
to keep carrying that because it's affectingyou. The other thing is, you
know, I get a lot ofpeople who come to me and they are
still carrying anger and resentment about someof their important relationships A father, a
(36:08):
mother, and I talk about okay, we have to work through those feelings
and let go of them. Andthey'll say to me, but I've been
doing this for years. I've beensitting in therapist's office where I've been yelling
and screaming and getting that anger out. But I tell them there's one key
(36:30):
here, Well, there's two keys. One is that if I'm carrying anger
toward my father because he didn't meetmy needs, who's being hurt by me
carrying this anger? Not my father? I am right now the person who
(36:51):
comes to me and says, butI've expressed my anger and I'm still carrying
it. And I say, areyou still wanting something from this person that
they've shown and demonstrated over the yearsthey're not either willing or able to give
you. And they'll say, yeah, you know, I deserve my father
(37:12):
to love me. I deserve myfather to listen to me. I say,
yes, you do. I honoryou, and I agree with you.
You do deserve that from your father. But if he's not going to
give it to you, you getthe anger out. But now you have
to let go not because you don'tdeserve it, but because holding on to
(37:36):
wanting something from someone who's never goingto give it to you just keeps recycling
younger. But it does more thanthat. As long as I'm focused on
getting it from that person, I'mless available to get it from someone who
might be capable of giving it tome. I'm stuck over here, and
(37:57):
I'm ignoring something over here that mightactually meet my need. So we have
to let go here, as painfulas that might be. We have to
let go here, get the angerout. Let go here. Now I
can approach other people in my lifefrom a healthy place, with the potent,
with the real potential of getting thatneed met. It may not come
(38:21):
from my father, but that loveand attention might be available someplace else,
and that's where I have to look. It's like it's like the person that's
in a dark street with a lamplightand he's looking under the lamp for his
keys, and someone walks along andsays, what are you doing? Said,
I'm looking for my keys. Hesays, well, where did you
(38:42):
drop them? He said, well, I dropped them over there. Why
are you looking over here because here'swhere the light is. We have Well,
yeah, because we're not holding spacefor the right, the right person
and the right because I my mybirth father, I said, I'm done
with his with him not showing up, not being part of my life,
like I was that basically your scenariowhere the dad never showed up. But
(39:07):
I have an incredible stepfather. He'sbeen my dad as far as I'm concerned,
since I was like two and ahalf years old. But there was
still that need to want to havemy dad and my step mom love me
and care for me. And it'snever possible. It was impossible, and
I had to mourn that and Ihad to let go of it. And
(39:28):
I did that seventeen years ago andI haven't looked back. That was one
of the best decisions that I've evermade, and I let space in for
my stepdad to really have the amazingrelationship that I have with him. That's
a very good example of where Idid. Champions, That's beautiful that you
did. It's difficult, and I'msure it was difficult manage not only do
(39:51):
we not want to we want wedon't want to let go of the hope,
but also if we let go ofthe hope. Now we're going to
feel other pain of loss, andso we avoid the pain of loss by
holding on to a hope that willnever be there, and we stay stuck
in that pattern. Let go warnthe loss as you did. That helps
(40:17):
you let go and helps you bemore available to get those needs met someplace
else. So that's great that youwere able to do that. Yeah,
it was. It was my bigsuccess. And you know, just because
that I share blood with this humanbeing doesn't mean that I have to keep
being treated the way I was treatedor not treated at all. You know,
(40:37):
it's more of an absence than itwas. The poor treatment. It
was just like, I don't evenunderstand how you could not want to hang
out with this hot little nugget,Like what is wrong with you? But
I was not part of his plan, so you know, and that's okay.
So the sixth pillar, emotional balanceand mastery, is about not carrying
any regrets in life. If there'ssomething we regret, you need to work
(41:02):
through it to let go of theregret, because regrets hold us back.
In fact, any emotional baggage thatwe don't address only holds us back.
And so that's my sixth pillar.The fourth pillar is physical balance and mastery.
And we talked about earlier how theevolutionary process sets us up because we
(41:27):
have a big stress response, fightor flight, and then we're dealing with
somebody sitting across the table with usin an office, and we have to
hold that energy in. And sothe fourth pillar is physical balance and mastery.
Now, how many stimuli in yourday trigger the stress response? I
(41:50):
don't know. Three hundred and fiftymillion plus the lessons of child could have
us jumping from one stress to another. How many stimuli in your day trigger
the opposite, the recovery response.Very little, if any trigger safety trigger.
(42:12):
I could let down my guard,which is necessary. The two branches
to the nervous system, the activatingsympathetic branch to stress and the recovery parasympathetic
branch that helps restore balance. Andso, because we have very few,
if any, stimuli in our daythat say, oh I'm safe, we
(42:35):
have to create them. We haveto find what I refer to as islands
of safety in our day. Ilove that times where we could say,
like particularly if you sit down tolunch, In particular, when you sit
down to lunch, you want tosay, Okay, for the next half
hour forty five minutes hour, I'msafe. I could let down my guard,
(42:58):
I can relax, I can enjoythis food, I can be present.
I'm on an island of safety.And we want to create more of
these in our day. And Ilike to say, you want to create
some kind of a signal to yourself, a queue that says to you,
hey, check in with myself andmy shoulders elevated. Let go is my
(43:22):
jaw tense relax. So I liketo use doorways portals. Every time I
go through a doorway, I've trainedmyself to recognize, oh, I'm going
through a doorway. Hold on,let me take a moment, let me
let go, because every time Ido that, I'm creating a reset in
(43:42):
my nervous system. Every door youwalk through, most of them? Wow,
do you not have any many manydoors in your home? Certainly if
I'm walking through one and then another, then another, I don't have to
do it with each one hyperventilating atthat point. Or you know, you
(44:02):
stop for a red light, Okay, you're right, yes, Ah,
you know something something you can useas a signal to start balancing out all
the signals of stress and tension tostart creating some signals of calm relax And
there's a lot of these those deepbreaths and all of that. It's just
(44:23):
like when we're about ready to walkinto Thanksgiving with our family, guys,
where we all have to take adeep breath before we go in. But
we do. I mean that evenwith like when you think about you were
talking about like out a red light, the road rage, we're always all
we're always everybody's in such a hurryall of the time. We've got to
get there. You know, everyone'stexting and driving and swerving, and you
know, oh my gosh, ifwe could all just take a deep breath
(44:45):
and be a little bit more calmin places. But I can't control anybody
else and what they're doing. Ican only control my environment, and even
then it's a little iffy. Yes, so you talked about Thanksgiving and being
with family. Yes, ends upto other of my pillars of resilience,
the second one, which is yourrelationship with others, and the seventh,
(45:08):
which is presence. And so it'simportant to notice the quality of our relationships
and our environment to a great extent, determines our health. But we have
choices about that environment, and onechoice are the people who we engage with.
(45:30):
And of course there's some people likefamily members that we may not have
choice, although we may have choicesto spend less time with them. But
you want to be able to discriminatehealthy relationships from toxic relationships. Relationships that
are nurturing, emotionally nurturing in whosepresence you feel I can let down my
(45:55):
guard and whose presence you feel honoredand knowledge and accept it, versus relationships
in which maybe you have to beon guard, maybe you have to watch
what you have to say, whatyou're saying, Maybe you're walking on eggshells,
maybe you're feeling judged. You wantto minimize those times with those relationships
(46:20):
and maximize time and relationships that arehealthy. Now, combining a few of
my pillars, I want to saythat the fourth pillar physical balance and mastery.
It's up to us to practice someform of relaxation, meditation, imagery
(46:42):
that helps us go into that recoverymode. We spend so much time in
stress. We have to find thetime and take the time to literally retrain
our nervous system into a place ofbalance. Okay, the sixth pillar emotional
balance and mastery. When we gointo a positive emotional state of gratitude,
(47:05):
appreciation, we literally affect our physiology. So there's a and this is an
important message and an important lesson howour emotions affect our physiology. So there's
a There's something referred to as heartrate variability, and that has to do
with how the various physiological systems ofour bodies can go into alignment. When
(47:30):
I am in a positive emotional stateand I look at my heart rate variability,
it goes into a positive and positivephysiological state called coherence. Coherence is
when we breathe in, our heartrate goes up, and we breathe out,
our heart rate goes down. Andthis rhythmic heart rate pattern is referred
(47:54):
to as coherence, and it's optimal. In fact, it's one of the
it's one of the important measures thatdoctors look at for health, how well
our heart rate goes into this optimalpattern. Now, if we are in
a negative emotional state of anger,resentment, upset, frustration, and we
(48:16):
look at that heart rate pattern,it is chaotic. Oh it's got to
be now. Now let's bring inpillar number seven presence, Okay, and
presence has two directions. Receiving beingpresent, I see my environment, I
notice I'm paying attention to what's goingon in my world. Right. But
(48:40):
then there's the presence that we projectout into the world, our presence.
Right. And you know that somepeople, you you experience them and you
want to you want to talk withthem, you want you're attracted to them.
And then others you sort of whetherit's conscious or not, you sort
(49:00):
of want to stay away from.Yeah, for sure. Now if you
and I were in the same roomtogether and I monitored your brain waves,
I would pick up my heart ratepattern in your brain waves. WHOA,
I would pick up my heart ratepattern in your brain waves. Okay,
(49:23):
now let's go back to the fifthpillar, the sixth pillar of emotional balance
and mastery, and we and thinkabout if I'm feeling gratitude and my heart
rate pattern is nice and coherent,now we're picking up that in your brain
waves, versus if I'm worried,anxious, fearful, upset. Now we're
(49:46):
going to pick up my chaotic heartrate pattern in your brain waves. How
do you think that affects you andyour relationship with me? Amazing? Huh?
Yeah, that amazing. I didnot know that, and I'm a
smart little cookie. Most days.If you're practicing a relaxation exercise, if
(50:10):
you go into a state of gratitudeand appreciation, you're going to enhance that
positive physiological state that you're working tocreate. I love that. Well,
we're going to be doing a booksigning together in Newport Beach, California,
(50:31):
and our heart and brain weighs aregoing to be all kinds of lovey dovey.
I can't wait. This has beenincredible, and I love the way
that you didn't go one through nineand that you that you brought us through
them. Is there a reason whyyou did that today versus going through one
(50:51):
to two, to three to four? Because I know that there's a strategy
behind it. You know, wehave a limited time together, and so
yeah, did want to be moreorganic. Number two, to be most
relevant to your audience. We're notgoing to put my whole book into this
forty five minutes cannot at long,but I wanted to give important highlights that
(51:15):
and takeaways for your audience to go, Okay, I can pay attention to
that in my life today. SoI wanted to give your audience a bunch
of those takeaways for them, andthen you know, my book is a
handbook for living an optimal life.In fact, Michael Ovitz, the former
(51:37):
president of Walt Disney and founder ofCIA said, quote my quote from him
is it's a brilliant book, andit's a handbook for living your best life.
And I like to think that that'sexactly what it is. It's something
that you can use on an ongoingbasis to end your life and to live
(52:00):
a better life. Everybody's got toget this book into their hands. The
Nine Pillars of Resilience, the provenpath to master stress, slow aging,
and increase vitality. With my darlingStephen here, thank you so much for
our time today. This has beenwonderful. We could keep talking for I
will leave your audience with one onemore thing. Okay, you got it.
(52:23):
We can now assess our biological age, how fast or slow we're actually
aging as as opposed to our chronologicalage. Right. So I'd got my
biological age last year, and youknow, I follow my book my program,
and that's how I developed my program. My biological age was assessed at
(52:45):
twenty years lower than my chronological age. H Wow, tremendous things are possible
if you engage in a process ofresilience. That's awesome, so wonderful.
So we can find oh goodness,we can find you at doctor Stephen sitter
(53:06):
Off dot com as d R ST E p h E N s I
D E R O f F dotcom. We've got I'm gonna put everything
in show notes and in social media. You got to follow him on Instagram.
He's super engaged on Instagram, whichis awesome. And in social media
again, the book The Nine Pillarsof Resilience, The Proven Path to master
stress, slow aging, and increasevitality. Thank you so much for your
(53:29):
time today. It has been nothingbut wonderful and I can't wait to see
you at the book signing. Mypleasure. You are exclusively invited to share
this resilient, intentional, and expressiveVIP pain journey together. Let's get to
the heart of how to heal withyou by my side. Please follow the
Pain Game Podcast wherever you digest yourpodcast content, we will be there.
(53:52):
Visit us at the Pain gamepodcast dotcom and follow us on all the socials.
Thanks for listening, my little VIPs. Catch you on the other side.
This is Your Pain Game podcast wherewe talk about the game of living in
and with chronic pain and trauma getinto the heart of how to heal.
I am your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show, I plan on
discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, holistic practitioners, loved ones, and
anybody that is interested in having theirvoice heard in the chronic pain and trauma
(00:27):
world that we live in. Iam a stress ball. I worry about
things that I shouldn't worry about.I worry about things that I have already
happened to me but I've absolutely nocontrol over. I worry about the next
(00:50):
ten seconds of this conversation. Iworry about what's going to be happening in
ten years from now. I havealways been like that has that stemmed from
childhood trauma. Probably is just howI'm wired. Probably, but we're going
to find out today a little bitmore as to why we are wired for
stress so much and how bad itis for our health. And I am
legitimately under chronic stress and I havebeen for most of my life. You
(01:14):
know, I'm riddled with traum anxiety, sprinkle with a sprinkle out with a
little depression and top that off withsome addictions. No wonder I'm sick and
that I live in pain, Andas I mentioned, I worry like nobody's
business. But we're here today toheal. We're always here to heal on
this show and to find solutions.We can talk and talk and talk,
but if we don't have some steps, some tips, some solutions for ways
(01:38):
that we can better handle our stress, then I'm doing a disservice and I
might as well just quit doing myjob here. So today we're going to
talk a little bit about why stressaffects our health, our well being,
our relationships, my gosh, therelationships with especially in my world. I
know that stress is a big,mega part of our relationship. We're working
on that with my sweetie. Howit affects our jobs and more of course,
(02:02):
and we're here to provide a provenpath to overcome stresses, mental,
physical, emotional, all of itto help us achieve that happiness that we
all strive and thrive for. So, without further ado, I would like
to introduce you to my amazingly darlingguest today, doctor Steven Sitterov. Hello,
(02:22):
darling, Hi there, good tobe with you, Good to be
with you too, so oh mygosh, his accolades, they go on,
So everybody take a deep breath.He is an internationally recognized psychologist,
executive, and medical consultant, andexpert and resilience, longevity, optimal performance.
I don't even know what optimal performanceis for me in my life,
(02:43):
but we're going to find out addiction, neurofeedback, and mental health. He
is an associate professor in the Departmentsof Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Rheumatology at
UCLA's Deathen School of Medicine here inLos Angeles. He was the founder and
formal clinical director of the Stress StrategiesProgram, also at UCLA and Santa Monica
(03:04):
Hospital, and former clinical director ofMoonview Treatment and Optimal Performance Center. He
has helped establish innovative training and treatmentapproaches in optimal functioning, mind, body,
medicine, mind and body. It'snot just our bods, guys in
the US, China, and europeAn it's hosted summits and longevity, resilience
and leadership. I'm exhausted, andnot to mention his new book, which
(03:30):
is amazing, The Nine Pillars ofResilience, the proven path to master stress,
slow aging, and increase vitality.So within about forty five minutes today,
we're going to get out of ourstress and we're going to be good
to go. Right, We're goingto find the path. There we go
the path. All you have todo is step on to the path,
(03:53):
because if you understand taking a fewsteps, then the path is alongside you
every day. And so if youtake a few steps onto the path every
day, you can achieve success everyday and ultimately you will begin to notice
feeling better. Yeah. And Ithink one of the things that I find
(04:15):
so interesting about stress and my body. And I'm going to speak for myself
because I really can only speak formyself here, but when something stressful happens
in my life, it is almostimmediate that my pain that I have,
my chronic pain with CRPS and LMEdisease and all the other coinfections with that,
my pain magnifies almost in an instant, and it's nuts. In fact,
(04:39):
last night I had a situation thathappened with an old friend of mine
raised my stress level like crazy.There was a reason why I do not
have her in my life anymore.She came in in a whim and my
stress level went up, my painlevel went up, and my sleep went
down. And it happened in aninstant. Why does that happen? Why
does stress magnify pain so and whyis it so dangerous to our health?
(05:02):
Those are very good questions, andthat's because when you engage in stress,
you throw your body out of balance. When you engage in stress, you're
putting more demands on all of theaspects of your body, and if you
are already experiencing symptoms, it magnifiesthe impact of those symptoms. But the
(05:30):
other way that it has that stresshas an impact is it takes your body
away from its ability to heal,So it doesn't only magnify the symptoms.
But you know, we have achoice. We have limited personal energy,
and the brain and body are alwaysmaking choices. Do I send this energy
(05:53):
into my kidneys to purify my bloodor do I send it into my muscle
to protect because there's danger and sothe more we go into the fight or
flight response, the more we gointo the stress response, the more we
take energy away from the healing processthat serves us so well if we give
(06:16):
it a chance. Well, whenyou're talking about within your your path that
you that you mentioned, you talkabout it in your book, these nine
pillars of resilience. I know,resilience sounds like, oh my gosh,
about to climb this mountain and I'vegot it. You know, you think
you think about these you know,these athletes, the endurance athletes, like
it's almost daunting when you think abouthaving to be resilient, you know,
(06:41):
and that to me is almost stressful. So how can we take stress out
of resilience? And can we talka little bit about this path of yours
and these nine pillars, because that'sthe big scoop that we've got going on
here today with you. So,as I just said, we do feel
a sense of overwhelm simply thinking aboutall that needs to be done to become
resilient. And as my book laysout, there are nine pillars to optimal
(07:08):
functioning that I've identified. But youdon't have to do it all at once.
You don't have to feel like,oh I have so much I have
to do. This is how weget ourselves stuck. First, is very
important for all of us to startfrom a place of acceptance, and which
is difficult to begin with. Howcan I accept that I have chronic pain.
(07:31):
How can I accept that I haveanxiety? There? These are things
that are difficult to accept, andthat's the first place we get ourselves stuck,
right A fear for starters, fearbased on I like to say that
we're on this journey through life,and at any time we're someplace along this
(07:55):
journey, like we're right here rightnow. But most of us come along
and say, well, I shouldbe here. It's not okay where I'm
at. It's not good enough.I should be here. Why did I
make that mistake? I shouldn't havemade that mistake. I should know better.
I should All these shoulds that welay on us create additional stress.
(08:16):
But they old to do also dosomething very insidious. They are undermining.
If I'm here and I keep tellingmyself I should be further along, I'm
saying this is something wrong with me. Is I'm not okay? And that
gets in our way of growth.And so the first step for everybody is
(08:39):
to be accepting of where you're at. Doesn't mean you like it, it's
just an acceptance of reality. Here'swhere I'm at. I can't find my
keys because I'm so distracted by otherstuff that I don't really, I don't
notice when I put them down.That's why I can't find my keys.
(09:00):
Okay, that's where I'm at rightnow, here's my starting point. And
now let me learn and grow,but all the while accepting myself instead of
being hard on myself. And that, by the way, ties into my
first pillar of resilience, which isour relationship with ourselves. Some of our
(09:22):
stress is created because we can behard on ourselves. We could be critical
of ourselves, judgmental. And sowe start off by wanting to create establish
a healthy relationship with ourselves, meaningthat we cultivate an internal voice that's loving,
(09:46):
accepting, compassionate, supportive, andcaring. Okay, and now,
people in your audience, that's thefirst step. How do you talk to
yourself? Notice if you're overly critical, judgmental, what happens when you make
a mistake? Do you beat yourselfup for it? You get angry with
(10:07):
yourself? Or what I'm suggesting iswe switch into a voice that's loving,
accepting, and compassionate. Because themore we talk to ourselves from that loving
place, the better we handle thestresses in our lives. So there's are
a couple of approaches that are soimportant for people to begin with. That
(10:30):
is a huge component from where Iwas a couple of years ago to where
I am today, that little voiceinside me that I've always been an overachiever.
I come from an overachieving family.Both of my dads, both of
my moms, my spouse, allof us all overachievers, very successful,
very educated. I mean we justcome from now, we're both from la
so there's a lot of that too. We're keeping up with the Joneses,
(10:54):
where you know, we all haveto look perfect from Instagram. I mean,
we've got all of these things thatare going on around us. We've
got kids and grandkids and nices andnephews, and it's like, oh my
gosh. I had to find aplace of acceptance within me, acceptance of
my diagnosis, acceptance that I spendsome time in a wheelchair where I used
to be a downhill skier and racerand biker and hiker and all of these
(11:16):
things, and right now I can'twalk my dogs. And so coming to
that place of acceptance was a darkand twisty place to get through. But
now that I'm here, I amalready feeling the joy that is coming from
accepting where I am right now,not where I want to be in two
weeks from now, not where Iwas two weeks ago, but right now
(11:37):
in this space with you. Ilove that so much because that's where we
have to start if we can't acceptourselves, and we're not going to go
anywhere right right. But you justdescribed the sort of like the type a
approach to life where it's about dodo, and that does lead to success.
(11:58):
And that's the problem for most ofus because if you think about all
the successes in your life, Iguarantee that all of them have been associated
with stress. Think of all thesuccesses, whether it's getting taking an exam,
speaking in front of a group,having a meeting, et cetera.
(12:22):
All of our successes have been associatedwith stress. So one of my original
mentors, Donald Hebb, one ofthe pioneers in neuroscience, said that neurons
that fire together wire together. Sothat's what's happened in our brains. We
have wired together success with stress,and so there's an unconscious drive in all
(12:48):
of us, unconscious drive in allof us for stressful experiences because in our
history, in our lives, they'vebeen associated with success and So my seventh
pillar of resilience's presence. If youwant to make any changes in your life
and your behavior, with one requirement, you have to be present to notice
(13:13):
that you're following the old pattern,the old path of striving for stress in
your life, looking for stress inyour life. So it's about being present
to notice and going hold on,I don't have to be stressed all the
time. I can relax, Ican take a break and that's okay.
And then we support that with strengtheningthat positive, loving voice that I encourage
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in my book people to develop thathealthy internal parent And how do we do
that? Because I mean, we'veall been raised differently in our lives,
so we've been parented different, ourchildhoods have all been different. How how
do we how do we find that? M Yeah, it's it's different for
different people. And I go intomany different strategies in my book for how
(14:05):
to do that. But for example, sometimes I'll be talking with a parent
who's very could be very hard onthemselves, and I say to them,
do you do that with your child? No? No, no, I'm
much more accepting of my child andloving of my child. And then I
(14:26):
say, if your child makes amistake. How do you deal with that
mistake? I say, well,I let them know that first, that
I still love them even though theymade the mistake. And I say that
this is the way we learn frommistakes. And then I say, is
that how you talk to yourself?And I say no, And I say,
(14:46):
why should you treat yourself any differentthan you treat your child who you
love so much? And they'll go, I don't know, but that's but
that's one of the that's one ofthe pathways to starting to talk well to
yourself is by noticing how you're capableof doing it with your child, with
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your partner, or with somebody else. And if you can do it with
them, you could do it withyourself. And it shows you that you
know how to do it. That'strue because you know our self talk.
I mean, I have those thosemoments, especially with my with my diagnosis
and my body have gone through somany changes with my bod and I just
like, I hate my body.I hate the way I look. Eh,
(15:35):
it's just that such negative. Andthen the other day I caught myself
doing it, and my Sweedie andI were sitting and I was like,
I need to say I love youbody. You are wonderful, you are
beautiful, like all the woo wooon the planet. To try to kind
of like slip out of that thatnegative narrative that we have because my body
has changed. I'm upset with itsome days, you know, I'm upset
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with God or source or whoever itis, the spirit of the world,
whatever, whoever, what your beliefsare. And you know that anger and
that vulnerability and that you know,all of that like why me, why
me? Stuff? I have toI've had to curb that enthusiasm for lack
of a better term, and youknow, because I've been enthusiastically frustrated with
(16:21):
my body and with that and allthe stress that it is caused, not
just myself, but also the relationshipsthat are within my world too, because
my sweetie and my parents and myfriends and stuff. They take a little
bit of a beating too when itcomes to having to deal with me living
and pain. You know, Imean, I handle it like a badass
most of the days, but thereare times where there's no chance, like
(16:44):
I can't walk well. You know, in my book, I talk about
I frame the problem from talking abouttwo important mismatches that we all deal with.
So the first mismatch is the environmentin which we evolved our stress response,
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which is the hunter gatherer environment,with our current environment, which is
very, very different. So westill have the fight or flight response to
danger and stress that our hunter gatherersdid, but yet our environment is totally
different. How many of the stressesin your life in your day can you
(17:30):
effectively deal with by either fighting themor running from them? None? But
that's what our bodies do every timewe experience a threat or danger. So
that's the first mismatch. We overactivatethe body, We use up more resources
than we need to in mobilizing forthe stresses of our lives. But the
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second one is much more insidious,and that has to do with a developmental
mismatch. Learned to use our responsein our childhood environment. How we learn
to deal with the world is basedon the lessons of our childhood. We
adapted to the small little world ofour primary family, and so if we
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had, for example, a parentthat was anxious as an example, the
unspoken message to us is the worldis dangerous. If we see a parent
who's anxious, that's telling us there'sdanger. And so we grow up believing
that the world is dangerous. Thisis just one example of the lesson how
the lessons of childhood set us upas adults. So now we start our
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day on guard. Where's the dangergoing to come from? Okay? And
so we mobilize our stress response beforethere is even any stress in our day.
And this touches into my fifth pillarof resilience, which is mental balance
and mastery. So how do youstart your day? Do you start your
(19:07):
day looking for what can go wrong, looking for the danger again mobilizing your
stress response. Where do you startyour day looking for what can go right,
expecting good things to happen. Apositive mindset helps us better deal with
stress. A growth mindset helps usin our lives because it says that if
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we experience some shortcoming in ourselves,with a growth mindset, we look at
it and say, okay, howcan I develop myself so I no longer
have the shortcoming. So a growthmindset tells us engage with learning the learning
process so that I keep getting betterand better, and I will handle these
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stresses in my life better and better. And that's a choice. I mean,
every morning we have a choice tolive our life a certain way,
and you know, like I haveto wake up every morning and go,
okay, I had to name mylegs. People that listen to the show,
they know Thelm and Louise, SoTHEMB and Louise and I have to
make a choice together. We sit, we lay in bed before I can
(20:18):
even put weight on my feet onthe floor, and we have like a
chit chat with each other. Ihad to humanize them because I felt very
detached from my body. It's it'slike almost like I have phantom whim even
though they're here, and so Ihad my acupuncturists. Actually is like it
humanize them, make them a partof you have a relationship with your legs.
I'm like, this is ridiculous.It is the best advice that I've
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ever been given. Quite frankly,I swear, because in the morning,
I have a chit chat with themand we make a choice. We know
it's gonna hurt a little bit today. We know that the weight of your
body on your feet is going tohurt. You might not be able to
walk all day. You might haveto roll around in your chair and make
these choices so that the things thatpop into my day throughout are less stressful
that I handle them as they comein a much better healthy way than immediately
(21:07):
going after and trying to fight it. Because I know my personality type.
I mean, obviously everybody knows I'ma lunatic. I'm wild and crazy.
So that part of me is stillthere, driving this body that doesn't support
it quite as well as it didbefore, and that stresses me out.
So that anxiety of the thought ofme not necessarily being able to ski again,
(21:30):
or run again, or do longterm yoga again, that scares the
crap out of me. But Ishifted my mindset to believe in myself and
accept myself more and have a muchbetter narrative. So can I give you
some feedback? Yes? Please,that's why you're here. I love all
right. So a lot of timeswe use words to describe ourselves that are
(21:52):
not positive. Self deprecation number onething I do right, And so it's
important to catch yourself when you dothis, such as a moment ago you
use the word lunatic. Okay,so you want like a wild child?
You know, even though we maybe saying it in jest or kidding around,
(22:17):
those words go in unconsciously, andso it's very important to notice any
negative self talk, any ways thatyou refer to yourself, any words that
you use that are as you justsaid, self deprecating, because they do
go in and they land somewhere andthey don't serve us. So we want
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to catch ourselves and how we talkto ourselves as well as about ourselves.
And literally, when I said theword lunatic, I knew you were going
to come back and get me bythe way I said it, And as
I was coming out of my mouth, I knew I was going to get
a little bit of a little snackon the rest. Yeah, hold on
one more second, not a smackon the wrist. I'm giving you loving
(23:06):
feedback. He's giving me loving feedbackbecause I care about you. There's no
judgment in it. It's just something, you know. When I do biofeedback,
biofeedback's a way of monitoring some aspectof my physiology that I feedback to
myself, so I could literally learnto get my physiology under my control.
(23:27):
And so if my tension goes down, I get feedback letting me know my
tension has gone down, which ismy goal, and it encourages my body
to do more of that but ifmy tension goes up, I'll get feedback
saying my tension has gone up.Now my goal is to not get upset
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that my tension went up, butto use that as neutral feedback. Okay,
that's information for me. My tensionjust went up. Now that's telling
me what not to do, becauseif it goes up and I go,
oh my god, it went up, it's going to go up more more
good? Right, yeah, Soif I give you feedback or the goal
(24:12):
is for it to simply be informationthat you then use, not a judgment,
not something negative. And we talkeda little bit about childhood, right
and where we get a lot ofthese lessons. And I've got my nieces
five years old, and my familyis in the middle of a little bit
of something with their living situation,and this poor little girl is running around.
(24:34):
She doesn't have a home to livein. They're in an airbnb.
They're basically displaced. And I'm watchingthis little girl and I'm seeing developmental things
happening like every moment with this littlegirl. And I immediately thought about her
when you were talking, how she'sforming her views of the world, how
(24:55):
she's fearful at five years old,of being homeless and how that's going to
affect her down the road, andwhat place I can play, what role
I can play to help her notbe afraid of the world. Because I
was a pretty scared little girl.That was the childhood trauma stuff that happened
fairly early on in my in myyears, so I always was. I
was always very, very scared,and that those safety issues have followed me
(25:19):
into adulthood because of childhood trauma.And it was adulthood trauma as well,
But the childhood stuff is what reallyhas stuck with me, and it formed
my opinions of myself. It formedmy opinions of the world around me.
I didn't trust very many people,or I was overly trusting because I wanted
to be loved. I wanted tofeel safe. I wanted to feel secure.
(25:41):
I want, you know, Iwanted So a lot of that is
in, you know, in thepromiscuity and in drinking and drugs and all
of that, because we're trying tofind something that makes you feel okay.
And so I went through all thegamut of all of that, and I
am worried for my niece and mynephews right now. I'm worried for all
of the children right now that arefeeling displaced, that are feeling stressed at
such a young age. How canwe help guide ourselves to help kids in
(26:06):
that way and also speak to ourown little child inside to help pull us
out of that. Because those stressresponses, like you said, are just
like they're like innate in me.So first off, you know, I
feel for what you just described alot what you just described, And yeah,
the best thing you can do withthat for that little girl is just
give her love, love, attentionand positive feedback, positive affect. Let
(26:34):
her know that she is loved.That's the best thing you can do for
her. But for ourselves, Ibrought up the notion of our internal voice,
because the lessons of our childhood,they all get distilled into that internal
voice. That internal voice, orI like to refer to it as an
(26:57):
internal parent, because it plays thatrole with us, is the distillation of
all those lessons. And so thoselessons, to a great degree are not
healthy lessons, as we've been saying, but they play this unconscious, ongoing
(27:18):
role. So it's important for allof us to start noticing how we talk
to ourselves. You know, there'sa psychologist at the University of Washington,
John Gottman, who does a lotof work with couples. There's one key
statistic of his that's very relevant here. You found that when couples have a
(27:42):
twenty to one positive to negative interactions, that's a healthy relationship. When that
ratio drops down to about five toone positive to negative, the relationship is
in trouble. So I like totell people that that I work with to
start monitoring their relationship with themselves,how they talk to themselves, and to
(28:07):
notice, am I at twenty toone positive to negative? Am I down
to five to one? Or forfor many of us, am I more
negatively talking to myself than positive?So that's pointing out how you're hurting yourself
on a moment by moment basis becauseof how you talk to yourself. And
(28:32):
that's why as my first pillar ofresilience, I identify the qualities of a
healthy internal voice, a healthy internalparent. So the qualities of a healthy
internal parent is that they come froma place of love, compassion, acceptance,
support, care and joy. We'vegot to have the joy there now
(29:02):
everybody out there. Now you havea guide, Now you have a model.
Could start comparing how you're talking toyourself with the way a healthy internal
voice would talk with you, becauseultimately, you want to find a way
to migrate from over here to overhere, and the way to migrate is
(29:23):
that every time you hear your negativevoice, you say, Okay, wait
a second, how how would myhealthy internal voice talk to me right now
and speak from that place? Andthe more you speak from that place,
the more power you develop over therenow. In my book, I lay
(29:44):
out how to do this, andin fact, to a great extent,
my book is sort of like ahandbook for resilience because you can read five
pages in a day and then justfollow the idea of those five pages that
whole day, and it guides youonto the path. Yeah, because this
isn't a book that you're gonna sitdown and whip or snap through, like
(30:06):
I got it like a week anda half ago or something, and I'm
like, I need to give thisbook care and love and process with it
and work with it, not justtry to read it so I can do
an interview with you, because I'musually fairly good about reading the books of
my guests before they come on.But this is a lot of work for
(30:27):
me in particular. I'm like,like I told you before we saw the
interview to day, I was like, just turning the pages and that there's
more highlighted than is not. I'mlike, maybe I should just highlight the
things I shouldn't be concerned about,things that would be yellow by the end
of this. And it really showedhow quick quickly it showed me how I
(30:48):
have let stress drive almost my entirelife. It almost made me sad for
a minute because I was like,wow, I have missed out on a
lot of things because I'm so controlling. A lot of that is fear based.
I know that, you know I'mOCD. Everything's just so everything's color
coordinating. You know, I wasbored. I didn't sleep since I was
nine, and so I was boredall night, talk about childhood stuff keeping
(31:12):
me up. And now I'm here. And it took me to be forty
six years old to go, Okay, well, you love yourself and I
never have until just recently. Soit's pretty neat. So that takes a
level of stress an anxiety off whenyou start to talk better to yourself.
(31:36):
So you've gone through three of yourpillars and out of order, which I
love about this. So are wegoing to talk about more of them?
Well? I started out by highlightingwhat are the most important, So the
men, we did one, seven, and five right right, So,
and I'll get to another one thatWell, they're really important. They are
(32:00):
all important. I know exactly you. Now. Another pillar that's very important
for us to address is the sixthpillar, which is emotional balance and mastery.
That one sounds very daunting for me. Well, the good news about
all of these is I lay outthe steps to achieving emotional balance and mastery.
(32:25):
And it's based on how you know. When something happens in our lives
and we have an emotional reaction,we are designed to stay on something until
we reach completion, okay, Andso if we have a conflict with somebody,
(32:45):
let's just say, and we're upset, we will carry that upset until
we find a way to get resolution. And for this reason, we carry
a lot of unfinished emotional business,resentments, ups sets, anger, sadness,
and we're not able to hold thosefeelings in just in our minds.
(33:07):
We literally have to hold those feelingsin in our bodies because emotions have energy
to them, right, and sowe have to hold in that energy,
and that is a distraction and ittakes us away from being present and focused.
And so it's very important for usto identify, recognize emotions that we're
(33:30):
carrying and hold the intention to workthrough them, to express the feelings,
express the emotions so we can letthem go. I feel like I've got
a bunch of suitcases sitting at laxright now of emotional unfinished business. Seriously,
(33:52):
Like my example of this girl that'sin my life that caused this enormous
pain boost yes, last night andthis morning, that's baggage that I thought
I had already opened, tookn out, donated to the Salvation Army, like
I thought I was done and Iwas good, and I am not.
(34:13):
And it was cleared just by mybody's an instant response. And so that
shows I have so much more workto do to clear through that. I'm
holding on to it like nobody's business. I mean, it's almost a twenty
year relationship. That's a long timeto be affected by somebody. And I'm
an EmPATH, so I take oneverybody's everything. I know that about myself.
(34:34):
It's a blessing and a curse.And you know it's one of those
things that I find with relationships thatwe do man, we do hold on
to those things, and in yourbook explains how we can help navigate through
that because man holding onto it isn'tgood for anybody. So a couple of
things on what you just said.Anytime that where you know, there's a
(34:58):
lot of pain in the world,and it's very easy to start feeling upset
about the pain in the world.But the first question we have to ask
ourselves because if we are feeling upsetby stuff that's going on out there,
it's using our own and we're usingour own precious energy, our resources,
(35:20):
and we are creating tension in ourbodies. So the first thing we have
to say is is this use ofmy energy having any constructive purpose? Because
if it isn't, then you wantto let go of it. Otherwise,
why keep being upset about something thatyou can't do anything about. Oh well,
people say, well, I'm agood person, I care about that.
(35:44):
I get it, I get it. But you want to care about
what's going on, But then youwant to let go. You don't want
to keep carrying that because it's affectingyou. The other thing is, you
know, I get a lot ofpeople who come to me and they are
still carrying anger and resentment about someof their important relationships A father, a
(36:08):
mother, and I talk about okay, we have to work through those feelings
and let go of them. Andthey'll say to me, but I've been
doing this for years. I've beensitting in therapist's office where I've been yelling
and screaming and getting that anger out. But I tell them there's one key
(36:30):
here, Well, there's two keys. One is that if I'm carrying anger
toward my father because he didn't meetmy needs, who's being hurt by me
carrying this anger? Not my father? I am right now the person who
(36:51):
comes to me and says, butI've expressed my anger and I'm still carrying
it. And I say, areyou still wanting something from this person that
they've shown and demonstrated over the yearsthey're not either willing or able to give
you. And they'll say, yeah, you know, I deserve my father
(37:12):
to love me. I deserve myfather to listen to me. I say,
yes, you do. I honoryou, and I agree with you.
You do deserve that from your father. But if he's not going to
give it to you, you getthe anger out. But now you have
to let go not because you don'tdeserve it, but because holding on to
(37:36):
wanting something from someone who's never goingto give it to you just keeps recycling
younger. But it does more thanthat. As long as I'm focused on
getting it from that person, I'mless available to get it from someone who
might be capable of giving it tome. I'm stuck over here, and
(37:57):
I'm ignoring something over here that mightactually meet my need. So we have
to let go here, as painfulas that might be. We have to
let go here, get the angerout. Let go here. Now I
can approach other people in my lifefrom a healthy place, with the potent,
with the real potential of getting thatneed met. It may not come
(38:21):
from my father, but that loveand attention might be available someplace else,
and that's where I have to look. It's like it's like the person that's
in a dark street with a lamplightand he's looking under the lamp for his
keys, and someone walks along andsays, what are you doing? Said,
I'm looking for my keys. Hesays, well, where did you
(38:42):
drop them? He said, well, I dropped them over there. Why
are you looking over here because here'swhere the light is. We have Well,
yeah, because we're not holding spacefor the right, the right person
and the right because I my mybirth father, I said, I'm done
with his with him not showing up, not being part of my life,
like I was that basically your scenariowhere the dad never showed up. But
(39:07):
I have an incredible stepfather. He'sbeen my dad as far as I'm concerned,
since I was like two and ahalf years old. But there was
still that need to want to havemy dad and my step mom love me
and care for me. And it'snever possible. It was impossible, and
I had to mourn that and Ihad to let go of it. And
(39:28):
I did that seventeen years ago andI haven't looked back. That was one
of the best decisions that I've evermade, and I let space in for
my stepdad to really have the amazingrelationship that I have with him. That's
a very good example of where Idid. Champions, That's beautiful that you
did. It's difficult, and I'msure it was difficult manage not only do
(39:51):
we not want to we want wedon't want to let go of the hope,
but also if we let go ofthe hope. Now we're going to
feel other pain of loss, andso we avoid the pain of loss by
holding on to a hope that willnever be there, and we stay stuck
in that pattern. Let go warnthe loss as you did. That helps
(40:17):
you let go and helps you bemore available to get those needs met someplace
else. So that's great that youwere able to do that. Yeah,
it was. It was my bigsuccess. And you know, just because
that I share blood with this humanbeing doesn't mean that I have to keep
being treated the way I was treatedor not treated at all. You know,
(40:37):
it's more of an absence than itwas. The poor treatment. It
was just like, I don't evenunderstand how you could not want to hang
out with this hot little nugget,Like what is wrong with you? But
I was not part of his plan, so you know, and that's okay.
So the sixth pillar, emotional balanceand mastery, is about not carrying
any regrets in life. If there'ssomething we regret, you need to work
(41:02):
through it to let go of theregret, because regrets hold us back.
In fact, any emotional baggage thatwe don't address only holds us back.
And so that's my sixth pillar.The fourth pillar is physical balance and mastery.
And we talked about earlier how theevolutionary process sets us up because we
(41:27):
have a big stress response, fightor flight, and then we're dealing with
somebody sitting across the table with usin an office, and we have to
hold that energy in. And sothe fourth pillar is physical balance and mastery.
Now, how many stimuli in yourday trigger the stress response? I
(41:50):
don't know. Three hundred and fiftymillion plus the lessons of child could have
us jumping from one stress to another. How many stimuli in your day trigger
the opposite, the recovery response.Very little, if any trigger safety trigger.
(42:12):
I could let down my guard,which is necessary. The two branches
to the nervous system, the activatingsympathetic branch to stress and the recovery parasympathetic
branch that helps restore balance. Andso, because we have very few,
if any, stimuli in our daythat say, oh I'm safe, we
(42:35):
have to create them. We haveto find what I refer to as islands
of safety in our day. Ilove that times where we could say,
like particularly if you sit down tolunch, In particular, when you sit
down to lunch, you want tosay, Okay, for the next half
hour forty five minutes hour, I'msafe. I could let down my guard,
(42:58):
I can relax, I can enjoythis food, I can be present.
I'm on an island of safety.And we want to create more of
these in our day. And Ilike to say, you want to create
some kind of a signal to yourself, a queue that says to you,
hey, check in with myself andmy shoulders elevated. Let go is my
(43:22):
jaw tense relax. So I liketo use doorways portals. Every time I
go through a doorway, I've trainedmyself to recognize, oh, I'm going
through a doorway. Hold on,let me take a moment, let me
let go, because every time Ido that, I'm creating a reset in
(43:42):
my nervous system. Every door youwalk through, most of them? Wow,
do you not have any many manydoors in your home? Certainly if
I'm walking through one and then another, then another, I don't have to
do it with each one hyperventilating atthat point. Or you know, you
(44:02):
stop for a red light, Okay, you're right, yes, Ah,
you know something something you can useas a signal to start balancing out all
the signals of stress and tension tostart creating some signals of calm relax And
there's a lot of these those deepbreaths and all of that. It's just
(44:23):
like when we're about ready to walkinto Thanksgiving with our family, guys,
where we all have to take adeep breath before we go in. But
we do. I mean that evenwith like when you think about you were
talking about like out a red light, the road rage, we're always all
we're always everybody's in such a hurryall of the time. We've got to
get there. You know, everyone'stexting and driving and swerving, and you
know, oh my gosh, ifwe could all just take a deep breath
(44:45):
and be a little bit more calmin places. But I can't control anybody
else and what they're doing. Ican only control my environment, and even
then it's a little iffy. Yes, so you talked about Thanksgiving and being
with family. Yes, ends upto other of my pillars of resilience,
the second one, which is yourrelationship with others, and the seventh,
(45:08):
which is presence. And so it'simportant to notice the quality of our relationships
and our environment to a great extent, determines our health. But we have
choices about that environment, and onechoice are the people who we engage with.
(45:30):
And of course there's some people likefamily members that we may not have
choice, although we may have choicesto spend less time with them. But
you want to be able to discriminatehealthy relationships from toxic relationships. Relationships that
are nurturing, emotionally nurturing in whosepresence you feel I can let down my
(45:55):
guard and whose presence you feel honoredand knowledge and accept it, versus relationships
in which maybe you have to beon guard, maybe you have to watch
what you have to say, whatyou're saying, Maybe you're walking on eggshells,
maybe you're feeling judged. You wantto minimize those times with those relationships
(46:20):
and maximize time and relationships that arehealthy. Now, combining a few of
my pillars, I want to saythat the fourth pillar physical balance and mastery.
It's up to us to practice someform of relaxation, meditation, imagery
(46:42):
that helps us go into that recoverymode. We spend so much time in
stress. We have to find thetime and take the time to literally retrain
our nervous system into a place ofbalance. Okay, the sixth pillar emotional
balance and mastery. When we gointo a positive emotional state of gratitude,
(47:05):
appreciation, we literally affect our physiology. So there's a and this is an
important message and an important lesson howour emotions affect our physiology. So there's
a There's something referred to as heartrate variability, and that has to do
with how the various physiological systems ofour bodies can go into alignment. When
(47:30):
I am in a positive emotional stateand I look at my heart rate variability,
it goes into a positive and positivephysiological state called coherence. Coherence is
when we breathe in, our heartrate goes up, and we breathe out,
our heart rate goes down. Andthis rhythmic heart rate pattern is referred
(47:54):
to as coherence, and it's optimal. In fact, it's one of the
it's one of the important measures thatdoctors look at for health, how well
our heart rate goes into this optimalpattern. Now, if we are in
a negative emotional state of anger,resentment, upset, frustration, and we
(48:16):
look at that heart rate pattern,it is chaotic. Oh it's got to
be now. Now let's bring inpillar number seven presence, Okay, and
presence has two directions. Receiving beingpresent, I see my environment, I
notice I'm paying attention to what's goingon in my world. Right. But
(48:40):
then there's the presence that we projectout into the world, our presence.
Right. And you know that somepeople, you you experience them and you
want to you want to talk withthem, you want you're attracted to them.
And then others you sort of whetherit's conscious or not, you sort
(49:00):
of want to stay away from.Yeah, for sure. Now if you
and I were in the same roomtogether and I monitored your brain waves,
I would pick up my heart ratepattern in your brain waves. WHOA,
I would pick up my heart ratepattern in your brain waves. Okay,
(49:23):
now let's go back to the fifthpillar, the sixth pillar of emotional balance
and mastery, and we and thinkabout if I'm feeling gratitude and my heart
rate pattern is nice and coherent,now we're picking up that in your brain
waves, versus if I'm worried,anxious, fearful, upset. Now we're
(49:46):
going to pick up my chaotic heartrate pattern in your brain waves. How
do you think that affects you andyour relationship with me? Amazing? Huh?
Yeah, that amazing. I didnot know that, and I'm a
smart little cookie. Most days.If you're practicing a relaxation exercise, if
(50:10):
you go into a state of gratitudeand appreciation, you're going to enhance that
positive physiological state that you're working tocreate. I love that. Well,
we're going to be doing a booksigning together in Newport Beach, California,
(50:31):
and our heart and brain weighs aregoing to be all kinds of lovey dovey.
I can't wait. This has beenincredible, and I love the way
that you didn't go one through nineand that you that you brought us through
them. Is there a reason whyyou did that today versus going through one
(50:51):
to two, to three to four? Because I know that there's a strategy
behind it. You know, wehave a limited time together, and so
yeah, did want to be moreorganic. Number two, to be most
relevant to your audience. We're notgoing to put my whole book into this
forty five minutes cannot at long,but I wanted to give important highlights that
(51:15):
and takeaways for your audience to go, Okay, I can pay attention to
that in my life today. SoI wanted to give your audience a bunch
of those takeaways for them, andthen you know, my book is a
handbook for living an optimal life.In fact, Michael Ovitz, the former
(51:37):
president of Walt Disney and founder ofCIA said, quote my quote from him
is it's a brilliant book, andit's a handbook for living your best life.
And I like to think that that'sexactly what it is. It's something
that you can use on an ongoingbasis to end your life and to live
(52:00):
a better life. Everybody's got toget this book into their hands. The
Nine Pillars of Resilience, the provenpath to master stress, slow aging,
and increase vitality. With my darlingStephen here, thank you so much for
our time today. This has beenwonderful. We could keep talking for I
will leave your audience with one onemore thing. Okay, you got it.
(52:23):
We can now assess our biological age, how fast or slow we're actually
aging as as opposed to our chronologicalage. Right. So I'd got my
biological age last year, and youknow, I follow my book my program,
and that's how I developed my program. My biological age was assessed at
(52:45):
twenty years lower than my chronological age. H Wow, tremendous things are possible
if you engage in a process ofresilience. That's awesome, so wonderful.
So we can find oh goodness,we can find you at doctor Stephen sitter
(53:06):
Off dot com as d R ST E p h E N s I
D E R O f F dotcom. We've got I'm gonna put everything
in show notes and in social media. You got to follow him on Instagram.
He's super engaged on Instagram, whichis awesome. And in social media
again, the book The Nine Pillarsof Resilience, The Proven Path to master
stress, slow aging, and increasevitality. Thank you so much for your
(53:29):
time today. It has been nothingbut wonderful and I can't wait to see
you at the book signing. Mypleasure. You are exclusively invited to share
this resilient, intentional, and expressiveVIP pain journey together. Let's get to
the heart of how to heal withyou by my side. Please follow the
Pain Game Podcast wherever you digest yourpodcast content, we will be there.
(53:52):
Visit us at the Pain gamepodcast dotcom and follow us on all the socials.
Thanks for listening, my little VIPs. Catch you on the other side.
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