Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #205 BITESIZE | The Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle | Drs Emily and Amelia Nagoski

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

Stress is a physiological cycle that has a beginning, a middle and an end. And by understanding how to complete the stress response cycle, you can get rid of the stress even if you can’t remove the stressor. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests. Today’s clip is from episode 60 of the podcast with authors of the book ‘Burnout: The Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle’, Drs Emily and Amelia Nagoski. In this clip, they explain the importance of understanding the stress cycle, and the powerful and practical tools we can all use to minimise stress in our lives. Thanks to our sponsor http://www.athleticgreens.com/livemore Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3oAKmxi. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/60 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.

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10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better, Live More. Bite size your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 60 of the podcast with authors of the book Burnout, The Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle, doctors Emily and Amelia Nagoski. In this clip, they explain the importance of understanding the stress cycle and the powerful and practical tools we can all use to minimize stress in our lives. Stress is an experience that happens in your body. It's a physiological cycle that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And you can complete the stress response cycle even without fixing the problem, without getting rid of the stressor. You don't have to fold all the laundry

before you feel calm. You don't have to empty the dishwasher and raise a child to be a contributing member of society. You don't have to win the game before you get to feel good. This is so key, isn't it? Because I think the perception is that you do need to do those things. I will be calm when the laundry's done. I will only feel non-stressed when I've done all my chores and the kids are asleep. But you're saying it's not that. It doesn't work that way because stress itself was evolved into humanity to save our lives from lions chasing us across the savannah. And laundry also stresses us out. Our bodies don't have a wide variety of ways of responding to stress. So the way we respond to that threatening pile of laundry, which is dooming us to social

pariah hood. I mean, that is life threatening for human beings. If you are isolated from the herd, you're going to die. So it's perfectly natural for your body to respond to this sense of obligation, social obligation, as though it's being threatened. However, folding the laundry will not complete the stress response cycle. The stress response cycle completes in various physiological ways, sleep, physical activity, affection. Physiology has no idea that you have, you know, escaped the lion. That's not what that accomplishes. So you need to separate the stressors from the stress and manage the stress itself. If you feel like you're getting close to burnout, set the stressors aside for a moment. And we, I think in the book have at least seven concrete specific ways that you can complete the

stressor pump cycle that include crying, laughing, a 20 second hug. People love the 20 second hug. With somebody you love and trust enough to hug for 20 seconds, 20 seconds is way too long to hug a colleague at work, who you might like hug on their birthday for like two seconds with a pat on the back. 20 seconds is that it's not that hug. It's the hug of somebody that you can stand over your own center of balance or support your own weight in whatever way is comfortable for you. And you put your arms around each other

and you let your bodies connect to each other. Wellness and health and all of everything that is your biology does not stop with your skin. Your skin is not the outside of you. Jonathan Haidt describes human beings as 90% chimp, 10% bee. We are partially a hive species and we need other people. So this is how the 20-second hug works. You connect physically with someone that you love and trust.

And in 20 seconds, your heart rate lowers, your blood pressure goes down, and you return to feeling like you are safe. Yeah, no, I love it. I absolutely love it, particularly the things on hugging and human touch. And we don't give touch, do we, the same importance as we give, you know, food is important for our physical health, but we don't think of touch in the same way as important for our mental health. Yes. I think that one of the reasons this has happened is a larger systemic problem where we have stigmatized the need to connect with others. There's a, especially in the

US, but also I think it's here in the UK, a sense that the ideal is to develop from childhood to adulthood, to grow from dependence to independence. And complete independence and autonomy, we think makes us heroes and strong, the silent cowboy on the plane, completely self-sufficient. And we think that that's the heroic ideal. And that if we need to be touched, if we need to be close, if we need support, that's more than just, hey, can you help me carry this thing down the stairs? If it's, hey, can you sit with me while I cry? It feels like that's a weakness and we're ashamed of that need. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I'm still reflecting on what you said that you've got to separate the stressor from the stress. I think that is profound. I think that's so,

that you've got to separate the stressor from the stress. I think that is profound. I think that's so, for me hearing it, it really resonates. I'm sure for the readers and the listeners of this podcast, it will as well, because I don't think we think about things like that, do we? We really don't think about,

okay, so you have been stressed out. And the reality is there are infinite stresses in society now, but there are some core ways in which no matter what the stress is you can actually manage the stress. The stress response cycle is something that we've mentioned a couple of times and I wonder if you could really be quite specific and let's get into a bit of detail what is the stress response cycle so uh the stress response cycle is it's designed to help us with short-term kind of stressors like amelia said being chased by a lion uh so you see the lion it's coming right for you your body floods with adrenaline and cortisol and all the things and you experience all these physiological shifts

your heart rate goes up your blood pressure goes up, your digestion slows down, your immune system slows down, your reproductive system gets deprioritized. And this is all to prepare you to do one thing, which is run like crazy away from the lion. So that's the middle. Bam, there it goes. You're running in the middle of it, trying to do something. And then there's only two possible outcomes. You're running in the middle of it, trying to do something.

And then there's only two possible outcomes. Either you get eaten by the lion, in which case none of the rest of this matters, or somebody in your village sees you coming and beckons you into their door. Come on, come on, come on. And you both lean your shoulders against the door and the lion roars and scratches and eventually gets bored and wanders away. And you, looking at a person who just saved your life, you jump up and down, you celebrate. That is the complete stress response cycle. These days we are, alas, almost never chased by lions. Instead, our stressors are things like traffic or our jerky bosses or family,

kids, the pile of laundry, right? And running, I know, like when you're faced with a lion, you run. So when you're stressed out by sort of the administrivia of 21st century life, what do you do? You run. Physical activity is what communicates to your body most efficiently that you have escaped that stressor and your body is now a safe place to be. So physical activity is the like most and it doesn't have to be running. It can be like just jumping up and down, dancing it out in your living room to Beyonce. It can be literally just tightening every muscle in your body for a slow count of 10 and then flopping. It can also be like rolling around on the grass with your kids

wrestling. That's an awesome version of it. Affection is the next most efficient because it too is this really straightforward biological cue. You put your arms around this person who is your emotional home and your body knows, oh look, I have arrived safely. I have escaped the stressor and arrived. So you get out of your car after the terrible commute. Your body is still like getting out of the traffic doesn't mean you're not still stressed out. You got rid of the stressor, which is the traffic, but the stress is still there. So you walk into the house and you put your arms around your certain special someone. And for 20 seconds, your body shifts from traffic into I am home. I came home. So physical affection, that's the reason that it completes the cycle is

because that is a cue your body understands as being safe now from the stressor. Creative self-expression is another of the major ones. So this can be music, it can be writing, it can be sculpture, theater, anything at all. It's like this cultural loophole in a world where we're not really supposed to express big feelings. The arts are one of those places where you're allowed. So we can take advantage of this loophole and go feel our big feelings on a stage or on a page. When a therapist recommends that you journal, they're not suggesting that like grammar or the construction of sentences is inherently therapeutic. What they are saying is that like grammar or the construction of sentences is inherently therapeutic what they are saying is that you need a place to put the frustration and the rage and the fear

so that it has somewhere to live that is not inside your body because once you get it out of your body it can no longer make you sick sleep is a miracle everything Everything happens in sleep. You can finish the stress response cycle in your sleep. Probably everybody has had a dream about like beating the crap out of whatever the source of their stress is. And so your body goes all the way through it when you get enough sleep, enough hours in a row. It repairs the damage done to your muscles and bones after physical activity. the damage done to your muscles and bones after physical activity. Physical activity is not complete without sleep. Learning is not complete without sleep. Most of the memorization happens not while you're sitting there with your flashcards, but while you are in your sleep, and it's integrating all those new memories. Human beings are designed not to stay in one

state of peak well-being. Wellness is not a state of being, it is a state of action. It is movement through the cycle of stress. It is oscillation from rest into action again, into rest and into action again. If sleep is not accessible to you, then don't choose that as the way that you complete the cycle. That's the reason there's seven is because there is no script. There's no one thing that works for everybody. You have to find the thing that works for you in the context of the life you're living now.

I think that's very empowering for people, isn't it? Because far too many times in the health world, we can be quite prescriptive and people think, oh, well, that's the way to deal with this problem, but that way doesn't appeal to me. And I really like that about your approach. It's about saying, hey, look, if way to deal with this problem, but I can't, that way doesn't appeal to me. And I really like that about your approach. And it's about saying, hey, look, if sleep's not available to you, that's okay. You know what? Choose something else at the moment. And maybe sleep is something that will be useful at some point in the future. There's a line in your book, which

really jumped out at me when I read it, which is the cure for burnout is not self-care, it's all of us caring for each other. Why did you write that line? We begin the book talking about Kate Mann's moral philosophical construct of a world with two kinds of humans, human beings and human givers. There are human beings who have a moral responsibility to be and express their full humanity, whatever the cost. And then there's the human givers who have a moral responsibility to give their full humanity to the beings, whatever the cost. man calls them the loving subordinates. They should give cheerfully whatever resources they have, their time, their money, their attention, their love, their very bodies, even their lives, certainly their hopes and dreams in support of the human beings. And what if all of us were human beings? Life would be brutish, nasty and short. We would all be competing for resources and feeling like we were all owed everything.

What if we were all human givers? Then when one of us had human giver syndrome and felt obliged to be pretty, happy, calm, generous, attentive, needs of others, if we'd given away too much, we'd be surrounded by people who are also givers. And now we've created a system where everyone can give to each other

and no one gets left behind. No one slips through any cracks. We're all supported. We're all held in the presence of each other's compassion. please do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family and if you want more why not go back and listen to the full conversation with my guest and if you enjoyed this episode I think you will really enjoy my new bite-sized Friday email it's called the Friday Five and each week I share things that I do not share on social media. It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across and so much more. I really think you're going to love it.

The goal is for it to be a small yet powerful dose of feel good to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it at drchastity.com forward slash Friday five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.