Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - Science-Based Tools for When You’re Stressed, Obsessed, or Overthinking | Dr. Jenny Taitz

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Simple tools you can knit into your life both for when you’re actively freaking out, and for preventing future trips down the anxiety toilet. Dr. Jenny Taitz is a clinical psychologist and an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Taitz completed her fellowship in psychology at Yale University School of Medicine and achieved board certifications in both cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy. Her new book, Stress Resets: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes, is out now. In this episode we talk about:The difference between stress and anxietyJenny’s take on the use of benzodiazepinesWhat she means by, “negative core beliefs”, and how to untangle ourselves from themHow to prepare in advance for stressful situationsThe benefit of giving yourself a deliberate panic attackAnd why stress, while uncomfortable, is actually part of a healthy and meaningful lifeAdditional Links: How to Be Single and Happy by Dr. Jenny TaitzBreathe • Calm down • Meditate Three-Minute Breathing SpaceRelated Episodes:Can Anxiety Be a Gift? | Dr. David RosmarinZach Braff On: Anxiety, Sobriety, Insomnia, Grief, Social Media, and the Meaning of the Tattoo on His WristFor tickets to Dan Harris: Celebrating 10 Years of 10% Happier at Symphony Space: click hereSign up for Dan’s weekly newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/jenny-taitz-730See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and add free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello everybody, how we doing? This episode is a bonanza, a bonanza of practical and evidence-based advice for dealing with stress, anxiety, and overthinking. Simple tools you can knit into your life, both for when you're actively freaking out and for preventing future trips down the anxiety toilet. I personally got a lot out of this conversation. My guest

is Dr. Jenny Tates. She's a clinical psychologist and an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her latest book is called Stress Resets, How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Min minutes. We talked about the difference between stress and anxiety. Jenny's take on the use of benzodiazepines, drugs or medications such as Valium or Clonopin. What she means by negative core beliefs and how to untangle ourselves from them. How to prepare in advance for stressful situations.

The benefits of giving yourself a deliberate panic attack. And why stress, while uncomfortable, is actually a big part of a healthy and meaningful life. When you visit Audible, there are endless ways to ignite your imagination. With over 750,000 titles, including bestsellers, there's a listen for every type of listener. Discover all the best in audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, featuring authentic Canadian voices and celebrity talent. Check out Audible Canadian Originals, including The Downloaded, a sci-fi adventure featuring Brendan Fraser and Luke Kirby.

A first listen is waiting for you when you start your free trial at audible.ca. is waiting for you when you start your free trial at audible.ca. I'm Afwa Hirsh. I'm Peter Frankopin. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we delve into the life of Mikhail Gorbachev. This season has everything. It's got political ideology. It's got nuclear Armageddon. It's got love story. It's got betrayal. It's got economic collapse.

One ingredient that you left out, legacy. Was he someone who helped make the world a better place, saved us all from all of those terrible things? Or was he a man who created the problems and the challenges of many parts of the world today? Those questions about how to think about Gorbachev, you know, was he unwitting character in history? Or was he one who helped forge and frame the world? And it's not necessarily just a question of our making. There is a real life binary in how his legacy is perceived. In the West, he's considered a hero.

And in Russia, it's a bit of a different picture. So join us on Legacy for Mikhail Gorbachev. Dr. Jenny Tates, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Dan. I'm so excited to be here. You're writing about stress, and maybe it makes sense to start with some definitions. How do you define stress and what's the difference between stress and anxiety? Stress is when we feel like we don't have the resources to meet the demands that we're facing. It's when we're feeling like those times where it's just too much, I can't.

And measures of anxiety really ask you questions about your level of worry or physical symptoms like panic. And while there's a lot of overlap between the two, a lot of times stress comes from an outside trigger, but that being said, stress can certainly easily create anxiety if you don't intervene early. So one of my favorite things is really helping people manage stress so it doesn't lead to an ongoing struggle with anxiety. I don't know if I took away the right lesson from this, but not long ago right here on the show we talked to a guy named Dr. David Russ Marin, who runs the Center for Anxiety at Harvard. And I recall thinking that the way he delineated between stress and anxiety,

which sounds like it's basically the same way you are, is stress is a little bit more reality-based, like you are expected to do something that you don't have the resources to do. Anxiety may be more psychological in that you are creating a disproportionate response to a threat that may not be as real as you are perceiving it to be. That's totally correct and I would also just add to that that we still can, even if something is external, we can still increase our bandwidth to face what's in front of us. Say more about that. Yeah, so let's say I'm about to give a big presentation and I'm telling myself I need to calm down and I need to be the best presenter that this audience has ever heard. That's going to really amplify my stress.

But if I say I just need to show up and live according to my values and share information, that automatically will make the situation less stressful. And so much of our stress really has to do with getting caught in really negative thoughts or big expectations of ourselves that we can't possibly meet. That creates physical sensations. And then a lot of times we, you know, lose ourselves

in this cycle of big expectations plus physical symptoms kind of colluding against us. And then we cope by avoiding. And so if we can learn to think more flexibly, allow ourselves to experience the physical sensations is potentially helpful, or not judging them them even if they're uncomfortable. And then strategically lean into opportunities we can kind of move from, it's too much I can't to, yes I can, yes I will, here's my plan. So it might be worth dwelling on some of what you just said there because this toxic troika that you just described, you also go into this in the book, you basically say that where people get tripped up when it comes to stress is, part one, we get stuck or the word you use

is mired in negative thoughts. The second is that we start feeling physical symptoms of stress. And instead of just looking at it like the body preparing us to act, we freak out and judge these symptoms. Oh my God, my heart's racing. This must be really bad.

And then the third is we try to bail or avoid whatever's going on instead of dealing with it. And bailing or avoiding might feel good for a nanosecond, but it actually sets you up for more suffering down the road. So is that a roughly accurate recapitulation? Dan, that was perfect. That was perfect.

That's what I was looking for, Gold Star. Thank you. Yeah, and if we think about it, that's like exponentially increasing our stress. But the good news is that when we have this opportunity to reduce our stress threefold by thinking more flexibly, and which we could certainly talk more about how to do that, and learning how to allow our physical sensations to be there, and even prepare ahead of time for them and then really focus on how to help ourselves in those moments so we're not avoiding but we're strategically systematically approaching.

I wanna go into great detail about how we can talk to ourselves in these moments and prepare ahead of time for the physical symptoms, which you just mentioned right there. But let's just stay with the problem for just a second. You have a whole section at the beginning of the book about overthinking and rumination. What do we need to know about that? And what's the difference between overthinking and rumination, or are they just synonyms? I think that you could use them synonymously, and some people even call it perseverative cognition. That's what stress researchers call it the technical term.

But the thing that we need to know about overthinking and rumination is that that is what turns acute stress, something that's temporary, into chronic stress, something that is long-lasting. And so this is mind-blowing. But if we can think about this, you can have an ongoing stressful thing in your life, say caregiving or so many examples of things that can be chronically stressful. But if you're able to put down the overthinking, you could transform something chronic to something temporary. That said, we can also take something that's

temporary, like an upsetting incident at work, and make it chronic by playing it over and over again. And one of the things that I love to think about is a story that Sharon Salzberg, a good friend and I know a good friend of yours, shared with me that this is such a powerful story that I think really illustrates this point. You know, a man was trekking in Nepal and he had a blister on his foot, and he would anticipate the blister before he stepped down, experience the blister

when he stepped, and then replayed it. So we could experience our own distress once or threefold. And so the reason that stress becomes a problem in our lives is because we're carrying it with us, replaying it, taking something that took 20 minutes and marinating in it for many, many hours. And of course, it is likely something that was very legitimately upsetting, but the most thoughtful thing we could do in those moments is be kind enough to ourselves to learn how to unhook from the incessant re-experiencing, which also creates a cascade of physical

effects. Yes. And then those two do a toxic duet, the thinking and the feelings. But yeah, I mean, as I'm listening to you talk, I just think about how many times I've re-upped the negative emotion by making a little mental movie, both of what happened in the past and what's going to happen in the future over and over and over again, sort of compulsively.

Yeah, and the crazy thing is, is like if you're hooked up to all sorts of physiological stress assessment measures, even something that happened 20 years ago, your body can easily go back into re-experiencing in the present, and that's how stress goes from something that's unpleasant to leading to something that's really destructive. You mentioned Sharon Salzburg, her roommate, the guy she shares a house with, although it's two houses that are connected, but Joseph Goldstein, another amazing meditation teacher, he often talks about how we can experience all of this stress and anxiety, but what we're reacting to is often not something

that's happening in the moment. We're reacting to a thought. That's it. It is a quantum burst of energy in the mind, as Joseph reacting to a thought. That's it. It is a quantum burst of energy in the mind, as Joseph says, barely more than nothing. And it is producing this cascade physically and psychologically for us. Absolutely. And that's why I want to, I think one of the biggest things we could all do is get really good at playing with our thoughts and seeing them almost like Play-Doh rather than cement. Yes. Okay. That's another thing I want to make a note to follow up with you on playing

with our thoughts. But just staying on the flow of the book here, you have a tool that you use in your book called your abbreviated guide to breaking up with overthinking. Can you take us through some of the steps? Yes. Well, first of all, since overthinking can be something that most of us are really good at, rather than deciding today that you're going to stop overthinking in general, which is really ambitious, to actually develop a specific clear goal. Like, I'm going to not think about work between six and eight when I really want to be with my partner or my family or enjoy a little bit of me time. So, to create like a kind of a smart goal specific, measurable, attainable,

realistic, time-sensitive, something that's within reach. And then rescheduling, ruminating. A lot of times, our minds just run and ruin our lives. We can be thinking all the time. But what if you had a set time that you opened up all of your worries? Like let's say four to four twenty was your rumination time or your worry time rather than like a news ticker that's constantly going in the background. If you actually sit with it with your

full attention, you go from kind of an all day stress habit to a mindful, it's called stimulus control. You kind of control it and it then has like parameters around it rather than being incessant and endless. And a lot of times people find that like if they have a set time and they really train themselves to be really, you know, obviously if something's immediate that you can deal with like, oh my gosh, I'm going to get a ticket if I don't feed my meter, then obviously deal with that.

But if it's something like what if, what if, what if, I can never afford a house or what if, you know, to actually have a set time to do that because during that time, you might find it boring or forget to get into it. And you might take something that's kind of like going on in the background, background noise for hours over the day that you can just condense into like a 20 minute mini session. Yes. That makes a lot of sense. There's also on your list, write it out.

Write it out is a wonderful technique by James Pennebaker. He's a professor at the University of Texas in Austin. And a lot of times people confuse ruminating with processing. And so I really want people to have the full range of ways of dealing with it, like pushing away things that don't need immediate attention, problem-solving things that do. But we also need to allow ourselves to feel our feelings.

And so if you journal in a very specific way that allows you to process your emotions, so really going deeper, for example, in a research study where college students were asked to write about something that was very distressing with their full emotions and then how that event affected their lives and in the past and how it's currently affecting their lives. Really going through the process of allowing yourself to feel, people that did that for three days had significant reductions in rumination and depression six months later.

And so sometimes we think like ruminating is kind of like grieving or processing, but we're barely scratching the surface. And so actually giving ourselves the sufficient amount of time and headspace to go a little bit deeper and to kind of store something that's kind of splintered. I'm picturing a journal that says, use this to freak out constructively. It's not even freaking out. It could be like self-validating. This is another thing that I talk about in stress resets.

A lot of people confuse replaying something upsetting with normalizing. Of course, this is really upsetting. Of course, you feel this way, but self-validating allows for closure and improving how you feel while ruminating is like, I don't know, letting the suffering win. Right. That makes sense. There is a difference.

And of course, I like being a little glib, but I do see the difference between, you know, a miasmatic diffuse freak out that is generalized and running in the background of your mind like static as opposed to a focused processing that actually, as you said before, can be validating because the stuff you're worrying about isn't necessarily bullshit. Yes, different situations call for different ways of coping. And so if I know that there's just background noise,

I used to get into this thing when I was in graduate school about worrying how I would do you want to exam when I always did fine, like that could be good for my worry time or rumination time. But if I was really dealing with like a loss, that would be better for the expressive writing that actually allowing yourself to feel. And so I want people to have the right tool for the right time. What's going to work is based on what you need at the moment. Yes, that makes a lot of sense. Just so I don't miss another tool on your abbreviated guide to breaking up with overthinking is get absorbed in something else. Are you basically

saying change the channel in your mind? And this is the craziest thing, but this is true. People in a study were asked to talk about the most upsetting thing that happened to them, and then half of the participants were able to eavesdrop on researchers talking about something else. And people like eavesdropping to strangers were suddenly able to stop thinking, but the people that didn't have the opportunity to eavesdrop were still huffing and puffing about the most upsetting thing, understandably. And so doing something very simple, this is so crazy that these very

simple things work, but like looking at like a screen of colorful balls like could stop ruminating. And so the very simple things, I mean, we go big, we like think we need like postmates and, you know, big things, but like very small things like you know noticing three sites, three sounds, three sensations you know so I mean and we all know this if we get a call right in the middle of you know a stressful moment we might totally be in a different headspace by the time the call is over but being able to know what are the ways that you can kind of re-enter the moment and having concrete ways of doing so even if you don't have someone Juicy gossip that you've dropped you. I mean we are ridiculous creatures

There's a line I heard from the comedian Theovon like we're amazing humans are amazing and we're also straight muppets like the fact that We are so distractible can be used to our advantage and that's kind of hilarious It's I always think about that movie Up where there are these bad guy canines who are chasing, I think it's Up. They're chasing the protagonists and every once in a while the dogs will get distracted by a squirrel and that's us. Yeah and what I want people to know is

it's kind of like going to the gas station. You just need to like refuel yourself. You don't want to like live in distraction. You know, if you're stuck on something you need a quick reset, not the rest of the day out of office and then a big pile up tomorrow. Yes. You keep mentioning the word reset, and we're going to get to your actual resets and buffers

coming up. But let me just ask you about your story. You referenced worrying about your tests in college, but what else about your biography got you so deeply interested in stress? Yeah, I mean, there's so much I can say about this. I think genetically I probably run a little more on the stressed side, but I really found that so many of the things that I learned in training as a mindfulness-based behavioral

therapist really changed my life. And one of the things that really breaks my heart and continues to really move me is the fact that so many people are really struggling and can't necessarily afford research-backed help. And also not everyone needs a full course of therapy. A lot of people could benefit from smaller doses of self-help materials. And during the peak of the pandemic,

when there were so many articles about people struggling with their mental health and not being able to access care, a colleague of mine at UCLA mentioned to me that there was this study run by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania that found that people that were going into surgery, half of the people were given benzodiazepine and half of the people were offered the chance to listen to a song called Waitless by Marconi Union. And remarkably, Dan, the song worked almost as well as the benzodiazepine. And obviously, songs have no side effects.

And this got me really thinking a lot about what are the simple ways we can improve how we feel without downsides. And I wrote an article about the song and other similar strategies for the New York Times, and it went viral. And then I wanted to kind of expand on additional ways we could all improve how we cope in difficult moments and also how to create a life that feels more like a buffer. But these are also certainly things

that I am always applying in my life. I have three little kids, and I work with a lot of people that are in crisis back to back and these are all kind of the beads that I put together like routinely in my own life and they've been incredible catalysts for change in my life and I want everyone to have access to them even if they can't meet with a professional. Yeah. Just to quickly say if anybody's wondering what a benzodiazepine is, it's a class of

anti-exiety drugs that includes Xanax, Ativan, Clonopin, Valium, etc., etc. And just back to you, it sounds like your goal here is, yeah, some people need a therapist, many of us do, and almost all of us are stressed, and some decent subset may not actually require therapy, so for those folks, for the worried well, this book. Yeah, and some people that have been in therapy, they need something to turn to in a tough moment. A friend of mine, she did a course of DBT, which is one of the therapies I specialize in,

and she has post-its all over her house. It's like DBT skills reminders. And so we all might need a quick reminder. And I think one of the ironies is even the concept of a book on stress, because like when you're stressed, who's going to sit down and start flipping through a book. And so this book is almost like a cookbook where you could turn to any page and find strategies, depending on what you need to improve the moment. That makes a lot of sense. And just to go back to Benzos, I know you write about them in the book. And a lot of people listening probably do take them or have taken them

or might be considering taking them. What's your take on them? There's so much to say about Benzo de Azepines. I mean, maybe we could start with their history and then a little bit about their pharmacology and then a little bit on the irony in them. In terms of the history of Benzo de Azepines, I find this really interesting. in them. In terms of the history of benzodiazepines, I find this really interesting. And I learned a lot about this from Robert Whitaker, who wrote an Adam Bevan Epidemic. He is a science journalist and he also runs a website called Madden America. But he explained to me, and this is based on a lot of research, that benzodiazepines were developed by a pharmaceutical company that was trying to treat bacteria.

And they discovered that mice on the verge of being electrocuted, who were administered a specific compound, behaved passively. So these mice are about to be electrocuted and their columns can be. And then Arthur Sackler of the opioid crisis, notoriety, started marketing what turned out to be benzodiazepines to women who were really stuck by their days as housewives, as mother's little helper. And it's really terrible that a substance is being pushed as a way to cope with a dissatisfying life.

And pharmacologically, 30 million people take these and they act on a neurotransmitter known as GABA, which is almost like the brakes of our nervous system. They bind to a GABA receptor, amplifying its breaking power. But then what happens to us is we naturally reduce our output of GABA. So we become dependent on these external sources of anxiety relief that are very sedating. And then we don't have that within us. And so when people try to discontinue them, it's really difficult.

It's a really difficult withdrawal, and I just find it's so painfully ironic that when we need to be our sharpest, these medications really dull our ability to think clearly and to be energized to do the things that we need to do, and they perpetuate this belief that anxiety is something that we need to run from. And so a lot of people may not realize that to actually do behavior therapy, you need

to work on some sort of benzotapir. And it can be very challenging and you need to work with a professional on that, but it can also change your life and save your brain because long-term benzodiazepine use is associated with cognitive decline. Okay, one thing to say and then some questions. I said what I'm about to say to you to Dr. David Russ Marin in the episode I referenced earlier. By the way, listeners, I will put a link to that in the show notes.

But here's the way I use benzos and just be interested in your take as a doctor. I have panic disorder. I had a big resurgence of claustrophobia a year ago. I was having trouble getting on planes and in elevators. So for planes, when I went out of real, I needed to travel for work. I really needed to travel and I was in the throes of this really severe cycle of panic. And so I used benzos as a bridge to get me on planes while I did exposure therapy, riding in an elevator with my shrink at the Westchester Mall and slowly tapering the amount of benzodiazepine

that I took to get on the plane. So I used it as a bridge as opposed to something I just take as a standing dose all the time. And so in that way, I found Benzos to be really helpful. Am I off? That makes a lot of sense. And I would certainly recommend for someone, let's say someone is having to give a eulogy tomorrow and they are worried that they're not going to be

able to sleep well tonight. There are certain instances a couple of times a year, maybe, where something like that could be helpful and I don't want to presume arrogantly that I want to make broad recommendations for everyone. But I truly believe that there are ways to treat panic relatively quickly. And if you're taking a benzodiazepine a couple times a year, a couple times a month, that's okay. That maybe it's not going to be habit-forming. But a lot of people I've worked with have found that it works too well,

and they took it on the plane and then they want to take it tomorrow because there's going to be a stressful thing tomorrow, and then they want to use it the third day to sleep, and then it can easily become something more than that. In relatively quick ways, there are alternative methods to treat panic that are really empowering. Yes, I have found that. I got lucky with benzos in that, There are alternative methods to treat panic that are really empowering Yes, I have found that I got lucky with benzos in that and I do have an addictive personality I struggled with cocaine many years ago

I was taking clonopin which is a flavor of Benzo it makes me feel like shit the next day And so I was powerfully disincentivized because I didn't want to feel like shit the next day So I just I used it as minimally as possible. But I could see how it would be addictive because it feels good in the moment. It's like the, as I've written somewhere that you could like march an army of chimpanzees with ninja stars through the room

and I would not freak out and that feels really good as somebody who has like a baseline, you know, anxiety all the time. And I recognize, A, I don't want to be addicted to anything and B, the price I'm paying the next day after I take a benzo is so high that I really want to cut it out as much as possible. Yeah, and I worry that even just taking it, and I may really appreciate you talking about this because it takes a lot of courage and vulnerability to do that. But even just taking it has a little bit of a flavor of there's something wrong with

feelings certain ways. And one of the things that we know is that really accepting is kind of the way, huh? I agree with that powerfully. One of the things, I've mentioned this on the show before, a thing that I talk about with everybody, most especially my nine year old son, is I think the assignment of being alive is getting more comfortable with discomfort. And as Esther Perel has pointed out on this show

and other places that we've created, I think her term is a kind of assisted living in modern society where technology has made so many things so free of friction that we freak out if we're freaking out, if anything's difficult. And so, absolutely, I don't think, for me, I don't take a benzo if I'm mildly anxious. I take it if I'm worried I'm going to have a panic attack and can't get on a flight with

my kid. And then when you worry about having a panic attack, can I ask what you're worried about happening? Like what are the physical symptoms that scare you the most or that you most read? Oh, what's so interesting is that, you know, and I've done a lot of work on this and when you're doing exposure therapy, you know, you get questions like the question you just asked me. And what's so interesting that I kind of knew, but I never really had it pointed out to me explicitly, is that the thought I often have when I'm worried

about getting claustrophobic in an elevator or an airplane is other people are gonna think I'm insane. And I thought that maybe it was idiosyncratic, but no, it is classic. And it makes a lot of sense because the number one fear, justifiably, for most humans is social rejection. Why? Because we evolved to be communal creatures, and if you were rejected on the savannah

during evolution times, you were gonna get killed by a saber-toothed tiger. I don't even know if they had saber-toothed tigers on the savannah, but with some sort of predator. So that's a thing that goes through my mind, is like, I'm gonna freak out, and everybody's gonna point and laugh at me. And what would freaking out look like?

Freaking out is I need to get off of this fucking plane right now. Like I am trapped and I need to get out. I'm gonna start banging on that door even though we're on the tarmac and the door won't take me anywhere because we're not hooked up to the skybridge anymore. I am trapped, I'm in hell.

That's what I worry about. And what's the hell in your body? Just so everybody knows. This is what happens if you go to a doctor when you have panic disorder. Hell in my body is honestly not that bad. And I'm sorry, is this okay? No, it's totally fine. It's great. I think it's just really good for people to hear what this is like. Hell in my body is a set of uncomfortable sensations that I have learned over time. I can absolutely survive.

So racing hard, dizziness, a feeling of the walls closing in, blurry vision, sweaty palms, dry mouth, shortness of breath. So all of that happens, and it's your nervous system sending you the signal, you're gonna die but you need to get out of this situation. Of course, there is no objective threat in those moments I've now learned and so I've learned to talk to myself in a way that, you know, I can tell myself there is no threat

here. And by the way, just doing that brings the prefrontal cortex online and deactivates the amygdala as you know. And I can also tell myself, I've experienced these sensations a million times and I'm still alive. I can experience it now. Great. And so you're doing like all the things

and there's maybe even more things that we can talk through but I love the idea that someone could lean on things within themselves and that really comes with this added dose of self-efficacy, which is like this priceless feeling of mastery, whereas taking something outside of you and you kind of feel lousy the next day is a missed opportunity. But again, if you need to, someone listening needs to take a benzodiazepine to do something that's

a really core value of theirs, far be it for me to opine on your life, but I really want people to know that when I meet someone that has long struggled with panic attacks, I feel equal parts like heartbroken and like elated. I'm devastated that so many people haven't been able to find treatment because treatment works relatively quickly and I'm elated because there are really exciting things that people may not know about that work well, very well. Yes, and the self mastery part of it is true. And it's also true that the process sucks. Like it sucks to systematically face your fears. It's not fun. I would much rather avoid it through not getting on planes or not getting in elevators or,

you know, taking a climb in or whatever. But that makes your life small, and there are other massive prices to pay, like potential for addiction, hangovers, etc. And by the way, nobody, literally nobody promised us that life was going to be easy. In fact, just the opposite, a proper understanding of life is that it is challenging. So shying away from that is to miss out on really on the good stuff. Yeah, and I would say it's it's a little bit like working out. Like some people could say that it sucks but some people feel so hopeful and excited that like often people help me help them like

rev up their panic symptoms and like at that point they've won and anxiety is lost and so you could say it sucks or you could say that it's really like exciting that you're about to like win, you know, put panic in the trunk and you in the front seat. Yes, yes. That's a little rah-rah for my taste, but you're absolutely right.

I used to like hate some of the panic treatment stuff or exposures. I know I feel like doing it, I like people and I don't want to bother people or make people uncomfortable. But now I feel like privilege, like how lucky am I that we get to do this thing together that's going to help you and you know isn't going to harm you. And the worst thing is like feeling like you can't do the things that you want to do. Coming up, Dr. Jenny Tates talks about what she means by a stress reset,

the difference between resets and buffers, and practical examples of many, many resets that you can use in your daily life. Where can I get help hiring people with disabilities? There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities who are ready to work. And many local organizations are available to help you find qualified candidates and make your workplace more accessible and inclusive. Visit Canada.ca slash right here to connect with one near you today. A message from the Government of Canada.

Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Canada. Hello, I am Alice Levine and I am one of the hosts of Wondries podcast British Scandal. On our latest series The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round the world sailing race. Good on him I hear you say, but there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh and also tiny little detail almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most

complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and add free on Wondry Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. great friend Joseph Goldstein, who will also be appearing live with me at Symphony Space in New York City on March 28th. Go to symphonyspace.org for tickets and download the 10% happier app today wherever you get your apps. Okay, so Stress Resets, it's the name of the book. It's the subject of the ensuing discussion between you and me. What is a stress reset? A stress reset is a quick thing we can do in the moment

to either improve our thinking, improve how we feel in our body, or improve our behaviors. So in just a matter of minutes, no long meditations, medications or martinis required, you can give yourself a little bit more wiggle room to live a better life. So the book is called Stress Resets, but you actually spend the book talking about resets and buffers, which are separate ideas.

Can you describe the difference? A reset is what we do in the heat of the moment when we are really struggling. It's almost like urgent care, if you will. And a buffer are things that you can do preventatively to live a life where you're less likely to go from crisis to crisis. Just in case anybody's out there thinking about this person's just making the shit up. This all comes from DBT, ACT, CBT. So that's dialectical behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy. These evidence-based psychotherapeutic modalities. And do I have that right?

Yes, nothing in this book is made up. The research reference section is pretty lengthy. All of these things are things that have been found helpful in various clinical trials or a part of evidence-based treatments. And not everyone is going to work for you, but you can find your favorites because there's a lot of them to choose from. And I also just want to let people know that, again, these things short-term are not going to be as relieving as leaving work for the day or buying something really expensive online or something that's like a quick, like big dose of dopamine. But these are the things that longer-term will help you and and longer term will prove like a much better

investment. A point well taken. Just in no particular order, Lauren, the producer on this episode, identified a few that she thought might work here. So this is in the book, Mind Reset Number Two, Acknowledge Your State of Mind. What do you mean by that? How does it work? We all metaphorically and also somewhat literally have three states of mind. What do you mean by that? How does it work? We all metaphorically and also somewhat literally have three states of mind. We have an emotion

mind where we're governed by our emotions. We have a reasonable mind where we're really just logical and focused on the facts. And then we also have a wise mind where we merge like our facts, feelings plus intuition intuition and this is a skill that's taught in dialectical behavior therapy. And there's nothing wrong with emotion mind or something wrong with reasonable mind. You don't always need to be in wise mind. But if I'm about to try to work on my taxes, I can do myself a huge favor if I say I'm in a motion mind and I need to be in reasonable mind, or if I'm just focused on facts when I need to be more focused on feelings, like I got to get home, it's getting late rather than really enjoying my time with my friend who's never in town,

it might be helpful to just even notice like what state of mind I'm in because we can get into this big thing of like really taking our thoughts very seriously, but if we can quickly say emotion mind, you know, when I face this particular situation, emotion mind. But categorically writing off that we're in a place where our emotions are running this show because they're very high, we can kind of be able to see more clearly. And even just taking a step back to think like, what is wise mind gives us a little bit of room to make a better decision. Does that make sense, Dan? Yeah, it does, but I want to drill down on it a little bit. Run through with me, for me, for us, again, the different minds. It's emotion mind, wise mind.

And reasonable mind, which is the facts. Okay, reasonable mind is facts. Wise mind is. The integration of facts and feelings and intuition. And emotion is, we all know what that is. Yeah, the feelings, the raw feelings. And so it's simply putting a label on where we are right now that can be a stress reset. Absolutely, because if in the middle of the night

I start hearing noise or I start convincing myself that if I don't fall asleep within minutes tomorrow is going to be terrible. If I just quickly tell myself like a motion mind that is so much more helpful than continuing to add on to the tornado. And is that it? Is it simply just a motion mind or do you then say, okay this is emotion mind what I need now is reasonable mind and let me talk to myself in the following way. Great question you you notice what state of

mind you're in, what states I deal for your situation and then try to shift gears a little bit and there's also a skill of practicing accessing wise mind for those times that you really need the integration. How do we access wise mind? Taking a moment to slow down and even breathing in wise, breathing out mind, like let's say you're about to say something really mean to someone you actually really like, you know, slowing down and breathing in wise, breathing out mind, asking yourself, is this wise mind? Leaning into the pauses between your breaths

because there's something about emotion mind that's really reactive and fast and compulsive and impulsive. I said this before, and it might have, for people who don't have, you know, aren't interested in or conversant in the various parts of the brain. Earlier I was talking about how I could be on a plane,

the panic could start, I could start feeling some incipient physical sensations of panic, psychological manifestations, scary thoughts, talking about how I could be on a plane, the panic could start, I could start feeling some incipient physical sensations of panic, psychological manifestations, scary thoughts, etc. etc. And if I talk to myself in the right way, I said something to the effect of it can deactivate the amygdala and bring online the prefrontal cortex. The amygdala is the stress center of the brain. The prefrontal cortex is basically reasonable mind incarnate. And that seems to me exactly what you're talking about here. As soon as you put a label on emotion mind, you're jumping from the skittering amygdala

to a sort of reasonable, the newer part of the brain. Exactly. You could go through all these things in your mind trying to convince yourself that's just a sort of reasonable, the newer part of the brain. Exactly, you could go through all these things in your mind trying to convince yourself that's just turbulence, that's just wind, that's whatever it is, but if you just say emotion mind, you can kind of get the prefrontal cortex on board. Just harkening back to something you said earlier

in this conversation that I made a note of wanting to come back to, you talked about playing with our thoughts. I don't know if you invoked clay as a metaphor, but you invoked something as a metaphor, playing with our thoughts. And this maybe seems like an apropos moment to bring it up, back up. Yeah, so this is another, we said a lot of times we take our thoughts very, very seriously. we said a lot of times we take our thoughts very, very seriously and most of our thoughts are more like spam than very important people speaking truths to us. And so even just learning to practice, it's called cognitive diffusion of just like taking your thoughts lightly. And there's a lot of ways

we can do this. One of my favorite ways to do this is singing your thoughts. And so there's different ways you can practice this. But if you have the thought, you know, I'm a loser that shows up every Saturday night, if you sing that to the tune of a song like Do You Believe in Magic, it loses its grip. It just won't feel the same. And it's a nice reminder that thoughts are just combinations of letters and sounds. They don't necessarily have a lot of value or credibility. And a client taught me this and I love it so much. But even just there's a had a way song, What Is Love?

Yeah. And there's a great Saturday night live clip of Jim Carrey dancing to What Is Love. But even like, what are thoughts? Thoughts can't hurt me no more. And so this is another way out of ruminating is really seeing like, okay, like thoughts can't hurt me. I can sing the thought because we snowball and spiral and drown when we are taking these very unhelpful

emotion mind ideas and making them reality. But if we can play, sing, we automatically lose their grip. I was at a psychology conference and this was the coolest thing, but we instead of wearing name tags with our actual names, we wrote our core beliefs about ourselves. One of the best things about being a psychologist is you get endless experiential opportunities.

But people that are truly like wonderful, noble, inspirational, righteous people that might have even been on the show are wearing name tags that say, I'm a bad person. And such a different thing to wear that on your name tag versus like really believe that. And also such a enlightening experience to realize that we all have these. this is part of our shared humanity my Wife and child hate when they'll sometimes come to me with serious things and I will sing it back to them this reset I did it to my son the other day and he looked at me and said daddy sometimes you are hard to love It's so funny that you say that because when I do this with my kids they they start laughing

Maybe my singing is more laughable, but. I think it's because like they're actually asking me to do something that with an acute need, like they're trying to get me to do something that needs to happen right now. And I sing it back to them and they hate that. Okay, so those are mind resets, acknowledging your state of mind, singing your thoughts.

There are body resets and one of them is to cool down literally. So this is another skill from dialectical behavior therapy, DBT, and basically if you take a salad bowl full of ice water and you set a timer for 30 seconds, you hold your breath, you submerge your face into the cold water, you activate the vagus nerve and you slow your heart rate and redirect blood flow from your heart to other essential organs. If you were wearing an apple watch your heart rate would come down significantly so people should not do this if they have a heart condition but doing something as quick as a 30

second basically like a face ice bucket challenge or a cold punch for your face only you quickly reset and just very practically, if you jumped into a cold pool, you wouldn't still be thinking about the same thing when you were in the pool or when you came out. And again, this just takes 30 seconds and there's something really empowering about realizing that it doesn't take very long and doesn't take anything too fancy, but there's something about literally cooling down that quiets the mind and regulates your body. Well, who has an ice bucket lying around?

You just need a salad bowl. You just need something your face will fit in. But it takes some forethought here. You have to be freaking out and be like, okay, I need to go get a salad bowl and a bunch of ice and make this happen. If you want to do it in the technical sense, yes. But now they sell these little ice rollers for your face. It's not going to have the same jarring effect. There's like little ice rollers for your face

if you suck on an ice cube. But I think even more powerful than the literal skill is the bigger message that our body is incredibly resourceful and resilient. And there are quick ways to recalibrate. So like if you're living in New York City and it's cold right now and you wanted to take a walk around the block, that might even reach some of it.

It's not going to reach the exact benefits of the, it's called the mammalian dive response. It's not going to do the exact benefits of that, but there are ways to quickly do this. But these days, so many people are working from home and a lot of, I think, our stress can easily come up when we're at home, but just knowing that this is out there there and I've also had people do things like have the dry ice that you could just quickly access. I find this intriguing. I was on a meditation retreat like

a private one with just a couple of friends during the pandemic retreat centers were all closed and so we basically just stayed at my friend's house in the fall in Maine and anybody's ever been in Maine even in the summer the water there is unacceptably cold and this was the fall in Maine and anybody's ever been in Maine. Even in the summer, the water there is unacceptably cold and this was the fall and every afternoon at this retreat we would jump off the pier into the water and it was shocking. I mean it was terrible at first and then the elation that I felt every time was really remarkable. Yeah, and that phase ice thing is much faster. Again, 30 seconds, you could do it with frozen vegetables if you don't have ice. Fast, easy, quick, and again, we do have this mammalian dive response.

We do have these incredible mechanisms within us that are almost like control all delete. We just need to know how to access them. Mammalian what response? Dive response. Dive response. I mean, what does that refer to dive? When a human body is submerged while they're holding their breath, when their nose is submerged in water, it lowers your heart rate and redirects blood flow.

Is this why deep breathing also can have salutary effects? I'm not sure, but deep breathing also activates the vagus nerve. It wouldn't be the dive response, but that's another very powerful tool of slowing your breathing down to five second inhale, five second exhale can similarly activate the parasympathetic nervous system and slow you down. Can you define vagus nerve and parasympathetic nervous system? Yes, the vagus nerve is the main component of the parasympathetic nervous system and that's the rest and digest

part of us that slows us down. And so if we're really revved up and we want to be able to access like slow the bodily functions that we have that help us regulate, these are some of the ways that we can from the outside in. So as a body reset, we talked about cool down, but it's possible that this deep breathing that you just described five seconds in five seconds out for some period of time could also be a reset. Yeah, there's a very popular package of resets that's taught in DBT for people that are really

struggling with overthinking or intense urges. The acronym is TIP, which is temperature, which is that ice face exercise. I is intense exercise, and that's not a gym class. That's like 90 seconds of like squat jumps, burpees, doing something quickly to change your chemistry. So temperature intense exercise, paced breathing, which is the five seconds in, five seconds out. So inhaling for five seconds, exhaling for five seconds. So we're slowing our breathing from the average person, breathes about 18 breaths per minute. So we're slowing down to a third of that six breaths per minute. And then the final P in tip is progressive muscle relaxation, which is tensing and releasing, like tensing your forehead, releasing, tensing your neck by bringing your chin to your chest, releasing. And so doing this combination of four exercises is

one of my favorite ways to either stop rumination or change your bodily response if you are in a very high stress situation and for people that can't do the temperature because they're somewhere that they can't access ice, you could certainly maybe do the two Ps or... So any one of them might do the trick? Yeah, yeah, and I think different ones work well for different people, so I hope you try them all. Yeah, and I think different ones work well for different people, so I hope you try them all. Coming up, Jenny talks about how to cultivate a willing attitude, what she means by negative core beliefs and how to untangle from them, and how to prepare in advance for stressful situations.

Hi, I'm Anna. And I'm Emily. We're the hosts of Wanderer's podcast Terabbe Famous, a show where we bring you outrageous true stories about our most famous celebrities. And our latest season is all about the one and only Katie Price. You might think you know her, you might have an opinion, but there is way more to the former glamour model than just her cup size. Yes, this is a woman who's gone from pin-up to publishing sensation. We all have teenage dreams,

and for Katie, it was simple, massive fame and everlasting love. I just wanted to kiss a boy. Just one boy. Well, she does kiss a few boys, but there are plenty of bumps along the way. And when I say bumps, I mean terrible boyfriend choices, secret dates with spiky-haired pop stars, and a tabloid press that wants to tear her apart at every opportunity.

And she surprises even herself when suddenly she becomes a role model for a whole new generation of young women who want to be just like her. Want to hear more? Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and add free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Being an actual royal is never about finding your happy ending. But the worst part is, if they step out of line or fall in love with the wrong person, it changes the course of history.

I'm Aresha Skidmore-Williams. And I'm Brooke Sifron. We've been telling the stories of the rich and famous on the hit, wonder-y show, Even the Rich, and talking about the latest celebrity news on Rich and Daily. We're going all over the world on our new show, Even the Royals. We'll be diving headfirst into the lives of the world's kings, queens, and all the wannabes

in their orbit throughout history. Think succession meets the crown meets real life. We're going to pull back the gilded curtain and show how royal status might be bright and shiny, but it comes at the expense of, well, everything else. Like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head. Follow Even The Royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Even The Royals early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Okay, so we've talked about a few mind resets, a few body resets. There's also behavior resets and the one that Lauren picked for us to discuss and you can supplement if you would like. The one that Lauren picked was cultivate a willing attitude. Yeah, a lot of us approach our lives with willfulness, which is a hell no sort of stance, digging your heels in, screaming or silently speaking, you know,

expletives or screaming them into, you know, Twitter or X. And willingness is having an attitude of like kind of hell yes. And so to try all of these things, like these things are not things that I want people to just read about, but to actually lean into, it's really helpful to practice willingness. And I think in any moment, if you're sitting in traffic and you're clenching and you're compulsively, you know, moving in your car or hitting the horn, just taking a second and asking yourself, am I being willing or willful? you're compulsively moving in your car or hitting the horn, just taking a second and asking yourself,

am I being willing or willful? And willingness is really what I think of as the embodiment of acceptance. And it's almost like if you spilled something on the floor, like willingness is picking it up with a good attitude and willfulness is like throwing something after you spilled something. And so it's a really incredible shift

into being more effective, agreeable, good sport in life. Does that make sense, Dan? It does. I just want to clarify again, I'm sure this is true. You're not saying we should act out every shitty idea somebody gives to us, especially if they have more power than us, we should accept any sexual advance that's wanted or unwanted.

This is really about, are we accepting what the universe is offering up to us in this moment or not? I love that you asked that question. It's really willingness in the service of our values. Got it. So I'm willing to go the extra mile to be a good friend. I'm willing, it's things that bring us closer to the life that we want to live rather than things that move us away from it. And in key moments it's about like what's your relationship to reality in traffic for example. This is what's happening right now so raging against it ain't so useful. Right and if

you're with someone that you love but you're annoyed with in the moment maybe you need to be willing to be a little bit nice or give the benefit of the doubt or stretch yourself my wife who married an occasionally very annoying person has a tattoo on her wrist that says right now it's like this and That's basically the cultivation of a willing attitude like whatever's happening right now. I can feel this I Love that and I forgot the quote but Zach Braf shared something beautiful about a tattoo he has that's similar, I think.

A more or something? Yeah, a more fate, which was to love your fate. I think that's a nice way to also think about willingness. Yeah, seven days to last again, I haven't really unpacked this with her, but she's a great meditation teacher, but she has a tattoo that says trust life, which as I've sometimes joked is a little earnest

for my taste, but, and this is a person who's on her fourth bout of cancer and had gone through a divorce and had plenty of difficult family stuff. And I think it's her way of saying like, if this is happening, it's what's supposed to happen on some level. I might be mangling that

because I don't think she believes in creator, God, or destiny or anything like that, but it is what's happening right now. So you should trust that this is what's happening and cultivates inequity in the face of it. Seb, if I got that wrong, I apologize. Yeah, dragging is not going to help anyone dance towards what they want. Okay, so let's move into some buffers. We've been talking about resets, which are more sort of, you know, you've got an acute

situation. Here's what you can do. Buffers are, I think, followed more in the preventive medicine bucket. Here's mind buffer number one. Untangle yourself from negative core beliefs. This harkens back to your psychology conference. Yes, so oftentimes because of our upbringing or painful experiences we've endured, we develop core beliefs or fundamental ways we view ourselves.

You know, anything ranging from I'm unlovable to other people can't be trusted. And these core beliefs really can affect the way we view ourselves and view the world, and rather than letting them guide us or become a self-fulfilling prophecy, it's really helpful to know what they are and realize when they've been, a hot button issue has been pressed. The most important, I think, is to act in ways that transcend them. If you think you don't belong to really purposefully pursue the communities that you'd like to belong in, even if they feel aspirational, or if you think other people can't be trusted to lean in and strategically increase your trust in other people. And so I think being super aware of the way you view yourself in the world

and then checking in as to how that affects your behaviors and then acting in ways that are counter to them and then also really being compassionate and Aware when certain core beliefs get triggered and being mindful that that's because it's a core belief that it's remains to feel very true I see all these people that are incredibly successful accomplished like a book charismatic and they feel like awkward adolescents that are about to be made fun of because they were bullied in high school or they were a poor fit in their class or they struggled with shame because people didn't accept them growing up and to be just really aware of

how that affects their day to day rather than to be living that as if it's real in the current moment. Yeah, I've been thinking about a problem that I've had for many years, which is when somebody criticizes me often, I hear that as you're a terrible person. And so I freak out. I have a disproportionate response instead of focusing on like the narrow issue that somebody's trying to identify. And I've worked on this, which leads me to the, I think the natural follow up question is, is what exactly can one do to operationalize this buffer to untangle from these core beliefs?

I think you hit the nail on the head when you said even just realizing that when someone gives you feedback, your mind quickly goes to I'm a terrible person. So knowing what are instances where this core belief is going to be primed and what are ways I can act different than them. So if you just took it as feedback, how would you respond differently in preparing ahead of time to, you know, next time this happens and my mind is going to do this, I'm going to instead thank the person for their feedback instead of become defensive, which would be the response. If I was believing I was, they were calling me a terrible person. So it's really deliberately working on

creating a new habit. And it's hard to predict when this is gonna happen, but when you get some tough feedback to train yourself to have a reflex of thank you, I will think about that. No matter what else is going on for you, and then when your nervous system comes down, you can really chew on what the person said.

Am I in the zone of accuracy here? Absolutely, and Dan, I think an important first step is even just taking a minute to think about if people are listening right now and thinking, what are my core beliefs? How do I fundamentally view myself? What are the stories I hold about other people to get really clear because then you're more likely to be able to be on high alert when it gets pushed. You have a nice phrase in the book that our core beliefs are things that we tend to make pervasive, permanent and personal. That is something that Martin Seligman, a professor who wrote the book Learned Optimism, talks about.

So when we start to make things, you things, you weren't invited to the party, isn't just I wasn't invited to the party, but I'm never invited, I'll never be invited, everyone is terrible and no one likes me. So step one is to think, take a minute and think. It can be right now, it can be later when you're not listening to us talk. What are my core beliefs? And then if I'm hearing you correctly, the next step is to try to work on some new reflexes for moments when those core beliefs are triggered.

Exactly, yeah, you're coping ahead for ways to practice what I call opposite action, acting different than what your emotions want you to be doing. Well, that reminds me of something you said earlier that I promised to come back to, which was thinking about situations where we know we're gonna get stressed

and preparing in advance for them. You made a reference to that and I made a note of wanting to come back to it. Does that sound familiar? That does sound familiar. And there are several ways we can do this. I'll walk you through two of them. So the first one is coping ahead.

So I really encourage people rather than dread, cope ahead. So if I know that I'm taking a red eye tomorrow and I'm going to be really tired and I'm going to have to get to the airport and I'm not going to have the foods I usually like to eat and so on and so on, rather than go through all of the things that could go wrong and how things will just become problematic rather than rehearsing the outcome that I don't want,

I can mentally and logistically prepare for things to go right. And so rather than taking something that's unproductive, again, we're making it useful. And there's something really powerful about mental rehearsal, just imagining doing the thing, you imagining you're having a difficult conversation with someone, and you respond with kindness when they say something upsetting, I'm just imagining doing that uses the same part of your brain that's needed to actually do that. So it's not only kind of like a nice idea, but it's actually literal rehearsal. And so that's one way to do that. And then another way to do

that is very specific to do that. And then another way to do that is very specific to people that do struggle with physical sensations that they don't like. If you know that if you're in a tight space or you're going to have a year end review with a boss or you're going to be flying, if you're anticipating that those situations are going to make you sweat, make your heart race, make you feel dizzy,

rather than simply, again, like praying that that doesn't happen or feeling like you need to take a pill to make those sensations go away, you can practice panicking. You can practice, you know, getting really clear on what are the symptoms that I'm anticipating that I don't like. And one of my favorite things to do is help people recreate those symptoms. And so if you know that your heart's going to raise and you're going to get really hot and you're going to feel short of breath, I can help you by helping you put on a jacket doing jumping jacks and taking a straw, like a plastic straw, pinching it so it's half the diameter, pinching your nose and just breathing from the skinny opening of the straw that

will make you feel like you can't breathe. If by listing your specific stress bodily sensations, recreating the responses that you're afraid of in a safe space, practicing each of them for a minute repeatedly, when these come up, you have a kind of a been-there-done-that attitude about them rather than catastrophic interpretations, and you conclude that they're really temporary rather than terrible. Hmm. And just to be clear from the book, this is body buffer number 12. Give yourself a panic attack to feel less afraid of them.

Yes. Yeah. I've never been able to make this work. My exposure therapy guy was trying to get me to do this. I never, for some reason, like, I can't manage to really freak out unless I'm in the situation for real. But I do know this works for lots of people. Yeah, I also want to say that it works across the board, whether it's public speaking or

test anxiety or traditional panic attacks or general anxiety that creates all sorts of other symptoms. And the reason I want to talk about it is because I just feel like we're set up to fail when our body is doing something that intensifies our emotions and then our mind is escalating the bodily response. more flexibly and have learned experience about the temporariness of the body sensations and we're so much freer to approach situations with more hope and learned optimism. Yes. It's like a form of exercise. It's like a bicep curl of, yeah, I can do this thing. And so when the sensations come up, whether it's stress, anxiety, or panic, then you're not completely taken off guard. You're prepared. You're totally prepared. And you need to do this repeatedly. And the goal is never for these symptoms to be tolerable. Tolerable is the wrong word. It's never for it to be like you're not supposed to habituate to them. They're supposed to be distressing and

similar, but that you metaphorically have like put out a welcome mat rather than a do not disturb to them. What resets and buffers do you find yourself using the most? Oh, so many. I love stop, slow down, take a step back, observe, proceed mindfully. That's something that I'm constantly doing. And then I follow that up with anchoring, like feeling my feet on the floor, doing a quick three point check check. What am I thinking, feeling doing, and coming back to what's helpful in the moment? I'm also obsessed with half-smiling, which is a facial expression of acceptance where you ever so slightly raise the upper corners of your lips, which automatically releases tension in your brow, which I find it's very difficult to get lost in judgmental thoughts or overthinking

with a facial expression of serenity. And opposite action is in another one. Okay. You just list a bunch of things that I want to go back through. So stop, STOP, that's an acronym. Can you just walk us through that again and how we might do that? Sure. Stop is slowing down, taking a step back, observing and proceeding mindfully. So literally like thinking to yourself, like, because a lot of the things that we do thinking wise or behavior wise that are problematic or when we're going 100 miles an hour. So truly slowing down because again, like we have a lot more space to, to damage control if we're going like five miles an hour versus 150 miles an hour.

That's something very quick, just literally stopping and being more mindful. And then anchoring is like digging your heels into the floor, really feeling the earth supporting your feet, doing a quick three point check. What am I thinking? What am I feeling? What am I doing right now? And come back to the demands of the present moment or what's helpful in the present moment? And so like really kind of turning on awareness when we're kind of slipping into suffering or responses that are going to make things

exponentially worse. Turning on awareness meaning in a mindfulness way. Yeah, seeing clearly what's happening because then we can change things. Yeah, I mean that's jumping from the amygdala to the referental cortex. From the emotions driving your life to your inner wisdom driving your life. So you walked us through stop and anchoring. I think half-smiling is self-explanatory and very, very interesting. You mentioned opposite action as being something That's very useful for you. You explained it a little bit before but I'd be curious like how do you apply opposite action in your life? Yeah opposite action is when an emotion is not helping us doing the opposite So if I feel really tired and I don't feel like going to a gym class like getting up and going or if I feel really impatient and

Tired and I don't want to have a long chat with my nine-year-old to sit down and really pay attention to her as I would if I wasn't tired and if I had some energy and if I wasn't stressed about other things, really acting the way you want to live even if it's not what you want to do in the moment, it allows you to design the life that you want to live and really embody that. So yeah, I'm doing it all the time. I feel like I'm juggling a million things. I really try to do one thing at a time. If I feel annoyed, I really try to give the benefit of the doubt and lead with kindness. If I feel nervous about something, I run towards it if it's aligned with my long-term life goals. You came to us through a mutual friend, Sharon Salzburg,

who's already come up in this conversation and is a great meditation teacher. To what extent does meditation help with all of the resets and buffers we've been talking about during the course of this conversation? It helps so much in a lot of this. I think a lot of people worry that meditation is going to be really time-consuming. A lot of the things that I try to teach are very accessible. So the longest

meditation that I prescribe is like the 20-minute coherent breathing, but there's also a three-minute mindfulness that people could do daily that's part of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy that is a treatment that's found to be as helpful. And preventing relapse into depression is antidepressants. And so meditation is certainly very helpful. And for people that don't like meditation for any reason, there are other ways to be more aware in your life.

And for people that don't like meditation because they see it as a big thing, it can also be something that you can access in smaller bites. And these 20 minute and three minute meditations you referenced, are those available anywhere or are they just, you describe them in the book and people can do them on their own? I personally love the Breathe app. We could maybe link to it in the show notes because there's a lot of Breathe apps.

But that is my personal favorite app that I lead on for coherent breathing. There's also box breathing on there for people that prefer that approach. That is my personal favorite app that I lead on for coherent breathing. There's also box breathing on there for people that prefer that approach. And the three minute mindfulness people could find on YouTube. And I also have it on my website. I like the one led by Zindal Siegel, who is one of the developers of mindfulness based cognitive therapy. Great.

We'll put links to everything in the show notes. Jenny, is there something I should have asked but failed to ask? I don't think so. I'm so delighted to be here and I want people to walk away with knowing that stress can be really stressful, but it's also an opportunity to chisel the virtues that we want to embody. And a lot of times we think that we need something really big, but like small wheels on a big suitcase, a little couldn't go a long way when everything feels overwhelming.

Yes, I mean, I keep referencing Russ Marin because he says something similar to what you're saying, which is he argues that anxiety is like a gift, a blessing. And it's similar to what you just said, the stress, anxiety, worry, overthinking that we can look at as an opportunity for growth. Yeah, and stress is the price we pay for a meaningful life. I mean, if we didn't have stress, our lives would be really boring.

We'd probably be pretty checked out. Yes, another Pixar reference. The end of the movie, Wall-E, where the humanity has moved up onto these spaceships, where they're all on these little scooters all the time with iPads dangling in front of them, and turkey legs and coke in their hands. And life is stress-free, but pretty boring and numbed out. And so yes, we should look at stress as proof that we're alive.

And the end goal is doing something to improve this moment so you can do bigger things to build the life you care about. Finally, can you just remind us of the name of your book and any other? We're going to put lots of links in the show notes. So anything else you want us to link to in the show notes? My book is called Stress Resets, How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes. And I also wrote a book called How to Be Single and Happy. And you can find me on drjennytates.com.

Awesome. Thank you for doing this. Appreciate it. Very helpful. I'm going to go put my face in a bucket of ice right now. Thank you, Dan. It was such a treat to meet you. And I'm really grateful for the work you do. Thanks again to Dr. Jenny Tates. We have talked a lot on this show about stress and anxiety, including some conversations that I mentioned in the course of the conversation you just heard, including episodes with Dr. David Russ Marin and the actor and writer and

director Zach Braff. I put some links in the show notes if you want to go check those out. 10% happier is produced by Lauren Smith, Gabrielle Zuckerman, Justine Davy and Tara Anderson. DJ Cashmere is our senior producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior editor, Kevin O'Connell is our director of audio and post-production, and Kimmy Ragler is our executive producer, Alicia Mackey leads our marketing,

and Tony Magyar is our director of podcasts. Nick Thorburn of Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey. I'm hiring, but where can I find potential candidates? Hundreds of thousands of Canadians with disabilities are ready and eager to work. Help create an inclusive workplace

that benefits everyone. Find the tools and resources to help you hire persons with disabilities at canada.ca slash right here. A message from the government of Canada. When I say the word history, what do you think about? Horses and buggies and dust and a bunch of white dudes riding their horses and buggies in the dust. Facts, definitely not enough melanin

on all those history books. But we are about to flip the script on all of that. From Wondery, this is Black History For Real. Together we'll weave Black History's most overlooked figures back into the rightful place in American culture and all over the world. Follow Black History For Real on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.