Bonus: SYSK TRENDING - How Stress Distorts Your Thinking

Everyone seems more stressed than ever — and oddly, some people even wear it like a badge of honor. But chronic stress isn’t something to brag about. It quietly alters the way you think. It amplifies worry, exaggerates threats, narrows your options, and makes worst-case scenarios feel not just possible, but probable. Over time, stress doesn’t just affect your mood — it reshapes your perception, your judgment, and the decisions you make. And because the shift happens gradually, you often don’t realize it’s happening at all. Clinical psychologist Arthur Ciaramicoli has spent decades studying stress and its impact on the brain and behavior. In this conversation, he explains what’s actually happening neurologically when stress rises — how your brain shifts into a more reactive mode, why you become more negative and less flexible in your thinking, and how chronic stress can trap you in a self-reinforcing loop. We also explore why modern life seems perfectly designed to keep stress levels elevated and why simply “relaxing” isn’t a realistic solution. Most importantly, Arthur shares practical, science-based strategies to interrupt the cycle — techniques you can use in the moment to calm your nervous system, widen your perspective, and prevent stress from distorting your thinking. If you’ve ever made a decision under pressure and later wondered, “What was I thinking?” — this episode will help you understand exactly what was happening and how to prevent it next time. Arthur is the author of The Stress Solution (https://amzn.to/3yQgt22). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS QUINCE: Refresh your wardrobe with Quince! Go to ⁠https://Quince.dom/sysk ⁠for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! HIMS: For simple, online access to personalized and affordable care for Hair Loss, ED, Weight Loss, and more, visit ⁠https://Hims.com/SOMETHING⁠ for your free online visit! SHOPIFY: Sign up for your $1 per month trail and start selling today at ⁠⁠https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠ DELL: Dell Tech Days are here. Enjoy huge deals on PCs like the Dell 14 Plus with Intel® Core™ Ultra processors. Visit ⁠https://Dell.com/deals⁠ PLANET VISIONARIES: We love the Planet Visionaries podcast, so listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you're listening to this podcast! In partnership with The Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Mike Carruthers?

  A lot of people are feeling stressed right now. And you think you know what stress feels like. Faster heartbeat, tight shoulders, feeling overwhelmed. But what if the biggest impact of stress isn't how it makes you feel? It's how it makes you think. That's today's SYSK trending topic. How stress distorts your thinking. Under pressure, your brain shifts into a different mode. You become more reactive, more negative, and more convinced that the worst-case scenario is right around the corner. You may think you're being logical, but stress quietly narrows your perspective and exaggerates the danger. In my conversation with clinical psychologist Arthur Sierra McCully, we explore what's

• 0:45Mike Carruthers?

  happening in your brain when stress rises. And more importantly, we'll share practical techniques you can use right away to regain clarity and keep stress from running the show. And we'll get to it in just a moment.

• 1:01Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:44Mike Carruthers?

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• 2:28Mike Carruthers?

  People throw around the word "stress" a lot. As in, "I'm under stress. This stress is killing me. My life is so stressful." But what's interesting to me about stress is that stress is something we really impose on ourselves for the most part, which means it's really up to us to manage it and eliminate it when we can. Someone who understands stress really well is Dr. Arthur Sierra McCully. He's a clinical psychologist and author of the book "The Stress Solution." And I think when you listen to him, you'll have a better understanding of what stress really is, what it does, and how to manage it and control it better. Hey, Arthur, welcome.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

• 3:14Mike Carruthers?

  So, everyone knows that feeling of stress. But how do you define it? What is it exactly?

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Well, stress really is produced mostly by misperception. When we're perceiving inaccurately, we produce stress and we produce the stress hormone cortisol. And when we do that, we narrow our ability to think in a more expansive way and it also reduces our capacity for empathy. Meaning that when our thinking becomes narrow, and that is a result of the stress hormone cortisol, we can't see things very clearly and we tend to perceive in distorted ways.

• 3:48Mike Carruthers?

  And so, when you say it's distorted, but if I'm in a stressful situation, what I'm seeing is what I'm seeing?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Well, you may be, and but the issue is, and here's where empathy comes in, Mike, is empathy is really about perceiving beyond the surface. So if you're in a stressful situation, the question is, can you slow down your perceptions enough and slow down your reactions enough to see the truth? So that you can make very good decisions rather than making quick, impulsive decisions based on narrow thinking.

• 4:20Mike Carruthers?

  But that stress reaction that we all get when we're in that situation must be serving a purpose. And we've all heard about, you know, the tiger chasing the caveman kind of thing, that it serves that purpose of protecting yourself. Has it outlived its purpose?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  Well, you know, when we were, when we needed to be protected against tigers, yes, we had that, that flight system activated in our, through our brains and that makes us want to run away and produce these stress hormones that allow us to do that, make our heart beat faster and get more energy and sugar into our muscles. But most of the time today, in our current world, in our civilized world, we're producing stress when we're sitting in a chair, not going anywhere. If your boss walks by you and he has a frown and you think that it's because he's angry and upset with you, you produce the stress response. Then later you found out that he has a migraine this morning and he wasn't even thinking about you, but you overreacted because your perceptions were distorted.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  And again, that's where empathy comes in, because empathy allows us to slow down our perception, find out where our biases are, and that's where cognitive behavioral therapy helps, because it focuses on the distortion we make in thinking, like generalizing or mind-reading, and in that case, the person would be mind-reading. They'd say, "Oh gee, he's frowning, he must be upset with me," when in fact, the poor guy has a migraine, he's not even thinking of the teacher sitting in the classroom.

• 5:44Mike Carruthers?

  So, this way of thinking, where we, I guess we overthink and we think things that aren't true and all of that, it, it would be great to, to be able to sit back and say, "Well now, calm down, you know, this is just me and my stressful moment here," but in the moment, it's extremely hard to do.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  It, it's very hard to do, Mike, but if we practice the development of empathy, we more and more learn where our biases are, where they, how they come from the past. And when we realize which kind of cognitive distortions we tend to use repeatedly, we can filter them out over time, and when we're in a stressful situation, we tend not to use them, the more we become disciplined about trying as much as we can to perceive accurately. We kind of learn our old records, our old stories, and when we, when we get a sense of repeating those old ways of perceiving, those ways of perceiving that we know are not based on the truth, we can tend to discard them much quicker than in the past.

• 6:48Mike Carruthers?

  And so how do you start this process? What do you do first to kind of get a sense of what you're talking about?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Well, using empathy. Empathy actually produces the connecting hormone oxytocin. It's called the love hormone or connecting hormone. It relaxes our physiology. It allows our brain to think more expansively. And when we use empathy in interactions, we are more able to see the whole of a situation. We're more able to perceive comprehensively. So it is a lot about empathy training, teaching ourselves to not jump to conclusions, to not impulsively react, to try to slow down enough to gain the facts. When we sense in our body that we're starting to feel our blood pressure elevate, we have

• 7:38Speaker 01

  to teach ourselves to slow down because once we produce those stress hormones, our thinking is becoming very narrow and empathy goes out the window. So this is a lot about teaching ourselves to be more empathic and realizing that when we do that and we produce this oxytocin, the compassion and connecting hormone, it relaxes us and allows us to perceive much more accurately and comprehensively.

• 8:02Mike Carruthers?

  So can you give me an idea of how, maybe in an example, that would work?

• 8:07Speaker 01

  For instance, if you're in an interaction with a spouse or a significant other and you come home from work and you walk in and, you know, maybe your wife has had a bad day with raising three young children and she immediately looks up and is washing the dishes and doesn't say hi and come over and kiss you and you react immediately by saying, "I can't believe I worked all day and you're treating me this way." And together you're off to the races. Rather than walking into the house assuming that she's been alone with three young kids all day, she's probably going to be very stressed and she may not greet me in the most loving way, so I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt and try to slow down my reaction and ask her, gee, how are things going? How can I help? Maybe start picking up some of the kids' toys.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  And by that, you're not reacting quickly, you're not being so overly sensitive to the interaction. And when we react empathically, when we give our spouse, a significant other, or friends or colleagues a break because they're a little off in that moment, they tend to be more empathic with us and we have much more likelihood of having an empathic interchange rather than starting an argument.

• 9:13Mike Carruthers?

  Well, what about stress that is self-created, self-imposed? There's no other person to be, to have empathy for. It's all in our head.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  I talk in the, I have a chapter in the book on self-talk because, you know, we learn how to talk to ourselves very, very early in life. If you've been called names, or you've been called stupid, or told that you're unattractive, or if you've been bullied, as a young child, you tend to internalize those views of yourself. And then you don't even realize that that's the way you talk to yourself. And that's the way you produce stress internally without even being in an interaction with other people because you're repeating interactions of the past. And in early in life, those interactions are very influential and they can have a dramatic effect on how you talk to yourself. So what's the work? The work is trying again to engage in interactions where you, you take in rational feedback

• 10:07Speaker 01

  from other people to try to get a better sense of who you are. Because, you know, we all grow up with biases. We all grow up with inaccuracies about ourselves. In many ways, it's sort of like when we grow up, we were looking in a circus mirror and we can't see ourselves all that accurately unless we get very clear feedback from others. And if you didn't get very clear, clear feedback from others growing up, you need to get it as an adult. You need to engage with other rational people. That's, you know, when I do group therapy sessions, for instance, that's what we do. We spend time on giving each other feedback on how people interact with each other so that you can rewrite the old story and create a new story. Sort of turning a, a fiction book into a non-fiction book.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  And you have to be open to feedback from other people to change that negative self-talk. Especially rational people. People you know will be truthful and tactful with you.

• 10:59Mike Carruthers?

  So, Arthur, what is the, the connection between stress and worry? They seem to, they seem to go hand in hand.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Well, worry and stress and anxiety are all in the same circle because worry usually, not always, but usually is based on projected fears, fears from the past, and again, misperceiving. We worry about tomorrow when most of us cannot accept the fact that we can't predict tomorrow. You know, Americans right now, half of Americans say they are awake at night due to stress, anticipating stress for the next day. Seventy-five percent of Americans say they experience stress on a daily basis, and it is based on worry about what's going to happen. There's, when you are an anxious person and you have negative self-talk, the

• 11:48Speaker 01

  likelihood that you're anticipating negativity in the future is very, very high. And this whole approach, this empathic cognitive behavioral therapy approach, is developed, I developed over many years to help people slow down and recognize that old negative bias thinking and get help in correcting it through positive interactions with other people.

• 12:10Mike Carruthers?

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• 14:08Speaker 02

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• 14:38Mike Carruthers?

  So, Arthur, you gave some statistics a few moments ago about how many Americans are feeling stressed and staying up at night, and it's really remarkable. I mean, how many people are consumed with stress?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  It is amazing, because the stress rates in our country have really increased dramatically. I mean, and it goes along with several other things that have happened in our country. I mean, the empathy rates have diminished. The amount of Americans trusting each other has diminished. Twenty years ago, Americans said they had five to seven close friends. Today, it's two to three close friends. So, our empathy for each other has been reduced. Prejudice has been increased. I mean, prejudice, if you have many prejudices, you're experiencing stress all the time, because you're kind of walking through a minefield in life. If you feel uncomfortable with African Americans, or Italian Americans, or Irish Americans,

• 15:35Speaker 01

  or Muslims, you have a multiple, you have multiple ways of experiencing stress on an ongoing basis. So, the stress hormone cortisol is living within you on a regular basis, which causes negative thinking, weight gain, inflammation, hair loss, breaks down muscle tissue, causes flabbiness, depression, anxiety, and memory loss.

• 15:56Mike Carruthers?

  Well, who could remember that if they're all stressed out?

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:00Mike Carruthers?

  And what is it about, it does seem that people are so less empathetic and sympathetic to their fellow man today. Is that just a perception, or do you think that's true? I mean, road rage and all this. Is this just, what's going on?

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's part of our fast-paced society, Mike. I mean, we are at a point where we work too hard, we sleep too little, we love with half a heart, and then we wonder why we're stressed and unhappy. And the empathy rates, there's a number of studies that have done, are done every year, where they're tests, college seniors going into the workplace, and what characteristics do they rate most importantly. Empathy used to be in the top five, top three, 20 years ago, 25 years ago. Now it's below 10, 12, 13. The first thing that people are emphasizing is making money. So, we are, we have begun to put a tremendous emphasis on status, and image, and prestige, and far less emphasis on character and integrity.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  And it certainly is pervasive in our society currently.

• 17:04Mike Carruthers?

  You know, it's amazing, from what I've read and heard and talked to people about this who are experts on the topic, that, that all this does, I mean, all this stress and getting all pissed off at everybody, all it does is hurt you. I mean, it doesn't do anything, you get mad and brood about somebody who cut you off on the highway, they're not, they're not home worrying about you.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And you're hurting yourself when you misperceive. Even people who are, maintain that they, they believe in their prejudices, once they realize that they're actually hurting their health and their physiology, they start to take heed a bit. And yes, the way we think, the way we perceive, is how we produce stress for the most part, and we're damaging our entire physiology, our heart, our brain, our immune system, on and on. The stress from cortisol is incredibly damaging if it's experienced on a regular basis.

• 18:01Mike Carruthers?

  People will often say, though, that, you know, I'm a worrier. That's what I do, you know, or that that's part of my personality. Yes, no?

• 18:10Speaker 01

  No, I mean, if you look, if you examine little children, they're not worried. One-year-olds are not worried. Two-year-olds are having a great time. We learn to worry by the environment we grow up in. And anything that's learned can be unlearned. So no one is genetically programmed to worry. That is not true. It's never been proven. It is a learned characteristic. And again, it, I'm not saying that it can be unlearned very easily. But anything that's learned, anything in, in, in your life that you have learned can be unlearned if you focus on it with diligence and commitment.

• 18:43Mike Carruthers?

  But that surprises me because I've seen plenty of families, kids in families, where, you know, one kid is a worrier, grows up to be a worrier, and the other kid didn't. And they grew up in the same house.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Well, they grew up in the same house, but we all know from having siblings, siblings are treated differently. And we're born with a bit different temperaments. But if you were born when your father was in a, had a great job and was very happy in his life, and I was born when he was laid off and couldn't find employment for four years, or I was the youngest and you were the oldest of five, and I'm, I go through the divorce of our parents, but you were off in college when they got a divorce, your experience may be very different than mine, because parents are different at different ages. And parents interact with males differently than they interact with females. So there's a lot of variables in a family that we have to account for that can produce worry and anxiety.

• 19:38Mike Carruthers?

  As someone who has certainly experienced that waking up at four in the morning and worrying, to not do that seems almost impossible.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  I, I think when you've been accustomed to it for a long time. And these habits are, they have, you know, we've established neural pathways in our brain where they're just easily, if they're easily continued and it feels like automatic thinking, but you have to kind of step outside yourself and in a way use empathy toward yourself. It's almost like you're observing yourself. You have to learn those old records that you repeat over and over again. For instance, some people wake up at the same time every night, two ten, three ten in the morning, and they'll tell you exactly what they're going to be thinking. And I say, practice the night before not thinking that, knowing that that's your old record. We're trying to, to change old conditioned ways of thinking by almost being prepared for them. So instead of waking up every morning

• 20:33Speaker 01

  at three o'clock saying the same thing, oh my god, I gotta go to work, it's not gonna be good, my boss doesn't like me, on and on and on, you counter that immediately. And you, you don't fall into it. And that, that again is what happens when you know your old records, it's like dropping a needle on an album, you know, instead of playing all twenty-two records, you pick the needle up. You don't let it go on and on and on, you know, you know, this is what I always do. And instead of just letting it roll on and roll on and letting your thoughts have a life of its own, you begin to be more thoughtful and aware of what you're thinking so that you can intercede in those old conditioned ways of, of perceiving.

• 21:10Mike Carruthers?

  When I've had those times in life, and I imagine everybody does, where you're up at night worrying and catastrophizing and everything, one of the fascinating things I've found, maybe, maybe it's just me, but if I just get up and really wake up and not be in that kind of half-asleep fog, then things seem better, things seem more real, as opposed to when I'm lying there ruminating, then things seem worse.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Well, it, it, when we're sleeping and when we first wake up, our temperature's the lowest it is all day. So, and we, we've been fasting, so we don't have the... The nutrients to make the brain chemicals we need to think accurately. That's why people, when I say, when you wake up in the morning, get up and start moving. I'm a fan of teaching people to exercise first thing in the morning, for instance, because you find that you start to produce more energy, you produce more calming neurochemicals, you get some food that produces the nutrients that your brain can turn into the right neurochemicals to think accurately. So when we're just sitting there in a kind of dull state, yes, your thoughts can easily go into a negative place.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  It's why, why depress people, the worst time for them is when they wake up in the morning. But again, when you're waking up in the middle of the night, yeah, if you're just gonna lay there and reminisce about all the negative things that have happened in your life, it is better to get up, maybe have a little something to eat and go back to bed. But you just don't wanna make it a habit, though, because then your brain gets conditioned to waking up at the same time over and over again, and you don't wanna, you wanna lose an hour of sleep every night.

• 22:47Mike Carruthers?

  Why do people who do this, and then things usually eventually work out? Why don't we learn from that?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Well, because it's emotional learning, Mike. It's not something that we can rationally, easily change. It's when we're conditioned early in life to think a certain way, it's like dropping that needle on a record. It starts immediately, unless we intercede, and we have to keep learning how and discipline ourselves to break up that thought pattern. And that's, and that's, we do that by always asking ourselves, what is the truth? What is the truth? And empathy is focused on truth finding, and that's why it's such an important capacity. And you can continue to think in negative ways your entire life without ever realizing it, because you're not very aware of what's happening. You're just allowing that old story to dominate your life.

• 23:41Mike Carruthers?

  But what if the truth really is horrible?

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Well, the likelihood of that being so is very low. I mean, how many human beings do you know that are horrible human beings with no talent, no abilities, and are utterly ugly? So, most of the fears that people have don't tend to be fact-based. I mean, we all have imperfections, and if there is something that we need to improve on, like you tend to react too quickly, you tend to be too angry, again, these are all learned patterns that can be unlearned. So, you have to acknowledge your misgivings, and have to acknowledge your imperfections, but the likelihood that you're going to end up in such a dismal place that you're a horrible human being, I mean, I just haven't met anyone in my travels that's like that.

• 24:28Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah. Well, you probably wouldn't, because they're hiding in a cave somewhere, I suspect.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:36Mike Carruthers?

  But if 75% of people are doing this, it almost has become the new normal.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  75% of my practice right now are not people who are mentally ill, but they're highly stressed. They're good people, they are oftentimes educated people, they're loving people, but their lives are in such a fast pace, they're living such a fast-paced life, everything is so hectic. And as I said, they work long hours, they don't sleep enough, they don't exercise enough, their health habits in terms of eating and exercise tend to be poor. You know, we live our lives according to our mood, and if we're stressed and producing cortisol with consistency, we are not going to choose the best ways of taking care of ourselves. And so, I do believe it has become epidemic in our society.

• 25:24Mike Carruthers?

  Well, even though we all experience stress, few of us really take the time to consider what it is, what it does to us, where it comes from, so it's interesting to get that insight. Dr. Arthur Sierra McCully has been my guest. He is a clinical psychologist, a leading expert on the topic of stress, and the name of his book is The Stress Solution, and you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Arthur. I enjoyed it.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you having me again.