A Paradox That Makes You Miserable & How We Amplify Our Own Stress

At some point, most men have likely been told they eat too fast – that they should slow down and enjoy their food more. Do men really eat faster than women? Should they slow down? This episode begins with a brief exploration and explanation. https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/study-men-and-women-chew-differently/ Here is something you likely haven’t thought about much – it’s a paradox really… Humans are dependent on one another. Our happiness and survival require that we connect with others and be part of the group. Yet we also have a need to chart our own course – to be autonomous. This paradox creates a tricky balance that seems to have gotten out of whack. This has created a lot of problems that directly affect you in ways you have never thought about. But you are about to. Listen to my guest William von Hippel. He is a former professor of psychology at Ohio State University who has been featured in the New York Times, USA Today, The Economist, and the BBC. He is also author of the book, The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness (https://amzn.to/3DI67pE). There are things in your life that cause you stress. Yet, if you are like most people you have a tendency to compound that stress by imagining all sorts of other possibilities. You may start to catastrophize, think about what else could go wrong, and ultimately “What If” yourself into a frenzy. That is why you need to listen to my guest, Jennifer Taitz a clinical psychologist and an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at University of California, Los Angeles, and author of the book Stress Resets: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes (https://amzn.to/43RdghQ) Have you noticed whenever you type a document that you can choose from an almost endless list of fonts? Of course, you probably have a default font you use without thinking about it. But what fonts do people prefer to read? Which are the easiest to read. Listen to hear which fonts are sure winners – and one big loser. https://nerdfighteria.info/v/7g_7Cr1vEnM PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off QUINCE: Indulge in affordable luxury! Go to https://Quince.com/sysk for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. TIMELINE: Get 10% off your order of Mitopure! Go to https://Timeline.com/SOMETHING HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! SHOPIFY: Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! 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.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:28Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, the problem with eating too fast and who's most likely to do it? Then, the price we pay for having fewer friends and less social connection.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  And so if you look at lottery winners, they're our best example of what happened. They typically end up less happier than they were before, even though we know that rich people are happier on average than poor people. And a big part of the reason they end up less happy than they were before is they sever a lot of their connections.

• 1:56Mike Carruthers?

  Also, choosing the right font to use that's most liked and easily read. And the ways we deal with stress and why we're not very good at it.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  A huge downside to being human is that we have a knack for taking stress and majorly multiplying it. I mean, we take something that's somewhat stressful and then we add on to that, thinking even worse than what's actually happening.

• 2:21Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:26Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:46Mike Carruthers?

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• 4:23Mike Carruthers?

  Yes, we all eat and chew our food, but we don't all eat and chew our food the same way. Hi, welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. I suspect every man has probably been told once or twice or more that he eats too fast and that he should slow down, enjoy your food. Is there really a gender difference in how men and women eat? Well, researchers in South Korea hooked up electrodes to the jaws of men and women and gave them some rice to eat. And the results? Men do eat faster than women, on average, twice as fast. There are two reasons for this.

• 5:07Mike Carruthers?

  First, men take bigger bites. And secondly, they generally chew their food faster than women. The advice is not for women to speed up their eating. It is for men to take smaller bites and slow down. At the very least, you reduce your risk of choking, but there are other health benefits to eating slower as well. People who eat slower tend to eat less, which is good for your waistline. And you will improve digestion when you eat more slowly. And that is something you should know.

• 5:44Mike Carruthers?

  Humans have a need for social connection. We cannot survive and thrive alone. People need people. We've discussed this many times here. Yet people also have a need for autonomy, to do things and have things our way and not be subject to the desires of the group. It's a tricky balance, and there are a lot of reasons to believe that this balance has gotten out of whack. Now, you may not have given this a whole lot of thought, but this conversation you're about to hear will fascinate you as you start to understand this social paradox between the need for connection and autonomy, and why it is so important. Here to discuss it is William von Hippel.

• 6:29Mike Carruthers?

  He's a former professor of psychology at the University of Queensland in Australia, a former professor of psychology at Ohio State University, and his research has been featured in The New York Times, USA Today, The Economist, the BBC, and many other places. He's author of a book called "The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness." Hey, William, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  Hi, it's great to talk to you, Mike.

• 6:58Mike Carruthers?

  So let's start with an explanation of what this paradox is between autonomy and connection, and why it's important, and let me just have you explain that.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  So, the paradox is that the two most fundamental needs that humans evolved are the need for connection and the need for autonomy. And the need for connection comes from, both of these happened after we left the rainforest about 6 million years ago. So I can't tell you exactly when, of course, but somewhere in the ensuing few million years, as we moved to the savanna, we evolved a strong need for connection because that's how we stayed safe. We cooperated with each other, we worked together to drive away predators, and then eventually to become the apex predator on the planet. So, connection is our most fundamental need. But secondarily, we also evolved a need for autonomy. And by autonomy, I mean self-governance, choosing your own path in life.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Now, the problem is, connection's all about cooperating and friendship and relationships, and that means putting your own needs aside sometimes. Whereas autonomy is all about self-governance and what suits you the best, which means sometimes you have to put your relationships aside. So the consequence is that these two needs, our two most fundamental needs, are in permanent tension with each other. And the key is finding a balance that allows us to be happy. That's the social paradox.

• 8:20Mike Carruthers?

  And can you give me an example, a quick example or two, of the social paradox in life and in action?

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Sure, so let's, let's talk about rich people versus poor people. Or we could talk about, there's a million examples. So you tell me, anything that's interesting to you, we could go in that direction. But, but here's a classic example. Poor people need each other. They live in these dense networks of venture dependents because they're barely getting by. And so if they want someone to house sit their dog, they can't afford to hire it out. They have to ask friends to do that. If they need a new tool because they're broke or they don't have the right one, they have to borrow one. They, they, they can't just go to the shops and buy one. And so, poor people are densely interconnected with each other. And they tend to get together with their neighbors several times a week on average. Rich people, in contrast, are not interconnected with each other. They don't need each other at all. Rich people often don't even know their neighbors.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  And you know, if they run out of their favorite coffee beans, they can drone a latte in. They don't need to go over to their neighbors and borrow it and create a conversation, et cetera. And so the consequence is that rich people keep making decisions in their life about what suits them the best. And in making these decisions, they're continually cutting off connections, such that in the end, poor people actually spend much more time with their friends than rich people do. Which, if you think about it, it's ironic, given that the point of being rich really would be to have total freedom, which you ought to use for social connection. Now, how do we know this? There's a bunch of evidence for rich people spending less time with their friends. But you could say, well, that's what they want to do, right? I mean, people are voting with their feet. They know what's best for them. But actually, the data suggests otherwise. And I'll give you one key data point.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  If you, if you look at how often people attend religious services. So now we've got something that you do if you believe in God. But of course, you don't do if you don't believe in God or don't believe that God wants you to attend services. So people tend to attend services for reasons not to do with their social goals, but reasons to do with their religious goals. And what we find is that attending services has a huge impact on happiness. It makes people much happier if they go to religious services a few times a week than if they only go, you know, once a week or even once every few months. More importantly, however, the effect of attending religious services on happiness is greater for rich people than it is for poor. Rich people get more bang for the buck out of going to services than poor people do because they've cut themselves off from their other connections.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  And so in countless different domains, wealth is just one of them. We tend to cut off our connections when in fact, those are what make us happy. And do...

• 10:50Mike Carruthers?

  We know that, do we, in other words, do rich people who cut themselves off, realize they've cut themselves off and are therefore unhappy about it? Or do they think, "Well, I'm a rich person and that's what we, that's what we rich people do."

• 11:06Speaker 01

  No, they don't know. The irony is that, and we can come back to talking about why this is, if you'd like, but the irony is that we've evolved to continually grab autonomy whenever we have the chance to do so. And so every individual decision that the rich person is making makes perfect sense. It's what makes them happier in the moment, but the long-term cost is huge. It makes them way less happier in the longer term. We see this in countless domains. It's not just rich and poor. So, for example, in 1840, about 10% of humanity lived in cities. Cities are about 5,000 years old. That's when the first proper city existed, 5,000 years ago, in Mesopotamia. And so, you know, it took, in 5,000 years, slowly 10% of humanity, all of the world, moved to cities. Well, in 1840, Americans started moving to cities en masse,

• 11:51Speaker 01

  and by 1900, the rest of the world started moving to cities en masse, such that by 2007, half of the world lived in cities. So, we're now in a world where more than half of humans live in cities, whereas just 150 or so years ago, only 10% lived in cities. Now, given that half of all of humanity's moved to cities, you'd say, "Oh, well, cities must make you happy, right?" Cities certainly provide autonomy. They give us opportunities. They allow us to make our own choices in a much bigger way than the country does. But ironically, they actually make us less happy. People who live in the country are happier than people who live in the city, even though all of humanity is moving to cities.

• 12:28Mike Carruthers?

  And yet, in that case, it isn't either or. There are, you could say, the suburbs, where they're not, it's not rural, it's not little towns, but it's not big cities either. It's kind of somewhere in the middle. And what about those people?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a great question. It turns out somewhere in the middle is a perfect way to describe it. People in the suburbs are somewhere in the middle with regard to their happiness. They're somewhere in the middle with regard to most of these things. Now, if you look at, you know, why would people in cities be happier? In principle, there's more opportunity for connection in cities than there is in countries. Because, you know, in cities, you're cheek by jowl with a gazillion other people. Whereas if you live in the country, your nearest neighbor could be a quarter mile away. Well, it turns out that if you ask people in the country and in the city and in the suburbs, "Do you know somebody who you trust with your house keys?" Like, in other words, do you have a really close friend who you can really count on? People in the country are most likely to say yes, then the suburbs, then the cities.

• 13:23Mike Carruthers?

  And so if you gave all, you took a bunch of poor people and gave them a million dollars, would they become more autonomous and leave their friends behind? I mean, what's the desire?

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, they would do that. And the sad truth is, they shouldn't, but they would. And so if you look at lottery winners, they're our best example of what happens, right? There's somebody who was just meandering through life and then suddenly an outside force, random chance, gave them a million dollars or more. And when that happens, they typically end up less happier than they were before, even though we know that rich people are happier on average than poor people. And a big part of the reason they end up less happy than they were before is they sever a lot of their connections. So let's say that I used to be a roofer. I'm out on the hot roof every day, you know, with my fellow roofers putting on shingles and things like that. So now I win millions of dollars. Why would I want to go out in that terrible weather on top of somebody's roof when I don't have to?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Well, what I forget is that all my friends do that. I'm tightly connected to those people. And so they make decision after decision about what they want to do right now without stepping back and thinking about, well, what's the actual long-term cost to my connections? But the end result that they typically, even though money makes us happy, they typically end up less happy, or certainly no more happy, than prior to winning gazillions of dollars.

• 14:42Mike Carruthers?

  We're discussing this social paradox, the need for autonomy and the need for social connection. My guest is William von Hippel. He's author of the book, "The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness." This episode is sponsored by Vinted. You know, I remember interviewing an organizing expert who offered this really clever trick for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are, the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right, some of those you probably

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• 18:15Mike Carruthers?

  But we also hear that, but it's that social connection that's what makes people happy.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Yes, so there's competing forces here. And so let me, um, let me put it in context. So first of all, a big part of what makes human beings happy is status. And it's too bad, but we've evolved to want to always be at the top of our heap because that's our best chance of getting someone to choose us as a mate, getting somebody to want us to be on their team, to be our friend, et cetera. And so when we look at rich people being happier than poor people, it's not money per se that makes them happy, it's the status that comes with it. And so if we look, for example, in the United States over the last 70 years, we can see that Americans now are about three times richer in real terms than they used to be. They're three times more purchasing power. And arguably five to 10 times if you measure it,

• 19:07Speaker 01

  taking into account some of the modern conveniences like computers and things. But- If you, um, and, and so in principle, that should make us happier because we've gotten a lot richer, but it doesn't. Life satisfaction on average in America, happiness is I, exactly where it's been for the last 70 years. But what does happen is that at any one point in time, rich people tend to be happier than poor people. Now, the effect isn't huge, but the effect is clearly there. And so then you'd say, well, wait a minute, but you're saying that poor people have better connections. They do. And so we can look at it in a variety of ways and we can see cases where you can undo that. So let's take, for example, poor people who attend services. A poor person, rich people are happier than poor people, but a poor person who attends

• 19:49Speaker 01

  religious services regularly is happier than a rich person who never goes. So the social effects of going to church regularly, even for somebody who has pretty good connections, because they're tied in tightly with their neighborhood, that those social connections they gain are more important than all the wealth that the rich person has.

• 20:08Mike Carruthers?

  So what is it about religious services that has this effect?

• 20:13Speaker 01

  Well, we know that it's not simply the act of believing in God, because we can pull that apart by looking at, well, what happens among people who never go to services but pray or don't pray? And that's a really good way of looking at people who believe versus who don't believe. And we know believing is important because lots of people who don't believe in God feel that life is meaningless and they, they're struggling and they feel kind of lost. Now, not everybody feels that way, but lots do. People who have religion hardly ever feel that way. They feel that life has meaning and purpose and that religion provides them that meaning and purpose. So the mere act of prayer, we can, you know, knowing therefore, therefore evidence that you believe, we can see it makes people happier, but it doesn't have nearly the effect of going to services.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  And so what the data suggests is that if somebody can get you to socialize, if they can push you to go and, and hang out with lots of other people who are like-minded in at least some ways, who are going to be friendly to you, that's the best thing that we can do for your happiness.

• 21:09Mike Carruthers?

  But has anybody looked at going to services versus joining a bowling league or going to the Moose Lodge or something?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, so yes and no. Americans used to be members of all sorts of service organizations. So when I was a kid, my best friend's dad was a member of the Lions Club or Elks or, you know, one of those clubs. And lots of dads were, lots of parents were. And up until the 1950s, these service organizations were very popular and people went to them regularly and they socially interacted in those contexts because that was an important part of American civic life. But those service organizations have by and large disappeared. You know, most people don't even know these clubs anymore, much less do they join them. So things like social media and these other modern things have replaced them. The data suggests that it doesn't have to be services.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  There's nothing special about that. But there is something special about this regularly getting together in person, face to face with other people.

• 22:09Mike Carruthers?

  What is the point of all of this? I mean, it's clearly fascinating, but what do we do with this? And therefore what?

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, therefore what? That's a great question. So for me, the what is, you need to understand the problem if you want to try to fix it. And for me, the problem is this, you know, in the history of humanity, up until recently, I know it's 10,000 years, but up until recently, from an evolutionary perspective, all of us were hunter-gatherers. And hunter-gatherers lived very difficult lives. The classic version of hunter-gathering is immediate return, which means that you eat today what you kill today. And those people don't even save for tomorrow. They don't, if you kill something, everybody eats it that night and chances are it's just gone. Every day, they have to go out there and try again to find something to eat. So these are people who have no savings.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  They live in a pre-medical world where they buried more, 40% approximately of their children on average. So they lost lots of their own children before they ever came close to reaching adulthood. And They had, their sources of entertainment were few and far between. They sat around and chatted with each other, invented a few games, but certainly didn't have television, or didn't go skiing, didn't play golf, and all the things that we take for granted now that we enjoy. So they didn't have safety, they didn't have comfort, they didn't live in temperature-controlled homes, none of those things. And yet, here's the remarkable fact. The data all suggests that they were happier than we are. So how could it be that somebody who has so little, and who suffers so much, could be happier than us, who have so much and suffer so little?

• 23:41Speaker 01

  And I think the answer to that question comes in that their connections, they found a much better balance between autonomy and connection than we do now. So their connections were regular and every day, and our connections just aren't anymore.

• 23:53Mike Carruthers?

  But it doesn't seem like you have to go back to hunter-gatherer days thousands and thousands of years ago to see a difference. There's a difference between today and 50 years ago, or 100 years ago.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You're absolutely right. It's, it's, in one sense, it's a very old problem, and in another sense, it's actually a very recent problem as well. And so even as recently as the 1960s and 70s, people in cities tended to be quite close with their neighbors. People, in technology and wealth, has made us much more independent of each other than we used to be. And so we're now much more autonomous agents. We saw each other all the time. You know, the, a milkman delivered milk to my door when I was a child. Nobody gets that anymore. There's a million ways in which we interacted with each other, even in, in the 60s and 70s, that we just don't do anymore. And so the, the problem is, is as old as agriculture, right?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  It's, well, not as old, it's, the problem is since cities, really. But in fact, the problem's gotten much worse in the last few generations. And so if we'd look at, at the 1970s, for example, we could see that about 30% of people across the board, across the economic spectrum, in the 1970s, about 30% of Americans got together with their neighbors two or three times a week. Their neighbors, not just other friends, but their neighbors. And only about 1 in 5, so 1 in 3 Americans got together with their neighbors regularly every week, and 1 in 5 hardly ever got together with them at all. Now it's switched. In just 50 years, now only 1 in 5 Americans gets together regularly with their Ameri, with their neighbors, and about a third of them almost never do at all.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  And that 1 in 5 is more likely to be people who are poor than people who are rich.

• 25:36Mike Carruthers?

  Well, see, that's something that I have always wondered about because I can remember growing up, there was that neighborhood, and I grew up in the suburbs in Connecticut, and neighbors were social with each other. You know, my mother used to walk into the back door of the house next door, just unannounced for coffee in the morning every once in a while, and we had parties together. And that same neighborhood, that never happens anymore.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's, I believe, I don't know it, because nobody knows exactly why these cultural things happen, but the data suggests that this is a function of technology and wealth, that as you get wealthier and you get more technology, you start just separating from your neighbors. And so, like, for example, I was walking down the street the other day in a construction site, I live in Australia now, so I'm in Brisbane, I'm walking by a construction site, and when I walked by construction sites, when I was a kid in the 70s or 60s, everybody should, if it's break time, they're all schmoozing with each other, having a good time, laughing and telling stories. Now, when I walk by them, the guys are all sitting in a line, they're next to each other, but they're all ignoring each other, looking

• 26:45Speaker 01

  at their phones. And so, that, those tight connections that we had in a more, in a world that was not as technology, technologically based as it is now, those tight connections are largely disappearing. We rarely walk into our neighbors' homes anymore, unless we live in the country.

• 27:01Mike Carruthers?

  Right, right. And then, it does seem that the smaller the community, the more social and the more everybody knows everybody.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  They know everybody, and there's a downside, they're in everybody's business, and so, if you have an affair, it's going to go through the town really fast. But the upside is, they're tightly connected. They are not surprised when somebody walks into their kitchen door and just sits down at the counter, whereas that would boggle my mind if my neighbor did that.

• 27:27Mike Carruthers?

  But it isn't just, I mean, the technology problem, I get that. And I've always been so fascinated by and disturbed by the fact that, you know, when you see people together who are on their phones with somebody else, why are they together? But I remember, I think I may have mentioned this on another episode of similar topic, but...

• 27:52Mike Carruthers?

  I remember having a conversation with someone who I knew and I said, I met this guy and he lives on your street. Do you know him? And she said, I make it a point not to know my neighbors. And I thought, what an odd, what is the benefit of that? Why? And I didn't really get an answer, but what a strange, I thought that was a very strange outlook on life, that make sure you don't know your neighbors.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  It is, but it's sort of understandable if autonomy is paramount. If you don't want people in your business, then you want your friendships to be elsewhere. You want your romantic relationships to be elsewhere. Because if you start dating the person too who has us down and it ends badly, you've got an awkward situation whenever you see them. If you are tight with your neighbors and then they expect things from you when you're busy and you don't want to deliver, you've got an awkward situation. And you can avoid that awkwardness by just making sure your friends are elsewhere. And in a way, that's a good thing because it does give you more autonomy, but the cost is huge. If you make it a point not to know your neighbors, you're literally making a point to disconnect yourself. And we know very clearly, the data show that makes us unhappy.

• 29:01Mike Carruthers?

  Well, as I said at the very beginning here, this is an interesting topic that I don't think people ever think about, this difference between autonomy and social connection and why we need to balance them. I don't think people take this into account.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  That's a super interesting societal change. And by the way, it's not universal. If you look at lots of countries in the world, people still get together with neighbors, just like Americans did in the 50s and 60s and even into the 70s. It's just that in wealthier countries that are becoming more urban, we're seeing this very clearly. But lots of parts of the world have the advantage that this isn't happening. They don't have this problem yet.

• 29:41Mike Carruthers?

  I wonder if even in small communities where people were more social, if even they are less, they're still more social, but they're less more social because of technology and other things.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I have to admit, I don't know. I've not been able to find those data, but it's a great question. And I suspect you're right. I suspect that even people who live, at least in well-connected countries like the US and countries like the US that are very mobile, I suspect that even the smaller-town folks, on average, are a little bit less connected to each other than they were 40, 50 years ago, despite the fact that they're way more connected than they are in cities.

• 30:22Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I find it interesting that you don't hear people lamenting about the loss of social connection. I don't hear people saying, "I wish we got together with the neighbors more often." I wish that somehow, you know, we've grown accustomed to this, and I think for many people, it seems all right. In other words, if you don't perceive a problem, then there's nothing to solve.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Lots of people think, "Well, okay, we're not getting together with our neighbors as much." But does that really matter? Because, you know, neighbor, schm- neighbor, I've got my wife and my close family members. But ironically, the data show, actually, it's not ironic, it's merely a fact, that the data also show that we're not spending as much time with our spouses even anymore. So, we're literally moving away from everyone. And we don't know why that is. We don't know why people are getting more alone time. We know that this isn't what we evolved to do. We're a very gregarious species. We're meant to be together. But I suspect, but don't know, that part of what's happening is that there's so many sources of entertainment and work and opportunity that we, like, let's

• 31:30Speaker 01

  say that my spouse and I both loved to exercise in the 1970s. We would, there's only a few ways to exercise. We would go run together, go to the gym together. Now, there's 4,000 ways to exercise. And she says, "I'd rather do Pilates." And I'm like, "Oh, I want to do HIIT training." And so, we just do what we each individually want to do and go our separate ways. And so, it's not just with people who are kind of peripheral in our lives. It's also with people who are the most important to us. Across the board, we're spending more alone time, and it's just not a good thing.

• 31:58Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I've really enjoyed this conversation because it's opened up my eyes. I mean, this is something I've never really thought much about, this social paradox. But clearly, it's a thing and it's important to understand it. I've been talking to William Von Hippel. He's author of the book, "The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness." And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. William, thanks. You've been here before and every time we talk, it's always interesting. Thanks. Thank you. It's fun to chat. Hiring the wrong person is expensive, but it's also exhausting. Because now, you haven't solved your problem, you've created a new one.

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• 34:06Mike Carruthers?

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• 34:13Speaker 03

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• 34:31Mike Carruthers?

  I'm sure you feel stressed at times, maybe a lot of the time. But there's this interesting thing that we humans do is we compound our own stress by worrying about the what ifs. We have a problem, we might feel stressful, and then we pile on with, well, what else could happen? What else could go wrong? What if this doesn't work out? So now we're stressing about things that aren't even real. That's a lot of stress, a lot of unnecessary stress. And here with some insight into this and ways to really reduce the stress you feel is Jennifer Tates. She's a clinical psychologist and assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at UCLA.

• 35:14Mike Carruthers?

  She frequently writes for publications like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Harvard Business Review. She's author of a book called Stress Reset: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes. Hi Jennifer, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Hi Mike, it's great to talk to you.

• 35:33Mike Carruthers?

  So talk about human stress, why we do it the way we do it, why it affects us the way it does.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  You know, Mike, a huge downside to being human is that we have a knack for taking stress and majorly multiplying it. I mean, we take something that's somewhat stressful or very stressful, and then we add on to that, thinking even worse than what's actually happening. And the more that we think in ways that just disempower us, our body does a number on us, and then we easily judge our body's response, then we cope in ways that totally backfire. It's like you're stressed about a work demand, and then you start procrastinating or trying to get things perfect in a way that prevents you from getting the deadline met, or you feel like you need to fall asleep at night, and rather than... You know, having faith in your body, you tell yourself, if you don't fall asleep

• 36:26Speaker 02

  right now, tomorrow's going to be terrible, which just makes you tense. And then maybe you pick up your phone and then there's no way that sleep is going to come. So there is very real stress in the world, but we, and in our lives, of course, especially right now, but we have a knack, unfortunately, for just taking it and making it that much worse and then spreading it all around us, making the people around us also experience what we're feeling and feeling like we're dumping it and making it contagious.

• 36:56Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that sounds horrible.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  It's, it's kind of upsetting, but it's also incredibly liberating because if we appreciate the stress cycle of knowing what our minds do that makes things that much worse and appreciating this habit of overthinking and ruminating and how that takes something that was upsetting for a couple of minutes and makes it stressful for hours and days and years, or taking something ambiguous and making it that, you know, horrible, we can free ourselves. There's so many ways we can free ourselves at different points, whether with our minds, in our bodies, or through behavior. So we don't spread stress to the people that we care about and take work stress and need to turn that into relationship stress.

• 37:36Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it makes you wonder why we do that in the first place. Well, I mean, what, what purpose does it serve?

• 37:42Speaker 02

  I think as people, we, you know, there's a famous book called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. I think as people, we just have this knack for thinking and overthinking and getting lost in language that just makes things super judgmental and chaotic. But again, if we understand what we're doing, we can entirely change our relationship and improve our quality of life.

• 38:05Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I imagine, and you, you and I were talking before the conversation started about the fires in California, because we're both close by. If you've lost your house, if you've lost everything, as I have friends who have, I can't imagine many things more stressful than that. I can't imagine making it worse in your mind than it really is. But maybe you do, because maybe you think this is the end of the world, when in fact, you know, people adapt and recover and move on.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  I just want to start by normalizing. I, I can't begin to imagine the pain that people are going through. And I actually can sort of imagine because I'm working with people that have lost their homes. And so the pain is really, really real. But telling yourself not only do you lose your house, but you're also living through an apocalypse is just taking it and making it so much bigger than what is. And I'm also really profoundly moved by people's resilience. I just actually saw a client last night who lost her house and I have a daughter a similar age to her daughter. And I ran over to where she's staying and brought her some clothes. And I was struck by her resilience and she said something that I don't know if I could have had the courage to say,

• 39:16Speaker 02

  but like, thank God we're alive and home is where the people that you love are. And of course emotions come in waves and they're certainly going to be expected to be waves of tremendous grief and loss and panic, but also there are waves of

• 39:36Speaker 02

  being able to enjoy a meal with loved ones sitting across from you, even if it's not in your home. And appreciation for the people around that are trying to help and humans are notoriously bad. It's what's called effective forecasting or predicting how they'll feel in the future. And people ultimately are able to cope with difficult things far better than their minds let on.

• 39:56Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, I have found when I stop myself, and I imagine most people have had this experience, that you can really work yourself up into a, you know, this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me. But if you stop and think about it, you know, you won't even be thinking about this a week from now or two weeks from now. But in this moment, it feels like the end of the world.

• 40:21Speaker 02

  It feels like the end of the world. And one thing that we can all do is, you know, half of the time we're not in this moment, we're thinking about something that happened in the past or something that's going to happen in the future. But we know that the more present we are, the more likely we are to be happier. And 50% of the time our mind is going elsewhere, but if we can come back, anchor ourselves, feel our feet on the ground. What am I thinking? What am I feeling? What am I doing? We can feel a lot. More able to manage and navigate. And I think the people that are really, and again, I don't want to minimize, this is a really big thing that people will be thinking about for years and decades and maybe for the rest of our lives. But even if someone does go through

• 41:03Speaker 02

  a traumatic event, I'm blown away by something that, you know, exercises that I do with my patients that significantly improve PTSD in a matter of five sessions. And so there are things to do that are different than what we might normally do that can offer hope even in the hardest of times.

• 41:22Mike Carruthers?

  It does seem that there are people who handle stress better than others, just like naturally. They just seem to have that water off a duck's back kind of approach to life that nothing bothers them. And then there are other people at the end of the spectrum who take everything as if it's just the worst. And is it worth trying to move your position on that spectrum before we even get into exercises to help?

• 41:53Speaker 02

  Absolutely. So I talk about first and foremost, our stress mindset, how, what we make of our ability to cope with both stress and emotions. If we believe that we can't cope, that it's just too much, I can't, and that our body's stress response is going to kill us, that we're gonna, you know, heart palpitations mean that we're at risk of heart disease and premature death, that does a number to us. That becomes a negative self fulfilling prophecy. But believing that you can cope, the most common measure of stress is actually called the perceived stress scale. If you believe you can cope, and that your body's stress response is serving you, it's helping you prepare for

• 42:33Speaker 02

  action, and it's adaptive, then that actually, just learning those two things, that you can cope with stress and your body is, is on your side, dramatically helps people, reduces our cortisol, correlates with being able to persist in more challenging goals.

• 42:50Mike Carruthers?

  I'm sure everyone has had the experience of being in a very stressful situation, and getting so involved and consumed by the stressful situation, and how you're responding to it, that you later look back and go, What was that all about? Why was I so stressed? Why did I react the way I did? I wish I hadn't done that. And so I'm wondering if you could talk about some first aid in the moment, things that people can do. And sure, you have to remember to do them and make yourself do them. But some things in that moment of stress, when things really feel out of control that you could grab onto and try to do

• 43:35Mike Carruthers?

  that would really help.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Sure, so there's so many things. And this is why I love this topic because different things work for different people. But a couple of first aid things that come to mind, and I love this question, is even, you know, we all get spam emails and we get robo calls and we just ignore them, right? We just hit do not disturb or we have a junk sorter that we don't even, it doesn't even meet our eyes or we don't even lose any focus to it. But oftentimes, when we're upset, we fail to realize that we're in our own kind of spam, in the pile of our own spam. We all metaphorically and somewhat literally have different states of mind. And when we're feeling intense emotions or going through something very difficult,

• 44:22Speaker 02

  it's human nature to be in emotion mind. And emotion mind is different than reasonable mind. And simply noticing I'm in emotion mind. It's the middle of the night. I woke up, I'm thinking really anxious thoughts rather than getting into the exact anxious thoughts and trying to refute them or distract yourself from them. Just telling yourself I'm in emotion mind. This is a junk call. This is a spam email. I am just in emotion mind. And then you can kind of more readily untangle rather than trying to like, you know, respond to something that's ridiculous. So that's one option is calling out emotion mind, which can help people from this noxious habit of getting lost in these ruminations and, you know, telling other people all the things that are going wrong

• 45:07Speaker 02

  that just makes them feel even more real. Another one that I really like is creating a hope kit. It sounds simple, but literally collecting a few objects that give you a sense of perspective. You know, if you have a picture of some loved ones or a song that really reminds you of better times, or you know, a card someone left you, having a collection of things that widens your focus. So if you get a disappointing email, or you learn that something that you worked for didn't happen, instead of being narrowly focused in such a painful, myopic way on all the things that are going wrong, a broader sense of all the things that are going right. I mean, I could easily, if I worked on something and it didn't, you know, an article or something,

• 45:49Speaker 02

  and then something, an editor didn't like it, just realizing, okay, I have, you know, beautiful, healthy children, and that's what actually, of course, there's room to validate. Of course, I'm disappointed, but when our mind plays these tricks on us, like, life's not fair to have kind of a wider, wider perspective. And a hope kit can really do that. And there's a lot of research that has found that even for people with cancer, or that feel very, very depressed, having a hope kit can actually create real hope.

• 46:18Mike Carruthers?

  One more?

• 46:19Speaker 02

  Oh, Mike, there's so many to choose from. One more is doing the opposite. A lot of times, we feel stressed and we act in ways that stress us out further. We feel stressed and we send a grumpy text, or we procrastinate, or we cancel plans, we decide we just don't have time to see friends for dinner. But a very powerful thing is actually doing what you would do if you felt differently. A lot of times, we wait to feel differently, to do differently. But the only way to actually change how you feel is to change how you live. And so if you feel like sluggish, I don't want to go to the gym class today because I'm tired and I'm in a bad mood, that you will perpetuate your bad mood by skipping the things that you know generally nourish you.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  And some people try this, but don't do it all the way. And we need to do this all the way. If you're trying to get some work done, but also checking your email throughout and telling yourself you're going to do a bad job, so why bother? You're not going to be able to actually cross the thing off your list. But I love opposite action. I think it works all around, whether you're... Feeling grumpy with your spouse and acting in ways that perpetuate feeling grumpy because then they're grumpy towards you and it keeps you in a vicious cycle. But we could all interrupt vicious cycles with virtuous ones by changing our behaviors in more positive directions.

• 47:39Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, I love that one. And I try that one frequently that, you know, you should probably do the thing you exactly feel you shouldn't do or wouldn't do because that's what's going to make you feel better because you should go out to dinner, even though you don't feel like it. And when you do, you'll feel better.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and even if you don't immediately feel better, you're setting in motion the steps to start to live better.

• 48:04Mike Carruthers?

  What is it that goes on when people get in those kind of panicky modes, road rages perhaps in a stereotypical example, but you know, you get so upset, you get so stressed out. And later you look back and go, what the hell was that about? What, why did I, why did I get so upset? Why did I get so upset?

• 48:28Speaker 02

  You know, emotion mind, when we're, our emotions are intense, the limbic system is on fire and we just cannot think clearly and we really zoom in and we have a hard time with perspective, which is why I like these exercises that just quickly help us see, I'm in emotion mind, let me get some perspective, let me listen to this podcast rather than focusing on a driver that cut me off. We get flooded, but people are also incredibly good at getting better in just minutes, like literally minutes. Through small things, it's like little wheels on a big suitcase. You don't need something big outside of yourself, you know, listening to a song on the radio or relaxing your face and your grip on the steering wheel can automatically give you a little bit more spaciousness. So we, we can easily rev ourselves up,

• 49:13Speaker 02

  but we could also choose to reset our minds and bodies and act in ways that help.

• 49:20Mike Carruthers?

  People often, I've heard the advice when you're stressed out is to, you know, write it down, to write down your thoughts and what's bothering you, that that somehow has a magical effect.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  There are a couple of things about that that I like. I like something called worry time, which is when, rather than having worry as an all-day ticker in your brain, that's just, you're kind of doing something, but there's a lot of energy and space taken up by worries. You could batch your worries and save them for another time. Maybe you write them down for 20 minutes later in the day. So more of the day you're present, and then you have this time to actually sit with them. And there's also something called expressive writing, which is a specific way of writing with a beginning, middle, and an end, and really going deeper into your feelings. A lot of times, we're just kind of scratching the surface and not really addressing how we really feel. And actually,

• 50:11Speaker 02

  one way to significantly reduce this habit of overthinking is writing about something. If something's really upsetting to you, rather than just telling yourself, a lot of things that people are upset about are very real. It's not just thoughts to sing, but they're real pains and losses and disappointments. If you write about that, you can give yourself a little bit of closure. You can actually process what feels splintered and messy. And in studies where people were asked to write for 30 minutes a day, for, sorry, 20 minutes a day for three days, six months later, they had reductions in depression and rumination. And so there's something about putting it down that helps you kind of close it out.

• 50:52Mike Carruthers?

  Anything else, or any real magic trick that, that we haven't talked about, that really seems to resonate with people that you can share?

• 51:02Speaker 02

  It's all a magic trick. I mean, it's all a magic trick. Like even in this moment, just taking a minute to appreciate that you're able to enjoy your senses, look at the sights in front of you and the sounds that you're listening to right now. And there's, I mean, there's so much magic. And I think also just remembering, like a huge aspiration is to just not make things worse in a hard time. By not making things worse, by not taking something annoying that happened during your day and dumping it on your kid, or making it a reason to derail from your health goals, not making things worse will automatically make things better and also come with this priceless feeling of knowing that you can count on yourself regardless of what shows up in your life. And I think that's really what peace of mind is, is knowing that you

• 51:47Speaker 02

  can make things better in very difficult times, not just for you, but for the people around you.

• 51:52Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that is some great advice. And this is the perfect conversation for a podcast because people can go back and listen and rehear what you said and get your advice again and implement it into their lives. Jennifer Tates has been my guest. She is a clinical psychologist and assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at UCLA. The name of her book is Stress Resets: How to Soothe Your Body and Mind in Minutes. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Jennifer, thanks.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  Thanks, Mike. It's been a real pleasure. I'm so grateful that we had the time to talk.

• 52:30Mike Carruthers?

  When you're writing a document on your computer, what font do you use most often? Some fonts are more attractive than others. And size counts. Research from Wichita State University revealed which fonts people find most appealing. Georgia and Times New Roman were rated the most attractive, while Arial, Courier, and Veranda were considered the easiest and most legible fonts. There is a font called Comic Sans, and you'll probably find it in your list of fonts that you have. Comic Sans came in last place. Size seems

• 53:10Mike Carruthers?

  to matter, too. People liked Times New Roman when it was bigger. People liked Veranda in a 10-point size, and Arial in a 12. And that is something you should know. If you had a podcast, and I listened to it all the way to the end, like you just did, I would probably tell people about your podcast. So I'm going to ask you to do the same thing. Tell people about my podcast and ask them to listen. Send them the link. It's really easy to do. There's a share button somewhere on the app that you're using. I'm Mike Herthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 53:47Speaker 03

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