458. Can embracing stress actually help us?

Stress has a reputation for burning us out, torching our relationships and even causing our lives to end prematurely. But not all stress is created equal. In this episode, we explore the difference between eustress - good stress - and distress, understand why our experience of stress is rooted in our perception of it, and understand how we can harness stress as a powerful force for motivation, energy and well-being. Watch on Netflix: HERE https://netflix.com/thepsychologyofyour20s We unpack: • The difference between eustress - good stress - and distress • Why avoiding stress can actually cause cognitive decline • The dangers of too much stress on our bodies and minds • The Yerkes-Dodson law and the ‘sweet spot’ of stress • How we can reframe our approach to stress to create our own ‘biology of courage’ Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg https://www.instagram.com/jemmasbeg/?hl=en# Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast https://www.instagram.com/thatpsychologypodcast/?hl=en# Subscribe on Substack: @thepsychologyofyour20s https://substack.com/@thepsychologyofyour20s For business: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Our favourite sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU&vl=en https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU&vl=en https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8384975/ https://www.healthline.com/health/yerkes-dodson-law The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been approaching my health really differently this year. I used to be really focused on maximizing and doing more. And now I'm just realizing that if I listen to what my body needs, I perform way better. And that's why I am obsessed with my Whoop. Truly, you guys, you know, I'm such a data and information driven person. And I love opening my Whoop app and seeing how my sleep, my stress, my strain is correlating with my mood, with my running performance, with how I'm just feeling day to day. I'm not an elite athlete by any means, but I do really benefit. And I also just really enjoy knowing more about my body. And Whoop also gives me these actionable personalized insights that have made me more intentional

• 0:49Jemma Sbeg?

  and meant that I make smarter decisions day to day about what I need, rather than just putting my foot on the gas and just going, going, going, going. New members can try Whoop with a 30 day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop. This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is.

• 1:33Jemma Sbeg?

  Lifting cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 1:45Jemma Sbeg?

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• 2:29Jemma Sbeg?

  But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? Health versus Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy nominated host Trace Dominguez talks through health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to really matters. Listen to Health versus Hype wherever you get your podcasts. You know that feeling when your skin just needs a tall drink of water? That's what Clinique Moisture Surge 100 Hour Moisturizer is for. Moisture Surge 100 Hour Moisturizer absorbs instantly and hydrates for 100 hours

• 3:12Jemma Sbeg?

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• 3:51Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello, everybody. I'm Jemma Sbeg and welcome back to the Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.

• 4:11Jemma Sbeg?

  Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s and beyond at this stage and beyond. Today, we are talking about something that I think most of us have spent a lot of time trying to get rid of, which is stress. We are living in a very anti-stress era. We want to regulate our nervous systems. We want to lower our cortisol. We want to have better boundaries. You know, all of which is incredibly valuable, incredibly important. Stress is a killer.

• 4:52Jemma Sbeg?

  Only in the last, I think, 50 years have we really started to understand the psychological impact of chronic stress and the biological impact on our DNA, our life expectancy, on our relationships. All of that is very, very valid. But I think somewhere along the way, we've kind of simplified this a little bit too much and we've lumped all stress into the bad stress category. However, stress is not just something that happens when life is going badly. Stress happens when we care. Some of our very best moments in life will also be the most stressful

• 5:30Jemma Sbeg?

  because stress is just one of your body's most ancient inbuilt survival mechanisms for showing us what is important and showing us what we need to pay attention to and tending to it. So today, in a world of a lot of bad stress, we are going to break down the psychology behind how you can convert this arousal into something that actually helps you. We're going to learn about the difference between good stress and bad stress, whether those categories are helpful, the role of cognitive appraisal, which is one of the most powerful things your brain can do for you, and why some of the most successful and emotionally aware people

• 6:14Jemma Sbeg?

  microdose stress in a way that actually may help expand their minds, according to neuroscience and in some pretty remarkable ways. There is so much brilliant research to cover that has only just come out. Some amazing papers from Stanford, some from, from the US, from the UK, from Germany. There's literally so much evidence and science to get into. So I hope you enjoy the episode. A brief reminder, though, this episode and many others just like it are now on Netflix. So before we get into it, if you want a video version of this podcast, you can go and watch it over there. But without further ado, let's get into the psychology around stress.

• 6:56Jemma Sbeg?

  So when we talk about stress, what are we actually referring to? Not to kind of give you like an Oxford Dictionary definition, but basically, in short, stress is our body's natural and normal reaction to feeling threatened or feeling under pressure. When we are stressed, our body releases a hormone that we all know called adrenaline and that activates something called fight or flight. This hormone adrenaline usually gives us a boost to motivate us or to act quickly. That is often helpful because stress can be brought on by a huge range of things that we want to be alert to and we want to avoid and we also hopefully want to perform better at.

• 7:40Jemma Sbeg?

  So it can be everything from trying to escape a bad situation to sitting an exam, running late, having a difficult conversation. There is a whole scale of things that our body kind of uses stress for as a cure all to get us out of a situation or through a situation we want to perform well in. I think we typically see stress as a bad reaction to bad things. But what is lesser known is that there are different types of stress, different levels, some of which are beneficial to you. Let's work through those levels together. So firstly, we have acute stress. This is short-term stress that comes and goes quickly. It can be positive or negative. So what we call e-stress, which is motivating rather than, than threatening.

• 8:24Jemma Sbeg?

  And then distress, which is in the name, threatening and overwhelming and doesn't feel very good. So normally associated with things that bring a kind of sense of dangerous arousal. This kind of stress, acute stress, peaks very quickly and it also subsides very quickly as well. And that's important to remember. And that's the first level acute stress. Then we have episodic acute stress, which is where we experience acute stress regularly. This is not helpful. Even if the episodes are very, very brief, we don't want to be there very often. When you experience such a rapid onset of arousal so regularly,

• 9:06Jemma Sbeg?

  you basically don't ever get the time you need to return to a calm baseline. And so there is this like lingering, constant state of emergency. We know that goes on to impact everything else in our life, like rest, like diet, like social connection, your emotional state. Episodic acute stress is often associated with certain professions in particular or certain kind of life circumstances. But you know, working in healthcare is a common one. A stressful relationship is another one. Stressful housing situations where like you just can't be fully present or use your space as you'd like, or you don't feel safe.

• 9:45Jemma Sbeg?

  Even just certain periods of life where you're just kind of thrown one intense thing after another can trigger this form of stress. If this lasts for a while. As I said, there is probably not a single area of your life that will not be touched by it. After this, though, we have the worst type of stress, quote unquote worst, which is chronic stress. This is the kind of stress we consider a healthcare problem or even an illness. Um, chronic stress can also be professional. But it's most likely associated with something that feels unmovable in your life. So ongoing financial dread, family trauma, a chronic illness, something that is just system systematic in everywhere you look.

• 10:29Jemma Sbeg?

  Now, these layers are important when we talk about some of the common myths that surround stress because we need to know that there are different levels in order to break down these bigger myths, one of them being that all stress is bad and that all stress is the same. We know that's not true. We're gonna get to that a little bit later, but before, let's run through some other common myths about your stressed state that are really important for you to know if you wanna have a good relationship with stress. The first myth is that stress is the same for everyone. Everyone is gonna feel the same way about a missed flight. Everybody's gonna feel the same way about having a busy time at work or having a fight with a friend. This is largely inaccurate, very inaccurate, actually.

• 11:12Jemma Sbeg?

  How each of us responds to stress, where we feel stress in the body, how much stress each of us can tolerate is supremely different, very, very different. Firstly, there is this thing uh known in psychology as the stress threshold. And this is basically the maximum level of physical and mental pressure that your body can handle before it stops coping, before it kind of is like, I really can't do anything else about this situation. For some people, you reach that threshold really, really quickly. You know, it only takes one or two things in your day or your week to be overwhelming for you to reach your threshold. For others, you know, I've encountered people whose

• 11:55Jemma Sbeg?

  car is broken down in the morning and then they've got to work, realize they missed a deadline in the afternoon. Then they get an alert that a bill has been unpaid and then they have dinner with their in-laws all in the same day and their stress threshold is not met, they're fine, they're easygoing still. It all depends on what the psychiatrist Dan Siegel calls your window for tolerance. Your window for tolerance, it's critical to remember that and how you interpret the threat capacity of a situation. So how you interpret your ability to cope and how you interpret how scary the thing is that you're going through. Beyond that, we often find that there are some family things that influence your stress response. For example, how your parents respond to stress will likely

• 12:40Jemma Sbeg?

  influence how you will. So if your parents withdrew and they put their head in the sand, you learn that that's an appropriate way to do it because it was the only way that was modeled to you. Or if your parents or your family were the kind of family that got angry and stressed and frustrated, you may struggle to control stress in yourself because again, that outward loud expression seemed normal and that influences our stress capacity. It is not always up to you how you respond to intense moments in your life or what your stress response is programmed to do. You know, it's it's often a hand me down, you know, your stress response is inherited. The second myth is that stress is everywhere and stress is inevitable. So you just have to live with it, that's that's all.

• 13:25Jemma Sbeg?

  This is both true and false at the same time. Stress is always going to occur. You are going to be stressed at times. That is the cost of engaging in life. Sometimes things are gonna be difficult, uh including things that are really worth having. You know, also so much of our lives today, political instability, the cost of living, the fact that nobody can get a job, climate anxiety, rise of A I, that's, I'm gonna stop giving you a list and stressing you out more, but that often feels determined by things outside of our control, right? But there is a distinction between our reality and our reaction. Specifically, we have uh or we are in control of what we call our cognitive appraisal.

• 14:10Jemma Sbeg?

  Cognitive appraisal is basically how you think about a situation. When we encounter some story about how A I is gonna steal all of our jobs or when we encounter our boss suddenly calling us at eight A M. in the morning or a friend being like, I wanna talk, we need to have a serious talk, right? We have two reactions. The first involves our primary appraisal. So this is the snap judgment or the or the instinct. Ninety-five percent of the time, it is going to be more severe than the situation requires. Your instinct, your first appraisal is gonna be very intense because your body and your mind always prefers to overreact than underreact for obvious reasons.

• 14:49Jemma Sbeg?

  The thing is, a lot of us will trust our primary appraisal and let that shape our mood and our reaction because we don't question our instinct. You have to go deeper into your secondary appraisal, though, if you actually want any chance of being able to choose your response to stress, which is what we're talking about today. And our secondary appraisal is when you evaluate your options. For example, you evaluate the fact that, you know, I'm I'm probably not thinking about this from all directions and I'm probably undervaluing my ability to adapt and cope, I'm tough, I can get through this. I'm probably undervaluing what resources I have against this problem. I'm overemphasizing the scary parts of this without considering

• 15:35Jemma Sbeg?

  the support I have, without considering the context, without considering the facts. Secondary appraisal is crucial and this whole process, by the way, is known as Lazarus's transactional model of stress. And this filter can drastically change the direction of your stress and it can drastically change whether you are able to feel motivated by this moment or, I guess, despondent over it. So this is when we really get into the nitty gritty of what this whole episode is about. Can we turn bad stress into good stress? And is there a way of embracing this feeling specifically through the part of appraisal? So before we spoke about the difference between eustress and distress,

• 16:19Jemma Sbeg?

  eustress being positive, distress being negative, to put it very, very simply. I probably made it seem like these were entirely context dependent. That is only partly true. Yes, if, you know, I don't know, it's gonna be hard not to experience distress if you've just gone through a breakup. And it's gonna be hard to force eustress in response to losing your job. But the key difference between eustress and distress is what we just spoke about, which is perception and is the secondary appraisal. And this is really, really backed up by research. There was a very, very famous study from two thousand and eleven, which highlighted how a positive reaction to stress can decrease distress and increase

• 17:03Jemma Sbeg?

  eustress if we use something known as the tend and befriend response. So when you experience stress, the best way to embrace this feeling or to just channel it in some way that's helpful is to A, tend to something you care about and B, befriend or be around others who can support you. The reason the tend and befriend response work so well in response to distress is because it is a reaction that focuses on expanding outwards rather than retracting inwards, which is typical when we approach a situation that's scary. Basically, it's productive rather than restrictive. And it also, more importantly, emphasizes the biggest antidote to stress that we have, which is basically knowing that it's not just happening to you

• 17:46Jemma Sbeg?

  and that you have somebody else to share this feeling with. This model is incredibly effective and it's something that we don't often do. We experience stress as this all out negative feeling, not realizing that there are avenues through which to tackle it. And the best way to do that is to situate your stress in the context of of relationships that you have and in the context of the social support that you have. And also in the context of knowing that whatever you are going through, even if you've made the biggest mistake of your life, somebody's probably also gone through it. And also, everybody else has experienced perhaps something of a similar level. So in these conditions, when we are able to have a positive cognitive appraisal,

• 18:31Jemma Sbeg?

  when we can see stress as a challenge and when we adopt the tend and befriend model, that is when the benefits of stress emerge. That might still sound puzzling. You're probably like, what are you talking about? How can stress possibly be helpful? We're gonna get to it. Stay with us. We'll be right back after this short break.

• 19:00Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been really trying to prioritize my health in a realistic way this year. And something that has kept me really motivated is my Whoop. I am such a data person, which is why I love Whoop. Because I can genuinely see why my body feels differently depending on the day, why I'm running differently, why I'm maybe less focused. Whoop effortlessly tracks my sleep, it tracks my strain, my recovery, my stress, and most importantly, my overall health. And it just gives me all that data and all those patterns. So I can make better decisions, which includes knowing when to go easy and knowing when to go hard. New members can try Whoop with a 30 day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop.

• 19:45Jemma Sbeg?

  This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is, lifting cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 20:22Jemma Sbeg?

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• 21:07Jemma Sbeg?

  that make membership feel rewarding long before takeoff and long after landing. Because Sky Miles is more than a travel program, it is a membership that moves with you. Fly farther, earn every day, redeem your way and access more. Because when your membership is as unique as you are, there's no telling where your next journey will take you. These days, there are more people than ever telling you how to manage your health. And we've all gone down an internet rabbit hole exploring the latest health trends. Your social media feed is packed with wellness advice telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong?

• 21:50Jemma Sbeg?

  That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel and YouTube, talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 22:29Jemma Sbeg?

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• 23:13Jemma Sbeg?

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• 23:49Jemma Sbeg?

  So basically, your perception of stress matters equally to the amount of stress that you are actually experiencing. I feel like I've made that point, but I just want to highlight one final study that confirms this. Because I think it's like the best one, probably should have included it first. Who cares, we're gonna do it last. I've saved it to last for a reason. I'll pretend that's why we're talking about it now. But in 2012, there was a group of researchers who followed 30,000 adults in the US for eight years. The study firstly asked, how much stress have you experienced in the last year? Secondly, they asked, do you believe that stress is harmful for your health? What they did next was that they used public death records to find out

• 24:35Jemma Sbeg?

  who from that group had essentially died prematurely. And researchers discovered many things, but two things that were very, very crucial. Firstly, they realized that those who had experienced severe stress in the previous year did have a 43% increased risks of dying prematurely. However, that was only true for those who believed that significant stress was bad for your health. Those who experienced severe stress but were able to appraise it and see it not as harmful, but as helpful, were no more likely to die in the follow up. In fact, they actually had the lowest chance of dying prematurely out of anyone in the whole study,

• 25:20Jemma Sbeg?

  including those who experienced little to no stress in their life. Our stress response can become healthier over time when we retrain our brains to recognize that our bodies in these moments are trying to help, not trying to hinder us. And also when we have that critical appraisal capability. When we do this, we rewire our reaction, which can elevate or decrease stress significantly, potentially saving us from so many physical and mental health kind of secondary effects that create and come about as a result of chronic stress. Now, a big fat disclaimer here.

• 26:04Jemma Sbeg?

  Can perception alone eliminate the impact of a chronically stressful job or a chronically stressful environment or a chronically stressful financial situation or relationship? No, it just cannot. I want to be really clear, mindset can only go so far. But this is where we need to understand another important theory, which is known as the Yerkes-Dodson's Law or Yerkes-Dodson's Theory. What it says is that each of us has an optimal level of stress, which will be advantageous. This law, this model, is basically a theory of the relationship between stress and performance. And it's a model that's been around since like, I think it literally is one of the earliest psychological models

• 26:47Jemma Sbeg?

  that's been around since like the early 1900s. It was pioneered by these two men, Robert Yerkes, John Dilligan Dodson. And this model basically proposes that you reach your peak level of performance with an intermediate level of stress or arousal. Too little or too much stress is what results in poor performance and perhaps poor health. You and I can see this in ourselves, right? Stress has an optimal level. And if you were going to try to eradicate all stress, A, what would happen is that any experience of stress would immediately actually become distress rather than you stress because we'd be so unable to cope with it and so ashamed of it

• 27:29Jemma Sbeg?

  that, you know, we're feeling this thing that we're not meant to be feeling, that we just literally would not know what to do. And B, we would also lose a vital psychological motivator. When you are faced with a deadline or a really challenging task or anything that's difficult, the pressure you feel, we know this can push you to work harder and perform better than usual. That is stress that is making you do that. When you face stress in a relationship, you know, that's also a motivator. It's a sign that something needs fixing and it is a force to do so to eliminate this bad feeling. And it makes our brain more focused, it makes our brain more attentive. Stress is an indicator of what to pay attention to and that is critical.

• 28:12Jemma Sbeg?

  So the final point I need to make here is that when we villainize stress in its entirety or when we are intensely focused on eliminating all stress and being regulated at all time, we often forget that this alternative would likely not serve us either. When we have too little stimulation, too little challenge or demand placed on us, we drift towards the opposite end of the stress spectrum, which is stagnation, boredom, apathy and disengagement. I think it's important to think about those periods in your life when you like had absolutely nothing to do for days on end and you went on holiday, you weren't really doing anything. At first, like it feels incredible, but eventually you start to feel really, really different and strange and kind of unhappy. And there's a reason for that.

• 28:58Jemma Sbeg?

  Our body craves a certain level of activation and it needs a certain level of activation to be interested and engaged with our lives. Even if your level may be less than somebody else's, you still need something. You still need some kind of stimulus. And this is the biggest problem with trying to avoid stress entirely. Avoiding stress will make your world smaller.

• 29:20Jemma Sbeg?

  It just simply will. Some of the best parts of life are going to be the most stressful. Like getting married, like travelling, like big life changes, moving cities, those are great things. So avoiding stress would have you avoiding your greatest potential for change and your greatest potential for new memories. And this is why we have to distinguish between stress, growth and homeostasis. Because they all operate separately and together. Homeostasis is your body's tendency to maintain stability and to return to a comfortable baseline where things are very predictable and safe and stress is minimal. We need that, but we cannot permanently live there the same way that we cannot permanently live in a place of heightened stress.

• 30:06Jemma Sbeg?

  You need stress because growth often requires temporarily moving away from that homeostasis or that or that baseline. When you're learning something difficult, when you're exercising, when you're travelling somewhere unfamiliar, when you're meeting new people, when you are starting a new job, that uncomfortable feeling is critical for the experience. It like all those things can create physiological and psychological stress. Not because they are bad things, but because they demand adaptation. And adaptation and struggle is a major sign of personal evolution. And also, it's probably the only pathway to growing as an individual and growing as a as a human.

• 30:45Jemma Sbeg?

  So we need to be really, really critical in remembering that when somebody says, I want to eliminate all stress, I want my nervous system to be completely regulated. Not having any stress in your twenties at any time is actually really bad for you and will actually mean that your life is smaller. So how do we leverage the good parts of stress? How do we leverage only the stress that we want, knowing that we have to kind of have a relationship with stress in order to get its benefits? Let's talk about it. Firstly, I think the biggest way to change our relationship to stress is to change our mindset. Stress is not a weakness, it's physiology. A little bit of stress is gonna be good for you.

• 31:27Jemma Sbeg?

  You cannot grow without tension or friction. Your stress is indicative that you are putting yourself in environments where growth is possible. And also, stress is half reality, half reaction. Those are all critical things that need to be remembered in order for your mindset around stress to change. Instead of viewing it as a threat, we need to look at it as an opportunity for growth. For instance, we often associate, um, I think a lot of the physical symptoms of stress negatively because they indicate that something is off in within ourselves or off in our environment, things aren't balanced. And that's not something that people like to feel. We don't like to feel our heart pounding. We don't like to feel jittery or sweaty.

• 32:05Jemma Sbeg?

  But as I've said on this podcast before, those physical reactions aren't just activated by stress, right? They are also activated by excitement and they are also activated by anticipation. Those are emotional states that we view pretty positively and that are pretty great. So if we can interrupt our thoughts before they get to these feelings of stress and label them as bad and instead label them as something that is exciting, rewarding, or a sign of something really big and marvelous on the horizon. The painful side effects of stress, particularly distress, are minimized without completely eliminating or villainizing the reaction as a whole.

• 32:47Jemma Sbeg?

  Next, I think to change our relationship to stress, we need to reframe how we approach goal setting and tasks and how we celebrate our wins, which I know sounds cheesy, I know it sounds very like self-helpy, but will actually deeply change your relationship to stress and your ability to kind of find your cognitive and psychological sweet spot and your ideal level of of arousal and activation. So one way that we can do this is to create containers for our stress or basically limit how much stress a task can create before it is completed. The critical way to think about this is the difference between putting,

• 33:28Jemma Sbeg?

  ah, what's a good example? The difference between putting like, get my finances together on your to-do list and step one, check bank balance, step two, cancel unnecessary subscriptions, step three, set up automatic transfer to savings, step four, watch one YouTube video on investing. There is a big difference in those two things. One of them feels like more because there's four things to do, but the first one is actually more daunting. The first task has almost no boundaries. Your brain is holding an entire goal in mind at once, including every single moment of uncertainty, every single decision that you still need to make, every possible thing that could go wrong, every single step. And it becomes this huge open loop and open space that can generate stress for hours, days, weeks,

• 34:12Jemma Sbeg?

  because it's gonna take that long to complete the task. Figure out my finances is not a one-day event. But when you break that goal into smaller chunks, you also break the stress into smaller chunks as well. Instead of needing enough psychological capacity to deal with an entire life and financial reset, you only need enough capacity to check your bank balance just for today. And that might be stressful, it probably is, but the time horizon for the peak of that stress and how long it takes for it to eventually subside is much, much smaller. That is the container. The task is the container. It has a clear beginning and importantly, it has a clear end.

• 34:54Jemma Sbeg?

  And the beginning and the end are much closer together than a big, open-ended goal. I think this is particularly useful when, just whenever something feels overwhelming. I think a lot of the time we ask ourselves like, oh my god, how am I gonna finish this and how am I gonna get there as fast as possible? If you ask yourself instead, like, what is the smallest complete unit of this task that I can focus on right now? You are reducing how much of that work your brain has to emotionally carry at one time that could push you over your stress threshold. And that, I think, can be the difference between having a kind of stress that paralyzes us and stops us from performing and having a kind of stress response that actually helps us perform

• 35:37Jemma Sbeg?

  and helps us get through things and do things that we need to do. Okay, we're gonna take one more short break, then we're gonna dive into the final two ways that we can embrace stress. And also how we know when our stress is getting too great, because there's obviously that side of this discussion as well, so stay with us.

• 35:59Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been approaching my health really differently this year. I used to be really focused on maximizing and doing more. And now I'm just realizing that if I listen to what my body needs, I perform way better. And that's why I am obsessed with my Whoop. Truly, you guys, you know I'm such a data and information-driven person. And I love opening my Whoop app and seeing how my sleep, my stress, my strain is correlating with my mood, with my running performance, with how I'm just feeling day to day. I'm not an elite athlete by any means, but I do really benefit and I also just really enjoy knowing more about my body.

• 36:39Jemma Sbeg?

  And Whoop also gives me these actionable, personalized insights that have made me more intentional and meant that I make smarter decisions day to day about what I need, rather than just putting my foot on the gas and just going, going, going, going. New members can try Whoop with a thirty-day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join dot whoop dot com slash psychology for your free month of Whoop. This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over fourteen years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy.

• 37:22Jemma Sbeg?

  All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise, whatever exercise that is. Lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark dot com.

• 37:41Jemma Sbeg?

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• 38:26Jemma Sbeg?

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• 38:48Jemma Sbeg?

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• 39:27Jemma Sbeg?

  talks to health influencers, real people, and most importantly, doctors, to separate fact from fiction. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 39:47Jemma Sbeg?

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• 40:32Jemma Sbeg?

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• 41:08Jemma Sbeg?

  So the third way that we're going to learn to embrace stress from a psychological standpoint is to basically just move with your stress.

• 41:19Jemma Sbeg?

  Your stress wants you to do something about it. It wants you to pay attention to it. It's basically saying, hey, I've just given you all this adrenaline and I've given you all this glucose and all this energy and all this motivation and I've made you very, very scared, so use that feeling. Use me, take advantage of this. I understand the feeling to take stress and sit with it and ruminate over it and try and mentally problem solve it or think our way out of it. But unfortunately, that does not work because that is not the plane upon which stress operates. Stress is operating at a biological level. You're trying to deal with it on a cognitive level. Stress activates your systems for a reason. And that is why when you are suddenly overwhelmed, you know, we feel like we need to pace and

• 42:02Jemma Sbeg?

  we get twitchy and we, our heart rate is jumping and we need to move about. As much as your cognitive appraisal is important, just existing in that physical reaction is also important. Don't fight the feeling. When you have it, channel it into doing something that you feel like you haven't had the time to do. Brainstorm a game plan for yourself. Answer all your messages. Do all your chores. Channel it into something productive. This is actually something that the Stanford psychologist and stress expert, Aliya Crumb, calls utilizing stress. The practical question she asks is essentially, how can I use the energy created by stressful situations to move towards what matters to me rather than to stay in a place of that stress?

• 42:45Jemma Sbeg?

  Again, it comes back to the opportunity mindset. I'm stressed. Oh my God, what am I gonna do? I can't outthink it. Let's run with this for a while. I've got all these things I need to get done. What a great time to do them. And my body is naturally working at a more efficient pace. I find this particularly useful as a ruminator. My previous response to stress or worry or anxiety was just to kind of sit and mull and be like, I can problem solve my way out of this and I think any over thinker will relate. I think it's very easy to believe that if you are a smart person or an overachiever, like you can intellectualize your feelings and that there is a solution that just requires you to think harder. But the secret solution here is moving through or flowing with your stress rather than trying to figure it out mentally.

• 43:31Jemma Sbeg?

  And I really do like to think about it as like a dance, like I'm doing this like salsa dance with my stress until my stress, the partner, gets bored of itself or tires out and then I can have that cognitive appraisal where I can deal with the situation better. This brings me to my final point for this episode, which also comes from Crumb's work. She's pretty cool. She does some really cool stuff. And what she basically says is if you want to manage your stress, stop managing other people's stress. Sometimes the most stressful thing that happens to us is that we see other people's stress as our own responsibility. I'm gonna make a bet that you are a very sensitive person, you're a very caring person.

• 44:12Jemma Sbeg?

  And if you are this kind of person, your instinct when other people are feeling overwhelmed or stressed is often to immediately make their problem and their stress disappear. This often sounds like, you know, don't worry, I'll just do it for you. Let me plan this. Let me take over. I'll make this all better. And it comes from an incredibly loving place, but constantly sheltering people from their own situation and from their stress can accidentally create or reinforce this belief that stress is something that they cannot handle whilst also pushing you beyond your, your threshold or your window for tolerance much, much easier, meaning that nobody is better off.

• 44:53Jemma Sbeg?

  Sometimes our job is to realize that people are responsible for their own emotions and their own solutions to those emotions. We can be part of the tend and befriend process. We can help them out. We can sit with them like we spoke about before. But this immediate instinct to problem solve reinforces a general belief that all stress is bad and that is simply incorrect. Psychology says something different as well. Decades of research show that the best thing that you as a friend or as a kind person can do for somebody else's stress, whether it's a partner or your parents or your sibling or whatever, is just to be physically present without always being cognitively problem solving.

• 45:36Jemma Sbeg?

  We call this social buffering and it essentially says, or we essentially know that just the presence or existence of a support network makes stress more manageable and more likely to be what we call a motivational force rather than a corrosive one or a mentally taxing one. If you love somebody, the kindest thing you can do is validate that they can survive this situation themselves. That is actually such a kindness to not always problem solve, but to be beside them, to validate that it's difficult, to help where help is actually needed, but to just give them the opportunity to discover their own capacity. Every time we move through something stressful and we realize like, oh my God, I actually

• 46:20Jemma Sbeg?

  handled that really, really well. Wait, maybe I needed that experience. Like maybe I'm actually more capable than I think. We acquire this evidence that we're really, really capable people and that we actually can really go after what we want and we can handle a lot more than we think. That is so, so critical. So I think that that's like an equally part of this like stress conversation is not only how do you manage your stress? How, what is your immediate reaction to managing somebody else's stress for them? And how is that reinforcing your own belief that stress is this terrible, bad thing that could never possibly have a benefit? So as we kind of finish up this episode, I want to offer one final little caveat here,

• 47:04Jemma Sbeg?

  a little disclaimer, if you will, and a summary all in one, we're gonna do it all together.

• 47:10Jemma Sbeg?

  What I really want you to take away that we've learnt from the research is that we instinctually villainize stress because it feels intense and because sometimes it is. It is not good for us emotionally, psychologically, physically, socially, to be in a constant state of stress all the time. Your growth in these situations has a psychological ceiling. Additionally, there is no mindset shift in this world that can eradicate the chronic stress of a toxic home life, a bad relationship, a terrible financial situation, a natural disaster, terrible environmental things happening to you. There's nothing that can like cognitively get you out of that. And there's nothing that like can be said to be like, oh, now your stress is gonna go away. Congratulations.

• 47:55Jemma Sbeg?

  However, to go through life and to go through your twenties without stress of any kind would also be somewhat tragic because you would be missing your body's, A, its most ancient survival mechanism, and you would also be missing a mental state that accompanies so many of life's highest peak expansive moments. The stress we would prefer to experience in these moments is you stress. But we can also change the emotional charge of our stress through that secondary appraisal or cognitive appraisal overall. And by doing so through those four strategies that I mentioned, which is to change your

• 48:36Jemma Sbeg?

  mindset, change your approach to goal setting and create stress containers, move with your stress, not against it, and remember that other people are responsible for their own emotional reaction. Your job is not to make everyone else less stressed and yourself more stressed. It's also not to eradicate stress. I think it's just like to exist and make the most of the stress that you have and then make the most of the ways that you can channel it positively if that is available to you. So that, my friends, is the, is the episode, our, our new approach to embracing stress. Thank you to our researcher Lucy for helping us with this one. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learnt something.

• 49:17Jemma Sbeg?

  If you feel called to do so and you find that this, these episodes are valuable to you and you get knowledge from them, you can leave a five star review. You can leave a comment down below about what, what are you gonna get out of your stress this week? Leave a little comment if you're listening on Spotify. Quick reminder, you can also watch this episode and many others just like it on Netflix. You can follow us on Instagram, on Substack. You can read some of the research that I mentioned in the description. There's a lot down there. You can buy my book. You can follow me on Instagram. I don't really post anything that interesting, but I don't know. If you wanna, wanna see what's going on over there, it's all gonna be there. And I just hope that you enjoyed this episode and that it kind of gave you a new outlook

• 50:02Jemma Sbeg?

  on stress without being too kind of toxic positivity for you. I hope, I hope I walked that line well and yeah, I don't know. I hope you enjoyed the research. So until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. We will talk very, very soon.

• 50:21Jemma Sbeg?

  I've been approaching my health really differently this year. I used to be really focused on maximizing and doing more. And now I'm just realizing that if I listen to what my body needs, I perform way better. And that's why I am obsessed with my Whoop. Truly, you guys, you know, I'm such a data and information driven person. And I love opening my Whoop app and seeing how my sleep, my stress, my strain is correlating with my mood, with my running performance, with how I'm just feeling day to day. I'm not an elite athlete by any means, but I do really benefit. And I also just really enjoy knowing more about my body. And Whoop also gives me these actionable personalized insights that have made me more intentional

• 51:06Jemma Sbeg?

  and meant that I make smarter decisions day to day about what I need, rather than just putting my foot on the gas and just going, going, going, going. New members can try Whoop with a 30 day free trial before committing to a membership. That's join.whoop.com/psychology for your free month of Whoop. This episode is sponsored by Gymshark. Gymshark has spent over 14 years obsessing over gym clothing and the people who wear it. And let me just say, I think we all know they are very, very good at what they do. No, seriously, their stuff is so good. Their everyday seamless collection is light, it's soft, it's stretchy. All of their stuff just looks good on and it's made for people who love to exercise,

• 51:48Jemma Sbeg?

  whatever exercise that is, lifting, cardio, Pilates, running around campus, maybe just doing errands. Discover Gymshark and find your new favorite gym clothing at gymshark.com.

• 52:02Jemma Sbeg?

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• 53:57Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.