How to Manage & Better Understand Stress | Dr. Elissa Epel & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | You know, we hear stress, stress is bad, stress can kill us, no one likes to feel stressed,
00:00:06.760 | etc.
00:00:07.760 | But as you and I both know, that's not the entire picture.
00:00:10.800 | So I'd love for you to just educate us a bit on what stress is and what it isn't, where
00:00:16.520 | it can be problematic and where perhaps it can even be beneficial.
00:00:20.280 | So as a stress scientist, it is a word I use a lot, but it has to be broken down because
00:00:29.120 | it has so many different kind of dimensions and meanings.
00:00:32.520 | So there's good and bad stress, there's acute and chronic stress, and you know, technically
00:00:37.880 | it just means anytime we feel overwhelmed, that we feel like the demands are too much
00:00:44.000 | for our resources.
00:00:45.560 | So that's kind of a very technical way to put it.
00:00:48.240 | But really, so much of life is about meeting challenges, and we're never going to get rid
00:00:55.300 | of different stressful situations in life, if anything, they are increasing.
00:01:00.400 | And so it really comes down to not the stressors or what happens to us, but really how we respond,
00:01:08.080 | the stress response.
00:01:09.680 | So that's a distinction that we're still trying to get the field to talk about stress in a
00:01:14.720 | more specific way so that we can think about what situations are in your life.
00:01:19.480 | They might be difficult ongoing situations like caregiving, or work stress, or worrying
00:01:25.640 | about health, your own or someone's.
00:01:29.880 | And then there's how are you coping with it?
00:01:34.060 | So when something happens, we mount a stress response and we recover, and that's beautiful,
00:01:39.980 | no harm done.
00:01:41.120 | We need that.
00:01:42.120 | That's why we're here still alive is that survival response.
00:01:46.300 | It's a problem these days of just, we keep it alive in our head, we keep it alive with
00:01:50.660 | our thoughts.
00:01:51.660 | Our thoughts are the most common form of stress.
00:01:54.880 | Even though I expected that we would get into tools to combat stress a little bit later,
00:02:00.780 | since you have now told us that our thoughts are the biggest sort of propagator of internal
00:02:06.700 | stress, what to your knowledge is the best way or what are the best ways for us to manage
00:02:15.420 | overthinking and ruminating on stressful topics?
00:02:18.540 | Because I certainly experienced stress.
00:02:21.020 | And when I do, I have tools related to breath work, running, exercise, sleep, non-sleep
00:02:27.740 | deep rest.
00:02:28.740 | I'm a huge fan of all these sorts of things.
00:02:30.700 | But when we succumb to stress and the thinking patterns take over where the gears are turning
00:02:36.940 | and they won't stop turning, what does the science tell us about ways to manage those
00:02:42.460 | thoughts?
00:02:43.460 | Should we go with them in the sense that we try and rationalize or understand the basis
00:02:50.340 | of the stress or should we try and divert our thinking away?
00:02:54.100 | Or is there some other tool that I'm unaware of?
00:02:56.100 | Yes, yes, both and.
00:02:58.900 | So I like to bin it in three categories.
00:03:03.460 | So one is we, well, I'll just say, first of all, we have to have some awareness of how
00:03:10.340 | our mind works or we're just like, you know, a subject to thinking our thoughts are real,
00:03:16.900 | thinking that it's helpful to keep ruminating and problem solving because that's our tendency
00:03:21.780 | is to go toward whatever we think there's threat or risk and to problem solve that.
00:03:27.020 | We could just be stuck there all day in this kind of threat mode or red mind state.
00:03:32.000 | And that's just a shame.
00:03:33.180 | We don't need to turn on that stress response all the time.
00:03:38.100 | But that's where we are as a society.
00:03:40.500 | So that's why I wrote the stress prescription.
00:03:44.060 | Take any survey, even pre-pandemic, and people feel, the majority of people feel an overwhelming
00:03:51.260 | amount of stress.
00:03:52.460 | So even this past year, 46% of adults report feeling overwhelmed by stress.
00:04:00.060 | And then you break it down, you're like, oh, this is really bad for young adults and women
00:04:04.620 | and people of color.
00:04:05.620 | And so we have these, you know, groups that are targeted for marginalization that are
00:04:10.420 | feeling an extremely high amount of stress in most of those subgroups.
00:04:15.900 | So bottom, yeah.
00:04:16.900 | Wouldn't you argue that most everyone is feeling more stress now or is it just, what do the
00:04:22.180 | data say?
00:04:23.180 | Yeah.
00:04:24.180 | So I think that we're, we come with different levels of awareness of our stress.
00:04:32.660 | And so when I find someone who really doesn't feel a lot of stress, sometimes I can see
00:04:38.980 | right through that and they're just not aware.
00:04:41.740 | And sometimes it really is true.
00:04:43.500 | They're often in a different stage of life and they control their environment a lot.
00:04:47.940 | And they've been through a lot.
00:04:49.180 | I mean, one of the big patterns in the population levels of stress is that the older people
00:04:59.740 | are less stressed, period.
00:05:00.980 | If you're over 65, you have been through so much, solved so much.
00:05:05.300 | You just have a better perspective on life and on stressors.
00:05:09.240 | And then our adults, our young adults have like four times the level of stress as our
00:05:13.740 | older adults.
00:05:14.740 | So we do, you know, we don't have to wait till we get older, but there certainly is
00:05:18.700 | true wisdom and resilience that comes with age for many people.
00:05:23.380 | Often we're so used to feeling daily stress from our urban and modern life that we don't
00:05:31.060 | notice it.
00:05:32.060 | We're just used to it.
00:05:33.060 | And so we're going through the day with kind of like clenched hands and just, you know,
00:05:36.900 | for listeners, just even just taking a check in now and noticing how you might be holding
00:05:42.900 | stress in your body.
00:05:44.300 | That's a huge clue.
00:05:45.620 | It's a huge place where we accumulate tension.
00:05:48.700 | So we might not be aware that we're stressed, but we're clenching our hands.
00:05:52.380 | And in fact, my taxi driver who drove me here, let me know that he's exactly that point,
00:06:03.140 | that he doesn't realize he's stressed until he realizes that he's tensing his shoulders
00:06:07.980 | and his fists.
00:06:09.600 | And so great signal, you know, doing a check in to like notice where in our body we're
00:06:13.800 | holding stress is step one to releasing it.