Suicide Prevention Sat - Stress! We all have it, now what?

All right, it worked. I hope, I hope there was actually like music there at the very least. I know, an intro! I'm learning slowly but surely. DM Foss gave that to me July of last year, and yay, 5x5, awesome! It took me forever to learn what 5x5 was, but then I got the ham radio thing, and so now I understand it better. But it was one of those things. I actually learned about it in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, just so y'all know. All right. So I hope you enjoy my new little intro. More will be coming, I believe. There's lots of stuff in the works, but here we are, Suicide Prevention Saturday. Why? Because as gun owners, we need to share with everyone that 2 out of every 3 gun deaths you hear about from the CDC are suicides. And if people really want to save lives, we have to look at the causes, not the tool. So, all right, oh, I'm gonna be drinking a lot tonight. Not like— it's, it's water, it's not anything exciting. Um, and ideally y'all actually read, or maybe you saw the, um, what this is about tonight. Tonight's about stress, right? Because guess what? We all have stress. Sometimes we're aware of it, sometimes we are not. And it's something that's super important. If we can learn how to deal with our own stress, then it allows us to help deal with our stuff better. When we're in a better place, we can help others better. Because I find that most of us do want to help other people, and that's why you're here, to learn more tips and tricks on how to make your life a little bit better and maybe being able to help someone else who might be in crisis. There we go. And here's the truth. D23's got it right. Stress kills in so many ways. Heart failure, eating our emotions. All sorts of funky things. Oh, wait a second. Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, I forgot my banner. We'll throw the banner up for right now. DJ, do that. She's like, I don't know where it is. The crisis one. Yes, thank you. It's so good to have minions. I mean, assistants. I mean, friends. Yes, all of those things. So stress. We all have it. Sometimes we're aware that we're stressed and other times we are not. Even though DJ and I actually had a plan for the entire month of February, I came up with tonight because I walked in on my husband who was in the middle of a conference call because things were burning down at work. And I'm just like, honey, I just want to throw a punch at everyone, but I don't even know why. And he is the one who said it's stress. And I'm like, Okay, because I couldn't put my finger on it. I just know that I wanted to punch things, um, which I don't do. Desire is not the same as action, just so you don't think I'm all violent and whatnot. But, um, I got new teeth today— no, not new teeth, on Wednesday I got, uh, whatever they're called, Invisalign things. So this, this area of my body is hurting and in pain and swollen, and so I'm talking funny, at least in my head I'm talking funny. And, um, and it's hard. I have to do— this is why lots of drinking of water, because I can't have anything with anything else in it, and my mouth is super dry. So why am I telling you all this? Not because you need to know that my mouth is dry, but so you understand that I had all of this stress and I wasn't even aware of, like, how much this was driving me crazy. There's other things in my life that are going on Uh, in real life, spokesmodel. Um, yeah, the speaking part is the hard part right now. So anyway, those of you who watch me a long time, if you go back and compare, you might find that I'm talking funny relatively. So, all right, so we got a full room. I mean, for me, I'm like 8 people. Yay! Uh, long ago when DJ started helping me with this, he's like, what do you want? I'm like, if I get into double digits, I'll feel spectacular. So 8 is a double digit for me because it's 4 plus 4, because I'm good at math. So, all right, um, DJ, I'm gonna make you do the call out real quick while I look at my notes because I do not want to scroll all the way through there, and I'm confident that you have managed to pay attention and just say hi to everyone for me. Can you do that for me, or do I have to add you to the stream? Did I kill you?

I'm here. We got G23 out there as well. We got, uh, let's see, Gun Websites, uh, he's a regular. See who else we have out there tonight. Mike White 2A Advocacy, a new name for Mike White, he's joining us as well. See 2 Live Moo, he's making mootastic sounds out there. And that brings you current on your text chat.

Excellent. Yeah, and Mike's White 2A Advocacy is a new, um, channel for him, so we all should go check that out because I think I did when he told me that, but I'm not sure. But if you're like me, if you don't do it right now— well, don't do it right now because you want to be here to learn about stress and how to deal with that. Oh, see, Fiona was sitting there in the background all nice and quiet, like, oh, so are you excited about the instructor class coming up? Anyway, That's a whole nother animal. I even have notes for y'all tonight. So stress, what is it and how do we deal with it? This is the question. In the comments or in the description— Facebook's up there, YouTube down there— um, I put a link to a Medline article and it says stress is normal, is a normal feeling, but there are two main types of stress. We have acute stress which is the short-term stress that goes away quickly. You feel it when you slam on the brakes, have a fight with your partner, or ski down a steep slope. It helps you manage dangerous situations. It also occurs when you do something new or exciting. All people have acute stress at one time or another. It was really cute in the article because like they had a picture of a dude with a bee buzzing by its ear, right? Chronic stress. This is what G23— and we were talking about moments ago of stress kills chronic stress. This is a stress that lasts for a longer period of time. You may have chronic stress if you have money problems, an unhappy marriage, or trouble at work. Any type of stress that goes on for weeks or months is chronic stress. You can become so used to chronic stress you don't realize it's a problem, if you don't find ways to manage stress, which is what we're going to talk about tonight, it can lead to health problems. Oh, so DJ can't see this guy. Mike is on the Facebook side. So yeah, so that Mike's problem— Mike's challenge is more PTSD than stress. It causes anxiety, right? Because PTSD is a whole nother animal, and it has parts of stress as well. What is that? PTS. The S in there is for stress, right? So anyway, that is how stress works. So the PTSD stuff, yeah, you need to know how to do the S part, which is the stress. All right, so I'm going to put Fiona's in here. Kids and hubs give me chronic stress. Yes, but she loves them anyway. So she's got that going for her. I am totally amused that my water bottle almost matches my shirt. Ooh, shiny things. You know how I am with shiny things. I have actual shiny things. And wait, can I show this to you? I don't even know. Will it work? It's not going to focus. I don't think. Maybe. No, it's not. So anyway, these are my new pens for school and they have a Great Start Shooting School on them and it has the website on there. So anyway, fun new things. So dealing with stress in your body, here are some of the things we were talking about that will kill you. Um, your body reacts to stress by releasing hormones. These hormones make your brain more alert, cause your muscles to tense, and increase your pulse. That's why the short-term acute stress is okay, because it's supposed to do that thing. Now, these are good because they help you avoid dangerous situations. However, when you have chronic stress, your body stays alert even though there is no real actual danger. Over time, this puts you at risk for the health problems. We've got high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, depression or anxiety, skin problems such as acne and eczema, and menstrual problems. Now, yes, you do need one of them. They just came in today. They're so pretty. Sorry. Fiona was saying that she needs one. So, um, not to give you too much information, but when I was in high school, the menstrual thing, that was when I was suicidal. And so when I wouldn't have my period for 3 months at a time, I didn't know then it was because I was so stressed out. Um, so what do we have? The highlighted pretty parts here. Those are the solutions. All right, DJ, you ready? You're going to click on the first one. Now, the first one, ta-da! I've talked about this before. You've been here long enough to know. What do I do when I am stressed? What do I know I need to do? I need to listen to music. I need to move my body and get a little beat going. And oh yeah, I do this. I think of, if y'all ever seen Caddyshack, The, the, the gopher at the end was I'm All Right. Yeah, Kenny Loggins song. That's what this is. But anyway, listening to music. Why? Well, you know that heartbeat thing? You know, that's the first thing you hear, right? As you're a baby being formed in your mother's womb, that's the first thing you hear. So why do you think that lovely thumb, thumb, thumb? Of what music brings us, makes us happy. And we're not going to freeze, go for— oh yeah, sorry. So 2 Live Moves letting me know he has actually seen Caddyshack and he does know at least one line from Caddyshack. Um, all right, so listening to music changes our state. Number 2, talk to someone. In the article— oh, The article again is linked down here, and this is a different article. This is the Healthline article of 10 steps to relieve stress. So we've moved on to the next one. Talk to someone. In the article it says friends or family, but what else do we have? We have other options. We have 9-1-1 or 9-8-8, uh, 2-1-1. Both of those. I know when I call 2-1-1, it seems a little bit more like just go to talk to someone. 988, I feel like I get afraid a little bit, but talk to someone. It can be anyone because the next one, talk to yourself. What does that mean? This one kind of overlaps with one that's going to be later when we talk about mindfulness, but when you're in stress, another little handy-dandy link I have for you guys— YouTube down here, Facebook up there— is Sam Harris's Anxiety. And if you take the time to watch that one, here is the deal: it talks about anxiety. So, Mike, this is a perfect one for you to watch, actually. And I'm sure I've actually— I've probably sent it to you before, but what is anxiety? Anxiety is the fear of what could happen. So the way to talk to yourself is ask yourself some of those questions I've taught you in the past, right? What is happening right now? What's really happening right now? Because Mike's example of, you know, finding his best friend dead on a camping trip, waking up next to him, is something most of us do not need to deal with. But now that he is, it's like, okay, that memory is what's causing him anxiety. But if you start paying attention to what is happening right now, or am I— is he lying next to a dead body right now? No, that is not happening right now. It is a past memory. So the challenge is it's so hard when you are in an anxious or depressed state. You're not as resourceful as you could. So talking to yourself, checking in on yourself on a regular basis. Like last weekend, we talked about watering the garden. And by the way, it was very cool to have one of my friends call me and say, don't forget to water your garden. So we want to talk to ourselves when we're in a good mood, so we're checking on ourselves. All right, next one. Eat right. Yeah, as I drool all over myself, this is awesome. Good thing this is live. Um, eating right, what do we know? Hydration, super duper important. We need to drink, but we need to do little things for ourselves. I actually wrote this down because this morning I actually did something good for me. I made a drink that was good for me. You know what it has in it? A little squirt of lemon juice, a little bit of apple cider vinegar, Bragg's specifically, and that's it, and some water. And I know the first time someone told me to drink that, I'm like, oh, that sounds disgusting. And I'm sure that it probably is, but I've gotten to like it because I know it's good for me. It does all sorts of great things for your liver and gets rid of toxins and all of that. But here's why eating right is so important, because you are making choices of what you're going to put in this that will take care of you, right? So eating right, and eating right is whatever you do, right? I'm not going to suggest that frosted flakes and Coke are necessarily eating right. So there are some limits, but I'm sorry, I have to go back to DJ's Amino juice is Bragg's. So Bragg's apple cider vinegar with the mother is what it actually says on the, on the thing. What it is, um, I don't know, I try not to go down the, the nutrition thing too far, but the Bragg's— so Bragg's does have the amino, the aminos as well, but no, they're apple cider vinegar with the mother. Is a fermented food that is good for you because the eating right thing— again, brain health, gut health, emotional health all go together. Uh, I actually— ooh, there's another podcast I should probably throw in there, but I was just listening to another podcast talking about the gut emotion, uh, continuum. So that is kind of how that works. So yeah, so eat right because it shows that you are taking care of yourself. For me, it's a big deal because I am the kind that eats my emotions. It's like, oh, I'm not worth it. I'm just going to eat a can of Oreos, a box of Oreos, whatever, a container of Oreos. Yes, whatever it is. But when I make the choice to be like, okay, I'm going to get some apple cider vinegar, some lemon juice, because I know it does great things, especially as a drink first thing in the morning. That will allow my body to feel like it's being taken care of. Because again, like I said in the beginning, if we're not taking care of us, we can't take care of anyone else. All right, next, my favorite, laugh. Go ahead, I double dog dare you. Ready? Everyone go, hahaha. Yeah, okay, for real, does that not make you feel silly? If you didn't do it with me, then I'm not talking to you anymore, so just go away. But no, even if you fake it till you make it and you laugh stupidly, inevitably, I don't know, I find if I'm gonna laugh at something like, hahaha, like not really, it still cracks me up because it's so stupid. So laughing. Last year when I was stuck on crutches and I couldn't move, watching funny movies. And it has been documented, people who are terminally ill people who watch funny movies live longer because they are happier, and so their body can recreate better. So there is lots of reasons to laugh. Oh wait, you're in trouble now. You know what I have for you? I have a dad joke. My son was reading these out of the dad joke book that we got him for Christmas. So ready? What kind of vegetable do you need when you have a flat tire? Go ahead, figure it out. What kind of vegetable do you need when you have a flat tire? Ready? Are you ready for this? An asparagus. Isn't that hysterical? No, not really. But anyway, so dumb jokes for real, anything that will make you laugh. All right, the other thing, drink green or herbal tea. One of the things I was talking about with, um, with caffeine or coffee or caffeinated teas is that when you're stressed, you don't need more caffeine and that sort of thing. Um, so with the drink— drinking of tea, again, you're taking the time to boil the water, pick out your favorite mug. You are taking care of yourself. So it's more than just the imbibing of the thing. Uh, let's see. Oh, the added antioxidants and amino acids the green tea has is just a bonus. All right, so I'm gonna go to DJ's thing. How many cows are in basic emotions when you eat them raw versus cooked? Any difference? Yeah, so pretty much when I am eating my emotions, it's generally raw, and it's raw cookie dough. Um, oh well, cookies are cooked though, aren't they? So yeah, I guess they're almost always cooked, except when I'm eating raw cookie dough, then it is actually raw. Either way, eating your emotions is too many calories, always. All right, on to our next thing, the be mindful. Like I said, this kind of goes over and pays attention to the talking to yourself thing. When you are in stress, again, it's harder to be mindful and aware of what you're doing. Because, like, I needed to talk to someone, right? Number 2, um, I need to talk to my husband when I'm like, I just want to throw a punch at someone, and they're just like, oh no, here's what's going on, and reminded me of, like, the pain, the suffering of what's going on here. I've got stuff going on. I'm so excited. I'm going to be showing you guys soon. Oh, I have a TV show. I forgot to tell you guys. All right, sorry. So anyway, be mindful, being aware of what's going on here. Like I've told you before, the questions that we ask and that's been a lot of this week for me. If I say, "Why can't I do something?" I will come up with answers of why can't I do something. If I ask myself, "How? How can I be less stressed?" That's a simple mindfulness question. Or like the anxiety, take a breath, think about what's going on right now. Who loves you? Who do you love? What makes you happy? What is the most nutritious food you can think of? Those are the things of being mindful, bringing yourself to present. And you have to practice that on more of a regular day, regular daily thing, because the more you do it, the less you're going to stay in stress. I have a teenage daughter, which you met 2 weeks ago, and you've met her before here and there, But stress is part of being a teenager. And the way I try to work it with her is, look at it this way: you're always going to get stressed from time to time. The goal is not to stay stuck there, right? We want to avoid the chronic stress. So acute stress is expected, but we want to be able to change. So the more mindful we are, then the more often— the less often we're going to find ourselves in the chronic stress. Okay, next. Oh God, you guys are gonna love this exercise, even for a minute. Are you ready? I swore I was gonna do this prior to, to see what happens on the video, but I don't know because I didn't. Um, so anyway, ready? Here you go. Exercise. All you have to do, for those of you can stand up, ta-da! See these two hands? Reach them high over your head. I know you can't see me, but I can't go any further. Then put them on your hips like so. And even though you can't see my head, imagine that my head is up and straight and I'm looking towards the sky. Now take my hands, drop them down to the ground. I know we're all different as far as like how flexible you are, but just lay there for a moment or stand there for a moment. Try not to fall over, that sort of thing. Ready? So that's skies, to hips to toes. Sort of like, um, oh yeah, head, shoulders, knees, and toes, knees and toes. Did you do that when you were a kid? So big. Exactly. So let's say you didn't stand up when I told you to stand up. If you're just sitting here and you do so big, honestly, just this, you can sit here at your desk and just go like this for 30 seconds. Here's what happens. Exercise can be itty-bitty increments. It can be a minute, um, because movement is emotion. The more you sit, the more you don't move, the harder it is to maintain. The other thing about exercise, we have this lovely little system in our body called our endocrine system. It's very important. It has hormones and stuff that come out of it. But guess what it doesn't have? It doesn't have any muscles. So we don't move, it can't move stuff around for us. So even for a minute, this is why this can be such a big help. All right, we're almost done. We got— that is 8 of 8 of— yeah, whatever, this is number 9. Oh, all right, so Sleep better. I don't know about y'all, but this is definitely a challenge. Number one problem most of us have is this sucker. See this light? This keeps us awake, and we go there and we scroll through our stuff at night, and at some point we decide to put it down. The truth is, this little guy should never come in the bedroom. He should be left alone out in the living room somewhere. Because the light from here, the light from our screen, all of that. To sleep better, the simple thing we could all do is make sure our electronic devices are off 1 hour before we try to go to sleep. Oh, and let's talk about how much sleep you should actually get. For those of you who actually have 9-to-5 jobs, um, or you have a set schedule Yeah, I'm kind of a little bit with Fiona. What is that? Sleep, what is it called? Sleep hygiene is actually one of those things where usually many Americans are horrible at. So sleeping better. So let me read you some of my tips here. Make sure you put your electronic devices down an hour before bed. Oh, but wait, can't do that? Okay, fine. At least try 30 minutes prior. Prior to bedtime. All right, ready? This is, this is the grown-up adulting thing you have to do. Go to bed early enough to get enough sleep for your age. That's another one of the links that's, you know, Facebook, YouTube, um, in the description. Sleep for your age. So I'll give it so you don't have to click away, but 9 to 12 hours of sleep is needed for school-age children. Somehow I don't think anybody fit into that, but just in case, um, we do actually get my kids to bed around 8:30 because they have to get up at 5:30 so that they can get at least their 8 hours of sleep. Um, then those of us who are 26 to 64 years old, we need 7 to 9 hours of sleep. Now, for the most part, I definitely will be in bed that long. As to sleeping, not as much, because what do I do that I am gonna try to stop doing since I'm now doing this one and telling you guys, yeah, don't do this? Um, getting rid of this before you go to bed, keeping this out of the bedroom. This is why we do not have a TV in our bedroom. Little did I know that they were going to shrink them down and put them in our hands. So, and finally, number 10, the final thing that they suggest that are simple stress reducers— breathe. If you've been watching me long enough, we've talked about breath. Now here's the thing, at a Great Start Shooting School, I talk about this every single lesson ever. Ready? I wrote it down because I just do it naturally, but I just want to say every class I teach, when I teach firearm safety, people who are new to guns are often somewhat stressed. Sometimes they know they're stressed, sometimes they do not. We make our grip, I have them bring it to their belly, take a breath, look at their target, center their body up on it, get their stance. Take another breath, push gun out, settle sights, take the shot, finger off trigger, come back down to their belly. Another breath. That's it. 3 breaths, 1 shot. That is how I teach new shooters because that breathing in between allows them to open up their chest. Here's the other thing I make sure when they're breathing is they're not doing this, right? When they've got the gun in their hand, if they're doing this, that's why I have them bring it down to their belly, because then that helps bring their shoulders down. And when your shoulders are down and back, you're opening up your rib cage, which allows you to breathe better. So, um, wait, what is exercise time? See, now I'm behind because I wasn't paying attention. All right, so anyway, um, that's number 10, breathe. All right, DJ, what'd I miss? Do I need to answer any questions? I know we have to say at least hi to Anne-Marie. I don't know if anyone else joined us. Um, you tell me, sir.

Yeah, we had, uh, let's see, Anne-Marie B's out there. Most definitely need to say hello to her. Scrolling back up through the text chat to make sure I did not forget anybody. There are no questions that are carryovers. If anybody wants to add one in last second, you want to entertain that, that's available. But yeah, I think that catches us up.

Okay. I do want to know though. Ann Marie says, oh, I need that. I'm going in the morning. I'm like, need what? I just want to know. 5 hours. You would never sleep that long. Oh my goodness. Yes. You should definitely learn how to sleep that long. All right. If there's nothing else, I think that's everything. And yes, when I actually have an itinerary, we go a little bit longer than those 10 or 15 minutes, but here we go. You have lots of links and resources today for the first time in a while. TV show. I almost forgot to talk about that. If you want to, the gentleman who is putting together this TV show, it is CT ctpolitics.tv. And just before I got on, he's like, he's like, go to ctpolitics.tv and click on your ad. So I don't know, I haven't done that yet. So y'all can go check it out for me if you'd like. So that's gonna be— it's on Roku and all of those streaming services. So it's like an actual TV show thing. It has all my instructor interviews up there. And No, no, no, no. You want the 2-hour livestream. I did not promise a 2-hour livestream. I only need to have like, I don't know, 10 people here like y'all do when you have those chats that go on for hours on end. And you still haven't returned my emails. So, but I'm glad you're feeling better, GT3. So I'm glad you're out of the hospital and all of that. So that is also good. What else is coming up? Let's see, it is February. March, we have my instructor training class, although it's almost full. There's one seat left. I've got a bunch of people who are asking about it. Um, then I have this really cool fundamentals, uh, Skill Builder Fundamentals coming up in May, which is an all-day class, which is not what I normally do, but I have a guest instructor coming. I have a Patreon channel, which DJ is my first Patreon. Um,. And I'm working on building that thanks to G Web saying, hey, you should try this. So I don't know what's going to be there. I think it's going to be a little more raw as far as more random stuff than suicide prevention and firearms. It is still a great start shooting school on Patreon, but it is going to be— oh, Fiona, you're going to love that class. It's going to be so awesome. We split cards, playing cards long ways at the end. Not the ones that G-Web sent me though. Or anyway, so there's just, there's a ton of stuff I'm working on getting digital products up and running for you guys. So even though if you're not here in Connecticut, you're still going to be buying education from me. So, um, ah, okay, very cool. I didn't know which kind of newbie you were. Yes. So really, really helps. If you break it into 3 parts. First, you get your grip, belly button, breath. Look at your target, make sure you're centered, and pay attention to your target because that's what actually matters. And get your body towards the target. Take that other breath, check in on your feet, make sure you're nice and solid, and then push out. Once you see your sights, finger on trigger, settle your sights, squeeze, finger off trigger, come back down. Breathe again, because most of us, even if we're not newbies, we will totally hold our breath the entire time that we are shooting. So anyway, so now I know what she was talking about. So thanks for that. All right, well, I will, I will send you another email, GT3. I will go look for it. And, um, yeah, for those of you on Facebook who can't see the YouTube side, this is my Patreon channel. I got a great start shooting school, um, and DJ is my first. So, um, yay for DJ! Thank you very much. And thanks to G-Webs for suggesting that I put that together. And like I said, it's going to be different. It's going to be mindset-oriented, more mindset of shooting, mindset of being a Second Amendment advocate, mindset of how to make a difference in the world in tangible ways that you can actually do it. So that's why it's gonna be different than both my Facebook and my YouTube channel. So hope y'all have a lovely evening and I will talk to y'all later. Good night, everybody.