Dealing with Stress and Anxiety in Uncertain Times - Part 2

Welcome back, everybody. I'm Dr. Donnelly Snipes, and we are continuing to talk about dealing with stress in uncertain times. There are a lot of techniques, and we talked about several in part one, but there are a lot more techniques that we can use to tolerate dist. Sometimes we can't change it. You go to the doctor, you get blood work done, you've got to wait for a week to get the results back. There's some stress there, and you're going to have to tolerate that stress because you can't make the results come back any faster. The stock market has gone down and you know, we know it's probably going to come back up. However, we don't know when and we don't know how much farther it's going to go down and there's not a lot we can do as for most of us to affect that. So we need to develop strategies so the stress doesn't kill us. Because stress impacts our blood pressure, it impacts our blood sugar, it impacts our ability to fight off diseases. And too much stress for too long is also associated with cancer. I don't want any of those things. So let's talk about ways that we can prevent it. In dialectical behavior therapy, Marsha Linehan came up with two acronyms, Accepts and improve. And we're going to talk about those because that lays out a bunch of strategies that you can develop in your crisis response plan. The first one is activities. A stands for activities when you feel distressed and there is nothing you can do about it. You know, like right now, stock market's closed, I can't move any trades, and I've already lost so much money. Might as well not worry about it. My retirement account is looking pretty pitiful. I can't do anything about it, so what can I do instead? Thinking about it, perseverating on it, getting frustrated, freaking out, thinking I may never be able to retire. That's not effective. I can go to the gym. I can go home and make dinner for my kids and watch a movie. I can go home and clean the house. It's raining outside, so I can't garden today. But gardening is a big one for me when I'm feeling stressed out because I kind of get into a Zen with nature. You make a list of five activities that you can do that help you distract yourself when you are feeling distressed and there is nothing you can do to change it. Comparisons. Compare yourself or the situation to what's going on. For example, with the coronavirus, yes, we've got some cases of the Coronavirus in the US now, and that's unfortunate. However, we can compare ourselves to China and recognize that, you know, what, we're doing pretty daggone well. And we have a lot more plans in place to prevent the spread of the virus, and we jumped on it quickly, so hopefully we prevented too much exposure and too much contamination already. So making comparisons to recognize kind of where you're at and help yourself feel calmer, contributing. Sometimes you just need to do something about it. In terms of politics, maybe you just need to go down and contribute to, you know, your time to helping a political campaign, the environment. Maybe you need to go out and help. Click. Clean up a park. And that can help you focus. That's something you can do to get away from focusing on the fact that, you know, the ozone layer is depleting and this, that, and the other. Instead of focusing on all that and just ruminating on it, contribute. Do what you can. Sometimes you just need to contribute because there's nothing you can do about the problem. You need to contribute by helping somebody else out. You know, help your neighbor, help your kids with something. Just get out of your own head for a few minutes so you're not thinking about it and ruminating about whatever it is that's stressing you out. E stands for emotions, the happy ones. Make a list of five things that make you happy. Comedians you love, your favorite funny TV shows. Whatever it is that can make you laugh or make you happy, keep a list of those things around. Push away. P stands for push away. Push away those thoughts. When you start thinking, oh my gosh, I'm never going to be able to retire, or what happens if this person gets elected and you start working yourself up into an anxiety turmoil? Make a conscious effort to push it away. Just like little kids, when you try to tell them something they don't want to hear, what do they do? They plug their ears and they go, la la la la la la la la la la la. I can't hear you well, that's what you want to say to the voices in your own head that are getting you all stirred up. You want to push those thoughts away. Say, I'm not going to think about this right now. As you're pushing them away, sometimes it's helpful to replace them with positive thoughts. What are you going to think about instead? And it can be completely unrelated. I've shared in multiple of my classes one of the things that I do when I get distressed and I just turn my attention to something completely unrelated, like planting my garden and When I'm focusing on that, that takes a fair amount of mental focus. So then I don't have enough mental energy to be jumping over here and thinking about whatever it is that's stressing me out. I force myself to focus on my garden, which is something that makes me happy, by the way, and it allows my body to relax, it allows my threat response system, that HPA axis, to tune down a little bit and to let me go back into that relaxation state so I can think more clearly. And finally, S stands for sensations. Usually intense ones help jolt you out of the moment. You can splash cold water on your face. You can hold cold ice cubes. You can take a more than warm shower. Be careful not to burn yourself. You can do 50 push ups. There are a lot of things that you can do that are intense that can switch you to focusing on something else. When you're holding ice cubes, you're not thinking about anything else. When you're listening to loud music, you're probably hearing the music and not thinking about anything else. What is it? What sensations can you engage that can help distract you from whatever is causing your turmoil at the moment? So you can calm down and get into that place where you can think more logically if you need to, or you can just not think about it for a while if there's nothing you can do to change it. I the next acronym is improve. I stands for imagery, Use guided imagery, imagine, visualize, whatever it is resolving successfully, or visualize, for lack of a better term, your happy place. And use all your senses. What are five things that you see in your happy place? What are four things that you hear? You know, I always go to the woods, you know, the forest. So there's trees, there's brooks, there's leaves on the ground, there's a bunny rabbit, there's babbling brook. What do I hear? I hear the wind through the trees. I hear the birds chirping. I hear the water running. I hear the little chipmunks scampering around. You know, identifying, using as many of your senses as possible. Because when you're trying to figure out, you know exactly what you're seeing, hearing, smelling, all that stuff, your brain is engaged in that moment and it's not focusing on those distressful thoughts. M stands for meaning. Try to find meaning in it. What can you learn from it? How can you grow from it? This one's harder, but you know, it works for some people. Prayer. If you have a higher power, focus on prayer and turning over those things that you cannot control. Asking for courage to change the things you can. Relaxation. Sometimes we just need to say, you know what? There is nothing I can do about this at this point in time. So for my own health and wellbeing, I need to allow myself to relax and figure out how to do that. That's going to be different for different people. Some people meditate. I exercise. You know, exercising helps release serotonin and endorphins. And actually, if you're exercising at a really low intensity, it actually does reduce your stress. Horm. Focus on one thing in the moment. Practice on focusing on what is right in front of you. Not thinking about what happened on the news today, not thinking about what happened at work, not thinking about what you're doing tomorrow. Focusing on what you're doing right now. Cooking dinner. Immerse yourself in that moment so you're focused on that. Take a mental vacation. Allow yourself to check out for a little while and, you know, vegetate watching the television, whatever it is, allow yourself to just stop thinking. And in our house, we refer to watching TV as turning our brains to jelly because we don't watch a lot of educational programming. But, you know, that is our time to just let our brains relax and we take a little mental vacation and get ourselves absorbed in the show. So we are not focused on what's going on in real life right now. We're taking that mental vacation to join the actors in whatever show it is. And E stands for encouragement. Give yourself encouragement and get other people to give you encouragement. Find people who are positive who can say, you know what, this is going to turn around, or, you know what, there are a lot of things that we're doing to stay safe. They're the ones who can be the champions, the cheerleaders, the ones that are going to say, you know what? This is going to turn out okay. There are always. There's always the possibility that things are going to go south, but what is the probability? So people who are your cheering squad, people who are your positive supports are going to be the ones that are going to help you balance out the negativity and provide you that hope that we are all so desperate to find. Set boundaries is another strategy. When we are stressed out, when we are in turmoil, when things aren't going well, we tend to get exhausted. When our threat response system is turned on, we are running all cylinders wide open, which exhausts a lot of our energy. Even if we're not doing anything. That emotional turmoil is exhausting. Ask for help when needed and say no to requests for Things. If it is going to cause you to be overwhelmed, be willing to check yourself and say, what is it that I need to be happy and healthy right now? Do I have the energy to help my friend move right now? Do I have the energy to work a double? Do I have the energy? Or is it going to be catastrophic? Is it going to bleed all my energy dry? Avoid social media addiction. Not only does the media media tend to focus on the negative and spin it up like crazy, but social media tends to focus on the negative. And things that go viral tend to be things that get people fired up. And fired up is what we're trying to avoid. We're trying to help people feel calmer, feel more relaxed, feel more in control, not more powerless. If you have to get on social media, you know, try to control who is in your social media circle to make sure they're the positive people and they're not trolls and they're not people who are going to constantly be sending you things. With my Facebook, for example, I do a lot of animal rescue, and during times when I'm already stressed out, I can't get on Facebook because in its infinite wisdom, the Facebook gurus think that I want to see images of dogs that are at shelters all across the country. It's like every third post is some dog that is homeless and at risk of being destroyed. And I'm like, really? No, this is not what I need to see right now. Be willing to, you know, if you need to send a message out to your friends on social media and say, you know what? I'm checking out for a while. Do you know, not as a way of trying to get people to give you attention, but as a way to let people know not going to be on social media for a while, so they don't worry. You know, that's cool, but sometimes you just need to turn it off, schedule your day and maintain your routine. This is really important. When our circadian rhythms get out of whack, then we don't know when we're supposed to eat. We don't know when we're hungry, we don't know when we're sleepy. And our cortisol levels are all over the place. Circadian rhythms are really important and they are set largely by the daylight cycle. And on top of everything else, we're getting ready to turn the clocks forward. I was just like, really? One more stressor. But that's okay. That means more daylight. So focusing on the positive there, it's important to make sure you maintain your routine to Maintain those circadian rhythms. Don't start staying up all night fretting or playing on video games because you're trying to avoid fretting. Maintain that routine so you can keep your hormones, including your stress hormones, in balance and in the rhythm they are supposed to be in. Write down and review what's important to you and your goals every morning. So review it. And then throughout the day, ask yourself, you know, is what I'm thinking is what I'm doing right now helping me enhance these goals? And for me, as I said earlier, good relationships with my family, my own health, having a successful business, you know, I have several things that are important to me and I need to regularly ask myself, you know, is getting upset about this or is doing this in any way contributing to those goals? And if not, I probably need to redirect my energy. But by reviewing those goals every morning, it keeps them in the forefront of your mind so you're not as tempted to go off on a little detour. Do be compassionate with yourself and others Right now. Most people are under a certain amount of stress because of something or some things that are going on in the world. So people may be more irritable, people may be more tempted to be creating chaos or catastrophizing and okay, it happens. Be compassionate. If you find yourself creating catastrophic thoughts in your mind, like, you know, this is going to be the end of the world, check it, notice that, notice your thought and say, okay, you know, I recognize that I'm worried about this. However, let me see what the best course of action is. Don't judge yourself and say, I shouldn't be feeling this way or I'm stupid to feel this way. You feel how you feel, you react, how you react in large part. So checking that and saying, all right, let me be compassionate with myself. I'm being more irritable with people right now because I'm stressed, so what can I do about it? Instead of saying, I'm a bad person for being irritable and being grouchy with people noticing it, and then choosing how to improve the next moment is a much better use of your energy. And finally, manage the mind body connection. When we are thinking stressful thoughts, it turns on our stress response system and it gets us anxious. If we are anxious, then we are going to notice unpleasant things in the environment. We are going to have more negative thoughts, which is going to turn that stress response system up even higher. We need to manage this by checking our thoughts and checking our behaviors when we are sleep deprived. Malnourished you know, not getting enough food, dehydrated, using stimulants including caffeine and nicotine. All of those are stressors on the body and can make the body think that there's more of a threat. Not saying give up caffeine cold turkey right now, unless that was something you already planned to do, please don't, because that's another stressor. But be aware of what's going on and try to recognize the impact your thoughts have on your body and on your stress response. And recognize how calming thoughts can have the opposite reaction and can help you calm down. I hope some of those were helpful. And we have got one more installment of this series coming up.