Impact of Stress on Health and Mental Health with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes

This episode was pre recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar on demand. CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register@Allce.com Counselortoolbox Alrighty. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation, Impacts of Stress and Interventions. I am your host, Dr. Donnellice Snipes. We are going to define stress and distress as if we really needed to redefine those, but we're going to do it anyway. We'll identify a variety of sources of stress that we don't usually think about and we'll explore sources of interventions and the impact of stress. Stress is anything that requires energy. A lot of times we think of stress in terms of distress. Well, stress is anything that requires energy. It can be elation, it can be going on vacation, it can be digestion. Anything that requires energy. So you stress is the good stress. It's stuff that we really want to do. It's things that we want to spend our energy on and they tend to make us happy. Distress is everything else. You only have so much energy in your energy bank though, so how do you want to spend it? And that is one of the things that we really want to challenge clients to look at. Y' all know I tend to look at either using a scale or pie chart depending on what group I'm working with. If you're using a scale, you don't have to have a fancy balance scale. You can make one with a coat hanger and two little cups on either end. Then get marbles. You want to have a variety of the regular sized marbles and then probably 10 shooter marbles. The size of the marble represents the impact or the intensity of the stress. So you could have something that's mildly stressful, that would be a little marble. Or you could have something that's intensely stressful, that would be a big marble. And have people sort out, go through their day and identify their sources of eustress and distress and figure out where they were balanced at the impact of stress. And we've talked about this a lot over the past couple of weeks, so I'm just going to really hit the highlights. When we are stressed, we tend to be more irritable and it's easy, easier for us to get angry and impatient with people. We are in that state with the activated HPA axis. We're in our fight or flight mode. It may not be an extreme fight or flight mode, but we are in fight or flight when we are depressed or anxious. Stress seems to be a lot Worse. And being stressed for a long time can contribute to the development of depression and anxiety. You remember we've talked about the fact that you can't be revved up. You can't have that fight or flight thing going on for too terribly long before your body starts trying to conserve energy. And that looks like depression, apathy, difficulty sleeping, fatigue, muscle tension, yada yada, sleep disturbances when we're stressed. Again, that HPA axis is activated when you are in fight or flight mode. When you are stressed, you are typically not going to get good restorative sleep because of sleep disturbances and just being kind of revved up and your body going, okay, I've got to devote my energy to fighting or fleeing from whatever this threat is. Our immunity goes down. The body says, you know, immune system can wait, digestive issues. When we are stressed, our body is running faster, if you want to think about it that way. So anything you eat is going to go through your stomach faster. It also can contribute to changes in the gut microbiome, which have significant impacts on the availability of hormones and neurotransmitters. But it also can cause us to have develop things like ulcers and GI disturbances. Weight gain is a side effect of stress and I hyperlink to it because this is one of those that we don't talk about a lot. So you can look at the research. But a lot of people when they're under chronic stress tend to gain weight. Why is that? Well, there are a few factors. One, some people will try to self medicate by eating soothing foods, eating comfort foods, which are generally high in fat, high in sugar. So that's one. Number two, some people cope with stress by eating because that's a pleasurable activity they can do. It serves as a distraction. And number three, because that HPA axis is out of whack and we're not getting good sleep, our circadian rhythms get out of whack and our hunger and satiation hormones, ghrelin and leptin, also get out of whack. So we tend to not know exactly when we're hungry or we may feel hungry all the time. Increased pain is another side effect of stress. Well, let's look at the basic things. Number one, when we are stressed, we tend to carry muscle tension, low back tension, you know, and that sort of stuff. We tend to have GI disturbances which can cause pain. We may have tension headaches, we may grind our teeth, all of those things can cause pain. Additionally, when we're under stress, serotonin typically goes down because now's not the time to rest and digest if you're in that fight or flight mode. So serotonin typically goes down and our pain perception, our pain threshold also typically goes down. We also may see people who become addicted to stimulants when they're stressed because they're not getting enough sleep, they're fatigued. A lot of the time they may be burning the candle at both ends, so they're trying to push through, which can lead to addiction to. And when I say stimulants, I'm talking about anything from nicotine and caffeine to, you know, pre workout supplements and things that are a little bit more intense. I'm not necessarily talking about anything illegal. There is increased risk of chemical and behavioral addiction though, because a lot of times people are trying to self medicate. The more they self medicate, the more out of balance their neurotransmitters get, the more dependent they become on chemicals to help them feel anything. There are altered cortisol, our stress hormone hormone. And I use that term generally to refer to thyroid hormones and your gonadal hormones and neurotransmitter levels. Your stress hormone is going to go up, your sex hormones and your thyroid hormones are going to be altered. And that also impacts the availability of your neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, gaba, acetylcholine. I'm forgetting one. But you know, people have experienced infertility when they're under chronic stress. This doesn't have to be traumatic stress. This can be chronic, you know, burning the candle at both ends, having difficulty making ends meet stress. And it can lead to reductions in testosterone, it can lead to alterations again in those gonadal hormones. So the body says, you know what, we're under stress right now. Now's not the time to devote energy to creating a little being. So males tend to have reduced libido and women tend to have more difficulty conceiving and carrying a child to term. Social withdrawal makes sense. When we're stressed, it's sometimes more overwhelming to deal with people. Even if you're an extrovert at a certain point, if you're totally stressed out, it may feel like you can't deal with any more input and you just need to sort of wall yourself off. Rapid aging, we talked about this in the anxiety presentation. When we are chronically stressed, when we're not getting enough sleep, then our body can't restore itself as well as it should or as efficiently as it could, which means we're going to have greater signs of wear and tear, if you will. And I made the analogy in the last class of a car. When you are driving a car, if you are somebody who's under chronic stress, you are driving that car as hard as it can go, 365 days a year, and you're putting, you know, 60,000 miles on it in a year. If you are taking care of yourself, you're not gunning it as soon as the light turns green and you're going easy. You're not putting as much mileage on it because you're letting the car rest sometimes. And that's the difference. The chronic stress is keeping that pedal in the metal. And when we're not under chronic stress is when we are in park and we have the car turned off. So the joints and cylinders and whatever else in a car, I'm not really mechanically inclined. Any of that is not wearing out nearly as quickly when it has periods where it's in park. And heart disease. We have seen lots of studies that have shown correlations between stress, high cortisol and changes in the cardiovascular system that lead to heart disease. We don't want those. We don't want most of these or any of them. So what can we do to help people address stress? Well, let's talk about what are some of the sources of stress? Emotional eustress. Let's go over to the right side. First, things that make you curious, happy, exhilarated. Those are the things I want to spend my energy on. I want to spend my energy watching, watching silly animal videos or playing with my dog or doing crafts or working in the garden. Those things make me happy. Do they take energy? Some more than others. But it is a positive stress. So my fight or flight hormones, my cortisol levels are not engaged. I'm using energy, but I haven't ramped up that HPA axis. Distress, on the other hand, include all the things that make you sad, angry, envious, jealous, worried, anxious, overwhelmed, or just plain old rumination about any of those things. We want to have clients make a list or take a look at the things that make them feel distressed. Thinking back to acceptance and commitment therapy. Pain is a part of life. We are going to experience these emotions occasionally. That's okay. If we experience them, we notice them, we label them, and then we say, what's next? Then we're going to be able to use our energy productively to alleviate that distress instead of staying stuck in it and nurturing it. Cognitive stress Depending on the situation, cognitive stress can be a source of distress or eustress decision making. Some people love making decisions. Some people, it stresses them the heck out. Planning. Some people love to plan. You know, if you think about your Myers Briggs, you have your people who are the broad strokes people and the, and the perceivers who don't like to get too pigeonholed. And then you've got people who are the more detail oriented people and structured like me who love planning. Problem solving can be great, you know, it can spark your creativity or if it's an unpleasant problem, it may cause you a little bit of distress when you're trying to figure out how to solve it. Any of these things are taking energy, they're taking time. Remember, the brain is one of the or the biggest user of blood glucose in the human body. Thinking and learning is another source of cognitive stress. We want to pay attention to, you know, how we feel on those days. Does it mean we shouldn't think or learn? Of course not. You know, I tend to think of these things as you stressful because I enjoy learning and it's, you know, makes me happy and I tend to become curious. Does it mean I could be exhausted at the end of a day of doing research? Well, yeah, but that's okay because it was a positive thing so I wasn't ramping up that cortisol level. Interpreting can be another source of cognitive stress. When you're trying to interpret what somebody is saying. When you're trying to interpret a situation, when you're trying to figure out exactly what's going on, it can be stressful. People who are extroverts, for example, when they are in social situations, they tend to do really well at reading other people and it is energizing to be around other people. For them that's a source of eustress. For people who are introverts, it can be a source of distress because it is really exhausting for them to try to be aware of what's going on outside of them. They're more aware of what's going on inside of them. Just different personality types. Not anything better or worse about one over the other. Concentrating takes energy. Like when you're driving, you've got to stay focused at least to a certain extent and filtering out extraneous stimuli. Whether it's when you are in a classroom or when you're at dinner with your significant other and you're trying not to pay attention to the 16 other tables around you or when you're driving. It takes energy and memories and prior experiences can also be a Source of cognitive stress Eustress. If you're thinking about happy times when you're reminiscing, going back through old photo albums, you know that can be great. Or if you're thinking about unpleasant things from the past or unpleasant prior experiences that can trigger that fight or flight reaction and cause a lot of distress. So let's just stop with cognitive stress for a minute. So what can we do to help people who are experiencing a lot of cognitive stress with the emotional stress? They need to make a list of the things that cause them distress and figure out out how to mitigate them or avoid sources. Avoid triggers of distress and to add in sources of eustress. Sources of things that make them curious. That can be subscribing to a Reddit feed or a YouTube channel or whatever they want to. That gives them periodic input that makes them happy cognitively. If people have difficulty decision making, what can they do to make that less stressful? Talk to somebody else. That can be one way that they can handle that. If they don't like planning, you know, can somebody else help them with the planning? In our house, since I love planning, I tend to be the one that makes the plans and lays them out. Other people just really don't want to actually think it all the way through, but that's okay. And my daughter's the same way. She is, actually. She's a little bit more rigid than I am, I think. But planning is something that we do happily, and that way other people don't have to do it. We just kind of make the executive decisions. Problem solving Encourage people to tap into that creative problem solving mojo that they've got going on. Too often we get stuck in a box. Sometimes we need to ask people. Or in the day of the Internet, it can be awesome. You can go to YouTube and Google or search for videos on how to address certain things. In my garden, for example, with my zucchini, I have horrible, horrible time controlling squash bugs. And that can be really frustrating to me because I put a lot of love and care into my zucchini. So I go and for problem solving, I'm at my wit's end. I don't know how to solve it. So I could either be frustrated and not know how to solve it and feel like I'm spinning my wheels, or I can go online and find some other solutions. Thinking and learning Encourage people to engage in thinking and learning activities for things they enjoy. They may not like doing their taxes, you know, that takes a lot of thinking and concentration. For example, what can they do. In addition to sort of buffer against that, they can work on their taxes for a little while. And then what else can they do to make it a little more pleasant? And memories and prior experiences. Encourage people to make pleasant memories available to themselves. Journal about them, have pictures around. It feels a lot more relaxing and positive. If, when you walk into a room, you see things and it doesn't have to be huge, audacious pictures, if you see things that trigger positive memories, memories of strength, memories of courage, memories that bring up hope, you know, that's the mindset that we want people to be in. When they feel that empowered and good about themselves and generally happy, it's easier to deal with life on life's terms. Okay, so physical stress, and these are some that we don't often think about when we talk about stress. Exercise is physical stress. Now, depending on who you are, you might go, oh, yeah, that's distress all the way. It doesn't have to be. And one of the things I want people to understand, all people, not just my clients, but my kids, my family, you know, anybody I talk to. Exercise is about moving your body. You don't have to do 30 minutes in target training zone or whatever, if that is going to be distressful to you. Let's start out with something that you enjoy, or what is it? Is it playing with the dog? Is it gardening? Is it, you know, running and playing tag with your kids? Sometimes we'll blow. Even to this day, my kids are teenagers and I'm much older than a teenager. But we will blow up balloons in the house, and we will try to and keep the balloons in the air. It's fun. And especially when the dogs try to play with us, it's even more fun. But we have fun and we're moving. It's something we can do here in Nashville. If we get half an inch of snow, everything shuts down. It's like the apocalypse has hit. They don't have good snow, snow plows or anything because we just so rarely get snow. So, you know when that happens. A couple years ago, we were actually snowbound for like five days before we could get out of our neighborhood. We got a whole whopping inch of snow that year. But we did things in the house in order to move around so we weren't feeling stale. Exercise releases serotonin. Exercise releases endorphins. Exercise increases oxygenation, which increases energy. Exercise is wonderful. And exercise means movement and breathing. That's all I'm not again, you don't have to get out the jump Rope or whatever. Think of creative things that you can do. Your house, if you've got little kids, you can make little blanket forts with blankets and chairs and make a obstacle course throughout your living room. Yes, it looks like a mess. It's not, you know, really pleasing to the eye, but it's fun. Like I said, balloons, those are other things that you can do. Anything that makes you happy or just turn on some music and dance like nobody's watching. When we're under physical stress, it is harder for our body to repair and rejuvenate. But repair and rejuvenation takes energy. It's a source of physical stress. When we're sick, for example, our body is requiring more energy to our bodies under stress, and it's requiring more energy to repair and rejuvenate and fight off the bugaboos than when we're healthy. We need to recognize when we are injured, after we have surgery, when we're sick, when we are sleep deprived, our body is going to require more energy in order to function like it should. When we digest food, that requires energy, and usually we'll consider that use stress, a good source of stress, but it still requires a little bit of energy. When we eat, it triggers the rest and digest function, interestingly enough, because our body knows that once we've eaten, it needs the energy in order to process that food. So it triggers a calming response, which is why we typically get a little bit sleepier after we eat. Sleep deprivation. When we are awake, our body goes through a bunch of gymnastics in order to help us think. The byproduct of those gymnastics is adenosine. As adenosine builds up in our brain, it makes us feel sleepy. If we don't get enough sleep, then that adenosine isn't cleared out. If we don't get quality sleep. So we wake up and we feel lethargic, and so it's harder to get through the day. And what do most of us do when we feel that way? We drink caffeine. And that adds an additional source of stress. Not only is our body not recharged and rested and rejuvenated like it needs to be, but we're also adding that additional stressor of caffeine, which takes me to stimulants. Nutritional imbalances over and under can cause stress on the body. If you've got too much calcium, if you've got too much iron, if you've got too much or too little of any macro or micronutrient, it can cause a stress in the body Our body is tuned, if you will, to have nutrients in a particular ratio. So getting 100% of the US RDA of every single vitamin and mineral in one shot, like some cereals used to proclaim, doesn't mean that all of those vitamins and minerals are bioavailable. And it also can mean that some of the stuff, especially the fat soluble vitamins and minerals, can actually build up to toxic levels. One of the reasons they quit adding iron to a lot of stuff was because they were noticing and iron. Adding iron to multivitamins was because they were noticing that people were actually getting too much iron in their system. If you look at just about any wheat based product, you're going to see that it's already got iron in it. Dehydration is a huge stressor on the body. So let's go back to nutrition. Helping people make sure that they're eating a reasonably healthy, healthy diet, colorfully three colors on the plate at every meal. If you're doing that, you're probably getting a pretty good array of nutrients. Dehydration. Most of the functions of our body require water. The synapses between your nerve endings are filled with fluid. What is fluid made of? Water? Well, in part water. If we don't have water, we're going to slow down our nerve conduction. We are going to slow down our body. It makes things much more sluggish. Think about operating a car without having oil in it. Not a good thing. We want to make sure that people stay hydrated. Signs of dehydration or symptoms of dehydration can look like depression. Symptoms of depression or anxiety in some people. Once we are 1% dehydrated, we actually have a harder time with memory and concentration. We don't start feeling thirsty until we're about 2% dehydrated, which is why they say, make sure you're drinking fluid before you get to the point of feeling parched. Because by that point you've already started losing cognitive abilities. Once you're rehydrated, then they return. Encourage people to carry a water bottle with them. It's not that hard to do and it tends to be. We tend to drink out of it if we've got it with us. If we don't carry one with us, we're not as likely to drink as much. Toxins that we ingest are stressful to the body. Alcohol. We've talked about how alcohol initially has a depressant effect and then there's a stimulant effect where blood pressure goes through the roof. One of the reasons that holiday times are some of the most dangerous times for people to. Or we see a significant increase in cardiovascular incidence because people are drinking alcohol and they're already stressed, which combine those two things. It increases people's risk of a heart attack. VOCs are other toxins, volatile organic compounds. Generally you think about these as things that are in paint and, you know, especially the paint that smells really nasty. VOCs are also the substances in paint that people huff in order to get high, which is really hard on the body. The body's trying to filter out these toxins, and it's hard on the liver, and it leads to a sense of exhaustion. VOCs and paint huffing are also system depressants. And tobacco, we know all of the ills of tobacco. They've kind of shoved that down our throat for the past 20 years, the whatever hundred and some odd toxins that are in tobacco smoke. So enough said. We want to help people minimize their exposure to toxins. Does that mean we tell them, you know, you need to stop drinking altogether? Not necessarily. Some people like to drink a little bit, and if they don't have a problem with it, you know, that is a choice that they make. But we can do things like when we use heavy cleaners, make sure we open the windows when we paint, make sure we've got good ventilation. Better yet, wear a respirator anytime you know you're going to be exposed to some sort of toxin. Do what you can to minimize the ingestion, either smelling or tasting the toxins, and then drink plenty of water. Regardless of how it gets into your body, it's going to be filtered out by the liver and the kidneys. So the more water you drink, the, the quicker you're probably going to be able to help your body purge some of that toxin. Injuries cause physical stress. We don't like being injured. Injuries take energy to repair. What can we do? Well, practice good ergonomics. Try to prevent injuries. Don't do stupid things that may cause you to injure yourself like I do. But we do want to recognize that injuries are more oftentimes more than just tissue damage. If it is a significant injury, it can significantly impact our ability to engage in our activities of daily living. The things that bring us joy and happiness we want to figure out. Like for me, dealing with my knee injury right now, I can't exercise the way I like to. And exercise is one of my greatest sources of stress relief. So since I can't work out the way I want to, how else Can I deal with stress? And it is important to make sure that when clients have injuries or when I was pregnant with my daughter, I was on bed rest, so I couldn't go to the gym. When things like that happen and they are blocked from doing something that's meaningful to them or because of an injury, what else can they do to relieve stress? Pregnancy and childbirth is a source of stress. There's a lot of damage and stuff that goes on. There's a lot of energy that goes into creating a little critter. When people are pregnant or right after they've given birth, there are a lot of changes that are taking place in their body, so they tend to get sick a little bit easier and be more sensitive to sources of stress because they're using so much energy to, you know, sustain that. Pregnancy and illness, including autoimmune diseases, are sources of stress. People who live with autoimmune diseases like Crohn's or fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis are experiencing pain on the regular, which can be frustrating. We know that pain also increases our HPA axis activation, which increases our cortisol, which basically means we're under a lot of stress. We want to make sure that people with illnesses or autoimmune diseases know how to take care of themselves and have a plan for adequate self care so they're not having as many flare ups, and the flare ups are less intense in order to reduce their stress. Environmental stress, another source that we don't think about, but it impacts our life. Light can impact our circadian rhythms. We had this winter solstice two days ago, so that was the shortest day of the year. Our body keeps us awake and tells us when to sleep based on our circadian rhythms. And our circadian rhythms are set in part by exposure to bright light and blue light. When we are exposed to blue light from computers, TVs, digital devices late at night, then that can mess up our circadian rhythms because our brain doesn't get the cue that, hey, the light's going down and it's time to start producing melatonin so we can get to sleep. Encouraging people to practice adequate sleep hygiene to sustain adequate circadian rhythms. Fluorescent lights are another source of stress, especially for people who have migraines or epilepsy, but for anybody, especially when those ballasts start to go out and before it becomes really obvious. There may be some occasional flickering, almost imperceptible to the eye. But the flickering of fluorescent lights is stressful for some people and can trigger Migraines and a variety of other stress related complaints. Noise and if you are in an environment where there are fluorescent lights, you know, you may not be able to eliminate that. If you can, great. If you're in an office and you can turn off the overhead lights and have a desk lamp or lamps around that are LED lights, great. If you can't, do what you can to minimize the impact, such as having a. If you have a window, have your blinds open because the bright light from the sun can minimize how much your brain notices the flickering of the light. The best kind of lights really depend on the person. The incandescent bulbs, they are allowed to make them again, but they're really hard to find. Those are the old fashioned bulbs that got hot as can be. You know, those are okay depending on the person. Some may. Some people may prefer the soft white bulbs. If they've got seasonal affective disorder or they need the extra brightness in order to set the circadian rhythms, then they're going to want the not soft white. They're going to want the daylight bulbs that are really bright. I prefer LED lights because they don't do that flickering that the fluorescent lights do. They have become much more affordable now. So you can, you know, go down to your local store and easily get really bright, really nice LED lights for color spectrum. If I remember correctly, you want them to be greater than 5,000, preferably greater than 6,500 kelvin, and you want them to be as bright as humanly possible. You are probably not going to get the beneficial effects of, for example, a light therapy box by overhead lights. Because when the light comes out of the light fixture, it disperses too much. So you're not getting the intensity. Even if it says it's, you know, 800 lumens or whatever. You're probably only getting a fraction of that because of the dispersion. There are a variety of different techniques you can use in order to corral the light and it's not attractive. But if you put like aluminum foil around the light to make more of a cone, that helps a little bit. But you still have to have the light pretty close to you. Light therapy boxes are a lot more practical and a lot more standardized. Noise from traffic can be a stressor. Now we live out in the country, so that doesn't hardly affect me at all. But I do remember when I lived in the, in the city and lived in an apartment, we would hear cars going by at all nights, the car alarms going off at all hours of the night. Our neighbors. It was Hard to get good quality sleep because there was a lot of noise. But even during the day, persistent background noise, they found, increases the rate of anxiety and depression in communities exposed to it. Air conditioners, and these are especially true of your wall units. You know, when you go to a hotel and how loud that unit is, if it's not one of the, you know, integrated units, how loud that that window unit is. People who have that in their home have a mini split that makes a lot of noise when it turns on or a window air conditioner that can disrupt their sleep. But the constant humming that they're exposed to when it kicks on can also cause a low level of stress. Wind turbines. Who knew? I didn't know until I started doing the research that wind turbines actually make a fair amount of noise. And they found that people that live around wind turbines have a significantly higher rate of prescription drug use for depression and anxiety. And then people and animals. I just kind of put that all together. If you've got, you know, a bunch of children running around, if you've got, I know our dogs, especially with wood floors and everything, every time the UPS man drives down the road, he doesn't even have to come to our house. They lose their ever loving minds and it's loud and it's stressful and thankfully they know to shut up. But that can add a lot of stress to people's lives if they're constantly exposed to barking dogs and loud noise. Temperature is a source of stress. If you are not physically comfortable, then your body is going to register that as a threat in some way, shape or form and you are going to experience a certain level of stress. If you are too cold, your body is going to try to warm itself up. So it's got to ramp things up in order to produce more heat. If you are too hot, then you're going to start sweating and, and there's the whole cascade of effects that goes with that. Either way, your body is working overtime to try to maintain its 98 point whatever that you are set for touching tactile sources of stress. And I didn't exactly know what to call this, but think about a day that you've gone to the office or wherever and you put on a shirt or a pair of pants and that was made of like actual wool that was itchy and you were itchy all day long, or if you were sitting on a bench, that's hard and you were uncomfortable all day long, or you couldn't get comfortable because you didn't have good lumbar Support in your chair. Any of these things that cause you discomfort can be a source of environmental stress. Why? If you can eliminate that, why not do that? So what things can people do in their. In their world in order to make it more literally comfortable? So what they're touching is a pleasant feel. Sights, pictures, colors, organization and feng shui. When you walk into a room, is it stressful? What do you see and what feelings does it evoke in you? We want people to arrange their environments, including their cars, including their offices. And if they can't do a lot on their office because of rules, yada yada, have a photo collage or something on their digital device. Something where they can escape for half a second. But pictures that make them happy, not pictures that evoke a sense of stress. Colors that make them happy. Think about the colors that make you happy. And it may be yellow, it may be purple, it may be blue, red, pink, whatever. It's a very individual thing. I like black. Black is one of those colors that just. It's absorbing. It absorbs energy. So I tend to have a fair amount of earth tones and black in the house, in my furnishings and stuff. And my daughter always gets frustrated with me because she wants to see brighter colors. Whatever, it works for that particular person. Organization. Some people are not bothered by disorganization. Some people are. And they found that even if people don't think they're bothered by disorganization, when they're in a cleaner, organized environment, they tend to feel less stressed. So clean off. And my office is a horrible example of that right now. But clean off the flat surfaces. So there is some semblance of organization. Does everything have to be put away? No, you can have a bin of stuff I need to get to if that's what you need to do. But if you walk in and there's a sense of calm instead of a sense of chaos, it reduces your. Reduces your ambient stress. And then I put feng shui on here just because I'm a firm believer of organizing your environment. When you are in a situation where you can't see people coming up behind you, there is a natural sense of stress that occurs in feng shui. They say, never put the head of your bed against a window because you can't see somebody coming in that window. In the kitchen, when you are at the stove, you may have some peripheral vision, but you can't see behind you putting a little reflective mirror or something. It doesn't have to be so you can see exactly who it is, but something so you can see images coming up behind you, theoretically reduces your innate stress levels, making sure that you can see any entrances and exits to your environment. My husband was in law enforcement for, you know, a bazillion years. And to this day, he still. Whenever we go anywhere and even in the house, I've noticed he always sits with his back to the wall, so nobody's gonna walk up behind him. We have the way. We have our living room organized. The one sofa has the back. Has its back to the breakfast room, and the other one has its back to the wall. He always sits in the one with the back to the wall, and he gets edgy if he's in the other one. He doesn't like people being able to come up behind him. Feng shui, you know, I'm not going to say I'm a master by any means. I actually, you know, my favorite book is the Feng Shui for Dummies. But it gives you information that can be helpful at arranging your environment in a way that's peaceful. And there are a lot of other tips in the book that you can go way past peaceful, but there are some that make a lot of sense. And smells can be a source of stress. If you've ever, you know, had to ride on an airplane or something next to somebody who stunk to high heaven, that was a source of stress for you. And it probably made you a little bit more irritable and uncomfortable as opposed to sitting next to someone who smells pleasant or is neutral, doesn't smell at all that was less stressful. What can you do in your environment in order to infuse pleasant scents and to eliminate noxious scents? Like I mentioned, you know, we have four dogs in our house, four cats, and our donkey invited herself into the basement the other day. She didn't stay, but because she's not housebroken. But, you know, animals smell. I have a teenage son, and his room can get a little bit ripe at times. What can I do in my environment? I can bathe the dogs. I can use Febreze or Carpet Fresh in my son's room. And those are just different things that you want to think about. What is it that you can do in your environment to reduce the stress so you're not walking in, going. And they say that I've got a bionic sense of smell. I don't know. But I'll come in from work and I'll open the door, and whatever odor hits me kind of sets my mood for the next few minutes. I'll walk in. I'm like, it smells like dog poop in here, who took a dump in the house. Or, you know, it smells like somebody burned something or it smells good. It does smell good most of the time. But I'll admit it does have a impact on my mood. So I try to make sure that I put good smellies around potpourris. I will keep a little bottle of essential oils in my purse so I can just, you know, take a whiff of lavender whenever I need it. I use air sprays in order to keep the house smelling a little bit better. I hang my blankets outside at least once a week so the sun can sort of disinfect them and get the stinkies out of them. Yes, I still hang on a clothesline. You can get little rings that, you know, work better with the incandescent lights because they got hot, but you can get little rings that you put on bulbs or things that you put on your ceiling fan that you can saturate with essential oils in order to spread the smell around. There are a lot of different tools and techniques you can use in order to keep pleasant smells somewhere around you. EM fields and this got its own slide. Because there's a lot of debate about electromagnetic fields. There's a fair amount of research, especially if you get outside of the US if you go over to research in the UK and Australia and some other places that have found that there are significant health impacts to being around EM field, some people are a lot more sensitive than others. For people who are sensitive, they may experience headaches, pressure in the chest, heart palpitations, sleep problems due to low melatonin. They actually, you know, assessed people's circulating levels of melatonin. Sleep apnea, tinnitus, which is ringing in the ears, fatigue, memory loss and redness in the skin with itching, rashes and tingling on the arms or face. A lot of these are the same symptoms of anxiety. EM fields cause stress. They activate that HPA axis. How sensitive you are may affect whether you're bothered by it at all. Some people are bothered by EM fields from house wiring and cell phones. Most people aren't. Some people are really bothered by EM fields from those high power power lines. You know, the ones that are on the, the metal tower thingies that the vultures like to sit on. There's been some research that has shown an increase in cancer in people that live within certain distances of those super high power power lines, which tells you that those EM fields may be causing some level of stress on the body which it's not able to keep up. With dealing with this is one of those that's really kind of out there in terms of whether there's a lot of research in one direction or the other. But even the US has had to admit that next to the high power power lines, there has been some research that's indicated that increases in cancer, especially childhood cancer. So EM fields can be stressful. You can check for EM fields. There are things you can do like not holding your phone to your head, turning your phone off at night so it's not emitting any, you know, radiation or whatever when you're asleep. And it's because you know when your phone is on, even if you're not using it, it's pinging the towers constantly to check for stuff. So those are things you can do. It depends on, you know, how concerned you are about it. I have one friend who goes around and unplugs everything in the house every single night. Every tv, every vcr, every phone, every. Everything is unplugged every night before they go to sleep. And she feels very adamant about that. Most of us aren't going to go to that kind of trouble. But, you know, whatever helps people feel more relaxed and feel better. She seems to think that she has less anxiety symptoms and her kids have less anxiety symptoms when she does that. Social sources of stress include empathy. You know, we want to be empathetic. I don't want to say don't be empathetic because it's stressful. Yes, it's stressful and often it's distressful. It hurts when you see someone you care about hurt. It is frustrating when you see someone you care about struggling. So yeah, it is distressful, but it's a give and take. And being empathetic when they are in distress often results in positive social support later. So empathy is one of those. If you're being empathetic, if you've got a friend who's in crisis and you're using a lot of energy to be empathetic, just know that and say, you know what, I need to make sure I'm taking good care of myself. If you're a caregiver, if you've got a someone living in your house who has Alzheimer's or dementia or whatever, and you are a full time caregiver and you are being empathetic, if you're a clinician, which most of you are, we spend a lot of time being empathetic. We need to recognize that that is exhausting. That takes a lot of energy. We do it, we love it, but we Also need to make sure that we recharge. Think about empathy as, you know, leaving your phone on and having that screen on and total brightness turned up all day long, your battery is going to go from 100% to like 2% like that. Well, that's kind of what we do. You know, when we see six or seven clients in a day or we're working with a friend who's struggling or whatever, recognize that. Know that you need to just like you have to plug your phone up to recharge, you're going to need to recharge yourself because you're drained. Compassion goes along with empathy. So I'm just going to skip over that one. Interaction and communication. It takes energy to listen, to communicate, to have a conversation. I know sometimes when I get stressed out, I just, I don't even go check my social media accounts. I just can't take the small talk. I can't muster the energy to care about anybody else at that moment in time. I'm just that exhausted. And that's, you know, something you need to be aware of. But positive communication is also energizing for a lot of people. So having people in the social network that provide positive energy and support and enthusiasm and creativity and laughter, those are all great things. It's not just somebody who's going to be emotionally supportive. It can be somebody who sends you memes that give you a good old belly laugh every day. I love those. Conflictual communication, on the other hand, is obviously generally a source of distress. We want to figure out how we can minimize that by either way. Working on assertiveness skills, learning love languages, going to counseling, whatever it is that's going to help soothe that conflict. Sometimes it's not possible. If you're interacting with somebody who is conflictual in nature, sometimes you've got to accept that, you know what? This person is going to find something to be argumentative about. And I just need to accept that and let it roll off my, roll off my back like water off a duck. Because getting into a conflict with them is going to do nothing but drain my energy. And that's an important one for us to remember going into the holidays, because most of us have somebody in our family who pushes our buttons, taking a breath and just remembering, for whatever reason, this person finds it beneficial to be critical or condescending or conflictual in some way. And I don't have to buy into that. I don't have to give them my energy. And then finally, attachment and abandonment issues are social sources of stress. If we get into relationships and we have those issues activated, it can cause us a lot of stress. If you're constantly wondering, you know, we're not in the same room, is this person not interested anymore? Are they cheating on me? Are they this? Are they that? Helping people get that under control so they have a sense of secure attachment in their relationships is really important. Stress is ubiquitous and comes in many forms. The goal is to reduce distress in order to free up energy for eustress and preferably still have some leftover. You know, I don't want to just completely drain the tank every single day like a cell phone battery. Use the energy. Use your energy for the apps and activities that you want. And if you've got something in your life that is draining energy that you know is not important to you, uninstall it. Just like you uninstall apps that are overly taxing on your battery that are not important to you. Eliminate or suspend apps that drain your battery. And remember that just like your phone needs to plug in and recharge every day, you do too. And plugging in and recharging and trying to work at the same time. Have you ever tried to do that? Takes your phone takes the battery a lot longer to charge up if it's having to work and charge at the same time. Same thing for us if we're having to try to work and recharge at the same time. So give yourself permission. Between writing notes, filing insurance claims and scheduling with clients, it can be hard to stay organized. That's why I recommend Therapy Notes. Their easy to use platform lets you manage your practice securely and efficiently. Visit therapynotes.com to get two free months of TherapyNotes by just using the promo code CEU when you sign up for a free trial at therapynotes.com. If this podcast helps you help your clients or yourself, please support us by purchasing your ceus@allce.com or getting your agency to sponsor an episode. A direct link to the on demand CEUs for this podcast is@allce.com podcastceus that's allce.com podcastceus to sponsor an episode of Counselor Toolbox and reach over 50,000 clinicians per week. Go to allce.com Sponsor thank you.