Reducing Stress & Anxiety in Uncertain Times - Part 3

Welcome back to Dealing with Stress in Uncertain Times. I am Dr. Donnelly Snipes, and this is the third installment of this series. We're talking about more strategies that we can use in order to deal with some of the chaotic stress that's going on right now, geopolitically, in the stock market with coronavirus and healthcare concerns, environmental issues. There's just lots of stuff going on right now. So how can we deal with it so we can be happy? We don't want to live our lives in a state of constant stress and anxiety and negativity. That's no way to live. So some strategies include surrounding yourself with positive, supportive people. Don't surround yourself with Chicken Little. Don't surround yourself with people who are constantly ruminating on and ranting about what's wrong with the world and what's negative and that the sky is going to fall. That's just going to stress you out. Surround yourself with people who are creating solutions. Surround yourself with people who are noticing the positive, and surround yourself with people who are just plain positive. They may recognize most of us, I think, recognize there are some unpleasant things going on right now, but we also can force ourselves and train ourselves to also notice the positive. Become mindful of how you feel and purposeful and how you choose to use your energy. If you wake up in the morning and you're already feeling stressed out, choose how you use your energy that day. What is going to be the best course of action to help you have the happiest day possible? If you're stressed out in the middle of the day and you notice it, you know, maybe it used to happen to me sometimes when I worked on a residential unit, if I would notice that I was starting to feel stressed out. If I was mindful of that, I might shut my door that day. Because people. People popping in and interrupting me, you know, every 20 minutes was stressful. And if I was already stressed out, I knew that I was more likely to respond unpleasantly when they did that. So shutting my door and setting boundaries to protect myself was a way that helped me recharge. And it also allowed me to, you know, not encounter other feelings because, you know, if I tended to be irritable with somebody, then I might feel guilty about it and yada yada, a lot of extra stress there. I would just shut the door. You know, being mindful and setting boundaries is really important. Practice, acceptance. I say this so often. It is what it is. We can't change the past. We can't forecast the future. At least not very well, all we can do is add, accept what is in the moment and figure out how we're going to try to improve the next moment. Not the next day, not the next week, but what am I going to do to improve the next moment? Part of that is acknowledging what is and what we have control over, accepting the fact that we don't have control over everything and allowing ourselves to feel frustration or anxiety or whatever. For the moment, feelings are okay. We want to be able to feel feelings, but then we need to adapt. Instead of holding on to those feelings and nurturing that anger and nurturing that anxiety, adapt, say, okay, I'm angry about this, or I'm really stressed out about this. What can I do to help myself feel better in the next moment? And that may be using some of those distress tolerance skills we talked about in the last. Or it may be playing with my dog, or it may be making a plan for how to address the situation if there are aspects that I can control. But that's what the adaptation is all about. We need to learn to be okay, even if we don't have all the answers. And a lot of the things that I've mentioned we don't have the answers for. We don't understand a whole lot about the COVID virus. We don't know when the stock market's going to go up. We don't know who's going to be elected in November. There's a lot we don't know. And we have to be okay with some of that ambiguity. Yes, I would love for some of these things to get solved so I had answers that would make me feel calmer, but we don't. So I need to figure out a way to deal with that ambiguity. I, you know, understand that fretting over it isn't going to get the solution here any faster. Practice impeccable self care. We talked about this a little bit in the last video. Make sure to eat a healthy diet. Your body makes the neurotransmitters and hormones you need to feel happy, healthy, energized from the food you eat. You eat crappy, you're going to feel crappy. You know, that's just kind of the way it is. Pay attention to how many stimulants you're ingesting, including caffeine, nicotine, decongestants. Those are all going to ramp up your stress response and potentially make you feel more anxious. Remember that caffeine has roughly a six hour half life. So the caffeine that you drink at noon isn't out of your body until midnight, so it's still going to interrupt your sleep or impact your sleep quality. Nicotine has a much shorter half life, but it's about two hours. So if you smoke four hours before bed, then it'll be out of your system by the time you go to bed. But if you're smoking right before bed, the stimulant effects of the nicotine are still going to be impacting your sleep. But just pay attention to some things like that. Make sure to practice good ergonomics and stretch and address any pain issues so it doesn't impact your sleep. And be kind to yourself. Self care also means doing things that make us happy. Because it's like running a hot bath when we are stressed. It's like hot water, wide open hot water. Well, you don't want to sit in that. That's going to scald you. We need to add the happy. We need to add some cool water to it to help us relax and calm down. In order to make it tolerable, Self care involves adding in happy. Do things every day, even if life is stressful. Do things every day that make you smile. Be patient with yourself and others and try to eliminate shoulds and shouldn'ts. Hindsight is 20 20. I should have done this yesterday. Yeah, well, I didn't. I missed the opportunity. Too late. I can't go back to yesterday and make it happen. I can learn from it so I don't make the same mistake twice. But I can't change the past. I need to learn to accept that. All right, missed that opportunity. It is what it is. And the shouldn'ts usually revolve around I shouldn't feel this way or I shouldn't think this way or I shouldn't have to, whatever. Well, you know, you may have to and it may be unfair. Life can be unfair at times. But being patient with yourself and recognizing I don't want to do this or I don't want to have to endure this. That's very valid, but you may have to. Other helpful questions you can ask yourself. What is my belief about this situation? Do I believe that the pandemic is going to come to the United States and all the schools are going to shut down and millions of people are going to die and da, da, da. Okay, do I believe that? Well, let's hypothetically say I do, which I don't, by the way. But if I did, what are the facts for and against my belief? You know, let's look at the facts here. Let's look at how Many people, how long this has been going on and how many people in the US have gotten it so far. Let's look at what our protective measures are. Let's, let's look at the risk of the virus spreading. Well, that kind of goes into the other category of a little bit dangerous, but we're getting more of a handle on it. Let's look at the fact that we've had months now to start trying to find a vaccine or a cure for it. So by the time it gets to a pandemic level, if it got there, which we're hoping it won't, then we're that much closer to having a vaccine. So looking at the facts and recognizing what is real and what is just media induced panic is really important. Identifying factors that you're failing to consider. What other things are going into this? We'll stick with the virus for right now. Yes, it got really bad in, in China and seemingly really fast. But it was a lot longer before they instituted containment procedures. Other factors I'm failing to consider. I'm healthy, I don't smoke. You know, I am relatively low risk for experiencing major negative effects from the virus. So, okay, I can take comfort in that. I am in the middle of a rural area, which means, you know, I'm not going to be exposed to people who are regularly traveling because we just don't in this area of the county. So focusing on other factors that basically contradict my belief that the sky is going to fall is really important to consider all the facts. Yes, it's a bad virus and yes, you know, if my kids had it, it would be really bad mojo. However, what is the likelihood? Am I using all or nothing or extreme words? If I start saying everybody's going to get this and we're all going to die? Yes, those are extreme words and those are not accurate. So it's important to recognize what is accurate and check our verbiage. Or saying everybody who comes into contact with it gets sick or has major complications. That's not true. We need to focus on what the facts are. Am I focusing on the worst possible outcome? Well, the scenario I gave you was, yeah, that was probably the worst possible outcome. What is the difference between possibility and probability? The possibility that we could have a huge global pandemic and, you know, lots and lots of death and problems. There's a minuscule possibility. What's the probability that it's going to get that far? The probability from the data we have right now is very slim. So making sure that we really examine our beliefs. Look at the facts for and against the factors, all the factors that go into it, not just a little sliver of the factors. You know, consider your personal factors. Check whether you're using extreme words, whether you're making, trying, making a catastrophe out of it, and whether you're confusing a slim possibility with a probability that something's going to happen. You. All righty. I hope those tips were helpful, and I will see you in the next set of videos.