Start Your Day Stress-Free, with Dr. Stephen Sideroff

We are all stuck with the lessons of our childhood. These are our developmental lessons about not being good enough, about worrying about the feelings of others too much, being too sensitive to them, all of these childhood lessons. And because they are early lessons, they go in very deeply in terms of our neural circuitry.

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Hello and welcome to the five Journeys Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. I'm Wendy Trubo, one of your hosts. This is Edward Levitan, and we have an amazing guest today who's going to talk about stress. Dr. Steven Sidoroff is an internationally recognized psychologist, executive medical consultant, and expert in resilience, stress management, addiction, neurofeedback, and longevity, which is, I think, what we're all really committed to. He's also an associate professor, Department of Psychiatry and Bio, Behavioral Sciences and Rheumatology at the Geffen School of Medicine at ucla. Stephen, welcome. I'm so psyched to talk about this because I think all of us can attest to that we're experiencing stress.

Well, it's a pleasure to be here. I've been looking forward to it since we talked about this a few months ago at a 4M. So, yes. Great.

It's very exciting. Is there some formulaic way we can approach this? For every three hours that you have stress, you need three hours without, or is it individually? I'm looking for a prescription to take the weekend off.

Just for the record, you can take the weekend off.

I mean, you and I are both presenting at a 4M. I got Covid when the presentations were due and then had to catch up. And so, you know, these, these. You talk about stress like the piling on of the deadline is passed, it's due, and now I'm working, you know, seven days a week to get it caught up. So it's. Is there some formulaic approach we can take? Asking for a friend?

So first off, we can all assume that we're starting off where we're spending too much time in stress and we have to find some ways of restoring balance. I like to say that we spend so much time in the day where we're dealing with one stress after another. We finish one. And for some of us, there's another stress that hits us. But if we grow up in an environment in our childhood that's dangerous, where our parents may be critical and judgmental of us, what happens to our expectation is that we're expecting dangers even when we're successful in finishing dealing with the stress. A meeting, an appointment, a presentation, whatever it is, we're then searching our environment for the next danger. And so we don't give ourselves the opportunity to. To take that little bit of a break.

So, like, we're primed. We're essentially primed, prepped, locked and loaded, ready for stress at all times. We're. So essentially, you're talking about hypervigilance. Pretty much.

I'm talking. Well, there are varying levels of it, but we all have a certain amount of it. And quite frankly, it's a certain amount of this is built into us and from the evolutionary perspective, because it allowed us to survive. Right. And we don't. And we don't mess with survival mechanisms. And that's part of the difficulty in dealing with stress because it does have survival mechanisms, but then we overdo it. So the first thing I tell people is look for islands of safety in your day. So, for example, if you have lunch, make lunch an island of safety. Meaning I'm going to. During my lunch, I'm going to relax, I'm going to eat, and I'm going to realize that all the stresses will still be there a half hour from now, but I'm going to give myself this island of break. You find these islands of safety throughout your day, even if. Even if it can only be five minutes after you finish dealing with one thing, Any amount of time is helpful, is good. I like to tell people you want to find 10 minutes in every day to practice a relaxation exercise, because stresses are training your nervous system to activate. You need something to compensate for that. You need something in your day that trains your nervous system to go in the down direction, into the recovery direction. So that's for starters. Sleep is so important. Sleep is one of the primary ways we restore the resources used up during the day during our stresses. And it's also one of the first. It's like the canary in the coal mine. It's one of the first symptoms we have that our nervous system is out of balance. What I refer to as autonomic dysregulation.

Yeah, I mean, there are times when it hasn't happened recently, but when I'm super stressed, I'll be like, why didn't I. Why am I up between 2 and 4 in the morning. Well, it's, it's adrenal and liver time to, you know, jack you up. What were you going to say?

No, nothing. This, this kind of comes into the resiliency piece obviously of how do we get resiliency. And I know you talk a lot about neuroplasticity. Can you kind of bridge that gap for us?

I like to say that we are all stuck with what I refer to as primitive gestalt patterns. These are the lessons of our childhood and these are our developmental lessons about not being good enough, about worrying about the feeling of others too much, being too sensitive to them. All of these childhood lessons. And because there are early lessons, they go in very deeply in terms of our neural circuitry. The good news is that there is also neuroplasticity. And neuroplasticity is about how we have the ability to, to change those patterns. It's not easy, but it's very doable. And it begins with holding the intention to make the changes. It begins with making that decision and saying, I know I have this pattern, but I want to do it differently. I want to figure out a way to do it differently. And then you begin by setting those intentions. When you set an intention to go in a different direction and you start following, that will be successful. It won't be easy. I like to have people think about this forest and you're approaching this forest and there's this well worn path and you automatically go down this well worn path because every place else is thicket. Right. But that well worn path doesn't get you where you want to go. So it's easy and it's our. It's where we automatically go to. But if you want to engage neuroplasticity, you have to go over here and you get out your machete and you start whacking away. And that's doing some things that may be uncomfortable, that may be, you know, your boundary a bit, but that are the behaviors and the lessons and the learning that's going to make a difference in your life.

Was this like a. I'm still trying to. I, I hear you. I feel. I 100 I'm with you. Is this. And a lot of us are stuck. So is this with a therapist? Is this just making a choice? How do people actually go from like, I mean, a thousand percent? Yes. And I know even for myself and very much for patients, I see the stuckness is real and, and the emotions are real. And to them the life they have created, there's not a possibility.

I mean and also, you don't know what you don't know. Like, you have no access to being different. So how can you be different? What's the access to not to doing something you don't know how to do? Is it intention?

Yeah. Well, it begins with noticing that there's something wrong in your life. It could be a physical symptom, or it could be, you know, difficulties in relationships, but it's. It's something that isn't working the way you want it to be working. And a lot of the times what happens with people is they have that awareness, but either they don't feel like they could do anything about it, or they just assume that this is the way it's supposed to be, or they get scared about doing something other than the way they've been doing it all their lives. It really begins by making a decision that you're willing to do something, maybe that might be difficult in order to have a better life, in order to deal with the symptom. And so once you make that decision and hold that intention, then you need a plan, a program follow through and realize that this isn't like going to the wall and switching on or off the light switch. You have these habit patterns your entire life. It's going to take a while. It's going to be a developmental process to make these changes. And then it's about setting a plan to do it one step, one behavior at a time. It's changing your mindset that I'm going to engage in this process. Start out with taking 10 minutes a day to practice a relaxation exercise. When you do that now, if you do that for a couple of weeks now, you could say, look, I'm able to follow through now. I'm beginning to trust myself that I can make some of these changes. So that's the way you get the ball rolling. You have to start somewhere, and you have to be satisfied with the effort you're making. And you want to identify those parts of your old pattern that are getting in your way and then work toward making changes in those patterns. And most people need some help in that process, some guidance in that process, and that's okay.

And how do relationships affect our stress? Ask you for a friend.

Answer quite carefully, Stephen.

Okay. Okay. So the good news is that relationships can be an amazing source of what I refer to as emotional nourishment. We know that when you go into a positive emotional state, you actually improve your heart rate rhythms. When you go into a more upset emotional state, frustration, anger, you create dysregulation in the heart rate rhythm. So one of the things I do is biofeedback with my clients, which is a way of training them to be able to self regulate. When I have them go into positive affect. When I tell them to think about somebody in their life, husband, wife, for example, and have gratitude, have a feeling of gratitude. We see an improvement in their heart rate pattern.

Do you use HeartMath to do that or something else?

There are a few different companies and types. There's a thought technology. One is heart math. There are a few that all do similar things. You may have stress at work, but when you come home at the end of the day, when you're with family, when you're with friends, you want those relationships to be supportive, you want them to be nurturing. And anytime that a relationship, there's a conflict in a relationship, you want to do your best to resolve that conflict so that that relationship becomes an island of safety, not an island of danger. Because all of our stresses are additive. So you want to where you have the potential to have positive relationships that actually lower your stress, you want to make sure that those relationships are doing that.

Boom.

What else can people do?

One of the things I've talked about, a 10 minute relaxation process. One of the things that I can share, which I think is very important, is that there is actually an optimal breathing rate that facilitates heart rate, healthy heart rate patterns, that aligns a number of physiological systems. And that breathing rate is six breaths per minute. It's 10 seconds for a full breathing cycle. It turns out that when we breathe in, we're activating the sympathetic branch of our nervous system and our heart rate speeds up. When we breathe out, we activate the parasympathetic and our heart rate slows down. That's when we get this nice sinusoidal pattern of increase with breathing in and decrease as we breathe out. When we breathe at approximately six breaths per minute, we maximize that potential. So if people are going to do 10 minutes of relaxation a day, they should set as their goal to breathe at about 4 seconds in and 6 seconds out. It varies from person to person, but that's a good approximation. I would encourage people to do that because when you do that, you're actually helping your cardiovascular system get healthier. So that's one thing that I would say. The second thing is how you start your day. And you know, for the audience right now, think about how you start your day. Do you. Do you immediately think about what can go wrong? Do you immediately think of the problems, the difficulties, what do you start out thinking about what can go right, thinking about the things in the day that you're looking forward to? I will encourage you to consciously shift into a perspective, a mindset for your day in which you're looking positively for what you can enjoy in your day. If there's something that you're that's difficult or you're concerned about, plan how you're going to do it and then take the perspective that I'm going to handle it well. A positive perspective minimizes the impact of stress. Also, you want to have an intention of how you're going to do your day. Intentions set your mind in a particular direction automatically. We will go by our old ways, which may be worrying, looking for what can go wrong. But if you start the day with an intention and you set the right intention, you begin your day in the right way. And it may mean that when you sit down to have breakfast with your family, you're in a better mood, it has a better impact on those around you. All of this then has a positive snowball instead of a negative snowball.

This is fantastic. And I think it's given people something really concrete to work on. Breathe in for four, breathe out for six. I love that kind of thing because I'm very goal oriented. So if you tell me, breathe in for four, breathe out for six, I'm like, I can do that. That makes sense in my brain.

And start the day with intention.

Start the day with intention, not your phone. Get enough rest.

Most important, realize that it's a journey and it's most important to be accepting of yourself. My nine pillars of resilience. The first one is your relationship with yourself. And that's so important. In fact, what I would like to offer to your audience, I have a booklet, resilience assessment booklet. And it gives my model of resilience. It describes each of the components and it also gives a questionnaire that people can take and self score and they can get their profile along. My nine pillars of resilience.

That's fantastic. We'll put that in the show notes then.

Yeah, they can email me@cidaroffcla.com edu and I'm happy to send that out to them.

That's fantastic. Thank you. I think this is amazing, Stephen. Thank you.

Where can people find you? How can they connect with you?

So my, my website, Dr.stevensitteroff.com they can also find me on social media. Dr. Sidoroff or Dr. Stephen Sidoroff. I'm on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. So people can find me in a lot of different places.

So, Stephen, thank you for being here. And for the listeners, thanks for listening to another episode of the feel freaking amazing Five Journeys podcast. Our guest today is Dr. Steven Sidoroff, and you can see his information in the show notes. It's all about resilience and stress. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. It's a pleasure.

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