22: Let's talk about stress
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Jo: Hello, my beautiful soul. And welcome back to the podcast. Let's talk about stress, baby. Because holy moly. Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, let's talk about stress because stress is [00:01:00] something that everybody experiences. It's just a fact of life and with the way that society is right now, the way that we're living life. There was somebody that I watched on Tik TOK who calculated for inflation and all that good stuff. They did a comparison between the great depression and now, and the average income adjusted for inflation back during the great depression was like $88,000 a year. And yet the average income today is not anywhere near that, so if you're feeling stressed because of money or stressed because of living life in general this episode's for you. We're going to talk about what stress is, what it's good for, what it's not good for, and how you can get a little bit of relief. Let's dive in. Because I know that I've been a little stressed lately, a lot stressed, and I'll share with you my practical tips and advice on how to deal with [00:02:00] stress. Like what I've been actively doing over the past couple of days to help get myself a little bit out of this stress response. So what is stress and why do we'd do it. So when it comes to stress, there's two types, there's distress and eustress. So eustress is a good type of stress. We actually need a little bit of stress in our lives in order for our bodies to function properly. The distress is when you are in the state of stress that has you worrying. Has you a little bit anxious, and it creates this physiological effect in the body where you enter into that fight or flight. The sympathetic nervous system dominated state. Where your body enters this survival mode. So back in the day, stress was triggered when we had to get away from an animal that was trying to attack us. When we had to get away from an enemy who is trying to attack us.[00:03:00] When we had to get away from a threat. So our bodies would go into fight or flight and either prepare to run away from that enemy or fight like, hell. And it shunts blood to all of your muscles in your legs, in your jaw and your arms to make you a stronger, plus dumps adrenaline. That's why when you see somebody in danger or your afraid or you're running from something, all of a sudden you seem so much stronger and so much faster than normal, right? Because your body is physically giving you extra juice to do that. But what happens when we are in a chronic state of fight or flight when we are chronically in this sympathetic nervous system state. Our digestion gets jacked up because remember we are shunting blood away from our digestive tract and anything else that isn't needed to make you stronger or [00:04:00] faster or fight harder. It does a lot of stuff to our brain, to like our focus and awareness. When we are in this fight or flight mode, we are focused more directly on what's right in front of us and the threat right in front of us instead of being able to see the bigger picture. In the world that we live in, most of us are under this chronic type of stress and it's really not good for us. But like I said, there are good stresses, right? We have to have a little bit of stress in order for our body to function properly. Because when we go back to the way that we used to live in tribes where we were fighting for survival. That was a big part of our day, but we would be able to face the threat and then go back home or wherever we were living and kind of shake it off. Right. We're not able to do that anymore because the stress follows us. And it's not like we're in any imminent danger most of the time sometimes. Yes, it happens. But most of the time, it's stress due to like deadlines at work or [00:05:00] how we're going to make rent or our mortgage payment or how we're going to afford that extracurricular activity for our kids. You know, like that stress follows us home and then we're in this constant worry of how we're going to make things work. When we're in this state, when we're in that sympathetic dominated state, we're not able to see the bigger pictures. We're not able to see opportunities that might be lying right on the outside of our area focus right now . There might be a door right to your left that you're not able to see. Because you're too focused on what's right in front of you. So in order to get back out of the state, back into a parasympathetic state, which is what we like to call rest and digest. Because we're allowing that blood flow now to go back to our organs that aren't needed to run away or fight and back to the organs that like your digestive tract that are [00:06:00] needed in order for you to properly function in order for you to get all of the nutrients that you need to be healthy. So the problem with a lot of us right now, is that we live in this sympathetic dominated nervous system state, and we were never taught how to regulate. We were never taught how to regulate our nervous system. We were never taught how to deal with the chronic stressors that we have today because they never existed the way that they do today. But luckily we have all of this new information all of these new studies and research that is helping us to understand. What we need to do in order to step out of that sympathetic state. Step out of that fight or flight out of that stress response and help us regulate our nervous system. So that we can live our best life so that we can see all of the options available in front of us. Now I mentioned earlier that there is a good kind of stress it's called [00:07:00] eustress. It's caused by something positive or physically beneficial. So would that means it's like going to the gym and lifting weights, doing your cardio, accomplishing a task. Where you get the, all of the stress from it, but you also get all of the feel, good hormones and chemicals like your dopamine and serotonin. But it's the stress that follows you around where there is no real, like, physical threat that you're trying to get away from. So your body doesn't know when it's able to relax, right? Because that threat is always kind of lingering there. So let's talk about this lingering stress and how we can deal with it. How I personally deal with it and you can take what you want and leave the rest. What I personally love to do. One is, I am a person who loves to be by myself. I thrive being alone. I also very much like quiet. I know I'm probably [00:08:00] a little weird in that, but I love alone time. And if you don't know how to be alone with yourself, I highly suggest that you just give it a shot. Because in a world where we are highly connected a lot of times, we don't know how to be with ourselves. And we're the person that we're with 100% of the time. You are your only true right or die. Because you have no option. So, uh, why are we not treating ourselves like our best friend? Why are we not getting to know ourselves? Like we get to know our best friends or our lovers. Why are we not spending the time with ourselves? Just. Putting that out there. So I love to be by myself. I love to meditate both in silence. And with music, both with mantra and without mantra. And when I started I did a guided meditation, one single guided meditation that I learned in fifth grade from a speaker who came to talk to our class from Africa. [00:09:00] And that's the only part of his presentation that I remembered was this meditation. So I would do that over and over and over and over again until I got really good at it. And then I found guided meditations on YouTube and I did those. And then I found the calm app. I like to do Kundalini yoga. I'm not a super huge fan of traditional like Hatha or Vinyasa yoga. Although, I know that I should be doing them more because I am not very stretchy. But I love Kundalini yoga because it is more focused on meditation and moving the body in a way that prepares it for meditation. Another thing is obviously working out because it is that good stress, but here's the thing. Okay. And I do this more often than I'd like to admit. When you go work out and you're stressed. You may or may not be inclined to take out that stress on yourself and push yourself a little too far. There's definitely an [00:10:00] art to knowing how far you can push yourself without pushing yourself over the limit and have I learned that art yet, maybe. I'd like to think that I am getting closer to actually learning it, but I am also a person who will push myself to the very edge. The reason for that is multifaceted because in the beginning, It was more of a. I don't want to say punishment, but punishment to myself. And then eventually it evolved into me just wanting to see how far I can go. How much further can I go today than I did yesterday? think I'm finally getting to the point where I'm not so concerned with seeing just how far I can go. but seeing just how good I can feel. And that's a pretty big thing for me. Because I went from literally punishing myself and calling myself names and being extremely mean to myself during workouts, like in my head to just getting the workout done and seeing how good I can feel. That's a pretty [00:11:00] big thing. So, what did we go over so far? Meditation Kundalini. Yoga. If you'd like to do yoga. I know I need to be doing more of it and working out. So being mindful me in the moment being present in the moment. Allowing yourself the time and space to do those activities. I love Kundalini yoga because we tune in and we tune out before and after every practice. So once you start doing it consistently. It signals to your mind and your body. Like this is the time for me. This is my time to be fully focused on this practice because I know I will tune out after this practice. And then I can get back to the real world, but for now, For this practice, I'm going to set aside. All of the distractions and be completely present with myself. Because it's the greatest gift that I can give myself. Is time and attention to myself. When we're thinking about spending time with [00:12:00] friends and family or loved ones. We want them to be fully present with us and they want us to be fully present with them. Why not do the same? For ourselves. Why not intentionally spend time with ourselves. Figuring out what we need learning our emotions. Oh my gosh. This one took me forever. It took me so long to sit with my emotions instead of just push them away. I didn't even know what I was feeling. I just knew that I didn't like what it felt like. I didn't know what they were called. I had such a hard time expressing myself. I had such a hard time letting people know what I was feeling. I'd have people ask me what I was feeling and I'd be like, I don't, I don't know. I don't know, but I don't like it. So once I started spending more time with myself and sitting with my feelings and learning what my feelings were and why they were being caused. Oh. So much shifted. So if you are that person. If [00:13:00] you have been avoiding your feelings. Or if when you feel your feelings, you don't know. What they're called or what they are even take a minute to sit with them and just learn from them. You'll be surprised from what you learn. So I've got to cut this short because I've got to go grab my daughter from her dad. So we talked about. Good stress, bad stress. Parasympathetic sympathetic nervous system, nervous system regulation. We talked about the ways that you can begin to destress with the meditation, the Kundalini yoga and working out. I'd like to talk more about nervous system regulation in and of itself, because it is quite complex and we aren't taught how to do it, but we really need to be taught how to do it. So I will have an episode on that coming up. But for now, I have to go grab my daughter from her dad. And as always, I love you. I will see you [00:14:00] next week. Bye.
