37: Pro Tips for Navigating Stress

Episode Guest: Dr. William Slammon - Clinical Psychologist Stress... having it, avoiding it, dealing with it, leveraging it. We chat about this topic at length with our guest. We dive into mindset, sleep, how to be useful to others who ask for a hand in schooling their struggles. Stress (definition) - Is when there are forces impinging on us, that in the moment exceed our sense of our own capacity to manage. Mental habit / action / tool examples: (Quality) Sleep is essential to good health. Healthy stress on/in the body is natural, and beneficial for us to grow. Chronic stress (when we are stressed all the time, excessively) is unhealthy for us over time. Poor habits are typically born/leveraged as a response to combat or offset stress. Healthy stress can be used to unwind these poor habits through physical movement. Keep a list of helpful things that have helped rise above or alleviate stress situations. Exercise, that is enjoyable and sustainable, has the potential to be universally beneficial to everyone. To help others with stress - listen to hear, validate their experience - leveraging healthy relationships. Ask for permission to give a hand and interact with others, to help arrive at a plan working on what can be done in the now. Mindset is key to offset stress response. Choose to look at things as an opportunity, and what they can teach us. Related points: Our body has a physiological response to stress. This is by design and exists for our survival at the base class. Our bodies/brains keep track of the stresses we've experienced over time. Temperament plays a role in how we work on stress, therapy, and such, is approached. We are designed, humans, to be engaging physically in our world. Our brains are prediction machines. We create our reality based on what has already occurred and try to anticipate what will occur in the near future. Culture predicates the stories/script which serves as our defaults in life. Oncologists tend to save the term curable, for specific cases. Quotes / quips: "I don't need a bunch of studies to tell me that exercise makes me feel better." "I believe that the best, healthiest way to live is to move and exercise building that into your day." "Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice."' "I've had plenty of suffering in my life, I've learned the power of how I think about it completely changes the experience." Rando Mentions: How Bad Do You Want It? Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle - Matt Fitzgerald The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma - Bessel van der Kolk Born to run - Christopher MacDougall Contact us: [email protected] https://aka.ms/SchoolingStruggle/Feedback