3 Goals of Stress Management

EPISODE 56

Let's have another conversation around stress. Chronic stress can come as a symptom of our choices or the reality reality of our life circumstances, but it's usually a mix of both. I spent a decade create a life of chronic stress based on beliefs I acquired in my childhood and teenage years.

Here's the thing, stress isn't the problem, chronic stress is. There's also some cool new research that suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case.

Join me for the full conversation as I unpack 3 main goals when it comes to stress.

ps. this episode includes a sneak peak reading of part of my new book, "Healing Through the Vagus Nerve"

Resources referenced in this episode:

• Pre-order my new book, Healing Through the Vagus Nerve today!
• Part 1 (of 4) of my Stress Bucket Series on the podcast
• TED TALK: How to make stress your friend

Looking for more personalized support?

• Book a FREE consultation for RESTORE, our 1:1 anxiety & depression coaching program.
• Join me inside RISE, a mental health membership and nervous system healing space.

3 take aways from today's conversation:

1. Take your stress seriously, but not so seriously that it stresses you out.
2. Stress management starts with an intentional look at your stressors. Check out episodes 37, 38, 39, & 40 for a series on how you can do just that.
3. When it comes with to stress the 3 goals are to: (1) decrease the likelihood of long term chronic stress (2) to increase your ability to reset from stress more quickly through the vagus nerve (3) To increase your overall capacity for stress

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Website: https://www.riseaswe.com/podcast

Email: amanda@riseaswe.com

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Transcript

0:00  
Welcome to regulate, and rewire and anxiety and depression podcast where we discuss the things I wish someone would have taught me earlier in my healing journey. I'm your host, Amanda Armstrong. And I'll be sharing my steps, my missteps, client experiences and tangible research based tools to help you regulate your nervous system, rewire your mind and reclaim your life. Thanks for being here. Now let's dive in. 

0:28  
Alright, friends, let's talk about stress. This is a conversation. This is a topic I'm sure you have heard, many, many, many, many things about. And today, I have three primary goals for us. Number one, I just want you to better understand the physiology of stress. What is stress? What does it do in our body? What is healthy stress, helpful stress, what is unhealthy and unhelpful stress, which leads to number two, which is gentle encouragement to in this better understanding of stress, to begin to take it seriously in your life, because I didn't for a very, very long time and a toll was taken. And number three is to maybe help you to stress less about your stress. There was a really interesting TED talk that I watched recently that talks about how people's belief around stress whether they thought stress was helpful or harmful, or their beliefs around stress actually had a measurable impact on whether their stress was more or less harmful to their health. And I will link that TED talk in the show notes. 

1:36  
But to get started today, I actually want to just ride the coattails of a past version of Amanda who wrote a whole book and talked about stress a lot in that book. So for those of you who may be new here, I have a book that will be published in May that's available for preorder. It's called Healing Through The Vagus Nerve. And this book is all about how to improve your body's response to anxiety, depression, stress, and trauma through nervous system regulation. And chapter two is a deep dive into the vagus nerve. And there's a section that talks about the vagus nerve and various mental health conditions. So I talk about chronic stress, anxiety, depression, ADHD. And what I want to read is the section on chronic stress. 

2:24  
So here we go, my first semi public reading of part of my book, "stress temporarily activates our sympathetic fight or flight response to meet the immediate threat of a stressor. Afterward, our system resets, it becomes chronic stress or anxiety because of the inability of the vagus nerve to activate the parasympathetic response, thus keeping us in this fight or flight state." 

2:51  
I'm gonna take a quick side note here, and if any of these words are new to you, parasympathetic, sympathetic, the first chapter of the book introduces you to all of those terms, as do the first six or so episodes of the podcast. Okay, I'm gonna keep reading. 

3:06  
"At one point in my life, I was taking 22 graduate school credits, writing my master's thesis, working 50 plus hours a week, taking care of a dog over exercising, sleeping only five to six hours a night and listening to some pretty nasty self talk. I remember thinking to myself one night, someone busier than you is doing better than you. Oh, ouch. I had debilitating productivity based self worth. That kept me spinning my wheels constantly trying to do more and more and more and it lasted. For years. What I learned was that chronic stress can come as a symptom of our choices, or the reality of our life circumstances, but it's usually a mix of both. I created a life of chronic stress based on beliefs that I acquired in my childhood and teenage years. 

3:06  
You may have stressors in your life that are based on things like discrimination, poverty, natural disasters, or other situations entirely out of your control. It may not always be possible, at least not right now to live a life with fewer stressors. The power in improving vagus nerve health is that it gives you the capacity to recover from your stress response faster, and gives you tools to push back against that physiology in real time to dampen its impact. Stress isn't the problem. Chronic stress is daily Modern Life is full of layering stressors big and small. Your sympathetic response is often activated by things like traffic work responsibilities, relationships, processed food, health concerns, systemic issues or finances. If you don't have a way to turn off that activated stress response, the seemingly small stressors combined with your larger ones become chronic stress that wreaks havoc on your mind and body. The vagus nerve is the antidote to increasing your ability to manage and reset after stress via its role in the parison pathetic nervous system state. When you learn to optimize and stimulate your vagus nerve with the tools and practices in this book, parenthesis, see practices in chapter six, you will manage stress better and get better at resetting more quickly from stressful events, thus staying more regulated and present and whatever the situation is." 

5:23  
I continue on to reference a deadlift analogy that I used in the introduction of the book. So it reads, "remember that deadlift analogy I use in the introduction of the book, I often help my clients understand the balance between stress and carrying capacity by comparing it to a deadlift. For those who don't know, a deadlift is a common strength training movement that usually involves a long barbell, with weight on either end of that bar. The movement is to with proper form, pick up the weighted bar from the floor. You wouldn't walk into a gym and expect to pick up a 300 pound bar without significant training. You also understand that if you tried to lift it anyway, there's a good chance you'll hurt yourself? Well, it's possible that you're currently doing the equivalent of lifting 300 pounds of stress. Your stressors outweigh your training and it's hurting you. Of course, you're struggling, no one trained or prepared you for the load life has handed you. When you can look at it this way, it's likely your symptoms begin to make more sense. And a lot of the shame for quote, not handling your life better, can be let go. Just like in the gym, we can manage this load better in two ways. Number one, make the load lighter. Number two, increase our capacity to carry the load. Life naturally happens in seasons, some that feel heavier, and others lighter. But if your daily life feels overwhelming, it's time to get honest about auditing your load. Take a look at what's in your stress bucket. What's on your calendar, how much clutter is in your home? What relationships in your life feel supportive, versus draining? And then look at how you're supporting your basic biology that fuels your capacity to carry that load. How much sleep are you getting? What's the quality of your diet? How optimally Do you breathe? How sedentary or active Are you and step into the work it takes to change some of those things. As a person who has struggled with productivity based self worth for a lot of my life, I often carried around a load that was crushing. I said yes. When I needed to say no, I took on more when I desperately shouldn't have. And it took a very real toll on my mind and body. It was understanding the physiology of stress that finally helps me make some needed changes to lighten my load and increase my capacity. Working with your vagus nerve allows you to do both. In this book, you'll learn proactive and reactive practices that help you increase your stress threshold enabling you to carry more, however, the same practice can also support you in decreasing the heaviness of what you're carrying. A healthy vagus nerve allows you to not only carry more, but also to reset from stress much more quickly, helping to better balance that activation and relaxation. Seesaw."

8:24  
All right, I'll pause reading there. That chapter goes on to talk about the role of the nervous system specifically the vagus nerve in anxiety, depression, ADHD, and trauma. And this conversation around capacity and load is one that we've had often here on the podcast, there's an entire four part series on the stress bucket that talks a lot about, again, a deeper understanding of the physiology of stress, how to assess the stressors that you're carrying around audit, how to know when you're, you're stressed, I talked about how my body often feel stressed before my mind does, and for a lot of people, it's the opposite. And actually for a second, I'm gonna jump back to the end of chapter one. There's also a little section on stress that I want to read for you. And it reads, 

9:11  
"managing stress and dysregulation is a matter of managing our capacity and load. If you're living life in a constant state of overwhelm, and chronic stress, then something's gotta give. I support clients in auditing their life and stress bucket as part of the work that we do together. There are likely a lot of elements in your stress bucket that you cannot control. And oftentimes, life just gets heavy. But with every single one of my clients when we've gotten honest at unpacking and auditing their stress bucket, there are always things contributing to their load that are optional or that no longer serve them. This might be activities on their calendar beliefs in their mind or lifestyle practices that are leaving them depleted and burned out. When it comes to stress. There are three main goals. Goal number one is to decrease the likelihood of long term chronic stress. Goal number two is to be able to reset from stressful events more quickly by improving vagal tone and knowing how to push back against your body's stress response in real time. Goal number three is to increase your overall capacity for stress. We will all experience both acute and chronic stress to varying degrees in our life. The key is to be aware and equipped with tools to minimize negative impacts. And the best tools to control stress are the ones that have a direct hardwired line to our autonomic nervous system. As much as our stress response is a biologically hardwired mechanism, we have another biologically hardwired mechanism that can push back against our stress response in real time through the healing power of the vagus nerve." 

10:53  
Now, what I think I want to do with the rest of our time together here, in this conversation, at the risk of being redundant of previous conversations we've had around stress, I want to elaborate a little on those three goals. And I want to do so in a way that just invites you into a moment of self reflection with each of those. And I want to put a quick plug in for the book course that I'm creating, to guide each of you through the chapters in this book. So what you'll find is that with each chapter of the book, there's a supplementary video, believe it or not, I wrote an entire book. And I still feel like I have more to say, where I offer additional context, I invite you into self reflection. Because it doesn't matter what you know, it's what you do with what you know, that matters, the healing power within the pages of that book. Yes, a lot of that is in the education, because I believe that when you know better, you automatically do better. And when you do understand anxiety and depression through a nervous system lens, you start to engage with every symptom. And I believe, at least this is what it was, for me every moment of my life a little bit differently when I understood my mind body system. But with that course, you will get an invitation into personal application, there's going to be over 15 guided practices that I've recorded for you as part of that course. And anybody who pre orders, my book is going to get that course absolutely free. 

12:21  
And because I've been getting a lot of people asking, I'm just gonna put the instructions here, go preorder my book, and then head to my website. And there's a tab that says Book, at the bottom of that page is where you're going to input your name, your email address, and your order number for the pre order. And that's where you'll get put on a list. And on pub date, you'll get an email with this course for free. Now, if you're finding this podcast after May 7 2024. And updates already happened, you can still get that book course, it just won't be as a bonus free thank you gift for pre ordering the book. But that's something you can also find on my website. 

12:58  
And I put that plug in here, because part of that course is going to help you with each of these three goals. Goal number one is to decrease the likelihood of long term chronic stress. The book is going to help educate you on what that is what that looks like in a really compassionate way. But I want you to pause for a moment right now and just think what are the things that have been stressful in your life, and they've always felt like they've been stressful? This could be a particular limiting belief, this could be a strained relationship in your life. For me it was that productivity based self worth. It just kept me saying yes, and yes, and yes, and yes. And yes. When I needed to learn how to say no. So goal number one is to decrease the likelihood of long term chronic stress. And the number one way that we can do that is by taking in an intentional and methodical look at our stress. And I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about how to do that because like I said, there's a whole four part series on assessing and editing and auditing and managing your stress bucket, which is work that we help our clients do in both a one on one and group setting inside our one on one coaching program restore and inside my rise membership. And so if you feel like Amanda, I've been living a life of chronic stress for so long. I don't even know where to start with that. That might be a really good indicator to step into our community, either in one on one or in group and say hey, help me with this helped me take a look at this it feels almost too overwhelming to dive into myself. So to decrease the likelihood of long term chronic stress. You need to get really honest about what is contributing to that stress load in your life. 

14:48  
And then goal number two is to be able to reset from stressful events more quickly. And the number one way to do this is to improve vagal tone. And I wrote an entire book on how to improve vagal tone On. I'm also going to tell you here that it's not rocket science. Some of the most impactful ways to improve vagal tone are not through these like cool vagal toning hacks that you see like gargling and you know, massaging your, your neck or your ear. And I will caveat this with those are practices that I invite and demo and do with my members regularly. Because those matter. And the thing that matters most is the way that you're living your life. You want to improve your vagal tone, which is usually measured by heart rate variability, do a quick Google search, what improves heart rate variability? Again, folks, it's not rocket science, it's going to tell you get good sleep, move your body, eat better food, when our basic pillars of health are not in place. There is no amount of health hacking, or releasing stored trauma from your body, or whatever that is going to get you to where you want to be feeling whole and vibrant in your life. And you don't need to dial those habits in perfectly. We are incredibly resilient as human beings. But we also have things that are biologically imperative for our well being. We need quality, sleep, quality, sleep being you wake up rested in the morning, you've got seven to eight hours of sleep, consistently. nourishing foods, you don't have to eat perfectly. But our body needs to not be in a state of vitamin and micro and macro nutrient deficiency. We need movement, our bodies need to move when you live a sedentary lifestyle, and feel depressed, which is a nervous system state of immobilization. That's not disorder. That makes sense. 

17:01  
And I understand that when you are in a place of struggling with chronic stress or anxiety or depression, stepping into habits that he'll engaging in any behavior change is really, really hard. And so my offer to my to my members and to my clients always, always always is seek out support and start small, laughably small. And I have a series coming very, very soon, where we're going to have an episode talking about the neuroscience of behavior, change of habit change why you know better and don't do better. So often. It's not because you suck, it's not because you lack motivation, or because you lack willpower. There's a very, very real reason why we know we should be exercising, we know we should be eating better, and we don't. And then I am going to give a entire episode to what we teach inside my coaching practices as the essential eight. So eight essential research supported pillars of mental and physical well being things like sleep movement, vagal, toning interception. And what I want to do with each of those episodes is teach you a little bit about the science, I think the science gives you buy in at least that's what it did for me, the science gave me buy in to engaging in behaviors long enough to see the results and see the impact. But then I want to spend those episodes giving very real and practical suggestions or advice or just food for thought on where you might be able to start in just optimizing 1%. 1%. 

18:35  
And so coming back to that goal number two, which read again, is to be able to reset from stressful events more quickly by improving vagal tone, which we just talked about, comes from, or significantly comes from just living a life more catered towards wellness, and knowing how to push against your body's stress response in real time. And that's where those reactive vagal toning practices can come in most often is oh, I'm noticing stress and activation in my system right now. What can I do to activate a parasympathetic response, and that's where those ear massages, neck massages. gargling humming, knowing how to stimulate and activate your vagus nerve in real time can help you to take the edge off the intensity in the moments that you need it most. And so what you have here with this combination of proactively and reactively improving vagal tone is that when you just have better vagal tone, you naturally reset from stress, you don't have to try, right? With those reactive tools. That's when we noticed that we're stressed and we take an active role in distressing. But the cool thing is that as you have a more regulated nervous system, part of that being improved vagal tone, your nervous system regulates on its own. You notice that you have this like flash of anger and then all of a sudden you're like, Oh, I'm okay. And you didn't have After 10s, and release, push against a wall, shake it out, go outside and scream, it's like, oh, you can go there. And then also settle more quickly. And that is one of the number one benefits of improved vagal tone. In my opinion, as somebody who like I've, like I've shared many times, I'm a redhead and I, I fit almost every stereotype of kind of that quick to intensity quick to anger. But as I've improved my vagal tone, sometimes I'm still quick to get there. But I noticed that I come back and I reset from that almost automatically, way more often than I ever have before. 

20:37  
And then goal number three is to increase your overall capacity for stress. That again, comes naturally, with improved vagal tone, it also comes naturally with practice. And with rewriting your story of stress, your reaction to stress is often what can turns simple stress into anxiety. And I really encourage you go to the show notes, watch that TED Talk that talks about how our belief around stress can either take away our life expectancy or increase our life expectancy. And like real cool ways, that was really interesting. And I'm not going to recap what what she shared there, because I'm gonna drop that resource there. But when it comes to increasing our capacity for stress, we can change our beliefs around stress, that's one way to do it. We also can train our body's physiology in really cool ways. Exercise, that's what exercise does. When you exercise with a low level of intensity, you are stressing out your body you are intentionally engaging a sympathetic nervous system state. And when you push the limits and exercise, your system naturally increases its capacity to handle higher stress loads. And because our body's stress response is generic. When you train a higher stress tolerance in the gym, you naturally create a higher stress tolerance for the rest of your life. Other things that can increase your capacity for stress are things like activating breathwork practices, which are an advanced practice, I don't start any of my clients there. And we do not engage in activating breathwork practices, if it's somebody who is in like the peak of struggling with their anxiety because it can add too much stress load to their nervous system, I would say the same thing for cold exposure. Their cold plunges are all the rage right now there's something that I personally engage in as part of my wellness plan. And cold punching is not the right thing for everybody all the time. Because again, if you don't know how to regulate your body's activation, that sympathetic activation response, and you're already living a really highly activated life, getting in a cold plunge might be the thing that tips your system over the edge. 

23:08  
And so again, take all of the advice that you get on this podcast, Instagram, all the other places that you're consuming this information, my book as well. And I think I do a good job always of of adding this caveat of there is no one size fits all protocol for healing. And this is why I teach the science first I'm like, Hey, understand the principles here, understand your physiology, so that you can then build an awareness of your own mind and body so that you can judge for yourself whether this practice or that practice feels helpful or hurtful for where you are in your healing journey right now. 

23:48  
But finishing off that conversation with goal number three is that you can absolutely increase your capacity for stress. That is something that with our clients usually comes a little later on in their healing journey. There are a lot of other things that we do. And when they feel like they're like, Okay, my nervous system baseline is resetting, I'm noticing I have way more access to moments of regulation, I'm spending greater amount of times in the green zone, I'm able to be in the green zone more frequently, when their system has more capacity overall. That's when we because to train your nervous system to carry more stress, you have to add stress to it the same way to train your body to be able to lift heavier weights, you have to add heavy load to your body and work with it. And so that's why training a greater capacity for stress comes later. And I think that's obvious. But I always feel like I need to make that clear because I am the kind of person in my healing journey where I hear oh, I can increase my capacity for stress. I'm thinking great. I don't actually have to change anything about my life. I don't have to start saying no to things. Nobody has to be disappointed in me because I don't show up, because I can just work harder first and increase my capacity. But remember, if you walk up to that barbell that's too heavy and try too hard, you're gonna hurt yourself. I hurt myself. My physiology took a real toll that spiraled into years of anxiety and depression contributed to intense ADHD. And it didn't have to. If I had the knowledge, then that I have now the knowledge that I teach our clients every single day, the knowledge that I share freely here on this podcast, the knowledge that is held within the pages of my book will help you live and heal in a new way. 

25:47  
All right, let's bring it together with those three tangible takeaways from today's conversation. 

25:53  
Number one, take your stress seriously. But not so seriously, that it stresses you out. And the actionable for tangible TAKEAWAY NUMBER ONE is, go take a look, go take a listen to that TED talk that I shared in the show notes. 

26:13  
tangible takeaway number two, is that stress management starts with an intentional look at your stressors. And I have an entire four part series that will guide you through that. And I will also link that in the show notes.

26:29  
And takeaway number three is where we finished that when it comes to stress. The three goals are to decrease the likelihood of long term chronic stress, to increase your ability to reset from stressful events more quickly through the vagus nerve. And number three, which is to increase your overall capacity for stress. 

26:49  
And friends. This doesn't happen overnight. This is a long term lifelong journey, one that I love supporting people in every single day. And I'll put one final plug in to go preorder my book not just because pre orders are so so so important for first time authors, which I am, but also because that follow along course that I'm creating that you get totally free when you do preorder is so valuable. If you've ever been curious about what it's like to work with me or to be inside my programs, that is going to be a really great place to start. And you're gonna get this beautifully illustrated book. It's a book you want to be in, it's a book I promise will meet you where you are in your healing journey, and give you tangible tools. And that course will just help you personalize what you get in those pages to you and your journey. All right, links in the show notes for all of those extra resources I shared in this conversation. As always, thanks for being here, sending so much hope and healing your way and I'll see you next week. 

27:55  
Thanks for listening to another episode of The regulate and rewire podcast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and leave a five star review to help us get these powerful tools out to even more people who need them. And if you yourself are looking for more personalized support and applying what you've learned today, consider joining me inside rise my monthly mental health membership and nervous system healing space or apply for our one on one anxiety and depression coaching program restore. I've shared a link for more information to both in the show notes. Again, thanks so much for being here. And I'll see you next time.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai