Humans Leading

Lessons I've Learned the Hard Way: Active Stress Management as a Pathway to Less Overwhelm

• Dr. Jillian Bybee • Season 1 • Episode 5

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On this episode, Dr. Bybee discusses her process for navigating the inevitable stresses of daily life, active stress management, which she has been refining since she first experienced burnout 8 years ago.

Instead of being one more thing to add to your to-do list, this practice consists of strategies to incorporate into your day in order to feel less stressed and less overwhelmed.

If you're feeling overwhelmed and looking for a place to start, tune into this episode to learn about:

  • the stress continuum
  • the power of one degree turns
  • how to turn down the volume on your stress response 


Resources mentioned in this episode:

Join me for more over on social media:


If you’re ready to kickstart your journey (or your team's journey) to a less stressed life, I’m ready to help you! You can get in touch about 1:1 coaching or inviting me to facilitate a workshop for your group, get in touch via my website. 

SPEAKER_00

Hello, and welcome to Humans Leading, a podcast aimed at restoring the well-being and joy of high achievers who have burned out on their way to success. I'm Dr. Gillian Bivy, a pediatric critical care medicine physician, medical educator, coach, and leader in well-being and professional development. I use my personal experience with burnout recovery to help others do the same. This podcast is for anyone looking to move beyond hustle culture in order to find true fulfillment and well-being. In each episode, I share practical solutions on a variety of topics, including limiting beliefs, stress management, leadership, well-being, and more. If you're looking to feel less stuck and redefine what a successful life looks like for you, this is your podcast. Come join me. Hey, and welcome back to the Humans Leading Podcast, the podcast that helps high achievers break free from the cycle of overwhelm in order to get past your burnout, find more joy, and create the life that you want to live. I'm your host, Dr. Jillian Bibe, and today I'm really excited to bring you another episode in the Lessons I've Learned the Hard Way series, where I share what I've learned with the hopes that you'll be able to use these lessons in your own life. The reason I call this series Lessons I've learned the Hard Way is that these are not one and done lessons. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on what your mindset is, these are things that I've had to learn over and over and over again. Sometimes I take a few steps forward, often I take a few steps back, and I find that each time I learn something new, and the practice sticks a little bit better so that it's not as hard the next time. If you didn't listen to the first episode in the series about stress mindset, which was the episode just before this one, I highly recommend you go back and listen to it. That episode helps you frame the difference between good stress or challenge stress and distress or negative stress, and that discussion on negative stress is really what we'll be digging into today. Before we get started, I really want to be clear that these tools we'll talk about today have not completely eliminated the stress in my life. I think that's impossible, and as I mentioned in the last episode, it's not even desirable. But these things have made a huge impact on my day-to-day experience, and I think they're a key part of why I haven't experienced full-blown burnout again or have a relapse of my depression. I think they can be the same tools for you, but they're not a substitute for professional help when you need it. If you find that you're feeling hopeless or have other symptoms of depression, or you're experiencing significant levels of distress where you feel overwhelmed all of the time, that is a signal to you that you need professional help in the form of a counselor, a therapist, or a psychiatrist. And there is nothing wrong with that. I needed those people in my own life as I was recovering from my burnout and depression, and there's no shame about it. Especially if you're a healthcare worker, there is a significant portion of us who experience mental illness as a result of the very difficult jobs that we have. And the mindset that we are helpers, not the people who need help, is not helpful to us. This was something I had to let go for myself, and it's still one of those lessons I have to remind myself of when I'm struggling. With that disclaimer out of the way, we are going to talk about one of my favorite topics and one of the things I most commonly get asked to speak about when I go talk at events, and that's a process I call active stress management. And all that means is stress management that we are in control of, stress management that we take ownership of. For me, this is a lesson I've had to learn over and over and over again. Because at an earlier point in my life, I didn't take ownership of my stress management. I did what a lot of people who are busy and overwhelmed do, which is push things down and keep pushing forward, not thinking about my own well-being. And that is eventually what led to my own burnout. I once heard someone say that burnout first knocks, it gives you opportunities to respond to it. But if you don't listen to burnout and overwhelm, eventually it's like a bus that runs you over. And that's really what happened to me. Because I didn't listen to it and take the time to stop and think about what I might need to do differently, eventually it ran me over and I was forced to stop. And at the time, I was not grateful for that experience. But I think what I know now is that by experiencing burnout and really hitting the point of rock bottom, I got to confront the ways that I had been doing things and the ways that I wanted to make changes in my life going forward. One of the ways I started doing that was by reading a lot of books and also listening to a lot of podcasts. Maybe that is what led you to this podcast. I find that a lot of people have that experience. And while the process of looking at content outside of yourself and learning from experts can be really helpful, the true work of stress management actually comes from inside of ourselves. And I think that's the thing I had to learn the most and continue to have to learn the most, is I have to stop and carve out time to look at what I need at the moment. There is not a one size fits all solution for me or for you. There are different tools that work for different times. And as I recently discussed at a workshop I was leading, there are different tools for different seasons of life. If you have a child like I did two and a half years ago, or you have a job change or a life change, that really changes how you can incorporate these practices into your life or feel like you can't incorporate them into your life. And so regularly setting aside time for yourself and space to think and feel is really important. And we'll dig into that in another episode in the future. Because one of the limiting beliefs that a lot of us have is that we don't have time to carve out for ourselves. We don't have time for stress management. And the thing that I would say is if that is your mindset, you won't have time for stress management or for yourself. But I think if you're listening to this episode, something about your life or the knowing voice inside of you is telling you that you deserve stress management. It is telling you that you deserve time for yourself because you are not just a human doing, you're a human being. And in order to continue being, that requires time and space and care for yourself, not because you've earned it, but because you deserve it simply by being alive. You deserve to experience the full range of human emotions, including the negative emotions and also the positive ones. And you deserve well-being. My favorite definition of well-being and the definition that was the foundation for my practice of active stress management comes from Emily and Amelia Nagoski in their book Burnout. In that book, they define wellness as not a state of being, but a state of action. And that really spoke to me when I read it. I thought, yeah, wellness is a state of action. It's the things that I choose for myself in order to keep me going. And the reason I like this definition so much is that burnout is about feeling like you're out of control or that you don't have control over parts of your life. And so when you're thinking about active stress management and wellness as a state of action, that automatically puts us back into the driver's seats of our lives. It lets us choose daily practices that allow us to get a step forward out of the overwhelm that we're currently feeling. And each time that you tell your brain that it's capable of something, you get a little dopamine hit. That makes you feel good. It also tells your brain that you're capable of things, and it reminds you that you can keep being capable of things in the future. So how do you get started on that? That's the question I get asked the most often. And I think really, just like anything, and just like the song and the sound of music, you start at the very beginning. You start by noticing where you're at right now on the stress continuum. The stress continuum was something that was designed by the Navy in order to illustrate where people were at at any given time. It goes from green to yellow to orange to red. And if you're more of a visual person, I'll put a resource for you in the show notes. But on this stress continuum, you could picture where you're at right now. If you're a stoplight, from green to red, what is your current level of stress? If you are a green or a yellow, these practices of active distress management are for you. If you're an orange, they might be for you. And certainly if you're a red, these practices can be helpful, but like I referenced a while ago, if you are a red and experiencing a lot of distress and dysfunction, you need professional help, and there's nothing wrong with that. In order to help you get a better idea of where you might be at right now, I'll help you dig through the levels. So in the green level, which is the ready level, this is the optimal functioning level. This is just like a stoplight. You feel ready to go, you feel well trained and prepared, you feel in control, and you feel physically, mentally, and spiritually fit. Maybe you have a mission or a purpose that you're out to achieve and you feel capable of achieving it. This is great. This is a wonderful place to be. It means that you're feeling motivated, you're feeling capable, and you're likely not experiencing burnout right now. But maybe you experience a little bit more mild or transient distress. This is something that might be irritating at your job, at your home. And this can lead to you feeling irritable, anxious, or down. This is something that's put you into the yellow zone on the stress continuum. It's really something that's bumped up the stress level. Maybe you feel less motivated, less focused. You might also be experiencing physical symptoms like muscle tension or other physical changes. This can lead to a sensation of not having fun. It also can leave you less motivated. And so it's in this zone of yellow where you really want to restore yourself with practices that we'll talk about to help you get back to green. If you're starting to feel more chronic states of stress that leave you feeling like you've lost control, maybe you feel panicked or ragey, or you don't feel like your normal self, you don't want to engage with the parts of your life that you would normally engage with, you're getting short with people. These are signs that you've gotten into the orange zone. And this zone can be really tricky because some of these practices of active stress management can be helpful. But also when you're experiencing this more chronic form of stress and distress that leads to wear and tear on your body, this is where it starts to get helpful to engage other people to help you. They really serve as a mirror for you to be able to look at what you're currently doing and see if you need to make a change. And the reason for that is that the orange zone of stress is really high risk for development of mental illness, like depression or anxiety, and also puts you at risk for substance use problems. And without intervention, these things can have very serious consequences. That's why I'm so glad that I recognized my own depression when I did, and I went and got help in the form of therapy and medication, because I'm still here to talk about it, and that might have been different otherwise. So as I've been talking about these zones, green, yellow, orange, red, you may have been keeping track of where you are right now. And I just want to commend you for that. It doesn't matter if you're green or yellow or orange or red. Wherever you are is where you are, and you can choose to start today to take steps to get closer to where you want to be. And you don't have to do this all at once. One of the most helpful concepts I've found for digging out of the bottomless pit of burnout comes from life coach and author Martha Beck, and she tells us to start with one degree turns. If you imagine yourself as an airplane on a long distance journey, if you turn one degree every 300 miles, you'll end up in a completely different destination than you originally set out for. And if you think of your life as a long game, that allows you some space to start to choose things today that will put you in a completely different destination in a year than you would if you didn't take those steps. So if you find yourself in a place where you've been doing nothing for your own self-care, nothing about your stress management, that means that today you get to choose to do something. And you can choose from a variety of practices that we'll start to talk about now. As we've been talking about stress, we've really just been talking about one part of the nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system. If you think of your body like a volume control, the sympathetic nervous system is the thing that turns the volume up. It gets you ready to go, and it can get too loud at times. And so what we need when we get too loud is practices that turn the volume down. And those are my favorite practices. Those are the things that involve the parasympathetic nervous system. That's really the rest and digest part of our nervous system that we can engage when we feel distress or we feel like we're getting into that yellow or orange zone. That's the thing that turns the volume down and allows us to rest and recover. The cool thing about these practices is that you don't have to have a lot of time to do them. They are scientifically based and they help you recover within your workday. So, unlike a lot of what the wellness industrial complex is selling us, we don't have to have extra time or extra money in order to do these things. They can be done in the moment, or they can also be done after a stressful event in order to help you recover. One of the fastest ways to engage your parasympathetic nervous system and turn the volume down on your stress response is through breathing. There are a lot of different ways that you can do that, and we'll just touch on a few of them here. The simplest way that you can do it is to take a deep breath in for a count of three and exhale for a count of six. Anytime that you prolong your exhale longer than your inhale, you're engaging the vagus nerve, and that really is the nerve that helps activate the parasympathetic nervous system and produce that state of calm. Simply by taking one to two rounds of that breath, which can take just a few seconds, you have engaged your parasympathetic nervous system and you have given yourself space between this current moment and the thing that caused your stress cycle to activate. That allows you to respond to whatever is happening out of a more regulated place than you otherwise would. And it's really been this practice that has allowed me to take pauses during my day when I feel stressed out, to have better interactions with my colleagues and those who I'm teaching. I'm sure if anyone who is listening to this has ever worked with me, they would tell you I'm not perfect at this practice just because I do it. But I would say that I'm a lot better at it than I used to be because I've started to take a deep breath when I start to feel stressed out. Another more formal type of breathing that you can do to activate your parasympathetic nervous system is called box breathing. That's really where you imagine your breath like a four-sided process that involves taking an inhale, holding, exhaling, and holding. There are a lot of videos that you can find on the internet about this to lead you through it, but really what you're trying to do is make each one of these phases the same length as the others, and it's really the holding and the exhaling that activate your parasympathetic nervous system by activating your vagus nerve. An example of when I use this practice was the other day when I was in the parking lot. I had been rushing from helping my son get a haircut to the grocery store so we could get a treat and get groceries. I had to get him home in order to meet my parents and drop him off at my house so I could get back to work for meetings, and I found myself rushing in the parking lot. I was trying to get into my car, and luckily a woman who is older and more experienced was trying to get into her car at the same time, and I apologized to her as I was in her way, and she looked at me and said, Honey, life is too short to rush. And I thought, oh yes, here it is again. It is too short to rush, and I am rushing. I am currently in the cycle of stress where I feel pressured and like I need to move faster and faster because I'm never going to get everything done. And here the universe has sent me this person who has a wonderful message for me. And she stood there while I packed my stuff in the car. She smiled and then she drove away before me. And as she drove away, I smiled, and then I did one of these box breathing practices for a few seconds. I just did a few rounds and I already felt better. So it was a combination of her compassion and then also the recognition inside of myself that I needed to take a minute to do it something different. And that really allowed me to re-engage with the moment, to be present with my son, and to get all of the things done that I needed to do. And I didn't have to rush to do them. I was able to do them more out of a green zone than out of a yellow zone. Another way to engage your parasympathetic nervous system is through laughter. And I love this one, it's really helpful. And in this moment that I was describing in the parking lot, I also use laughter. Sometimes I laugh when I discover that I have to relearn these lessons because it's a natural human tendency for you to repeat the same things over and over again. If that's your default programming, it will likely come up again. And sometimes I laugh because I find it funny. Being an imperfect human is kind of hilarious sometimes because we do make mistakes and we don't do things perfectly. And it has taken me a long time to get there, but laughter has allowed me to put a little bit of space between myself and the stress as well. Another way that you can do this is by laughing with someone else. I think many of us have had that experience where you're bent over laughing so hard that you're crying with somebody else, and afterwards you just feel elated. The process of laughing itself can release a lot of feel-good hormones, and that can directly lead to you feeling less stressed out. And so that combines laughter and the next one, which is a positive social interaction. And I'm really careful to say positive when I talk about this, and I have to remind myself of it when I engage with people in discussion, is we have to stay positive in our interactions. It can be really tempting to fall into patterns of negativity and getting stuck in a cycle of sharing and complaining. But really what I've noticed about myself is when I complain with people and I bitch and I listen to them bitch, it just makes me feel worse. It leaves me with less energy, it makes me feel more stressed, and I feel more depleted than I did before the interaction. And so I would ask you to do the same thing for yourself and notice who are the people who really light you up? Where are the interactions that you want to go to? Who's helpful when you're stressed out? Start to notice those things for yourself, and that's really how we can take an active role in our own stress management. Now, none of this means that we can't share our negative experiences. I think it's incredibly important to be able to share authentically with other people, feel acknowledged by them, feel validated for our experience. That can really help us move forward too. And we can do the same for other people. But I am saying that we shouldn't be only stuck in the negative experiences and to be doing that 100% of the time because that will lead to more stress, and that stress will lead to burnout. That's why burnout in organizations is contagious because one burnt out person has a lot of negative energy that they're putting out there, and that can get inside of you and get you stuck in the negativity as well. So it's just important to remember that we need a balance of both things, negative and positive. And then if you're feeling negative all the time, you can take that as a sign that maybe you're starting to experience burnout or one of those higher levels of stress on the stress continuum, and then it's time to get some help. I've certainly noticed for me when I'm starting to feel a little bit like I might be heading toward burnout or one of those higher levels of stress that I get more irritable. I feel rushed, as I did in the parking lot story. Those are my signs. Not everybody has those signs, not everyone gets outwardly angry. Some people have shutdown or freeze signs. I think it's just important for us to get to know what we do when we're in levels of stress, and that helps us take the steps forward that we need. Another way that we can release our stress is through a big cry. And I laugh about this one when I talk about it at work because a lot of people in healthcare don't feel like they can cry at work. And I like to tell them that I don't often cry at work, though I sometimes have. I prefer to cry alone, which is why I have a playlist on Spotify called Songs to Cry To, which I'll link in the show notes if anyone is interested. It has 52 subscribers now, which I just think is interesting. I think it means that not only do I need an outlet for crying, it means that other people do too. Because sometimes life is stressful and sometimes we experience grief and other hard emotions. And if you've ever had a big cry and then experienced a relief at the end, it's because the crying itself also releases those feel-good hormones and it tells your body that things are okay. So don't knock it till you've tried it. And if you want some help with crying, check out my playlist. The last strategy that we'll talk about today is moving our body. And I'm really careful when I talk about this to say moving your body and not exercising. exercise, because I think exercise has the connotation that it has to be done outside of our workplace, whereas moving our bodies can be done at any time. For me, this looks like when I have a stressful moment or I know a stressful moment is coming up, I go on a walk. I put on my headphones, I put on whatever kind of music feels good to me in that moment, and I move my body. Sometimes I walk up and down the stairs for two to five minutes. Other times you can find me in the basement of the hospital system dancing down the hallway. It normally only takes a few minutes of music for me to start to feel better and feel like I'm back in the green zone, ready to face whatever it is I need to face. And it's not a huge part of my day. Of course I like exercise and it's actually the most evidence-based way for us to recover, but we don't always have time to do it during our days, especially when we're taking care of patients or other demanding jobs that we might have. And so it's important to incorporate more low stakes, more frequent activities and moving our body. And that's how you do it. There are a lot more ways for us to manage our stress and I could make this episode a lot longer than this, but I think this is a good starting point. It outlines five different ways that we can start to impact our stress today within our days by activating our parasympathetic nervous system to turn the volume down on our stress response. As a recap, those activities have been breathing, laughter, positive social interaction, a big cry, and don't forget about my Spotify playlist if you need help, and moving our body. By starting today and using the power of one degree turns, we can spend somewhere between 30 seconds and 10 minutes taking steps toward a less stressed life. You can choose to start today and over time by choosing over and over again you'll end up in a completely different place than you are right now. If you've enjoyed this podcast I hope you'll share it with a friend or someone who needs it and please leave a rating and review because that's how people find this podcast more easily. If you're looking for more resources on this topic I often share them over on my substack which you can find at humansleading dotsubstack.com. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time

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Dr. Jillian Bybee

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