DSTRESS Podcast
D STRESS is a podcast hosted by D and Caz that re-frames stress as communication, not pathology. Using factual, simple, common-sense guidance, the show helps listeners understand themselves better and make lasting improvements to mental health and well being.
You don’t have a stress problem.
You have a stress understanding problem.
Most stress advice jumps straight to coping techniques.
D STRESS starts with explanation.
Stress is not random.
It’s a predictable biological process driven by stress hormones.
When you understand how those hormones are activated —
stress becomes easier to manage.
What D STRESS Explains
- What stress actually is (and what it isn’t)
- Why stress hormones stay active longer than necessary
- How everyday thoughts and behaviours influence stress levels
- Why awareness changes reduce stress more effectively than willpower
No life overhaul.
No motivational pressure.
Just understanding that leads to change.
This Podcast Is For You If:
- You feel mentally or emotionally overloaded
- You’re tired of vague or conflicting advice
- You want explanations that actually make sense
- You’re ready to understand stress instead of fighting it
DISCLAIMER
D STRESS is an educational podcast and learning programme focused on understanding stress through awareness and insight. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and does not replace professional healthcare. Individuals experiencing significant or ongoing distress are encouraged to seek appropriate, qualified support and to remain informed and actively involved in decisions affecting their well being.
DSTRESS Podcast
Episode 3 - Stress Touches Every Corner Of Life
Stress doesn’t knock. It moves in quietly, fills every room, and calls itself normal until the body says otherwise. We take a clear, human look at how stress shows up across four parts of life—health, work, relationships, and the often‑ignored SPF trio of social, personal, and financial—and why naming it early changes everything. Caz opens up about living with Type 1 diabetes, the years of masking with a smile, and the shock of non‑epileptic seizures that followed periods of relentless overwhelm. We explore how functional changes like FND can emerge without structural damage, what white coat syndrome reveals about everyday stress, and why managing the nervous system isn’t a nice‑to‑have but the foundation for stability. Our through line is practical: even when a diagnosis is fixed, stress literacy can make self‑management steadier, routines more reliable, and flares less disruptive. From there we unpack the everyday CCT's that keep the stress response switched on: misaligned jobs, tense conversations, financial uncertainty, and the noise of contradictory advice. Instead of chasing every new tool, we return to basics—black‑and‑white steps, one change at a time, chosen for your brain and your life. We show how to spot CCTs (change, challenge, threat), how to use simple language shifts to calm the body, and how micro‑habits across SPF—time‑boxed scrolling, bite‑size hobbies, and clear money rules—rebuild predictability when everything feels fast and loud. The result is a calmer baseline that makes better choices possible across all four areas. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with someone who needs a gentler lens on stress, and tell us: which of the four areas is calling for attention today? Subscribe, leave a review, and send your story—we’re listening.
Stress is the biggest killer in the world.
Speaker 2:Welcome to De-Stress with D and Caz. Both our crowning achievements for not ending our lives. So we're talking about mental health.
Speaker 1:Too many of us are suffering silently. So go grab yourself a cup-up.
Speaker 2:And let's get real and raw because you are worth so much more. Hi and welcome to this episode. I'm D. And I'm Caz. As a result of talking about the realities of stress, we came offline and decided that well, the next natural subject we ought to talk about is where and how does this thing called stress affect us all in our everyday lives. There are four areas where this thing called stress affects us. The first one is our health, as we've already discussed, both mental and physical. The second one is our work. The third is our relationships, and the fourth area that I've lumped into one is called the SPF, which stands for social life, personal life, and financial life. So those are the four areas that stress affects us all in one way or another. And we're just going to have a general conversation, and you can work out yourself just where your stress affects you most in your life. So just a little recap CCTs. Change, challenge, or threat. We use the term CCTs instead of the known word trigger for any of those things that change, challenge, and threaten you. So a great introduction this is to Caz's experience of when she first came to meet me and what her CCTs were. Over to you, Caz.
Speaker 1:I'm going to tell you a little bit about my story and my journey and how stress impacted my life. As I've said, um, my world turned upside down. That's why I went to see D. Um, I've always been somebody that smiles, everyone calls me happy Caz but I I do believe that stress was creeping in, but I masked it with a smile until one day I was unable to. And what happened to me was I got a life-threatening illness, which is called type 1 diabetes. Um, and this is this is me trying to explain to you how if you don't understand your stress or accept it or take responsibility or are aware of it, this is the impact it could have on people. I'm not saying for one minute that anybody that has high stress levels will end up being a type 1 diabetic. I'm just explaining to you how stress impacted my life and how it changed my life forever with type 1 diabetes.
Speaker 2:So may I just interject there, my darling, by saying that type 1 came as a result of a traumatic experience. Absolutely, and stress I was overwhelmed and it's quite common actually, not necessarily type 1, but I've heard of cases where actually know people that have had um serious car accidents and their whole head of hair has turned white within a few days. That's the impact that trauma can have on a human body.
Speaker 1:Absolutely huge how the body responds. But I believe that my brain was so overwhelmed with stress that I didn't deal with, that I didn't take responsibility for all until I met you. I was totally aware of, and this is how my body it impacted me because I didn't deal with stress and be aware of it.
Speaker 2:If I remember rightly, you were told when we first worked together that stress didn't even have a bearing on type 1 diabetes.
Speaker 1:I was, and I did a course um 18 years ago actually, and stress they would not accept that stress was a part of it. Um but now I actually did the course for a second time, and they now believe that um type 1 diabetes comes and it's stress related. The CCTs in us is what can bring it to the surface, and that's exactly what happened to me. Um I've been type 1 for 18 years now. It's a difficult illness to live with, but here I am.
Speaker 2:Oh, she's just underdoing that, I'm telling you. I've seen so much with type 1 diabetes that I never knew existed. So, all of you out there with type 1 diabetes, we understand you. I salute you. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I understand you.
Speaker 2:So, would you say, may I ask you a question, that would you say that what you've learned about stress and how to manage it and doing the things that, you know, apply the principles that you've learned, that you have managed your type 1 better than you would have without it?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, it's been given me a tool, and I believe that's the success of my story and my trauma of being a type 1 diabetic and managing it on a daily. I mean, being a type 1 diabetic, you have to manage it every minute, every hour. People don't realise that it is actually a disability, but it's a hidden one. However, type 1 is very difficult to manage, let alone without stress, but with stress on top, has a huge impact in your life.
Speaker 2:I I just still to this day, after all these years, as much as I understand you and I appreciate what you've been through and you know how much I've learned a lot, but I still don't know enough about type one. Not that I don't want to, but I think we're so strength.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:I just feel that it's important for all of those out there with type one who have um or anybody with stress challenge in their life, on you know, aside from just the normal challenge, CCTs, with type one diabetes, it's a double whammy because people are just so unaware, and I think that's part of uh reasoning for joining up together because we I've witnessed your experience of type one and the the blindness of the vast majority of society to it, and not because you want to make it that everyone's taking you, um, you know, you're important and everyone's got to look at you and understand you, it's absolutely the complete opposite with you. But type one is something that people just underestimate, they do not realise. And I do I just feel really strongly that I'd like type one to be, you know, we would bring it to the surface and raise people's awareness to the importance of managing it, and and for other people who haven't got type one, for taking into consideration people who have got type one and how it affects their lives, as you say, most people are so quiet, personal, they don't really want to express what's going on, which actually you have no control of when you're having hypos because it's impossible to do.
Speaker 1:So that is exactly how I lived my life behind a smile, smiley Caz, and wasn't aware at the time before I met you um that stress was sneaking in because it is a snake, it does creep in and it goes into all your bluff vessels through your veins, and it impacted me in um and to be honest with you, if I can be honest, I've not always in the last 18 years managed my stress levels um perfectly, so I want to be honest about that. And there was a point where I stopped taking aware, stopped being aware, taking responsibility, life gets in the way like it always does to all of us, and I was so unaware with my diabetes that my brain actually went into complete meltdown and I started having seizures.
Speaker 2:Non-epileptic. Non-epileptic seizures. And on that note, although today is not about that, it also brings to mind the subject of the very new condition, disorder of functional neurological disorder, FND. There are more and more people now being diagnosed with FND, which is exactly what's happening. Your body is functioning in a way that there's no actual problem with your setup of system, it's all functioning differently because of stress in your body. So, in those, so that the the area of our health, if we think about um, let's have um a scenario where we're using the doctor's surgery as an example. Every single person that goes to the GP now, even if they walk through that door and they're not going in with a stress-related condition, stress is always an underlying byproduct. Yes. Because of it being the natural thing that it is, because of change, challenge, or threat.
Speaker 1:So But you know that tone that um what's the word when they try and say, say if you're going into a doctor's and like you say, you're not actually going in about stress, but they take your blood pressure and they call it is it the white coat coat syndrome. White coat syndrome. You're actually sort of thinking about if your thumb hurts or another area of your body hurts, but because you go into and what a perfect example of CCTs. Yes, and that's challenge that subconsciously is that what you you're you're actually thinking about stress. It happens so naturally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's everywhere. Unfortunately, it's everywhere, but that's what our job is in this show is to actually bring you, bring your attention to the fact that you need to start catching it and doing what you need to do. So the health side of things with stress for most people is very um all day, every day, to be honest. It's everywhere you look, every health condition you've got, no matter which way you look at it, upside down, inside out, back to front, it is gonna be there as a byproduct. If it's not the actual cause of your health condition, it will be there. And so you have to take it into consideration or take into consideration managing your stress with regard to whatever health condition you're experiencing.
Speaker 1:But if you don't manage your stress, this could escalate certain um health conditions and an expeding rate if you don't learn.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like like your example of pseudo-seizures. Yes. When you have so much um challenge with your condition as a type one diabetic, can you know things can I mean it's a lot more than that, as people you know, they don't know all the details at the moment, but no, obviously they will come. But bottom line, um the the way people think about stress is it has to be a problem before you do anything about it, but in all seriousness, it's there without you even realizing it's creeping up like that slithery snake Caz is talking about, and it's in all of the conditions and symptoms that you have. It's in everyday life, and we all carry it all the time. Anything that's challenging you has changed or is a threat, is all down. You feel what you feel is all down to stress. It's all down to your brain, producing the stress hormones in your body, which is another reason for us to keep hitting home that not dealing with your stress, not understanding your stress, not knowing what the mechanics of it are about, is your downfall when it comes to your health. So it's the bottom line of you being healthier and happier and having better quality of life if you manage your stress efficiently and effectively. No matter which way you look at it, it's there as a byproduct, it's a common denominator. There is no escape at all when it comes to your health.
Speaker 1:You've heard it from the past.
Speaker 2:So let's go into the next area of all of our lives where stress creeps in. So even if you're the healthiest person on the planet and you don't have any issues with any system in your body that's causing any bad feelings or just disruption, let's think of the word health disruption. You don't have any of that, but you're in a relationship that you're not happy in. What is that doing to your stress system?
Speaker 1:Or if you're not happy the way your parenting is going.
Speaker 2:Even even an adult child with parents that are challenging you, it's a stress issue.
Speaker 1:Either either way. I mean, we're just pointing out the basics to make it so that people understand it's relatable to everybody. It could be any kind of stress or issue or problem in your life. Not necessarily just a relationship, it could be something to do with work, could be something to do with your driving skills, could be something to do with you're not happy with the way you've cooked dinner tonight.
Speaker 2:You're just getting too good at this. Jumping ahead, it's not on my bullet points to talk about cooking. However, you're absolutely right. So the areas of our life that it affects is every single one of them. There isn't an area of our life that it doesn't creep into.
Speaker 1:And it affects every single person on our planet.
Speaker 2:100%. And it's only when you don't like the way you feel, or you're very unhappy about a particular relationship, or you're very unhappy about a particular job, or the fact that you don't have any money, or your social life isn't great, every single thing that you can think of that you're not happy with, or that you're challenged by, or that needs improving, the bottom line is stress.
Speaker:Rivian is more than a clothing brand. It's positivity in motion. Kindness is always in fashion. Cozy comfort wear that reminds people they're never alone. One drop of kindness can change a life. You wear the drop. You become the ripple. Together, we make the wave. The Rivian Ripple Revolution. Check out the Rivian clothing brand on our Shopify store.
Speaker 1:So let me put this one out to you, Dee. Do you think back years ago, 35 years ago, when this happened to you and you were learning to understand stress, because it wasn't spoken about, it was almost easier to the extent when we jumped 35 years on, and now we have all this technology, all this information. you learnt this by yourself and taught yourself. Whereas now we have too many tools, too much information. Absolutely. I was just trying to understand that because mental health is spoken about a lot now, trauma spoken about, trigger spoken about, but again, it's not fully explained, then words are just flippant and thrown out there. Where you started 35 years ago to understand the word stress because trauma wasn't used in and trigger wasn't used in. Um is it almost now when people are trying to understand their stress levels that, like you've just explained, there's too much information.
Speaker 2:Absolutely 100% stress you out, even more so. Yes, yes, yes. And that is the issue. There's far too much going on, which is creating more stress response than ever before. It's massively a contradiction. So, on the subject of contradiction, um, I love podcasts and listening to them, and there are thousands of them, as you know, and I won't say the one in particular, although one day I will, because I really feel strongly that I would like to be on these podcasts.
Speaker 1:Um, but 50% you'll be there.
Speaker 2:50% of the subject matters spoken on podcasts are literally contradicted with the other 50%. So which one do you listen to?
Speaker 1:Yes. Which one almost believe in add to your stress all the time? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Unless you can manage it by opening your mind to the fact that take whatever you feel, which is how I learned or what I learned. I I took what I believed worked for me and made sense to me, just the small bits, and then I left the other bits because they didn't make as much sense or they were contradictory. And I just thought, no, I won't use those or think about those. I just use the bits that worked. Um, but then not everybody's got that mindset where they can do that. They're they're bit of bit like total followers, and they don't want to not take all of the information, but that's the problem. It's not all the information fits your brain and your reactions and how you've logged and stored and folded, what stress means to you.
Speaker 1:And it's almost like taking it back to basics because the way technology is going, um, all the information that's being fed to us is far more complicated than actually the speed that the brain can go at.
Speaker 2:Black and white.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:We need black and white information, and and basic, total basics, basic, simple, common sense, basics.
Speaker 1:Again, which technology seems to think forget about. Yeah, childlike.
Speaker 2:You're not gonna get to the uh core, and that's what we're about, I'm about in terms of teaching, is the foundations. Without the foundations on which to put the information that's out there on, none of that's gonna stick.
Speaker 1:Do you know why I I like when you say sort of it's designed for a child? Because okay, we're we're adults, um, but we was a child once. And sometimes if you look in the mirror, you don't feel like you're this age or that age, and you can go back to a child experience. So this resonates with you know, not only children, but throughout our whole life, from being a child and how we proceed into the future and how we carry ourselves and our stress.
Speaker 2:Uh do you know what? Talking about children and this, I designed it around a 10-year-old brain because that's the capability I had at the time. I could not I could hardly think, let alone learn. However, I do believe that you have to be in a position where you can take responsibility as an adult. So I would say from sort of 16, really, some some people at 14, 13, even 12, you know, look at our our time in life, mine especially being born in the 60s, you know, we were working at 12 years old. We had a much more adult outlook and approach to life as it at a younger age. Not that the children today aren't capable, but it's a different world, as we know. But I tend to feel that the the the teachings and what I do share and get out there for people, I'll give in terms of information, you have to be of a responsible age to be able to apply it. So it's not for all children, but the basic principles a child could understand, but the depth of it is much more for a responsible adult type brain for obvious reasons, as we know that you know, your brain's still developing up. You're about 27 or 28, I think. Mines still developing. Okay, so yes, a simplistic approach is what we're about. And it's massively crucial, actually.
Speaker 1:In all areas of life.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, totally. And the and the other areas are social life, the personal life, which are things like, you know, if you've got hobbies and things like that. If if you're not doing something that you want to do, say you're a football fan but you cannot watch the TV because your sky system's broke, well, your stress response is gonna come into play. You know, you haven't got enough um money to pay your bills. Stupid example. Anyone's gonna be stressed with something like that. However, you may be a person who's got plenty of money but um don't really know how to spend it properly or invest it properly, it's really affecting the the whole stress issue. It is universal for every human being, old and young, and it's in as you say, every single area of our life. So if you've got problems at work with not necessarily the people at work at work, because there would be relationships within work, it could be the fact that you're not happy in your job, or you don't believe in what you're doing, or you've lost the passion, or you feel overworked and underpaid, uh, just don't agree with the the the the concept of the the company that you work for. It's just everywhere.
Speaker 1:Which then goes into another area of confidence, self-worth, and that escalates and puts negative thoughts on the brain.
Speaker 2:Let me use a date here from 1992. I started collecting press cuttings of everything that I perceived to be a reason for our brains to produce a stress response. So when you read a newspaper, um every single article that's in it, literally, if you look at the human element of those articles, it's full of stress. And it was overwhelming, the evidence of how much stress the role plays in every single aspect of life.
Speaker 1:I love this because some of the biggest professors in the world um didn't bring their books out till a few years later or years later. So the fact that you did all this, Dee, by yourself.
Speaker 2:Very good point. Um the fact that you've dragged that up and I wasn't even aware that you were gonna say that. But yeah, um yeah, I'm very presenting.
Speaker 1:Ahead of your time, way before. You had no internet, you had no AI. This has all come from I still don't use it.
Speaker 2:And I'm not into social media either. Which is another um story, I suppose. But actually the reason I don't use social media is because I do not believe the impact it's had on society has been healthy.
Speaker 1:Especially the younger generation growing up.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So which is why SPF, social, personal, financial is an area of life which creates massive stress reactions and stress responses in our bodies, because people are so unable to manage the challenge of these new technological concepts that we are uh we've been inundated with really bombarded with. And I'm not saying they're not great in lots of areas because they are, and we all know it.
Speaker 1:That comes back down to the choice, though, doesn't it? And your four C's. Yeah. I feel like that every time I switch the TV on and used to have one channel when I was younger. Yeah. Now there's 800 or more, and I spend more time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And we're oblivious to it. It's it's almost become an unconscious thing now that that's what life is, and that's what we've got, and that's what we've got to deal with. And it doesn't have to be like that at all. We just need to become more conscious of what's actually happening, more aware. And I know that you know, awareness is a buzzword at the moment, you know, becoming more, it's not necessarily spiritually aware, but awakened. Lots of lots of people are now becoming very blatantly aware of how they feel and how they don't like the way they feel. And then it's because of all the things that we're talking about that we've been bombarded with, and you know, we haven't even gone into food. We've not even talked about food yet.
Speaker 1:But obviously, that comes into the health side of things when it comes to I understand what you're saying about you know, catching your thoughts, especially when you're having a negative thought, catching it straight away and being responsible. I call it the karate chop. That's Caz's way of dealing when I start to feel something negative.
Speaker 2:But that comes back to the awareness. Most people are not even aware of the thoughts that they have or the words that they use in their verbal outward language, how much that is keeping the stress response active. Because they don't understand the mechanics again. Let's talk about the rate and pace at which our world has developed in the last hundred years. Our brains and bodies are just not designed to manage that. It's extremely fast and getting faster. And the stress response is overworking beyond belief. No wonder we're having all of the conditions health-wise that we are now having. I mean, that's not even mentioning the likes of ADHD, etc. Another episode, no doubt. But yes, so the four areas of life for every single person that exists are health, mental and physical, work, relationships, and the SPF, social, personal, and financial. If you can think of any of those areas of your life where you are thinking, feeling, and acting in ways you don't want to, it is always all down to excess stress in your system. So if you learn to manage that excess stress in your system, you will 100% feel, think, and behave better. And the quality of life will just increase. So just have a little look at your life and think about which of those areas of your life you are producing unnecessary stress levels that you can change and manage. Get in touch with your stories. So, Caz, today's episode really on reflection has been about how stress affects the four areas of life for absolutely everyone. No matter which walk of life you're in, what job you are, what position you are, it's every single person that is affected. You cannot take it away from anyone's life. The fact that you don't suffer with stress is because you are managing it really well.
Speaker 1:Everybody on this planet is dealing with some kind of stress, their own stress. So if you've got any questions, stories, reach out to us. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
Speaker 2:Stress is everywhere, and it's winning if we stay quiet.
Speaker 1:If you or someone you know could benefit from hearing our podcast, please follow and share.
