In this episode we're talking about the things we consume daily and how that all affects our stress levels and ability to cope.
This includes the music that fills your ears, the shows that catch your eye, and the company you keep. This episode peels back the layers of your daily 'diet' of experiences, revealing how they mold your emotional and physical state.
With a focus on aligning our actions with our aspirations, we delve into the power of our personal stress responses and how identifying and adjusting our behaviors can propel us towards our goals.
You'll have a chance to take a look at some telltale symptoms of stress that may be lurking beneath the surface—those mood swings, sleep problems, and sneaky coping mechanisms that signal it's time for a change.
I share my own encounters with nervous system dysregulation, the signs of irrational irritability and anger, not being able to express myself or remember anything, and more along with the strategies that have steered me towards balance.
Get in there and give it a listen!
Stress Inventory
Resources:
Manage Your Stress Mentorship
Discovery call
You can find more about Brain-Body Resilience and JPB:
On the BBR Website
On Instagram
On Facebook
Sign up for the BBR newsletter
In this episode we're talking about the things we consume daily and how that all affects our stress levels and ability to cope.
This includes the music that fills your ears, the shows that catch your eye, and the company you keep. This episode peels back the layers of your daily 'diet' of experiences, revealing how they mold your emotional and physical state.
With a focus on aligning our actions with our aspirations, we delve into the power of our personal stress responses and how identifying and adjusting our behaviors can propel us towards our goals.
You'll have a chance to take a look at some telltale symptoms of stress that may be lurking beneath the surface—those mood swings, sleep problems, and sneaky coping mechanisms that signal it's time for a change.
I share my own encounters with nervous system dysregulation, the signs of irrational irritability and anger, not being able to express myself or remember anything, and more along with the strategies that have steered me towards balance.
Get in there and give it a listen!
Stress Inventory
Resources:
Manage Your Stress Mentorship
Discovery call
You can find more about Brain-Body Resilience and JPB:
On the BBR Website
On Instagram
On Facebook
Sign up for the BBR newsletter
What is up? Hello there, my name is Jessica Paching Bunch, you can call me JPB, and this is Brain Body Resilience. This is a podcast dedicated to growth, human development and stressing a little bit less so you can go ahead and live a little bit more. Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Brain Body Resilience podcast. I am your host, jpb. This is episode number 166.
Speaker 1:And today I want to talk a little bit about identifying some of the factors of stress and how we can work to change the conversation that our bodies, systems, are having, creating some of the stress, or intervening Is that a word? It is now Sounds funny Anyways the interventions that we are using to help shift that conversation. So we are looking at identifying the stress that we feel, how it shows up, and then how we are contributing to that, and that one can be. A tough piece of that puzzle is how we contribute to that and how we can also change that through a lens of curiosity and kindness, rather than shaming and blaming. And so I want to start with our diet, our intake, and that does not just mean what you put in your mouth. I know we have talked about this here before and I am going to say it again because it still needs to be said and a lot of times we just need to hear the reminder. So the information you consume each day becomes the soil from which you grow. It is the information that you take in that becomes the soil from which you grow. This shapes your perspective. This helps change your state of regulation in your nervous system. What we consume creates us from the inside out. So when you are thinking of what is contributing to the stress that you are dealing with, remember that it is not just coming from the major events in your life. It can be the little things that you might not think of, like the music you listen to. What are the lyrics? How does the music sound? I imagine you know what it feels like to get really pumped from your favorite song or want to dance when you hear a song, or get sad remembering something through a song a time of life, a breakup, etc. Music is one of the best things that I can think of to help shift mood in one way or another. It elicits emotion. We get emotional responses to these things because usually it brings up a feeling in us or a memory. So what you intake affects your perception of what is going on around you and inside of you. What kind of emotions are being generated here?
Speaker 1:What are you watching on TV? What kind of movies are you watching? Are they intense, suspenseful and fearful? Thrillers, horror? How do you feel watching these things? Are you feeling anxious to? Your muscles get tight and tense, are your shoulders up around your ears? Do you have a hard time leaving all of that aside when you shut off the TV, or does any of that tension and fear stay with you?
Speaker 1:I know for me, this is why I don't watch any scary or super suspenseful shows or TV movies whatever. I get super tense and anxious watching and I get scared. Afterwards I find myself checking all of the closets and enter the bed and I have a lot of super intense dreams, nightmares, or ruminate on the bad story, the scary things in the movie or the shows, and so I know this about myself and I choose not to feed myself this type of content because it just increases my anxiety and I get scared, so I don't do it. So we also have to think about what are you reading? Who are you spending your time with? What are you eating and drinking? Because, yes, that also plays a factor. Are there any of these things that are filling you up? How do these things feel? What are you getting from these things, the things that we're choosing in these areas? Do they feel draining?
Speaker 1:Paying attention to some of these things is where we have to start, because awareness always comes first. We can't do anything about something we don't know about. So asking ourselves the question what am I doing with my time and is it getting me closer to or further away from my goals? And first we have to kind of back up and ask do I even know what my goals are? Do I know what I'm trying to achieve? That has to be step one. How is it that you want to show up for yourself and for your loved ones? How do you want to feel? What does that look like to work towards your goals? What would it feel like if you were able to stress less and then have the space to go ahead and live a little bit more, getting an idea of where our stress might be coming from and how we're spending our time and how that is affecting us. This sets you up to take action, to be able to affect change in how you feel in your life.
Speaker 1:And so, what is your diet? What are you feeding yourself Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, all of these things and is it getting you closer to or further away from what you want, how you want to live, how you want to feel? As we are identifying these things outside of us, we need to also remember that it's not about the stress or the external event that is happening. It is about the internal tools that we have, the capacity that we have to cope with, to process and to release these events. And knowing what your diet is, what you're taking in this, can help identify where we can work to build capacity. What tools will be the most useful in these moments where we need attention? One of the first steps is the ability to address and work with your responses to stress and being able to identify how you respond to stressors. It can show up in a variety of areas. It usually is behavioral, emotional, physical, social, cognitive. These are kind of the main five areas that we see, these expressions of our response, the manifestation of how that is affecting us.
Speaker 1:If we think first just about overall change in activity levels, this one caught my attention right away because so much of the time we like to keep busy to avoid the discomfort of facing the thing, acknowledging the feelings. I'm so busy. I'm so busy I don't have time for myself. I don't have time to sit in silence. I don't have time to focus on my breath. I don't have time for nervous system hygiene. I don't have time for me because then I might not be able to deny that I need help from myself or from others as well. I might not be able to ignore myself and my needs any longer, and when you don't know how to be with yourself, this can be really fucking scary and overwhelming because you don't know where to start building that relationship.
Speaker 1:There's another side to the change in activity levels. If we're not keeping busy, just working on whatever, it is, going a thousand miles an hour to try and ignore ourselves, we might also notice that we're becoming less active. Where we don't want to do anything, we stay on the couch all day or in bed, frozen by overwhelm, and the answer to this is to get moving, which is the last thing you feel like doing. But we know that there are immense benefits from movement, including burning off that arousal energy from the stress response triggering the release of numerous neurochemicals and hormones and proteins that give you a mood boost, help your brain health and help affect change in the physiology. And so those are the two kind of thoughts that come to my head when we think about just immediate change in activity level, which we generally tend to do, one of these things when we're really stressed out. And here are just some of the other most common kind of symptoms or expressions of stress and some of the ways that I can identify with for myself and how I respond to chronic stress and what dysregulation patterns look like for me and I know that I'm not alone here.
Speaker 1:I start to notice when I'm really stressed out, when I haven't been doing my nervous system hygiene, I am irritable, very easily irritable. This has changed a lot, actually, just saying that out loud, I realize how much that has changed for me over the last five years or so Since I started doing a lot of work with my nervous system hygiene, stopping to listen to myself about what I need, less criticism, less judgment, less blame, less shame and more exploration and more curiosity towards how can I build a better relationship with myself, with my physiology, with my psychology, with the stress responses that I have. So you know, yay for me, always celebrating all of the wins, acknowledging all of the wins, acknowledging all of the hard work that we're putting in, because then we have that reference to be able to pull from later. I am making progress. What I am doing is actually changing things. It is changing how I feel, it is changing my responses to these stressors, and so I'll pull back from that.
Speaker 1:Tangent Irritability, outbursts of anger, frequent arguments, hostility, rage, depression those can all be telltale signs that your system is overwhelmed with stress. A lot of ways that a lot of us choose to cope in increased use of tobacco, alcohol, drugs, sugar, caffeine, spending money. I think there's something interesting in our consumer society where we kind of joke about retail therapy. But that is a real thing that people try to do because it gives you an immediate little burst of joy. It's not actual joy, but you get a dopamine hit from the anticipation of the pretty little thing you're buying and then that fades very quickly. So that is a coping skill for people. So when we see those tendencies to smoke more, drink more, use more drugs, eat more sugar, that's a big one for me. When I'm stressed out, I just want, like, some ice cream, some chocolate or caffeine, and this one is huge because we find ourselves needing a boost because we're fatigued. So we have some caffeine, which then just ramps up our system and increases that adrenaline production and then we're in a cycle. So those are things that we can look at. What are our behaviors in those areas?
Speaker 1:Also, if we're looking at changes in sleep patterns either sleeping more or sleeping less, or interrupted sleep, or it's harder to fall asleep any of these things can signal that your system is in a high stress state. Denial this is a super common one. I'm fine, I'm just busy, I'm fine, I'm just tired, and those things might be true, but that is not the whole story. So, yeah, you're tired, you're busy and you will probably be fine. That doesn't mean that there isn't something that needs to be addressed there Increased anxiety or fear. Anxiety is a response to stress. It's your body's interpretation of that stress and those sensations that come with it.
Speaker 1:We can look at vivid or distressing dreams. These ones are. I know for me, when I'm really stressed out, I have distressing dreams I would call them nightmares and then we're not, and then that is also affecting our sleep. You're not getting the rest of the night's sleep because your system is still ramped up, playing out while you're sleeping. Digestive issues are a telltale sign of an overactive stress response Upset stomach, nausea, diarrhea, all of these things Because when we are in a heightened state of arousal, digestion is not a necessary function and so it gets all kinds of out of whack.
Speaker 1:Another sign is that you're easily startled. This one for me I'm startled by everything, and that is a sign that you are in constant high alert state. You're hypervigilant about what's going on around you, and when that happens you would think that awareness is more expansive, but your focus actually narrows and so you lose kind of what's happening in your periphery, and so then you are easily startled. We also have a slowness in thinking, analyzing or comprehending, limited attention span. These are all kind of ways that stress shows up and affects cognition. Also the inability to stop thinking about the disaster or incident or just what you perceived as a disaster or incident. This one I know well, mostly in social situations where I think that I've done something appalling, withdrawing or isolating from people, from your friends and family, your loved ones, and then feeling isolated and lonely and insecure about those relationships.
Speaker 1:Difficulty sharing ideas is another one where cognition is affected. This is one that has been super frustrating for me over the years, just hanging out with friends and trying to communicate opinions or ideas and not being able to say words or get my ideas out. And then I don't feel seen or heard or known because I'm unable to participate in these conversations in the way that I would like to, and it doesn't feel good and then kind of wondering like why can't I do this? Why? And also like why, why are people having a hard time? I'm losing this conversation, I guess, is what I start thinking. And it's because I'm having difficulty sharing these ideas.
Speaker 1:And again, knowing what's going on biologically, physiologically. That there's an explanation for these things can give some comfort, because then we can address it. I'm like, oh, I just have no ability to communicate anymore, but this is a sign that my system is overstressed and I need to do something about it. I need to pull one of these tools that I have, maybe in this immediate moment, and also it is a sign that I need to be paying more consistent attention to my nervous system hygiene so that I can get out of these high levels of dysregulation, criticizing and blaming. These are big ones for a lot of us, both internally and externally. Let me tell you that if you are doing this to yourself, it will come out and spill over others around you. So that is a good sign that you are dysregulated and need some attention to yourself.
Speaker 1:Also, difficulty in giving or accepting support or help this one is huge, not being seen as a burden or like you're not strong. Asking for help is something that I think is really hard, especially given our hyper-individualistic society that we live in, where we're always told you should be able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and really just tough it out, and that is just not true. Healing comes in community. We are social creatures. We are dependent on social connections. Mental health is dependent on community and social care. We're not meant to do this alone, and so we have to learn to accept help both from ourselves and from other people.
Speaker 1:So these are just a few of the identifiers of stress as they show up in your mind, in your body, in your social relationships. There is a pretty extensive list of stress response identifiers that I found through the New York State Office of Mental Health and I've linked that in the show notes if you want to head over there and look at that so you can explore a little further how stress shows up for you in your body and how you are currently responding. It might be surprising, some of those things, maybe that we didn't think about how we show up and then we see them, and I think it gives us something tangible to then explain how we're feeling and understand that there's a way that we can interact with that. So I recommend that, because being able to identify these signs of stress helps us to know what is happening, which helps us to then again address it faster and more effectively. If we can't name what's going on, if we can't identify it, we can't really work with it. I'm really fucking stressed out. Okay, yes, and what does that look like for me? What does that feel like in my body? What does that sound like as I interact both with myself internally and my others and others around me, getting a little bit more curious, having a better understanding of what that means.
Speaker 1:Because, again, awareness always comes first and until we can identify when we are in an elevated state, we can't choose to pause and assess how we can take action, to begin to respond differently, to steer our nervous system into a more balanced and regulated direction. And on that note, by the time we're seeing some of these symptoms. That means we're in a chronic stress state. It means that we need, maybe, acute intervention. We need that immediate attention to our nervous system, which is what some of these tools are for, and if we are using them on a regular basis for nervous system hygiene, it is going to lower the chance that we've reached these elevated states, because we are working daily to help return our nervous system to balance, to build a threshold, build a buffer in our threshold for stress, and to expand our capacity and our ability to tolerate the annoyances, the irritations, the stressors. And so when we're paying attention on a daily basis, or very frequent basis anyways, we have a better chance of being able to pause and assess early on before we reach a point where we just need to put the fire out.
Speaker 1:Our nervous system is always seeking to balance, and everything we do is either promoting a return to balance or pushing us further out into dysregulation. There is so much in the world that we cannot control most things actually, and so focusing on what we can control is the only thing that we can do to ensure a bit of peace, a bit of care for ourselves and any certainty that we have some control over what we are feeding our nervous system. That is it for today, wishing you all a beautiful week. I am so grateful you're here spending your time and attention to our most valuable resources, and you know that I don't take that for granted. If you found this episode useful, please do share it with a friend so that they might also find some use in it. We'll do this again. Until then, peace out.