When 78% of Americans are stressed at work, what do you do? No need to fear, Dr. Jei is to the rescue!
In this episode, I spoke with Dr. Jeremiah Pearcey (Dr. Jei) , a Cognitive Psychologist who specializes in stress management. We talk about stress in the workplace, DE&I initiatives, as well as some in depth talks about various aspects of mental health.
***Disclaimer***
The discussions in this podcast are for informational purposes only, and are not intended to diagnose or treat any health issues. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideation and thoughts, please seek the advice of a physician or other qualified healthcare provider. The suicide prevention and crisis hotline can also be accessed by dialing 988.
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @rebootloadingpodcast
Interested in becoming a guest? Email me: rebootloading@gmail.com
Get in touch with Dr. Jei here:
Websites:
www.drjei.com
https://cosmi.llc
Social media:
IG: dr.jei.p
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr.jei.p
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jei/
When 78% of Americans are stressed at work, what do you do? No need to fear, Dr. Jei is to the rescue!
In this episode, I spoke with Dr. Jeremiah Pearcey (Dr. Jei) , a Cognitive Psychologist who specializes in stress management. We talk about stress in the workplace, DE&I initiatives, as well as some in depth talks about various aspects of mental health.
***Disclaimer***
The discussions in this podcast are for informational purposes only, and are not intended to diagnose or treat any health issues. If you, or someone you know, are struggling with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideation and thoughts, please seek the advice of a physician or other qualified healthcare provider. The suicide prevention and crisis hotline can also be accessed by dialing 988.
Follow the podcast on Instagram: @rebootloadingpodcast
Interested in becoming a guest? Email me: rebootloading@gmail.com
Get in touch with Dr. Jei here:
Websites:
www.drjei.com
https://cosmi.llc
Social media:
IG: dr.jei.p
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr.jei.p
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jei/
00:03
Hi, welcome to the Reboot Loading Podcast. I'm your host, Stephanie. Hello everyone. On today's show, I am super excited to be speaking with Dr. Jeremiah Piercy, AKA Dr. J. He's a cognitive psychologist who specializes in psychophysiology. He was born in California, but he was raised in Tokyo, Japan. And also he is an entrepreneur. He has his own stress management consultancy called Cosme.
00:32
So I would like to welcome Dr. J to the Reboot Loading Podcast. Thank you, Stephanie. It's my pleasure to be here. So thank you for having me on. So excited to talk to you about the path that you've taken to get to where you are and also your journey to getting into cognitive psychology, becoming a psychologist, and now having your own consultancy. It's been quite a journey. And really, if I'm being honest, my journey started in childhood.
01:02
to become a cognitive psychologist. I actually was adopted. My mom had me young and met a white gentleman, and my mom is white, and they got married when I was one, raised me as his own, but I ended up growing up with four siblings that were white. So I grew up in an all-white family, everybody I knew, extended family, and this really caused me to be more cognizant of how people perceived me.
01:31
because everywhere we went, I got stopped. I got stopped if we went to a movie theater, they would ask me for a ticket, but everybody else would walk through the gate. Or we would go to a restaurant, I would get a separate check and everybody else would get one check. And so these events in my early childhood led me to realize that people didn't look at me like they looked at my family. And so it always kind of made me feel different. And it was that difference that really caused me to focus on how people perceived me.
02:00
Fast forward a little bit, I joined the military, US Air Force, as an airborne cryptologic linguist. Just a fancy way of saying I did signals intelligence in the sky. After my first deployment, so I deployed in 2008 and 2009, I went through a very significant stressful event and when I went to the doctor, they found that my blood pressure was about 155 over, I think it was around 90 at the time.
02:26
which was really high for a 23 year old that exercised every day. And they wanted to put me on blood pressure medication. I found myself at a really young age going, why am I experiencing this? I'm healthy, I exercise every day. I'm very cognizant of the foods that I eat and still I'm having these issues. And so it kind of sent me on this trajectory that led me to a master's program where I got an MBA and a focus in leadership.
02:54
Through that program, I had a really good teacher who encouraged me if I had any interest at all to do a PhD. I had learned quite a bit from him, and so I took his advice and ended up doing a PhD. Didn't really know what I was going to do. At the time, I was most interested in travel. After my military service, I had gone traveling, so I sold everything that I owned at 25, and then I backpacked YARP for six months and just went.
03:24
went everywhere, just did whatever I felt like doing in the moment, trying to figure out who I was. And so I had this real intense focus on travel because I felt that I changed so much. And so I get into this program and I start to learn all the factors that are involved in psychology, and especially when we're talking about stress, because we tend to think of stress as a bad thing. But we also tend to think of stress as one thing.
03:54
It is one bad thing that happens to us. But stress is actually just a thing. It's a thing that your body responds to. So that can be a physical stressor, for example, eating spicy food is stressful for your body. That's why you sweat, that's why your heart rate goes up, that's why your breath rate goes up. It's because you're in a state of stress, right? So it's almost like a mild poison, if you will.
04:20
So as I start learning all these different things about my body and my mind and how those things connect, I can start to see how these all tie together. And it really led me then, as we get into the pandemic, to go, okay, there's a lot of people that are dealing with stress. How can I help reach these people? How can I give them tools? How can I help them understand what is going on in their bodies? And that's when I really started Cosme. And Cosme started off
04:50
doing one-on-one coaching with people to help them through their stress. But as we got through the pandemic and I started to run out of personal time, I started to look more to opportunities for organizations because not only were individuals stressed, but at the workplace, there was a ton of stress, whether it was the conditions of remote working or not being allowed to remote work and dealing with COVID.
05:18
dealing with mask mandates, all of that created a ton of stress across the country for different reasons. And so I started to look at organizations. And so the first organization I worked with actually was Goodwill. So I worked with Goodwill and then I've kind of branched out since then. So currently, I work with the Houston Police Department on conflict resolution. So I help them understand stress in the context of conflict and communication.
05:47
and give them tools, resources to be able to better manage themselves in the middle of conflict, as well as learning how they contribute to conflict. So that hopefully, if you know that you're part of the problem as to why somebody can get out of control, if you will, where maybe the use of deadly force becomes something that they're considering or maybe even using, that's what my goal is, is to help them understand how
06:17
they can actually decrease that intensity to hopefully not have to go to those extreme measures. And then I do work with the Veterans Administration. As a veteran, I understand a lot of the difficulty that veterans go through, even from a dependent standpoint of having my dad deployed for the Gulf War in the early 90s, when I was, I think like six or seven.
06:44
And I just remember like sitting in his closet and smelling his shirts because I missed him. And at the time, you know, technology wasn't what it is today. So we got to talk to him like once a month, maybe, or once every couple of weeks, something like that. So all of these experiences have just kind of brought stress to the forefront of my life. And I have somewhat learned how to manage it for myself. And I found some tools and resources. And so my only goal.
07:12
is to try to improve the world by helping people de-stress and hopefully, if the world is less stressed, then maybe they'll actually be more considerate of other people's feelings, other people's lifestyles, and maybe we can just be a little happier overall. I love it. I particularly love the idea of going into these workplaces, these organizations, because I think oftentimes mental health is overlooked.
07:40
in these scenarios. And I know in my life in corporate, the ways that we got, I would say training or any sort of hint of information, I guess, is through these videos. So they would have you do like the compliance videos. So you have to talk about sexual harassment in the workplace, you have bullying and those sort of things. But there was never anything
08:10
Where's the root of those issues? And I think so many companies can benefit from having someone like you come in and actually teach something that maybe some people think is just common sense, but if it's presented in a particular way, it can definitely trickle down. The stress that these folks down here at the bottom of the rungs in corporate America are feeling could be disseminated a little bit.
08:38
by better ways of how you manage it, how do you help it, different tools. And like you said, you're still, you found some tools. I feel like we're always trying to find tools, even if it's your specialty. And I just told my kids that the other day, I'm like, life is literally you just continually reinventing yourself and figuring things out every step of the way. So I'm sure you have a set of tool, like a toolbox that you can just pull out.
09:06
bazillion different things, but it doesn't work for everybody, right? Absolutely. Like, no schools are going to work for every person. I think one of the biggest downfalls of corporate American, how they've handled many different things from stress to DEI initiatives to female employee initiatives, all these different things because they create a program or they hire a company to create a program and they say this program is going to work for everybody and it doesn't.
09:34
It doesn't work for everybody. It can't work for everybody. We're all so different. And so they create these cookie cutter programs to address these issues, but people are so diverse, they don't work. So basically, they use this as a way to say, Hey, look, we have something, but does it work? And oftentimes it doesn't. And that was the eye to a large extent in many places that didn't actually try to create a program that
10:03
gave people tools and understanding resources. Instead, they just got these cookie cutter programs to say, hey, we have a DEI program. And that program didn't do anything. It doesn't help people. It didn't address anything. And so we still have those same issues, which is why we've had a fairly big falling out across the country with DEI. So it's really about finding what it is your employees need and providing those tools and resources. For example, if you think about stress,
10:31
One of the biggest stressors in this country, especially right now after COVID, is financial stress, financial wellness, right? That is a subset of stress though. So it's causing your body a stress response. But if I were to give you the tools, some of the tools that I have, they're not gonna help you address your financial wellness because that's a different problem. You can't breath work your way to you. I mean, you can, right? You can...
10:58
Decrease the amount of stress you experience, but you're not going to get rid of your financial stress by doing breath work, right? It takes a different tool. And that's the same with anything. If you're struggling in your relationship, you know, breath work is going to help you stay calm, but it's not going to help you communicate better. Right. So then you need some communication tools. If you are raising kids, kids are very stressful. You can't use the same tools with them. You have to get a little more creative if you want them to calm down.
11:28
or do their homework or whatever it may be. It takes a different understanding. And so that's really what I try to do in everything that I do. All of my programs are flexible. Nothing is cookie cutter. Everything that I do, I try to make general enough so that people understand it, but can apply it specifically how they need in their lives. So it's giving them tools that then they can kind of change and tailor.
11:58
what they need. And I explain in my courses and workshops and things like that of how it works so that they can then implement it. I really love this idea going along the lines of layoffs that are happening. A lot of people being laid off, especially in the tech space, a lot of people that I've talked to, myself included. And when you said about you can't breath work your way out of, you know, the financial piece, which is as over here giggling because I feel like social media.
12:25
you'll have this onslaught of people who are trying to portray themselves as mental health experts. Oh, yeah. Giving misinformation to where it's like you think that I should be able to just take some deep breaths, I should be able to meditate or whatever, and it's going to make me feel better. And that's not always the case. Maybe like you said, it can help take the edge off of things, and it can help you like have a clearer
12:52
mind space, but it's not going to be the ultimate resolution to your issue. You mentioned about DEI initiatives. And I was over here just smiling and nodding because everything you were saying, it was just giving me these flashbacks of when this started happening in one of my previous corporate jobs when it started becoming like, for lack of a better word, it was almost like a fad for all companies to just start creating this. And it's like,
13:21
What exactly are we doing? And a lot of times, a lot of these employees, they didn't even know what the ultimate goal was. Like it was just, oh, we're going to do this. We're going to try to be more inclusive. We're going to try to add more diversity. But nobody really understood what that was. And again, we would get like a video of something and it's like, what are you trying to tell me? Having those cookie cutter things, like you said, it just will not resolve anything.
13:47
Like I'm wanting to understand from your perspective, from the psychologist perspective, how do you think that companies can handle rolling out those initiatives a little bit better based on your own experiences? Yeah, that's a great question. Based on my life experiences that have led me on this trajectory, what is it that DEI did wrong? And where can we do it right?
14:15
Yes, I mean, I think you were on point earlier when you were saying it was a fad. And I think that was one of the downfalls of those initiatives is it turned into a fad. Oh, you don't have a D.I. program. Well, I'm going to go to this company that has one. And now it becomes a recruiting tactic. And really, I think anytime you start involving money or facets of monetary factors in your decision making.
14:45
it's going to be driven by who can make the most money or where you can make money or where you can save money. And so I think this started off as something that was really good to help people understand what diversity is, what equity is, what inclusion is, how we can create that in our workplace. I mean, that on its face, everybody should be able to agree with. We want everybody to feel that they can go to work and not feel harassed.
15:14
not feel like an outcast, feel like they belong to part of a team. I mean, we call them teams or a team member, but we don't treat them like a team member. And really what DEI should have really emphasized is how having a diverse workplace produces diverse results, diverse mindsets. It allows us to understand our populations that we're targeting better. So for example, if you are selling to people,
15:44
you should know what people in different demographics like, what they want, what they don't want. And if you have a diverse team, they can help you better do that than if it were just all one team of the same ethnicity. And so I think the initiative started as that, but as it became more of a fad and cookie cutter programs started coming out, it turned less and less into, hey, let's help people feel like they belong and more like, to your point,
16:13
This is a training you have to do. Go to this training, just like sexual assault training. And while there are some benefits to that, if you create the perceptions that, I don't know, maybe there's different populations that have to do things differently than other populations, that creates problems. Really what they needed to do was go into these workplaces, assess the population in that workplace, who is it composed of? Who isn't it composed of? Who are they trying to reach?
16:43
Okay, now let's do a training to figure out how we can talk about these issues and help everybody understand why these are important, why these cultural differences are important, how they can help you build a stronger business, how not knowing them can detract from your business. Those kinds of things I think would have made this initiative less of a fad and more of a, hey, let's figure this out together. And spread in the name diversity. I mean, it's just
17:12
It is very ironic, right? And it made me think of when you're saying it really boils down to getting to the root and finding out what the root is. Like you said, you have to go in and see who is working there. What is really needed? That's the same with if I go to the doctor, right? And I'm like, Oh, I have a headache. And I've been having a headache for three weeks now, nonstop. Oh, okay, here's some pain medication or, you know, have you tried
17:39
breathwork. But really, we're not getting to the root of the issue. I love what your your mission is. I really like knowing how you got there and the things that you had to endure the things that kind of shaped you into what makes this important for you. Yeah, working with the Veterans Administration and understanding what it is to be a veteran. You were deployed. Yeah, 2008.
18:06
I deployed in December, I think of 2008 and extended until like the summer of 2009. Being a veteran, having been deployed, you can know firsthand what these people are going through. And that will allow you to have that more personal touch, that more personalized approach to what they're thinking. So I really like this gap that you're filling in. Like you had said earlier about
18:32
almost making these small little changes here and there and like the impact that you're going to make it. It was reminding me of that saying of like one drop in the bucket. Well, there's a couple of different points I want to make. Starting off, that's one of the biggest problems I think for individuals that are struggling is that change takes time. Americans especially do not have the patience they want right now. They want to go to the doctor, get a pill, feel better.
18:59
Right and we've been kind of primed for this throughout our lives of getting things really quickly when we want them and it's created unrealistic expectations when it comes to things like mental health because mental health isn't a one pill and you're going to be good. It's not even I know psychedelics have become a bigger part of culture and now they're being touted as these mental health phenomena that are going to save so many people. They are not a one experience fixes you either it's.
19:29
always a journey and that journey is going to be different for every single person. One person may be able to do it one time and be fine for the rest of their life. Other people may have to do it multiple times or take a substance over a prolonged period of time. But ultimately, this really comes back to one of the biggest issues around mental health and stress in this country, which is what is it? If I asked you to define mental health, how would you define it?
19:59
define it as a singular thing. Because having done so much inner work and change for myself to better myself, I mean, I'm 100% on board with you because there's not a singular thing that can fix it. I'm a huge advocate that everybody needs to be in therapy. It is something that I feel like if more people were in therapy, your mission could get achieved a lot faster.
20:28
something that a lot of people think is just so taboo. I look at it as continuing education for my mind, right? I like that. A lot of people look at it as like, oh, I don't wanna talk about my problems or whatever, but no, you're okay to do a continuing education course for your career. Well, how about do it for your life? That's my stance on it. So I really can't give you a definition of it because I feel like it's just, it's so many things. That's exactly the point though,
20:58
mental health has become so complex with how it's talked about because there's people that talk about it in very black or white You know physical structures they put it in a box of like oh, yeah anxiety this oh depression that and again sets up unrealistic expectations because then people start to think in those boxes, but mental health is an Extremely complex topic there is no one way to help in any aspect of your life
21:28
that will work for everybody because everybody's hormones are different, everybody's life experiences are different, everybody's environment that they're currently living in are different. And so it's really part of what we need to do is strip away the complexity and actually just start talking about things using normal words. Because if I start talking to somebody about anxiety, anxiety is a physical phenomenon.
21:54
It's a physical phenomenon that's caused by your mind, literally caused by your thoughts. You have thoughts that cause a physical response in your body, that physical response sends signals to your brain and goes, hey, we're in fight or flight mode, we need to get out of here, we're about to die. But if you don't know what anxiety is or what is happening in your body, then you might go, oh my gosh, I'm feeling this thing, what is this thing? I've never felt this thing before.
22:25
Whoa, my heart's starting to beat faster. Whoa, I'm starting to sweat. This is weird. Oh my gosh, what's going on? What's going on with my body? I don't know what's going on. And then you have a panic attack, you know, and you hyperventilate to the point where your body's like, oh my God, things are going crazy. Shut it down, shut it down. And then you pass out, right? We've made it so complex talking about all these things. If I say anxiety, it doesn't really make sense. If I say, hey, have you ever felt that thing when you get kind of scared?
22:53
You fill it in your body and it starts to produce these effects. And if we start talking about the actual effects of that, then people can start to understand what we're talking about. But everything is so convoluted, like depression. People can look at depression and you can talk about the neurochemical imbalance and all those different things. I mean, I was just reading about a study today about how they were trying to stimulate different brain regions to help people with emotion.
23:23
then who is going to be able to do that? Right. Who is going to go get their brain electrocuted so that they can not be depressed? I mean, there's very few people that will have access to that. Exactly. And at the end of the day, who understands that? Nobody, no lay person is going to be like, oh, that's the thing. That's the thing. I know how it works. But if you talk to somebody about depression and you go, okay, well, depression starts first with negative thought patterns, just little thoughts of...
23:52
I can't do this. I'm not smart enough to do this. I'm not good enough to do that. And then those kind of grow and it's kind of like it shrinks into smaller circles where then it becomes, you're stupid for doing that. If only you would have done this, you wouldn't have had this bad thing happen to you. And it starts to turn to self-deprecation where you're going, I'm stupid, I'm dumb, I can't do anything. What is this all for? And as soon as you get to what is this all for,
24:20
Well, now you're in such a negative thought pattern that you're going to start contemplating that. What is this all for? Why should I go to work? It's stupid. I hate my job. It's stressful. Everything is stressful. Why am I even here? And now you're into suicidal ideations. Right. And that becomes a problem. But people don't understand that it starts with your thoughts. We can talk about.
24:44
neurological processes and neurochemicals and neuroanatomy and all those different factors. But at the end of the day, nobody can control those. And all of those are created by your thoughts, by your memories, by the things you experience. So if you can change how you're thinking or how you're perceiving an experience, then you can start to change how your body and mind react to that. And it's really just a shift in framing. So I teach people how to reframe things. So instead of, for example,
25:14
I can look back at my military deployment and I was undiagnosed PTSD at the time. And I can look at that and go, that was an awful time. That was so crappy. It was all worthless. I wish that never happened to me. It just ruined my life. I can do that. And if I focus on that enough, it will ruin my life. If I sit there and keep thinking about all the things that happened to me that ruined my life, it's going to ruin my life.
25:44
I can go, that was a really terrible time, but what can I learn from that? How can I take what happened to me, process it in a healthy way, learn from it, and not get into that situation again? And that's kind of the perspective that I've taken. And the more I take that perspective, the easier it is to not judge myself or shame myself, because that's another thing that happens when you get into negative thought patterns is you start judging yourself, start shaming yourself.
26:13
you know, more self deprecation, you start judging your image, brings everything into focus. But the minute you just go, OK, this happened to me. I didn't really have control over that entire situation. So what can I learn from it so I don't repeat that? And also, how can I help others not repeat that? And suddenly you start thinking about it differently from a standpoint of what are the factors that cause that to occur? And can I explain those to other people?
26:43
so that they don't have those happen. And that is a huge shift. Yeah, that's a lot to unpack. Let me tell you. That was a lot. There is so many things I wanna say about all of this. A lot of the people that I'm talking to, myself included, with dealing with a layoff and the mental ramifications that that has. When you were saying how your thoughts start spiraling, talked about this a lot with others.
27:12
on how it becomes such a blow to your confidence level, you start questioning, am I good enough for anything? And really, you start to see that spiraling into your own life. Like, I'm questioning, am I a good mother? Like, can I even do this? And I like how you were saying, you know, it starts with those thoughts, because I'm sitting here going, Yes, exactly. And then my thoughts are going and doing exactly what you're saying.
27:41
The other thing is, what is anxiety? What is depression? And something I saw earlier today was a post, I forget what social media site I was on, but it was talking about like pop psychology terms where a lot of people are just throwing around these terms of that's a trigger for me, but they don't really understand what a trigger is. A lot of things you'll see now is narcissist. They don't really understand what a narcissist is from the standpoint of
28:11
the actual mental health DSM definition of these things, right? So I feel like in a way, social media and kind of these pop cultural, you know, fads, if you will, are helpful, but also harmful because people are understanding a little bit more about the wide variation of different mental health issues that can come up, but they're not getting the proper information.
28:39
about it. So they're hearing the terms, they're like, okay, that might be me. But I feel like there's so much misinformation out there that people aren't understanding. And that kind of leads to this taboo of mental health is whatever. It's like, let me go to the gym and focus on my physical like, well, and the last thing I was going to say is you were talking about PTSD. So I was diagnosed with PTSD, probably I forget how many years ago, it's been a long time.
29:09
And I'm lucky to have survived through it. It was caused by a driver under the influence. And I remember going through that time where I didn't know what was going on. So those sensations that I'm feeling, and when you were talking earlier about, you know, you start breathing heavy and you're like, why am I sweating and all those things and nightmares and different things. And I remember.
29:35
my own experience with it of going to a therapist and then basically telling me like, I think you need to do EMDR therapy. And what in the world is that because never heard of it. It was relatively newer at the time. But the one thing that they explained to me was the thoughts and how they the analogy that was given to me was like,
30:01
you have your brain, your brain has all these thoughts, and then what ends up happening when you have this traumatic experience that they start attaching themselves to things that you may not ever notice the correlation to. So that's the thought patterns going down, down, down, down. Like, it was so crazy because for me, one of those things that I remember is, as I'm going through this therapy,
30:26
I would smell like this smell and I had no idea where this was coming from, but it was like a berry scent. And it was actually the air freshener that I had in my car at the time of the accident. But I would just randomly like that scent would come into my mind. It was almost like I'm really smelling it right at that moment, but I didn't ever know what that was. And my brain was trying to connect it to so many things, but through the process of therapy,
30:55
you know, one and done process, I had to figure out like, where were all these coming from? Likewise, all the other thoughts that I had that tied themselves to that one singular event for me, I had to go in and basically cut all the strings to all of those thoughts to take them away from that particular experience. Yeah, I am so passionate about as far as being more open, especially in the workplace, about mental health. I feel like that's one of the places that it's
31:25
still the biggest taboo. Yeah, it's the biggest taboo, but it's one of the places that we need it the most. I mean, I think there was that the American Psychological Association did a study, it was either 22 or 23, but they found that 78% of Americans are stressed at work. 78%, it's like, I mean, what is it? Our country is somewhere close to probably 400 million now, somewhere between 350, 400 million. So you're talking about hundreds.
31:55
of millions of people that are stressed every single day going to work. But they spend usually 8 to 12 hours there. And if you're in one of those really high stress jobs, you may be working for more than that. Especially if you're in a larger organization, you are an executive or someone in a managerial capacity, it is stressful. We did talk about the complexity with talking about mental health. So one of the things that I've done to get away.
32:25
I think mental health is too convoluted of a term. And not enough people understand what it is, and more specifically, they don't understand how to help it, right? With physical health, you know, you can go to the gym, you can lift weights, you can walk on the treadmill, you can do the elliptical, you know, all those things. We know physical health. Mental health is a little different. And so I've stopped calling it mental health, and I actually call it mental fitness when I work with people, because I want them to understand
32:54
It is a fitness. And the more you work on it, the stronger your mind will become. It will become more resilient to stress. It will become more resilient to negative thoughts. It helps you not fall into those thought patterns, those depressive cycles. Because now you kind of understand how your mind is working. Similar to, you know, if you do a ton of sprints, because you're trying to get faster with your sprint, you're gonna learn over time how to move your legs a specific way.
33:22
how to move your arms in conjunction with your legs to produce the amount of energy you need to propel yourself forward, right? At the fastest speed that you can. And so it's really getting to the point where we're going, okay, let's think about what's going on my brain today and let's do some mental fitness things. And then again, measuring, because people want instant gratification, this is a process. So I tell everybody I work with at least eight weeks.
33:52
Give it eight weeks. It takes about eight weeks for a habit to form. And there's reasons for that in the brain because it takes your brain time to rewire itself in that way so that it becomes habitual. Until you get to that point of understanding that this is something that requires effort, it's not something that you're gonna do overnight, it's something that you're gonna do your whole life, just like your physical health. And I don't understand why our society has kind of just
34:21
I vacated that premise where it's just, yeah, you just do this one thing and you're going to be fine. Don't have to worry about anything again. No, no, no, this is you're going to do this your whole life. And the more you do it, the better you'll get to the point where you'll do it subconsciously. And now you don't have to put as much conscious effort into it, but you will need to do it your whole life. And another thing real quick that I wanted to touch on that you kind of evoked is how memory is stored.
34:50
So EMDR works. Memory is actually stored using the various stimuli attached with that event. So, for example, in your car accident, that smell might have been something that you, you know, I don't know the condition, you know, if your car was upside down or whatever it was. But if you couldn't just get out of your car right away, it may have been one of the one things that your brain was like, I can ground myself with this. I can smell that smell. And, you know, you can see everything going on around you, but it's a
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key part of that memory. Thus, you know, when you do things like EMDR, it can kind of evoke, like sometimes people get that smell and they'll go, oh, I can smell the thing from my car accident several years ago. Weird. But it's because they triggered that memory. When you said about it grounding you, I don't think I ever thought about it that way. But one of the memories that I have are one of the thoughts that came up through my EMDR is I could see that swinging back and forth.
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Um, so in my, in my mirror, the, uh, the rear view mirror, that is wow. All these years later, I mean, that is, that could very well have been where the root of it was. So, yeah, that's great. And that is a trigger. That is what a trigger is. It is an aspect, not the whole memory, an aspect of the memory that
36:18
causes your brain to jump into that neural network. Because remember, your brain is like a system of roads. So you can think, like some memories will have a bunch of brain space devoted to it. And each one circles in their own thought patterns. So, you know, we could call like this one, your workplace. So whenever you're at work, you get into certain thought patterns because of what you do at work and who you're around and how they actually ping the neurons in your brain by talking to you.
36:48
And so we have all these different networks in our brain. And so our brain jumps from network to network to network, depending on what we're doing, who we're with, what memory is evoked. And that's where this all comes in, because memory is stored with multi stimulus. So it can be smell, touch, you know, sight, sound, all those things, depending on what you are focused on at the time.
37:16
So I gave this example actually the other day of let's say you're walking down the street, you're walking past the convenience store and you see the convenience store getting robbed at gunpoint. Right. Immediately your brain is going to go danger, fight or flight response. You're going to kick that on. Your heart rate is going to go up and you're going to start looking for a way out. But whatever you focus on is going to be encoded in that memory. So if you look at the dude and you see the gun pointed and you go, I got to get out of here.
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and you just turn around and you look for where you're going. You may see a red car pass you, and then you run across the road, and then maybe you find an alley and you go into this alley and you hide behind the dumpster. And as you hide behind the dumpster, you can hear the door shut and you hear the footsteps running down the road. And so you're listening intently, waiting to see if they're coming closer or going further away. And that's all you're focused on. So when the cops come and they ask you and they're going,
38:13
I have no idea. I don't know. I was not worried about what the dude was wearing. I was worried about the red car past me so I could get to that alleyway. You remember the red car because it was a key to you escaping that situation. You may remember something like a smell if you were like by a sewer. You're like, you know, as you're getting across the road, that may have been a thing that triggered a memory. But as you're sitting by the trash can, if you're smelling trash,
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footsteps running down the road. In the future, if you smell trash, you may be triggered. It may produce that same response where you're like, oh my gosh, why do I feel this way? I can feel my heart rate going up. Now my breath is going, now I'm getting scared. Why am I scared? What's going on, right? But you are triggered by that same thing. So really the more you understand yourself, and this is why therapy is essential for everybody, why everybody should be in therapy, because the more you understand about yourself and how you're going to be,
39:12
how you respond to events like that, the better you can actually, in those moments of panic or anxiety, you can go, oh, this is because, you know, I had that one event and I sat next to a trash can. It's nothing to be worried about. But if you don't understand that, your brain just wants to find answers. And if it can't find an answer, it will just keep going and going and going and going. Why do I feel this way? What's going on? What can I do? I don't understand why this is happening to me. I guess I'll go to the doctor because I don't know what else to do.
39:41
You go to the doctor and they don't know what to do because most of them aren't really well versed in panic attacks and how that all happens and what's going on in the brain. They're not psychologists. So it's such a weird thing that we don't talk about this in society. Even though if you watch movies, they use these kind of tricks in movies all the time. And I even think to some degree that writers for TV shows and stuff are...
40:09
maybe even better than a lot of psychologists. They actually have to get into people's heads and understand what would happen with that trauma, how that would impact their life, what would that look like, right? They have to put a lot of thought into that. I was just thinking of movies like Bird Box. I don't know if you've seen that one. I remember watching it going, who thought of this? Like, what was going on in their head? Like, what is going on here? And...
40:37
My daughter and I are really into watching Grey's Anatomy right now. I swear every time I'm watching, I'm like, Shonda Rhimes, like, oh, because she's great. The show is brilliant, but it's always like touching like certain things and talk about triggers in there. Oh, my goodness. Like they just know how to pull all the emotions out of you. Yeah. Triggers that happen in the workplace. And when you were saying like 78% of people are stressed out, right?
41:06
I worked at a company that had multiple rounds of layoffs and it was almost like anytime we had an email that was kind of cryptic or impromptu phone call that was happening, it was always that triggering like, oh my goodness is like this the end for me? Is this it? And it happened so much over the course of the time that I was there that when it happened to me this past time, it was like I knew it at that moment. I knew it and something
41:36
I don't want to say triggered in me, but it was it was a trigger that happened to me because I had had that experience so many times before that this time was just no different. But it was it was actually me being let go versus the other times of me hearing about people being let go. But it was that repetitive memories that I had, I got that cryptic email, you know, and all those things that built up but
42:04
I feel like if we had more people like you going into these workplaces, we could have a better foundation altogether to bring that stress level down, bring those workplace triggers down, take out a lot of that toxicity, build up people's fitness. And, you know, I think that's a great point. And really, I don't understand why we haven't made greater moves there because making employees happier, decreasing their stress,
42:34
Those kind of things are what are gonna keep people there. I don't understand why they can't just see if you treat people with a level of decency and understanding and just try, just try. It doesn't even take like actually implementing every single thing, but try, talk to them, understand. That's free, right? Create, yeah, it's free. Doesn't it cost them money? Yeah, it's free to ask somebody a question. So if.
43:01
People at the top, CEOs, started asking their leaders these questions. Hey, are you feeling stressed? What's going on in your world that we can actually address here that would help you have less stress? Oh, we can do this one thing and this is affecting the majority of our leadership? Let's fix that one thing. Oh, this one thing actually help the employees too? Interesting.
43:24
Right. And you can create a trickle down effect from leadership too. You don't have to change everything overnight, but you do have to start asking questions. Well, Dr. J, I would like to say thank you so much for the conversation today. It has been amazing. As you can tell, this is one of my favorite topics. I love all things mental fitness. I love what you're doing. The mission for your consultancy. It really is more than a drop in the bucket.
43:53
And I would love to have you back on the podcast. If you are open to chatting with me again. Absolutely. Wonderful. I have so many questions and so many things I would love to chat about. I will include all of your contact information in the show notes to where if someone would like to reach out to you, maybe get some more insight in what your consultancy does. Also your LinkedIn profile information so they can link up with you on LinkedIn.
44:23
Yep. It has been an absolute pleasure and I'm looking forward to speaking with you next time. All right. Thanks, Stephanie. Yeah, it's been great talking to you and I look forward to the next time we get to do this. If you're interested in becoming a guest on my show, all the information on how to contact me is available in the show notes. Also, if you're enjoying the content and would like a shout out in an upcoming episode, a link in how you can support this podcast is available in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening and until next time.
44:51
you