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Embracing Stress: Understanding Its Role and Building Resilience – Part Two · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

0:08
Speaker 1: Eating a good diet because of the epigenome and the
0:14
Speaker 1: impact on the cup microbiome. About doing regular physical exercise,
0:19
Speaker 1: you know, doing sport. I told my kids whenever foreign
0:23
Speaker 1: you need to do a team sport and a martial
0:25
Speaker 1: art and you can do either. You can do any
0:28
Speaker 1: of any of those, but they're important for different reasons,
0:30
Speaker 1: and you can stop at any time, but you need
0:33
Speaker 1: to find somewhere else to live if you do. But
0:37
Speaker 1: I was kind of joking about that bit. But but
0:40
Speaker 1: what else?
0:41
Speaker 2: What else?
0:41
Speaker 1: If we're throwing into the mix with you having done
0:45
Speaker 1: so much experiments on this, you know, and giving them
0:49
Speaker 1: greated exposure. I think part of this is you don't
0:54
Speaker 1: just throw them into the deep end and let them
0:56
Speaker 1: sink or swim.
0:57
Speaker 2: It's just out slightly outside of our capabilities to just
1:02
Speaker 2: stretch them with that.
1:04
Speaker 1: What anything that I've said in there, that's that's a
1:07
Speaker 1: bit of a flag.
1:09
Speaker 2: And what would you add to it as well?
1:13
Speaker 3: No, I think I'm wor I'm worse. So when you
1:17
Speaker 3: say that you tell your kids that life's amazing, it's
1:20
Speaker 3: right hard. My life's not amazing that you just got
1:21
Speaker 3: to work through that. Things happen all the time. And
1:24
Speaker 3: I don't know if I'm building like resilience monsters or
1:28
Speaker 3: like what I'm doing, but it's it's not on purpose.
1:33
Speaker 3: It just goes back to like my background. My parents
1:35
Speaker 3: aren't graduate from college, Like I had to earn what
1:38
Speaker 3: I did, and no one's ever given me any and
1:40
Speaker 3: I come from that. The way I do things is
1:42
Speaker 3: about curiosity, drove in approaching difficulty, and I think I'm
1:49
Speaker 3: one of my kids have been different, were very fortunate.
1:54
Speaker 3: I'm very lucky that I have position I'm in, but
1:57
Speaker 3: they have not had to go through the difficulty. They
2:01
Speaker 3: had never push through anything that was uncertain. There's always
2:04
Speaker 3: that there's always a safety net. There's no safety net
2:07
Speaker 3: when I was when I was pushing through things, and
2:10
Speaker 3: that's that's that's the one thing. And like you guys
2:12
Speaker 3: got to like you have to be uncomfortable. I don't
2:15
Speaker 3: know how to do this to you because you're never uncomfortable,
2:17
Speaker 3: Like you know that, like, no matter what happens, it's fine.
2:21
Speaker 3: But sports are the best thing we found with helping
2:25
Speaker 3: with organization, with social development and also like failing in
2:30
Speaker 3: a comfortable way, and you mentioned martial arts and like
2:33
Speaker 3: team sports. This is the first year. I let my
2:36
Speaker 3: son play football, American football, and it's it's such a
2:41
Speaker 3: different sport than a lot of other things that he's
2:43
Speaker 3: always done, like baseball or or others finally like soccer
2:48
Speaker 3: or whatever. But football is like if this person misses
2:52
Speaker 3: a block, I get hit really hard. Like my well
2:54
Speaker 3: beings dependent on some other person. And so that social connection,
2:57
Speaker 3: that social just reliance is such a different thing. My
3:01
Speaker 3: daughter is fencing and it's such a mental.
3:04
Speaker 4: You have to train your brain so clearly it hit
3:08
Speaker 4: little aby bitty areas and ignore other things that and
3:12
Speaker 4: she's eight, she starts and she loves this.
3:16
Speaker 3: They both respond to very different things though. That's one
3:18
Speaker 3: thing that I never wanted to force my kids into
3:20
Speaker 3: doing something I want them to do. It was always
3:23
Speaker 3: let's let them see what they want to do, how
3:25
Speaker 3: they work, like their natural inclinations. But then like hey,
3:30
Speaker 3: like if you're in a commit, you commit. That's it.
3:34
Speaker 3: And having the social aspect of it I think is important.
3:37
Speaker 3: Where especially with stress, is that we're usually addressing stress,
3:41
Speaker 3: we're usually dealing with stress is not malaw these other people.
3:46
Speaker 3: And even in individual sports, there are more martial arts
3:49
Speaker 3: type sports or things like tatassmings of golf. You're still
3:53
Speaker 3: there's still people there and learning how to leverage those
3:56
Speaker 3: social resources. We talk about resources, demands. Can I take
4:00
Speaker 3: on this team? Be whatever? This is? Well, part of
4:03
Speaker 3: your resource calculation is other people. It is a social
4:06
Speaker 3: environment and that's a super important growth area for kids.
4:10
Speaker 3: And I think playing video games isn't quite good at this,
4:13
Speaker 3: playing like all my computer games isn't really doing this
4:17
Speaker 3: in a meaningful way. And so we're trying to get
4:20
Speaker 3: people just to be present and to be real that.
4:24
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important part that I bang
4:29
Speaker 1: on about as well, is that challengeing threat response. Right,
4:32
Speaker 1: So clearly, clearly we are better to be in a
4:35
Speaker 1: challenge response. But as you said earlier on, and we
4:40
Speaker 1: can only really be in a true challenge response if
4:43
Speaker 1: we perceive that we have the resources to deal with
4:47
Speaker 1: the issue or to make the demands of the stressor.
4:50
Speaker 2: And you think.
4:50
Speaker 3: About your just think with your bio. Think with your
4:53
Speaker 3: body is like it doesn't know what's going on. Your
4:56
Speaker 3: brain is what's telling it. I have the ability to
4:59
Speaker 3: dealers for a not your body's there to help you
5:02
Speaker 3: survive and optimize the response to what you need. So
5:06
Speaker 3: do you think you can't deal with it? Your body's like, okay,
5:08
Speaker 3: we're going to die, help you survive? Cool, see you
5:11
Speaker 3: no to day challenge like we're going to use on
5:13
Speaker 3: address it back to when those states is done. Yeah,
5:16
Speaker 3: we don't think about stress like that. And so our
5:19
Speaker 3: brains are telling our bodies what to do, whether we
5:22
Speaker 3: whe it or not.
5:24
Speaker 1: And and but to this point about the resources, this
5:29
Speaker 1: comes back to what you said earlier on and I
5:31
Speaker 1: am such a big believer in is that we have
5:34
Speaker 1: to do hard things because that is what increases our
5:39
Speaker 1: belief that we have our resources. Like you know, when
5:42
Speaker 1: I work with athletes, you know they all want confidence.
5:45
Speaker 1: And and but I said confidence comes from having done
5:49
Speaker 1: the work right.
5:50
Speaker 2: That's where you get that that.
5:52
Speaker 1: True internal confidence, and that is where you feel like
5:56
Speaker 1: you have the resources.
5:57
Speaker 2: And my listeners are going to be rolling the freaking
5:59
Speaker 2: eye here.
6:00
Speaker 1: But one of my favorite quotes is from Epictetius, the
6:03
Speaker 1: historic philosopher, who said we must all undergo a hard
6:08
Speaker 1: winter training and not enter into likely that for which
6:11
Speaker 1: we have not prepared. And he was actually talking about life, right,
6:16
Speaker 1: So that hard winter training is the stuff that gives
6:21
Speaker 1: you the belief that you have the resources, and then
6:24
Speaker 1: you and that you're in the challenge, and then your
6:26
Speaker 1: physiology is very very different. So tell how can say
6:32
Speaker 1: somebody is not very good with stress, they might have
6:37
Speaker 1: anxiety around it, and what what are some of some
6:42
Speaker 1: tools that they could use or an overall approach to
6:47
Speaker 1: help them to increase their stress.
6:50
Speaker 2: I like to talk about stress capacity.
6:53
Speaker 1: How can they increase their capacity over time?
6:59
Speaker 3: I think the first step it's just knowing that stress
7:04
Speaker 3: isn't going to kill you, that you can do hard things.
7:08
Speaker 3: And so that's a perfect I mean, stokesure amazing in
7:12
Speaker 3: a lot of ways, and a lot of that comes
7:14
Speaker 3: down to that you have to push yourself beyond a
7:18
Speaker 3: conversome to do anything worthwhile. If you've ever learned anything,
7:22
Speaker 3: if you ever done something challenging, you've been stressed. If
7:26
Speaker 3: you've been excited, you've been stressed. It is when we
7:30
Speaker 3: think about being stressed, we equate stressed and distress. And
7:33
Speaker 3: that's where once that kicks in, the physiological signs that
7:37
Speaker 3: we're feeling stressed becomes signs that something's wrong, and that's
7:42
Speaker 3: not the case. It's just that we need to do
7:45
Speaker 3: something like you need to do something, take on whatever
7:48
Speaker 3: is causing that stress in your environment, and that's okay.
7:52
Speaker 3: This is why I'm so I don't know what's going
7:55
Speaker 3: on in terms of like educational systems in Australia, but
7:58
Speaker 3: in the United States it's a major problem with people.
8:01
Speaker 3: They're removing barriers for kids. We're getting rid of standardized testing,
8:06
Speaker 3: we're getting rid of accountability, we're lowering standards in schools.
8:10
Speaker 3: It's not lowering the bar to make things easier. That
8:15
Speaker 3: kid's going to have a hard time, but it's safe
8:18
Speaker 3: to do that. When you're a kid learning, that's the
8:20
Speaker 3: safest time you can be going through that difficulty and
8:24
Speaker 3: you push yourself and that kid's going to learn that
8:26
Speaker 3: they can do this and once they get it, it's
8:28
Speaker 3: going to click and it's going to do well. And
8:31
Speaker 3: that's what that's what we need to do. And I'm
8:35
Speaker 3: very concerned with like this is like a macro thing
8:38
Speaker 3: in our society where people just aren't they're trying to
8:42
Speaker 3: remove barriers, they're trying to remove stressors. It's not reducing demands.
8:48
Speaker 3: It's about boosting resources. And part of that is people's
8:51
Speaker 3: beliefs around that, and that comes down to how do
8:55
Speaker 3: you change an attitude, how do you change a belief system?
8:59
Speaker 3: I would love to get my hand from the medium,
9:01
Speaker 3: like stop talking about stresses things kill, Like please change.
9:06
Speaker 1: And stop talking this, stop talking about this crisis and
9:09
Speaker 1: that crisis, and like it's all just negativity.
9:12
Speaker 3: And crisis and it's the.
9:14
Speaker 1: Language, right, yes, yes, What about So we've talked a
9:19
Speaker 1: lot about psychology and and the prais all and and
9:23
Speaker 1: reapre as all right, So if you pre as something
9:27
Speaker 1: as being stressful, just reappraising it as I'm excited, this
9:30
Speaker 1: is my body and giving me the resources to act
9:34
Speaker 1: and and and I'm sure there's a there's a lot
9:36
Speaker 1: more that goes under the hood and in appraisal.
9:38
Speaker 2: But what about physiology?
9:42
Speaker 1: I've often said to people, particularly if they have anxiety,
9:46
Speaker 1: two of the best things I think that they can
9:48
Speaker 1: do is cold water immersion, regular cold water immersion, and
9:54
Speaker 1: increasingly vigorous exercise.
9:56
Speaker 3: Because you're producing stress.
10:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're producing the same physiological reaction, but in an
10:07
Speaker 1: environment that they have some form of control over. And
10:12
Speaker 1: I think coaching them around that control and encouraging them to.
10:16
Speaker 2: Self select harder and harder is the way to do it.
10:21
Speaker 1: What what's your view on on that approach using the
10:24
Speaker 1: physiology going bottom up.
10:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, then this is this was a gold standing way
10:28
Speaker 3: of producing stress response allowed for a long time. It's
10:31
Speaker 3: called cold pressure task. That's right hand, the handed some
10:35
Speaker 3: critical I called wares how long have you been therefore?
10:38
Speaker 3: And that was that was the goal standing way of
10:41
Speaker 3: getting stresses was online for a long time before the
10:43
Speaker 3: tree existed. For those who know better. Tree is you
10:46
Speaker 3: give a speech in front people. They seep are really
10:48
Speaker 3: mean to you. So it seems pretty innocuous, but it's
10:51
Speaker 3: like it's not. It's pretty uncoole.
10:53
Speaker 1: There's no a version where you're being video recorded as well,
10:56
Speaker 1: every every.
10:56
Speaker 3: Time did you record it? Any being judged. You're coming
10:59
Speaker 3: backwards from like the big numbers from steps of thirteen.
11:01
Speaker 3: It's like it's it's not fun so but it's also
11:05
Speaker 3: IRB approved and safe and ethical, and so we can
11:08
Speaker 3: study these things keeping people in a safe environment, which
11:11
Speaker 3: is true your stress because we can't like bring people
11:14
Speaker 3: wat and make them fear for their life. You have
11:15
Speaker 3: to be that's a concerns what you're doing, how you're
11:17
Speaker 3: going to saying these things, which is great for saying
11:20
Speaker 3: like normative stress, like regular kinds of stress people experience
11:23
Speaker 3: in their life, but not really saying like trauma, but
11:26
Speaker 3: kind of going back to your point, doing things with
11:28
Speaker 3: physiology and showing people they can be uncomfortable one and
11:34
Speaker 3: this is something that they get through and they're fine,
11:38
Speaker 3: Like what does this mean to you? And especially people
11:42
Speaker 3: who are who are chronically anxious, it's about the meaning
11:44
Speaker 3: making process a lot of times, like what does this
11:47
Speaker 3: mean to you? Because anxiety is more about what's gonna
11:49
Speaker 3: what's going to happen? Now, what has happened. What has
11:52
Speaker 3: happen is affecting what you think's going to happen and
11:56
Speaker 3: kind of disrupting that cycle. You wanted to break down
11:59
Speaker 3: that that negative recursive feedback loop where it's like these
12:03
Speaker 3: bad things happen, always gonna happen, it keeps happening. You
12:07
Speaker 3: give them a safe setting. You give somebody a task,
12:10
Speaker 3: a situation and activity that's producing response. They typically don't
12:15
Speaker 3: like and what does this mean to you? That's pretty
12:20
Speaker 3: it's pretty straightforward. They're like, Oh, that's that's interesting. It's
12:23
Speaker 3: not that bad. I can get through this, Like yeah,
12:25
Speaker 3: you can get through this. There you go, now you
12:28
Speaker 3: have resilience.
12:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I think learning physiological tolerance of stress
12:35
Speaker 1: hormones is really really important.
12:38
Speaker 2: For these people.
12:39
Speaker 1: But I love that you add in the maaning bit
12:42
Speaker 1: and and so you're bringing the psychology over the top.
12:46
Speaker 3: They all time. I mean, you're going back to this
12:50
Speaker 3: is in the sixties, like Checkter and Checker and Singer
12:52
Speaker 3: doing this is like the mid sixties in Jackson's Open
12:55
Speaker 3: that from jacksonth dragaline. Don't tell them what you're injected them.
13:01
Speaker 3: They get it's a big response because they be injected
13:04
Speaker 3: with this restaurant. Are what they immediately do, look through
13:07
Speaker 3: the environment and make a mean out of why they're
13:08
Speaker 3: having any response, and they're like, oh, I'm just because
13:12
Speaker 3: of this. Because of that, Because of that, do the
13:15
Speaker 3: opposite injecting with saline, but say injecting with that pefron.
13:19
Speaker 3: They will try to find a meaning to like what's
13:21
Speaker 3: going on. They're like, why aren't I responding? Makes the
13:24
Speaker 3: expectation matters, and so people's we've known this for a while,
13:28
Speaker 3: and so this is like a big thing where we're
13:29
Speaker 3: just trying to unpack, like what's the brain, new body.
13:32
Speaker 3: You're like, it's connected in a way that's so deep
13:35
Speaker 3: and so I mean, it's not just the brain bite
13:37
Speaker 3: and they talk about the god, you talk about everything else.
13:41
Speaker 3: Everything's connected. Our bodies don't work with computers. It's it's
13:45
Speaker 3: an integrated system. In the way that we don't quite
13:47
Speaker 3: understand everything about Anyone tells you they understand how our
13:50
Speaker 3: brain works. They're full of shit. They don't, and so
13:54
Speaker 3: that we don't. I mean, I'm neuroscientists. I study these things,
13:57
Speaker 3: but like we don't. Brains are not computers. They don't
14:00
Speaker 3: bring the prediction machine helping you survive. That's it. Yeah,
14:04
Speaker 3: it's not about processing data. The way that we by
14:06
Speaker 3: pews process data and the way our body's interacting with
14:11
Speaker 3: the me making part. That meaning matters for our bodies
14:15
Speaker 3: do because what you're telling your body is that am
14:18
Speaker 3: I safe? I'm not safe. You might need to think
14:21
Speaker 3: about approaching and singer avoiding this thing. Sometimes it's pretty
14:24
Speaker 3: basic like that, where your body's like, okay, I'm on
14:27
Speaker 3: mobilized resources in this way or that way. That's it.
14:30
Speaker 3: Your body's just there to help you do what it
14:32
Speaker 3: thinks is best to help you live. That's it. That's
14:35
Speaker 3: also it m very cool.
14:38
Speaker 1: I like that, and I like the I like the
14:40
Speaker 1: meaning making around the response that you just had.
14:44
Speaker 2: What about virtual reality?
14:48
Speaker 3: This is great, and so I think this would be good.
14:49
Speaker 3: It's to be good for us in psychology anyway. The
14:52
Speaker 3: better it gets, it's still a little Unkidney value ee.
14:56
Speaker 3: I don't know if you're done, like really high end VR,
14:58
Speaker 3: but you can still tell it's not real people, or
15:00
Speaker 3: it's like not quite real. It's like this. It's still
15:03
Speaker 3: a little bit off. But we're getting better and better
15:05
Speaker 3: every year doing this. For instance, I'm like terrified to heights.
15:08
Speaker 3: I hate heights. You thinker on something they're gonna like
15:11
Speaker 3: I do not like that at all, Like tell me
15:13
Speaker 3: about they make fun of me all the time. We
15:14
Speaker 3: went to a hiking Zion Canyon on Utah this year.
15:19
Speaker 3: I like got half of the well I'm like no,
15:21
Speaker 3: I'm going back down, Like I don't like this at all.
15:23
Speaker 3: Guys like no, no, no, And but the view by
15:28
Speaker 3: betting VR systems right, you can put me on those
15:30
Speaker 3: like think like I don't know legis and I'm like fine,
15:34
Speaker 3: and so I'm not so it's gonna get it. It
15:36
Speaker 3: has to scare me for whats it scares me. And
15:38
Speaker 3: then I'll sign off on it.
15:41
Speaker 1: There's there's a very cold m v R thing that
15:44
Speaker 1: that that I have actually seen another present or doing.
15:48
Speaker 1: It's brilliant, but it gets people and blind. The putt
15:53
Speaker 1: a VR headset on them and and and then they
15:56
Speaker 1: have to stand on this plank, right, and they when
16:00
Speaker 1: as soon as they turn to the art said on
16:02
Speaker 1: they're in a lift, right, and they press the button
16:06
Speaker 1: and it goes, and then the doors open and they're
16:09
Speaker 1: on this plank on the edge of a building.
16:11
Speaker 3: Right.
16:12
Speaker 2: But he said that he does some.
16:15
Speaker 1: With with with some people to really amp up the belief.
16:18
Speaker 1: And I've seen people in this have a massive stress response.
16:23
Speaker 1: There's on this ledge and he and he has they
16:26
Speaker 1: have to walk out, but then he allowed a fan
16:28
Speaker 1: into it for the wind, right, so they actually as
16:32
Speaker 1: soon as the doors open, the fan comes on, so
16:34
Speaker 1: they feel the wind on them. And they're seeing this
16:37
Speaker 1: and they're seeing this ledge, and people have this unbelievable
16:41
Speaker 1: stress response, and then he gets them.
16:44
Speaker 2: He has a little process.
16:46
Speaker 1: I'll not give it all away, but some of it's
16:47
Speaker 1: about cognitive reappraisal, and then some of it's about breathwork,
16:51
Speaker 1: about using the breath to just control the physiology to
16:56
Speaker 1: the point where they can start to walk out on
16:58
Speaker 1: the ledge and he has the that blank supported.
17:01
Speaker 2: So is that when they walk at wobbles as well,
17:03
Speaker 2: And it's I need.
17:05
Speaker 3: That that that the the wobbling and the wind would
17:08
Speaker 3: do it. To me is the visual stuff is not
17:09
Speaker 3: going to do it. There is like a what was
17:12
Speaker 3: it on that share Limitless? I don't know what what
17:15
Speaker 3: platform was on. But a friend of mine, Madupiacnola, who's
17:18
Speaker 3: a wonderful stress researcher, she was working with Chris Hemsworth
17:23
Speaker 3: on the same thing they're going on by they're using
17:27
Speaker 3: all sorts of weird stress tests. They're trying to box breathing.
17:30
Speaker 3: So I try to breathe like into so I intake
17:33
Speaker 3: I take for good regularly that can be good. So
17:37
Speaker 3: something this is So this is a broader point that
17:40
Speaker 3: I think that it's really important emphasize is that there's
17:43
Speaker 3: no one size fits all approach regular stress. It's like
17:46
Speaker 3: you need the right tool for the right job. Like
17:49
Speaker 3: when you're in a situation where you need to down regularly,
17:51
Speaker 3: you need to kind of dampen down with the response. Yeah,
17:55
Speaker 3: use those techniques if you need to keep if you
17:58
Speaker 3: stay in a stressing to address cut demand that needs addressing. Yeah,
18:03
Speaker 3: implify the stress spots, that's fine. But when people can't
18:07
Speaker 3: get into these thing, okay, always always do this like no, no, no, no,
18:10
Speaker 3: you need to help pick up like a tool belt.
18:12
Speaker 3: You can't use a screwdriver to hammer in the nail, like,
18:15
Speaker 3: just use a different tools for the different job. That's
18:17
Speaker 3: really important. So emotion regulation flexibility is vital to love
18:21
Speaker 3: these all these processes.
18:24
Speaker 1: So given the a couple of last questions, given this
18:28
Speaker 1: meteoric rise that we're getting in empoor mental health, I
18:32
Speaker 1: think the stats in the States are very similar to
18:35
Speaker 1: the stats here.
18:36
Speaker 3: It's part of worse worst.
18:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, are there any promising future directions or interventions that
18:45
Speaker 1: you see on the horizon and see it from putting
18:49
Speaker 1: all kids in book camp and banning mobile phones making
18:53
Speaker 1: them do hard stuff?
18:55
Speaker 2: What else? What's out there or what's on the horizon?
19:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean social media is I haven't seen a
19:03
Speaker 3: single empirical say that there's any benefit social media use ever,
19:07
Speaker 3: not one. So that's so. But we can't limit that
19:11
Speaker 3: because make a lot of money, and those companies make
19:14
Speaker 3: tons of money, so we can't get rid of it,
19:17
Speaker 3: and we need to live with that. There are some
19:20
Speaker 3: promising things.
19:21
Speaker 1: We're just about to bond it from their sixteens in
19:23
Speaker 1: Australia in the next few.
19:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, we can't. We can't do that. I say, it's
19:26
Speaker 3: they can't die.
19:26
Speaker 2: It's no, we can.
19:31
Speaker 3: We can. Yeah, I can give my dog a gone.
19:34
Speaker 3: That's fine. It's what we have. That's like our charts.
19:41
Speaker 3: That's what we want to do.
19:47
Speaker 1: Is there anything that you say on our horizon that
19:51
Speaker 1: has promise here?
19:53
Speaker 3: There is? I think we can't. We can't run away
19:55
Speaker 3: from these things. Though. It's as much as like the
19:57
Speaker 3: research suggests that social media use is a good that
20:00
Speaker 3: all this stuff is going to be terrible for development.
20:03
Speaker 3: It's here already, so we have to have to use it. Essentially,
20:08
Speaker 3: it's how can I use this in a productive way.
20:11
Speaker 3: So a lot of the recent research in the intervention
20:13
Speaker 3: science world is moving towards trying to build AA models
20:18
Speaker 3: for helping people talk more perrectly about stress. So if
20:21
Speaker 3: I can learn from so we've this is with David
20:25
Speaker 3: diegor At Infrasity of Texas is like he's like an
20:29
Speaker 3: amazing person has a book called nineteen twenty five who
20:34
Speaker 3: talks about adolescent stress and development. A lot of what
20:38
Speaker 3: we're trying to figure out is like what is like
20:41
Speaker 3: supportive mindset stress language? Like we kind of don't know.
20:45
Speaker 3: Like we can write these interventions that's using a lot
20:47
Speaker 3: of it's using a lot of fears and persuasion, research
20:50
Speaker 3: and marketing. We're trying to build an ideas from psychophysiology
20:53
Speaker 3: and neuroscience. But how do you get it into people's minds.
20:57
Speaker 3: We're using marketing to do this. We're trying to persuade them,
21:01
Speaker 3: but how does that How does a teacher talk to
21:03
Speaker 3: their students about stress? How does a manager talk to
21:06
Speaker 3: their employees about stress? We can don't know. And so
21:09
Speaker 3: if we can build AI tools that can support a
21:13
Speaker 3: student asking me a question like hey, I feel really
21:15
Speaker 3: nervous about this exam, Well, if I can create a
21:18
Speaker 3: chatbot that they think is their teacher that's getting them
21:22
Speaker 3: essentially intervention that they don't know, there's things like that
21:26
Speaker 3: that I think can be done. We just have to
21:28
Speaker 3: be safe in terms of the implementation and the guard
21:31
Speaker 3: reels put around developing the systems, but as long as
21:34
Speaker 3: we have the training data sets to do it, Like
21:36
Speaker 3: we're starting to go that direction already. I'm just worried
21:41
Speaker 3: about if you try to scrub the entire internet to
21:44
Speaker 3: talk about stress, you're going to get some really pat stuff.
21:47
Speaker 3: You get to put the right guardrails up, and that's
21:49
Speaker 3: that's somebody who has control for algorithms to do that,
21:52
Speaker 3: and it's easy to do.
21:55
Speaker 2: Find it on TikTok. People don't look at TikTok.
21:58
Speaker 3: No, please don't never look at Tata's what the Chinese
22:01
Speaker 3: know everything about you, So don't do that.
22:06
Speaker 1: So one last question I'm going to throw to you,
22:10
Speaker 1: to Jeremy and and so you're talk talking to a
22:14
Speaker 1: bunch of people. Forget about your professional career. You're giving
22:19
Speaker 1: advice to young parents who you care about.
22:24
Speaker 2: What are you going to tell them? What would you
22:27
Speaker 2: tell them about bringing.
22:29
Speaker 1: Up their kids to be resilient or hardy or whatever
22:35
Speaker 1: language that you want to use or to be able
22:37
Speaker 1: to have a better relationship with stress.
22:43
Speaker 3: I just think keep one phrase money. Your kids can
22:46
Speaker 3: do hard things. You're not a You're not a bulldozer.
22:51
Speaker 3: You need to clear the path, the you can walk
22:54
Speaker 3: over that boulder, the kick can clear that rock. You
22:57
Speaker 3: need to get rid of it. You give them the
23:00
Speaker 3: confidence to be able to climb up the rock and
23:02
Speaker 3: move past it, don't bulldoze it. That's the That's what
23:06
Speaker 3: I've seen the most as a parent is that a
23:10
Speaker 3: lot of my kids, their friends and parents, they're so
23:15
Speaker 3: invested in like I'm going to talk to the coach,
23:17
Speaker 3: the parent, I'm going to do X, Y and Z.
23:21
Speaker 3: They're doing the work. The kid is just there kind
23:24
Speaker 3: of for long for the ride. The kid then gets
23:27
Speaker 3: to me in college in my class and I'm like, hey,
23:31
Speaker 3: what do you want to know? They're like I don't know.
23:32
Speaker 3: You tell me what I want to know? Like no, no, no,
23:35
Speaker 3: what do you want to know? Like no, no, you
23:37
Speaker 3: tell me what you want to know. It will help.
23:39
Speaker 3: Let's get let's get to that point. You can do
23:41
Speaker 3: a study like well, I don't know what I want
23:43
Speaker 3: to know? Like that adult comes to me, I don't know,
23:45
Speaker 3: God is me else? Like I don't want to talk
23:47
Speaker 3: to you then, And that's the I see this so
23:51
Speaker 3: much with parents that they're so worried about the kid
23:54
Speaker 3: not being the best or the top or that stop
23:57
Speaker 3: whatever whatever it is to give you some back. Like
24:01
Speaker 3: my son is eleven and seventh grade in the US,
24:04
Speaker 3: which is kind of young right now. She's birthdays in
24:07
Speaker 3: like late fall, and that's I don't know. That's fine,
24:11
Speaker 3: he's on the young side. But there's kids who've like
24:13
Speaker 3: their parents hold them back a year just for like
24:17
Speaker 3: sports or for like not big enough and like you care.
24:22
Speaker 3: It's so weird, And do you.
24:24
Speaker 1: Know why they do that, because there's a lot of
24:26
Speaker 1: data that that kids who are born who are old
24:29
Speaker 1: for the year are much more likely to want to
24:32
Speaker 1: be professional athletes.
24:33
Speaker 2: They're just trying to set them up for you're going
24:36
Speaker 2: to give.
24:36
Speaker 3: Them a reasons. It's so the detends what sport. I've
24:40
Speaker 3: actually think in some sports it's if you're young for
24:42
Speaker 3: when you're in the year, then you become the depression.
24:45
Speaker 3: But it's like the professional the versus like the college athlete.
24:48
Speaker 3: If you want to get to the top top things,
24:50
Speaker 3: if you're the youngest person playing a bigger people than you,
24:52
Speaker 3: you're gonna be the best. If you're still good even
24:55
Speaker 3: when you're little, that's even. But it's more of a
24:58
Speaker 3: it's a mindset. It's like I don't my kid can
25:00
Speaker 3: handle this. Yes, I'm going to keep them behind a
25:03
Speaker 3: year just to let them like be more developed. Whatever
25:07
Speaker 3: it might be. It goes back to a belief system
25:10
Speaker 3: my kid can't do hard things. It goes back to
25:12
Speaker 3: this like I want to be as safe as possible
25:15
Speaker 3: producing my kids. It's it's safety. And I don't blame
25:18
Speaker 3: parents are doing this, like they want to get their
25:19
Speaker 3: kids into a kids college, They want to get their
25:21
Speaker 3: kids do a good job. Some parents are just like
25:25
Speaker 3: they just trying to make it every day, trying to
25:26
Speaker 3: make a day to day and a lot of like
25:29
Speaker 3: the choices that we have, we have to like what
25:32
Speaker 3: do you prioritize? And I always give advice to a
25:36
Speaker 3: lot of people. I mean, Rochester is an interesting community
25:39
Speaker 3: where we are in western New York. Out here it's
25:41
Speaker 3: kind of old like Russ Bell, Like, it's not we're
25:44
Speaker 3: not living in Los Angeles or Boston or New York.
25:48
Speaker 3: There's some like real there's like real poverty here. When
25:52
Speaker 3: people who's going to like where is that kid from
25:55
Speaker 3: the inner city Rochester? But the way they're going to
25:57
Speaker 3: do well the first off, parents engage. Engauge is the
26:01
Speaker 3: first part, Like knowing where your kids at what they're
26:04
Speaker 3: doing is like obviously number one, yes, And I think
26:07
Speaker 3: once you can get to there, then it's like then
26:09
Speaker 3: you guys start having choices, then you're start getting freedom.
26:12
Speaker 3: I'm like, what you're actually being agentic in what you're doing.
26:16
Speaker 3: And the one thing I've seen in our community anyways
26:19
Speaker 3: is I don't know what it's like in Australia, but like,
26:22
Speaker 3: the charter schools here have been amazing. It's not the
26:25
Speaker 3: public schools. Public schools are terrible. The charter schools I've
26:28
Speaker 3: been like, absolutely phenomenal because they're more independent, because they
26:31
Speaker 3: can do things that aren't beholden to the unions are
26:34
Speaker 3: bereholding to things like that where and that's a problem here.
26:39
Speaker 3: But we have to, I think, move to a point
26:43
Speaker 3: where you put the kids before your own interests. And
26:48
Speaker 3: I think sometimes some parents it's the interests are like
26:52
Speaker 3: in media gratification, I'm neglecting my child. But sometimes it's
26:55
Speaker 3: like my child is my proxy to like whatever my
27:00
Speaker 3: goals are. Yeah, yeah, yeah, remember that it's not it's
27:05
Speaker 3: it's not you, yes, and like, and they're going to
27:09
Speaker 3: have to do hard things like the best. I want
27:12
Speaker 3: to see every I would love to see every second
27:15
Speaker 3: grade or third grade classroom give spelling tests every week.
27:19
Speaker 3: I don't care where people are, what country and what
27:21
Speaker 3: language you're doing, Like just give the spelling tests, make
27:24
Speaker 3: them study for something like make it, make it third grader,
27:27
Speaker 3: like because there's no stakes, like zero stakes. This doesn't
27:31
Speaker 3: matter for anything. But they're going to get used to
27:34
Speaker 3: like having to work at something that's maybe a little
27:36
Speaker 3: be uncomfortable, a little bit difficult. And that's fine because
27:41
Speaker 3: you want to get people to practice. Even when we
27:42
Speaker 3: do these interventions, we try to help people optimize their
27:46
Speaker 3: stress responses. The you know, to be always an opportunity
27:51
Speaker 3: to try it out, and so you want to have
27:53
Speaker 3: them do them like right before tests, right before a conversation,
27:56
Speaker 3: right before like the tree or task for instance. It's
27:59
Speaker 3: like an immediate way of like practicing it. It's practice,
28:03
Speaker 3: like you can't you don't get good at you don't
28:04
Speaker 3: get good at stress. Stress doesn't happen to you. You
28:09
Speaker 3: are an a gentic agent that determines how you respond
28:12
Speaker 3: to stress. And so people, oh, this happened to me,
28:15
Speaker 3: Like yes, that that stressor happened to you, but how
28:18
Speaker 3: did you respond in breaking down the stressor to the
28:22
Speaker 3: stress response is really important And I think when kids
28:25
Speaker 3: come in on at really young ages, they kind of
28:28
Speaker 3: get it. They're like, oh, yeah, I need to work
28:30
Speaker 3: a cargo on this X, Y or Z. And if
28:33
Speaker 3: you give someone like a rows stakes environing to do
28:36
Speaker 3: that in great, The kids just kind.
28:39
Speaker 1: Of kids kind of basically go they need to put
28:43
Speaker 1: their training right and yeah, they need to actually get
28:48
Speaker 1: amongst them, but they can.
28:50
Speaker 3: But they can do hard things. You don't need to
28:53
Speaker 3: bulldoze the path, Like that's the keeping parents like, don't
28:57
Speaker 3: be a bulldozer, be like, I don't know, be a rader,
29:01
Speaker 3: build a ladder topping over the rock. Don't build those
29:03
Speaker 3: the rock away from them. Yeah.
29:05
Speaker 2: Nice, that's a that's a that's a cool analogy.
29:07
Speaker 3: I think.
29:08
Speaker 1: The other thing that I would say to parent so
29:10
Speaker 1: on your topic of being gaged is also you got
29:14
Speaker 1: to think about the other things that go in to
29:17
Speaker 1: support their their physiology and their psychology. So so don't
29:22
Speaker 1: let them have their goddamn phones in their bedrooms, you know,
29:26
Speaker 1: don't let them be six hours a day on a
29:28
Speaker 1: freaking screen. Don't let them eat like sugar on drink
29:32
Speaker 1: cans of monster full of caffeine when they're freaking eleven
29:37
Speaker 1: years old, you know, because if you're beating them a
29:39
Speaker 1: shit diet and you're letting them have their phone in
29:42
Speaker 1: their room. You are making them swim up stream when
29:47
Speaker 1: it comes to not just physical health, but mental health.
29:51
Speaker 1: I think this is what so many people realize the
29:54
Speaker 1: impact of diet and sleep on mental health.
29:57
Speaker 3: And I read sleep one is big and we our
30:01
Speaker 3: kids don't have smartphones. My eleven year old does not
30:03
Speaker 3: have a smartphone like ever. He does not. He he's
30:07
Speaker 3: actually doesn't wabam, which is great for him. But he's
30:09
Speaker 3: that's his own. He's that's his own. He's his own person.
30:12
Speaker 3: But we have him. He has a dumb phone. He
30:15
Speaker 3: can make phone calls if he's if his bus is late,
30:17
Speaker 3: he can call me until my buses. He has to
30:18
Speaker 3: make our actual phone call and call me. The phone
30:22
Speaker 3: calls last usually five seconds, saying my bus is late. Okay, cool,
30:25
Speaker 3: thank you, that's it. The phone's usually halfway not charge
30:30
Speaker 3: every time. But that's fine. But he has friends who
30:33
Speaker 3: are like up till like midnight, one o'clock in the morning,
30:36
Speaker 3: playing video games or like on their phone. And he's
30:38
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, hey, how's some boddy, And he's like,
30:40
Speaker 3: well he was tired last night because he's on his phone.
30:42
Speaker 3: They're like two, Like don't yeah, like you're in bed,
30:46
Speaker 3: like you're eleven years old. It's nine thirty. Go to bed,
30:50
Speaker 3: and that's what that's you go get some sleep. I
30:52
Speaker 3: want some sleep, Like we all have to get sleep.
30:53
Speaker 3: You're up at six, we're upid, Like, let's let's go sleep.
30:57
Speaker 3: I don't think people understand sleep health really well. To
31:00
Speaker 3: you start about evygeniums talk about gut health. Sleep is
31:03
Speaker 3: the other like big pillar of like supporting people's health.
31:06
Speaker 3: And I think with stressed, it disrupts sleep so much.
31:09
Speaker 3: People worried about delimination turning your brain off, Like it
31:13
Speaker 3: just it's going to disrupt a sleep process and at you.
31:16
Speaker 1: And we know that if you have a lack of sleep,
31:19
Speaker 1: you are more likely to be stressed.
31:21
Speaker 2: The next day.
31:21
Speaker 1: Court has also hired the entire next day grelling, the
31:24
Speaker 1: major hunger hormone is is higher the entire next day.
31:27
Speaker 2: You're going to create shitty food, which is a.
31:29
Speaker 3: Vid chickens yep, yeah chi yeah.
31:35
Speaker 1: Leaptin is lower, which means you're going to sit on
31:37
Speaker 1: your arse most of the day as well.
31:40
Speaker 2: And it's just you know, there's just this nasty, vicious cycle.
31:43
Speaker 2: And actually I talked to marching arms.
31:47
Speaker 1: I think it was is A is a Dutch researcher,
31:50
Speaker 1: and their research showed that that sleep deprivation drives ADHD
31:57
Speaker 1: like symptoms. And his thing is you you fix sleep
32:01
Speaker 1: in teenagers, so many less of them would be getting
32:06
Speaker 1: diagnosis of mental health issues. And then you throw you
32:09
Speaker 1: throw shit diet and lack of physical activity in the But.
32:12
Speaker 3: They're all length though, And so when you're tired, eat
32:15
Speaker 3: chia food. Don't move, don't move ea chi food. You
32:18
Speaker 3: get tired, it's it gonna be. It's just going to
32:21
Speaker 3: go around and round around. Its just being conscious about
32:25
Speaker 3: what you're doing. I think people don't think sometimes about
32:28
Speaker 3: these daily decisions. But just give Kit a phone, give
32:30
Speaker 3: Kit a nightpad, shot him up for like an hour
32:34
Speaker 3: while at dinner, and give a book like get it.
32:38
Speaker 3: We started getting We started getting a physical newspaper, like
32:41
Speaker 3: an actual paper newspaper, because we got we realized were
32:45
Speaker 3: at the table that in breakfast every morning, my ration
32:47
Speaker 3: and I were like reading the news and our phones
32:49
Speaker 3: are like the computer, and it's like it feels weird.
32:52
Speaker 3: So we cut a newspaper like give well, literally the
32:55
Speaker 3: kids take a sexually start reading for the news to
32:58
Speaker 3: put it down. They go, it's it's it's it's hysterical.
33:01
Speaker 3: But don't don't just pick up on what you do
33:03
Speaker 3: pretty quick. That's right exactly, that's what they say. They
33:07
Speaker 3: do what you do now. I think with parents too,
33:09
Speaker 3: like you have to you have to walk the walk,
33:11
Speaker 3: not just talk the talk, like if you want the
33:13
Speaker 3: kids to stop using the phones, to stop being reliant
33:15
Speaker 3: on these things, like we need to do this ourselves.
33:18
Speaker 3: And because the reason why, why why you can't find
33:21
Speaker 3: me on social media when you can't find me on
33:23
Speaker 3: these other platforms. So I'm on Paul's podcast especially about it.
33:30
Speaker 1: And I'm like, we do you Unfortunately to draw this
33:33
Speaker 1: too close there, I mean this, this has been awesome
33:35
Speaker 1: and hopefully this will help people to reappree as what
33:41
Speaker 1: what stress is all about. And I think there's some
33:44
Speaker 1: really good practical tools as well as you explaining the biology.
33:50
Speaker 2: I think it's been very, very helpful.
33:52
Speaker 1: And we don't have a rabant in the book which
33:55
Speaker 1: I can't send people to, but anybody who is interested
33:58
Speaker 1: in this, I would just say to Google and google
34:02
Speaker 1: you Professor Jeremy Jamison and on Google scholar, there's a
34:05
Speaker 1: whole list of your publications, which are really interesting shit.
34:09
Speaker 1: For anybody who wants to go down the rabbit hole,
34:12
Speaker 1: I think, go and look at your research, because you,
34:16
Speaker 1: I think your real trail blazer in this area. So
34:19
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty cool to have you on and and
34:21
Speaker 1: thank you for giving up your time, particularly when you
34:25
Speaker 1: have nothing really to get out of it other than
34:27
Speaker 1: a conversation.
34:27
Speaker 3: That's no, that's that's that's that's important though, And I
34:30
Speaker 3: think anyone who reads any research, argos mine anybody else
34:34
Speaker 3: is like, think about it, like we're gonna write discussion sections.
34:37
Speaker 3: That's our interpretation with the data, read it for yourself,
34:41
Speaker 3: read a results, read the methods. Like I strongly strongly
34:45
Speaker 3: suggest people do this. And I just want to say,
34:49
Speaker 3: like the one thing if we can get one message
34:53
Speaker 3: across today is that stress isn't always bad, especially for
35:00
Speaker 3: your kids. They can do the hard things and the
35:04
Speaker 3: more they do those hard things, the better they get
35:07
Speaker 3: at it. And so you're there, you can support them,
35:10
Speaker 3: you can help them, and that's kind of it, you know.
35:14
Speaker 3: It is just also emailing questions if you want to.
35:17
Speaker 3: I just like talking about things like this. This is fine.
35:21
Speaker 3: Thank you so much having me.
35:23
Speaker 2: Oh, man, it's been an absolute pleasure.
35:25
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing all of your knowledge and insights
35:28
Speaker 1: on what is an increasingly important topic. And I do
35:34
Speaker 1: like that we dived into kids and hopefully there's some
35:37
Speaker 1: little gold nuggets for parents in there to actually do
35:42
Speaker 1: the work to help.
35:42
Speaker 2: Reis resilient kids, which is really important.
35:45
Speaker 1: Jermy, Enjoy the rest of your evening, whatever is left
35:49
Speaker 1: of it.
35:50
Speaker 2: And.
35:52
Speaker 3: Sleep. So it's important.
35:54
Speaker 2: Sleep, it's important.
35:55
Speaker 1: Let's it go, get some sleep and prepare yourself for
35:58
Speaker 1: tomorrow and whatever curb the universe has.
36:01
Speaker 2: Thank you very much.
36:02
Speaker 3: Thank you