Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / Master Stress + Slow Aging

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Master Stress + Slow Aging · Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano

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This is Your Pain Game podcast where we talk about the game of living in
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and with chronic pain and trauma get into the heart of how to heal.
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I am your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show, I plan on
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discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, holistic practitioners, loved ones, and
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anybody that is interested in having their voice heard in the chronic pain and trauma
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world that we live in. I am a stress ball. I worry about
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things that I shouldn't worry about. I worry about things that I have already
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happened to me but I've absolutely no control over. I worry about the next
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ten seconds of this conversation. I worry about what's going to be happening in
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ten years from now. I have always been like that has that stemmed from
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childhood trauma. Probably is just how I'm wired. Probably, but we're going
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to find out today a little bit more as to why we are wired for
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stress so much and how bad it is for our health. And I am
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legitimately under chronic stress and I have been for most of my life. You
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know, I'm riddled with traum anxiety, sprinkle with a sprinkle out with a
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little depression and top that off with some addictions. No wonder I'm sick and
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that I live in pain, And as I mentioned, I worry like nobody's
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business. But we're here today to heal. We're always here to heal on
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this show and to find solutions. We can talk and talk and talk,
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but if we don't have some steps, some tips, some solutions for ways
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that we can better handle our stress, then I'm doing a disservice and I
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might as well just quit doing my job here. So today we're going to
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talk a little bit about why stress affects our health, our well being,
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our relationships, my gosh, the relationships with especially in my world. I
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know that stress is a big, mega part of our relationship. We're working
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on that with my sweetie. How it affects our jobs and more of course,
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and we're here to provide a proven path to overcome stresses, mental,
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physical, emotional, all of it to help us achieve that happiness that we
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all strive and thrive for. So, without further ado, I would like
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to introduce you to my amazingly darling guest today, doctor Steven Sitterov. Hello,
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darling, Hi there, good to be with you, Good to be
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with you too, so oh my gosh, his accolades, they go on,
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So everybody take a deep breath. He is an internationally recognized psychologist,
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executive, and medical consultant, and expert and resilience, longevity, optimal performance.
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I don't even know what optimal performance is for me in my life,
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but we're going to find out addiction, neurofeedback, and mental health. He
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is an associate professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Rheumatology at
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UCLA's Deathen School of Medicine here in Los Angeles. He was the founder and
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formal clinical director of the Stress Strategies Program, also at UCLA and Santa Monica
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Hospital, and former clinical director of Moonview Treatment and Optimal Performance Center. He
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has helped establish innovative training and treatment approaches in optimal functioning, mind, body,
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medicine, mind and body. It's not just our bods, guys in
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the US, China, and europe An it's hosted summits and longevity, resilience
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and leadership. I'm exhausted, and not to mention his new book, which
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is amazing, The Nine Pillars of Resilience, the proven path to master stress,
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slow aging, and increase vitality. So within about forty five minutes today,
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we're going to get out of our stress and we're going to be good
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to go. Right, We're going to find the path. There we go
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the path. All you have to do is step on to the path,
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because if you understand taking a few steps, then the path is alongside you
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every day. And so if you take a few steps onto the path every
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day, you can achieve success every day and ultimately you will begin to notice
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feeling better. Yeah. And I think one of the things that I find
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so interesting about stress and my body. And I'm going to speak for myself
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because I really can only speak for myself here, but when something stressful happens
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in my life, it is almost immediate that my pain that I have,
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my chronic pain with CRPS and LME disease and all the other coinfections with that,
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my pain magnifies almost in an instant, and it's nuts. In fact,
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last night I had a situation that happened with an old friend of mine
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raised my stress level like crazy. There was a reason why I do not
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have her in my life anymore. She came in in a whim and my
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stress level went up, my pain level went up, and my sleep went
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down. And it happened in an instant. Why does that happen? Why
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does stress magnify pain so and why is it so dangerous to our health?
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Those are very good questions, and that's because when you engage in stress,
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you throw your body out of balance. When you engage in stress, you're
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putting more demands on all of the aspects of your body, and if you
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are already experiencing symptoms, it magnifies the impact of those symptoms. But the
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other way that it has that stress has an impact is it takes your body
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away from its ability to heal, So it doesn't only magnify the symptoms.
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But you know, we have a choice. We have limited personal energy,
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and the brain and body are always making choices. Do I send this energy
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into my kidneys to purify my blood or do I send it into my muscle
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to protect because there's danger and so the more we go into the fight or
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flight response, the more we go into the stress response, the more we
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take energy away from the healing process that serves us so well if we give
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it a chance. Well, when you're talking about within your your path that
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you that you mentioned, you talk about it in your book, these nine
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pillars of resilience. I know, resilience sounds like, oh my gosh,
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about to climb this mountain and I've got it. You know, you think
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you think about these you know, these athletes, the endurance athletes, like
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it's almost daunting when you think about having to be resilient, you know,
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and that to me is almost stressful. So how can we take stress out
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of resilience? And can we talk a little bit about this path of yours
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and these nine pillars, because that's the big scoop that we've got going on
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here today with you. So, as I just said, we do feel
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a sense of overwhelm simply thinking about all that needs to be done to become
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resilient. And as my book lays out, there are nine pillars to optimal
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functioning that I've identified. But you don't have to do it all at once.
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You don't have to feel like, oh I have so much I have
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to do. This is how we get ourselves stuck. First, is very
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important for all of us to start from a place of acceptance, and which
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is difficult to begin with. How can I accept that I have chronic pain.
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How can I accept that I have anxiety? There? These are things
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that are difficult to accept, and that's the first place we get ourselves stuck,
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right A fear for starters, fear based on I like to say that
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we're on this journey through life, and at any time we're someplace along this
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journey, like we're right here right now. But most of us come along
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and say, well, I should be here. It's not okay where I'm
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at. It's not good enough. I should be here. Why did I
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make that mistake? I shouldn't have made that mistake. I should know better.
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I should All these shoulds that we lay on us create additional stress.
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But they old to do also do something very insidious. They are undermining.
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If I'm here and I keep telling myself I should be further along, I'm
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saying this is something wrong with me. Is I'm not okay? And that
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gets in our way of growth. And so the first step for everybody is
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to be accepting of where you're at. Doesn't mean you like it, it's
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just an acceptance of reality. Here's where I'm at. I can't find my
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keys because I'm so distracted by other stuff that I don't really, I don't
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notice when I put them down. That's why I can't find my keys.
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Okay, that's where I'm at right now, here's my starting point. And
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now let me learn and grow, but all the while accepting myself instead of
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being hard on myself. And that, by the way, ties into my
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first pillar of resilience, which is our relationship with ourselves. Some of our
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stress is created because we can be hard on ourselves. We could be critical
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of ourselves, judgmental. And so we start off by wanting to create establish
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a healthy relationship with ourselves, meaning that we cultivate an internal voice that's loving,
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accepting, compassionate, supportive, and caring. Okay, and now,
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people in your audience, that's the first step. How do you talk to
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yourself? Notice if you're overly critical, judgmental, what happens when you make
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a mistake? Do you beat yourself up for it? You get angry with
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yourself? Or what I'm suggesting is we switch into a voice that's loving,
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accepting, and compassionate. Because the more we talk to ourselves from that loving
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place, the better we handle the stresses in our lives. So there's are
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a couple of approaches that are so important for people to begin with. That
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is a huge component from where I was a couple of years ago to where
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I am today, that little voice inside me that I've always been an overachiever.
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I come from an overachieving family. Both of my dads, both of
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my moms, my spouse, all of us all overachievers, very successful,
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very educated. I mean we just come from now, we're both from la
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so there's a lot of that too. We're keeping up with the Joneses,
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where you know, we all have to look perfect from Instagram. I mean,
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we've got all of these things that are going on around us. We've
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got kids and grandkids and nices and nephews, and it's like, oh my
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gosh. I had to find a place of acceptance within me, acceptance of
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my diagnosis, acceptance that I spend some time in a wheelchair where I used
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to be a downhill skier and racer and biker and hiker and all of these
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things, and right now I can't walk my dogs. And so coming to
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that place of acceptance was a dark and twisty place to get through. But
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now that I'm here, I am already feeling the joy that is coming from
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accepting where I am right now, not where I want to be in two
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weeks from now, not where I was two weeks ago, but right now
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in this space with you. I love that so much because that's where we
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have to start if we can't accept ourselves, and we're not going to go
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anywhere right right. But you just described the sort of like the type a
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approach to life where it's about do do, and that does lead to success.
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And that's the problem for most of us because if you think about all
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the successes in your life, I guarantee that all of them have been associated
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with stress. Think of all the successes, whether it's getting taking an exam,
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speaking in front of a group, having a meeting, et cetera.
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All of our successes have been associated with stress. So one of my original
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mentors, Donald Hebb, one of the pioneers in neuroscience, said that neurons
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that fire together wire together. So that's what's happened in our brains. We
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have wired together success with stress, and so there's an unconscious drive in all
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of us, unconscious drive in all of us for stressful experiences because in our
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history, in our lives, they've been associated with success and So my seventh
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pillar of resilience's presence. If you want to make any changes in your life
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and your behavior, with one requirement, you have to be present to notice
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that you're following the old pattern, the old path of striving for stress in
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your life, looking for stress in your life. So it's about being present
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to notice and going hold on, I don't have to be stressed all the
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time. I can relax, I can take a break and that's okay.
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And then we support that with strengthening that positive, loving voice that I encourage
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in my book people to develop that healthy internal parent And how do we do
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that? Because I mean, we've all been raised differently in our lives,
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so we've been parented different, our childhoods have all been different. How how
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do we how do we find that? M Yeah, it's it's different for
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different people. And I go into many different strategies in my book for how
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to do that. But for example, sometimes I'll be talking with a parent
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who's very could be very hard on themselves, and I say to them,
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do you do that with your child? No? No, no, I'm
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much more accepting of my child and loving of my child. And then I
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say, if your child makes a mistake. How do you deal with that
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mistake? I say, well, I let them know that first, that
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I still love them even though they made the mistake. And I say that
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this is the way we learn from mistakes. And then I say, is
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that how you talk to yourself? And I say no, And I say,
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why should you treat yourself any different than you treat your child who you
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love so much? And they'll go, I don't know, but that's but
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that's one of the that's one of the pathways to starting to talk well to
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yourself is by noticing how you're capable of doing it with your child, with
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your partner, or with somebody else. And if you can do it with
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them, you could do it with yourself. And it shows you that you
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know how to do it. That's true because you know our self talk.
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I mean, I have those those moments, especially with my with my diagnosis
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and my body have gone through so many changes with my bod and I just
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like, I hate my body. I hate the way I look. Eh,
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it's just that such negative. And then the other day I caught myself
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doing it, and my Sweedie and I were sitting and I was like,
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I need to say I love you body. You are wonderful, you are
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beautiful, like all the woo woo on the planet. To try to kind
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of like slip out of that that negative narrative that we have because my body
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has changed. I'm upset with it some days, you know, I'm upset
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with God or source or whoever it is, the spirit of the world,
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whatever, whoever, what your beliefs are. And you know that anger and
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that vulnerability and that you know, all of that like why me, why
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me? Stuff? I have to I've had to curb that enthusiasm for lack
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of a better term, and you know, because I've been enthusiastically frustrated with
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my body and with that and all the stress that it is caused, not
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just myself, but also the relationships that are within my world too, because
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my sweetie and my parents and my friends and stuff. They take a little
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bit of a beating too when it comes to having to deal with me living
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and pain. You know, I mean, I handle it like a badass
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most of the days, but there are times where there's no chance, like
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I can't walk well. You know, in my book, I talk about
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I frame the problem from talking about two important mismatches that we all deal with.
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So the first mismatch is the environment in which we evolved our stress response,
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which is the hunter gatherer environment, with our current environment, which is
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very, very different. So we still have the fight or flight response to
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danger and stress that our hunter gatherers did, but yet our environment is totally
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different. How many of the stresses in your life in your day can you
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effectively deal with by either fighting them or running from them? None? But
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that's what our bodies do every time we experience a threat or danger. So
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that's the first mismatch. We overactivate the body, We use up more resources
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than we need to in mobilizing for the stresses of our lives. But the
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second one is much more insidious, and that has to do with a developmental
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mismatch. Learned to use our response in our childhood environment. How we learn
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to deal with the world is based on the lessons of our childhood. We
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adapted to the small little world of our primary family, and so if we
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had, for example, a parent that was anxious as an example, the
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unspoken message to us is the world is dangerous. If we see a parent
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who's anxious, that's telling us there's danger. And so we grow up believing
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that the world is dangerous. This is just one example of the lesson how
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the lessons of childhood set us up as adults. So now we start our
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day on guard. Where's the danger going to come from? Okay? And
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so we mobilize our stress response before there is even any stress in our day.
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And this touches into my fifth pillar of resilience, which is mental balance
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and mastery. So how do you start your day? Do you start your
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day looking for what can go wrong, looking for the danger again mobilizing your
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stress response. Where do you start your day looking for what can go right,
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expecting good things to happen. A positive mindset helps us better deal with
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stress. A growth mindset helps us in our lives because it says that if
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we experience some shortcoming in ourselves, with a growth mindset, we look at
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it and say, okay, how can I develop myself so I no longer
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have the shortcoming. So a growth mindset tells us engage with learning the learning
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process so that I keep getting better and better, and I will handle these
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stresses in my life better and better. And that's a choice. I mean,
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every morning we have a choice to live our life a certain way,
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and you know, like I have to wake up every morning and go,
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okay, I had to name my legs. People that listen to the show,
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they know Thelm and Louise, So THEMB and Louise and I have to
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make a choice together. We sit, we lay in bed before I can
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even put weight on my feet on the floor, and we have like a
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chit chat with each other. I had to humanize them because I felt very
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detached from my body. It's it's like almost like I have phantom whim even
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though they're here, and so I had my acupuncturists. Actually is like it
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humanize them, make them a part of you have a relationship with your legs.
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I'm like, this is ridiculous. It is the best advice that I've
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ever been given. Quite frankly, I swear, because in the morning,
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I have a chit chat with them and we make a choice. We know
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it's gonna hurt a little bit today. We know that the weight of your
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body on your feet is going to hurt. You might not be able to
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walk all day. You might have to roll around in your chair and make
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these choices so that the things that pop into my day throughout are less stressful
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that I handle them as they come in a much better healthy way than immediately
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going after and trying to fight it. Because I know my personality type.
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I mean, obviously everybody knows I'm a lunatic. I'm wild and crazy.
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So that part of me is still there, driving this body that doesn't support
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it quite as well as it did before, and that stresses me out.
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So that anxiety of the thought of me not necessarily being able to ski again,
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or run again, or do long term yoga again, that scares the
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crap out of me. But I shifted my mindset to believe in myself and
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accept myself more and have a much better narrative. So can I give you
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some feedback? Yes? Please, that's why you're here. I love all
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right. So a lot of times we use words to describe ourselves that are
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not positive. Self deprecation number one thing I do right, And so it's
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important to catch yourself when you do this, such as a moment ago you
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use the word lunatic. Okay, so you want like a wild child?
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You know, even though we may be saying it in jest or kidding around,
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those words go in unconsciously, and so it's very important to notice any
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negative self talk, any ways that you refer to yourself, any words that
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you use that are as you just said, self deprecating, because they do
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go in and they land somewhere and they don't serve us. So we want
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to catch ourselves and how we talk to ourselves as well as about ourselves.
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And literally, when I said the word lunatic, I knew you were going
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to come back and get me by the way I said it, And as
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I was coming out of my mouth, I knew I was going to get
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a little bit of a little snack on the rest. Yeah, hold on
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one more second, not a smack on the wrist. I'm giving you loving
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feedback. He's giving me loving feedback because I care about you. There's no
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judgment in it. It's just something, you know. When I do biofeedback,
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biofeedback's a way of monitoring some aspect of my physiology that I feedback to
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myself, so I could literally learn to get my physiology under my control.
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And so if my tension goes down, I get feedback letting me know my
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tension has gone down, which is my goal, and it encourages my body
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to do more of that but if my tension goes up, I'll get feedback
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saying my tension has gone up. Now my goal is to not get upset
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that my tension went up, but to use that as neutral feedback. Okay,
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that's information for me. My tension just went up. Now that's telling
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me what not to do, because if it goes up and I go,
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oh my god, it went up, it's going to go up more more
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good? Right, yeah, So if I give you feedback or the goal
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is for it to simply be information that you then use, not a judgment,
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not something negative. And we talked a little bit about childhood, right
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and where we get a lot of these lessons. And I've got my nieces
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five years old, and my family is in the middle of a little bit
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of something with their living situation, and this poor little girl is running around.
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She doesn't have a home to live in. They're in an airbnb.
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They're basically displaced. And I'm watching this little girl and I'm seeing developmental things
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happening like every moment with this little girl. And I immediately thought about her
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when you were talking, how she's forming her views of the world, how
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she's fearful at five years old, of being homeless and how that's going to
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affect her down the road, and what place I can play, what role
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I can play to help her not be afraid of the world. Because I
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was a pretty scared little girl. That was the childhood trauma stuff that happened
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fairly early on in my in my years, so I always was. I
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was always very, very scared, and that those safety issues have followed me
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into adulthood because of childhood trauma. And it was adulthood trauma as well,
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But the childhood stuff is what really has stuck with me, and it formed
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my opinions of myself. It formed my opinions of the world around me.
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I didn't trust very many people, or I was overly trusting because I wanted
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to be loved. I wanted to feel safe. I wanted to feel secure.
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I want, you know, I wanted So a lot of that is
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in, you know, in the promiscuity and in drinking and drugs and all
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of that, because we're trying to find something that makes you feel okay.
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And so I went through all the gamut of all of that, and I
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am worried for my niece and my nephews right now. I'm worried for all
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of the children right now that are feeling displaced, that are feeling stressed at
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such a young age. How can we help guide ourselves to help kids in
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that way and also speak to our own little child inside to help pull us
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out of that. Because those stress responses, like you said, are just
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like they're like innate in me. So first off, you know, I
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feel for what you just described a lot what you just described, And yeah,
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the best thing you can do with that for that little girl is just
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give her love, love, attention and positive feedback, positive affect. Let
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her know that she is loved. That's the best thing you can do for
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her. But for ourselves, I brought up the notion of our internal voice,
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because the lessons of our childhood, they all get distilled into that internal
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voice. That internal voice, or I like to refer to it as an
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internal parent, because it plays that role with us, is the distillation of
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all those lessons. And so those lessons, to a great degree are not
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healthy lessons, as we've been saying, but they play this unconscious, ongoing
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role. So it's important for all of us to start noticing how we talk
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to ourselves. You know, there's a psychologist at the University of Washington,
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John Gottman, who does a lot of work with couples. There's one key
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statistic of his that's very relevant here. You found that when couples have a
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twenty to one positive to negative interactions, that's a healthy relationship. When that
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ratio drops down to about five to one positive to negative, the relationship is
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in trouble. So I like to tell people that that I work with to
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start monitoring their relationship with themselves, how they talk to themselves, and to
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notice, am I at twenty to one positive to negative? Am I down
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to five to one? Or for for many of us, am I more
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negatively talking to myself than positive? So that's pointing out how you're hurting yourself
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on a moment by moment basis because of how you talk to yourself. And
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that's why as my first pillar of resilience, I identify the qualities of a
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healthy internal voice, a healthy internal parent. So the qualities of a healthy
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internal parent is that they come from a place of love, compassion, acceptance,
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support, care and joy. We've got to have the joy there now
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everybody out there. Now you have a guide, Now you have a model.
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Could start comparing how you're talking to yourself with the way a healthy internal
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voice would talk with you, because ultimately, you want to find a way
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to migrate from over here to over here, and the way to migrate is
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that every time you hear your negative voice, you say, Okay, wait
29:29
a second, how how would my healthy internal voice talk to me right now
29:33
and speak from that place? And the more you speak from that place,
29:38
the more power you develop over there now. In my book, I lay
29:44
out how to do this, and in fact, to a great extent,
29:48
my book is sort of like a handbook for resilience because you can read five
29:52
pages in a day and then just follow the idea of those five pages that
29:59
whole day, and it guides you onto the path. Yeah, because this
30:03
isn't a book that you're gonna sit down and whip or snap through, like
30:06
I got it like a week and a half ago or something, and I'm
30:10
like, I need to give this book care and love and process with it
30:15
and work with it, not just try to read it so I can do
30:18
an interview with you, because I'm usually fairly good about reading the books of
30:22
my guests before they come on. But this is a lot of work for
30:27
me in particular. I'm like, like I told you before we saw the
30:30
interview to day, I was like, just turning the pages and that there's
30:33
more highlighted than is not. I'm like, maybe I should just highlight the
30:37
things I shouldn't be concerned about, things that would be yellow by the end
30:41
of this. And it really showed how quick quickly it showed me how I
30:48
have let stress drive almost my entire life. It almost made me sad for
30:55
a minute because I was like, wow, I have missed out on a
30:57
lot of things because I'm so controlling. A lot of that is fear based.
31:03
I know that, you know I'm OCD. Everything's just so everything's color
31:06
coordinating. You know, I was bored. I didn't sleep since I was
31:08
nine, and so I was bored all night, talk about childhood stuff keeping
31:12
me up. And now I'm here. And it took me to be forty
31:17
six years old to go, Okay, well, you love yourself and I
31:25
never have until just recently. So it's pretty neat. So that takes a
31:30
level of stress an anxiety off when you start to talk better to yourself.
31:36
So you've gone through three of your pillars and out of order, which I
31:40
love about this. So are we going to talk about more of them?
31:44
Well? I started out by highlighting what are the most important, So the
31:51
men, we did one, seven, and five right right, So,
31:56
and I'll get to another one that Well, they're really important. They are
32:00
all important. I know exactly you. Now. Another pillar that's very important
32:06
for us to address is the sixth pillar, which is emotional balance and mastery.
32:13
That one sounds very daunting for me. Well, the good news about
32:19
all of these is I lay out the steps to achieving emotional balance and mastery.
32:25
And it's based on how you know. When something happens in our lives
32:30
and we have an emotional reaction, we are designed to stay on something until
32:37
we reach completion, okay, And so if we have a conflict with somebody,
32:45
let's just say, and we're upset, we will carry that upset until
32:50
we find a way to get resolution. And for this reason, we carry
32:54
a lot of unfinished emotional business, resentments, ups sets, anger, sadness,
33:01
and we're not able to hold those feelings in just in our minds.
33:07
We literally have to hold those feelings in in our bodies because emotions have energy
33:15
to them, right, and so we have to hold in that energy,
33:19
and that is a distraction and it takes us away from being present and focused.
33:24
And so it's very important for us to identify, recognize emotions that we're
33:30
carrying and hold the intention to work through them, to express the feelings,
33:37
express the emotions so we can let them go. I feel like I've got
33:44
a bunch of suitcases sitting at lax right now of emotional unfinished business. Seriously,
33:52
Like my example of this girl that's in my life that caused this enormous
33:59
pain boost yes, last night and this morning, that's baggage that I thought
34:02
I had already opened, tookn out, donated to the Salvation Army, like
34:08
I thought I was done and I was good, and I am not.
34:13
And it was cleared just by my body's an instant response. And so that
34:16
shows I have so much more work to do to clear through that. I'm
34:21
holding on to it like nobody's business. I mean, it's almost a twenty
34:23
year relationship. That's a long time to be affected by somebody. And I'm
34:29
an EmPATH, so I take on everybody's everything. I know that about myself.
34:34
It's a blessing and a curse. And you know it's one of those
34:37
things that I find with relationships that we do man, we do hold on
34:43
to those things, and in your book explains how we can help navigate through
34:47
that because man holding onto it isn't good for anybody. So a couple of
34:52
things on what you just said. Anytime that where you know, there's a
34:58
lot of pain in the world, and it's very easy to start feeling upset
35:01
about the pain in the world. But the first question we have to ask
35:06
ourselves because if we are feeling upset by stuff that's going on out there,
35:14
it's using our own and we're using our own precious energy, our resources,
35:20
and we are creating tension in our bodies. So the first thing we have
35:22
to say is is this use of my energy having any constructive purpose? Because
35:30
if it isn't, then you want to let go of it. Otherwise,
35:35
why keep being upset about something that you can't do anything about. Oh well,
35:39
people say, well, I'm a good person, I care about that.
35:44
I get it, I get it. But you want to care about
35:49
what's going on, But then you want to let go. You don't want
35:52
to keep carrying that because it's affecting you. The other thing is, you
35:58
know, I get a lot of people who come to me and they are
36:01
still carrying anger and resentment about some of their important relationships A father, a
36:08
mother, and I talk about okay, we have to work through those feelings
36:14
and let go of them. And they'll say to me, but I've been
36:17
doing this for years. I've been sitting in therapist's office where I've been yelling
36:23
and screaming and getting that anger out. But I tell them there's one key
36:30
here, Well, there's two keys. One is that if I'm carrying anger
36:36
toward my father because he didn't meet my needs, who's being hurt by me
36:44
carrying this anger? Not my father? I am right now the person who
36:51
comes to me and says, but I've expressed my anger and I'm still carrying
36:53
it. And I say, are you still wanting something from this person that
37:00
they've shown and demonstrated over the years they're not either willing or able to give
37:07
you. And they'll say, yeah, you know, I deserve my father
37:12
to love me. I deserve my father to listen to me. I say,
37:15
yes, you do. I honor you, and I agree with you.
37:20
You do deserve that from your father. But if he's not going to
37:25
give it to you, you get the anger out. But now you have
37:29
to let go not because you don't deserve it, but because holding on to
37:36
wanting something from someone who's never going to give it to you just keeps recycling
37:42
younger. But it does more than that. As long as I'm focused on
37:45
getting it from that person, I'm less available to get it from someone who
37:52
might be capable of giving it to me. I'm stuck over here, and
37:57
I'm ignoring something over here that might actually meet my need. So we have
38:01
to let go here, as painful as that might be. We have to
38:07
let go here, get the anger out. Let go here. Now I
38:10
can approach other people in my life from a healthy place, with the potent,
38:16
with the real potential of getting that need met. It may not come
38:21
from my father, but that love and attention might be available someplace else,
38:27
and that's where I have to look. It's like it's like the person that's
38:31
in a dark street with a lamplight and he's looking under the lamp for his
38:36
keys, and someone walks along and says, what are you doing? Said,
38:39
I'm looking for my keys. He says, well, where did you
38:42
drop them? He said, well, I dropped them over there. Why
38:45
are you looking over here because here's where the light is. We have Well,
38:52
yeah, because we're not holding space for the right, the right person
38:55
and the right because I my my birth father, I said, I'm done
39:00
with his with him not showing up, not being part of my life,
39:02
like I was that basically your scenario where the dad never showed up. But
39:07
I have an incredible stepfather. He's been my dad as far as I'm concerned,
39:13
since I was like two and a half years old. But there was
39:15
still that need to want to have my dad and my step mom love me
39:20
and care for me. And it's never possible. It was impossible, and
39:23
I had to mourn that and I had to let go of it. And
39:28
I did that seventeen years ago and I haven't looked back. That was one
39:31
of the best decisions that I've ever made, and I let space in for
39:35
my stepdad to really have the amazing relationship that I have with him. That's
39:39
a very good example of where I did. Champions, That's beautiful that you
39:45
did. It's difficult, and I'm sure it was difficult manage not only do
39:51
we not want to we want we don't want to let go of the hope,
39:55
but also if we let go of the hope. Now we're going to
40:00
feel other pain of loss, and so we avoid the pain of loss by
40:07
holding on to a hope that will never be there, and we stay stuck
40:10
in that pattern. Let go warn the loss as you did. That helps
40:17
you let go and helps you be more available to get those needs met someplace
40:22
else. So that's great that you were able to do that. Yeah,
40:27
it was. It was my big success. And you know, just because
40:30
that I share blood with this human being doesn't mean that I have to keep
40:34
being treated the way I was treated or not treated at all. You know,
40:37
it's more of an absence than it was. The poor treatment. It
40:42
was just like, I don't even understand how you could not want to hang
40:44
out with this hot little nugget, Like what is wrong with you? But
40:47
I was not part of his plan, so you know, and that's okay.
40:51
So the sixth pillar, emotional balance and mastery, is about not carrying
40:57
any regrets in life. If there's something we regret, you need to work
41:02
through it to let go of the regret, because regrets hold us back.
41:07
In fact, any emotional baggage that we don't address only holds us back.
41:14
And so that's my sixth pillar. The fourth pillar is physical balance and mastery.
41:20
And we talked about earlier how the evolutionary process sets us up because we
41:27
have a big stress response, fight or flight, and then we're dealing with
41:31
somebody sitting across the table with us in an office, and we have to
41:37
hold that energy in. And so the fourth pillar is physical balance and mastery.
41:45
Now, how many stimuli in your day trigger the stress response? I
41:50
don't know. Three hundred and fifty million plus the lessons of child could have
41:58
us jumping from one stress to another. How many stimuli in your day trigger
42:01
the opposite, the recovery response. Very little, if any trigger safety trigger.
42:12
I could let down my guard, which is necessary. The two branches
42:16
to the nervous system, the activating sympathetic branch to stress and the recovery parasympathetic
42:24
branch that helps restore balance. And so, because we have very few,
42:30
if any, stimuli in our day that say, oh I'm safe, we
42:35
have to create them. We have to find what I refer to as islands
42:39
of safety in our day. I love that times where we could say,
42:44
like particularly if you sit down to lunch, In particular, when you sit
42:49
down to lunch, you want to say, Okay, for the next half
42:52
hour forty five minutes hour, I'm safe. I could let down my guard,
42:58
I can relax, I can enjoy this food, I can be present.
43:02
I'm on an island of safety. And we want to create more of
43:07
these in our day. And I like to say, you want to create
43:10
some kind of a signal to yourself, a queue that says to you,
43:16
hey, check in with myself and my shoulders elevated. Let go is my
43:22
jaw tense relax. So I like to use doorways portals. Every time I
43:29
go through a doorway, I've trained myself to recognize, oh, I'm going
43:34
through a doorway. Hold on, let me take a moment, let me
43:37
let go, because every time I do that, I'm creating a reset in
43:42
my nervous system. Every door you walk through, most of them? Wow,
43:49
do you not have any many many doors in your home? Certainly if
43:53
I'm walking through one and then another, then another, I don't have to
43:57
do it with each one hyperventilating at that point. Or you know, you
44:02
stop for a red light, Okay, you're right, yes, Ah,
44:07
you know something something you can use as a signal to start balancing out all
44:14
the signals of stress and tension to start creating some signals of calm relax And
44:21
there's a lot of these those deep breaths and all of that. It's just
44:23
like when we're about ready to walk into Thanksgiving with our family, guys,
44:27
where we all have to take a deep breath before we go in. But
44:30
we do. I mean that even with like when you think about you were
44:32
talking about like out a red light, the road rage, we're always all
44:36
we're always everybody's in such a hurry all of the time. We've got to
44:38
get there. You know, everyone's texting and driving and swerving, and you
44:42
know, oh my gosh, if we could all just take a deep breath
44:45
and be a little bit more calm in places. But I can't control anybody
44:50
else and what they're doing. I can only control my environment, and even
44:52
then it's a little iffy. Yes, so you talked about Thanksgiving and being
44:57
with family. Yes, ends up to other of my pillars of resilience,
45:04
the second one, which is your relationship with others, and the seventh,
45:08
which is presence. And so it's important to notice the quality of our relationships
45:16
and our environment to a great extent, determines our health. But we have
45:23
choices about that environment, and one choice are the people who we engage with.
45:30
And of course there's some people like family members that we may not have
45:36
choice, although we may have choices to spend less time with them. But
45:40
you want to be able to discriminate healthy relationships from toxic relationships. Relationships that
45:49
are nurturing, emotionally nurturing in whose presence you feel I can let down my
45:55
guard and whose presence you feel honored and knowledge and accept it, versus relationships
46:04
in which maybe you have to be on guard, maybe you have to watch
46:07
what you have to say, what you're saying, Maybe you're walking on eggshells,
46:12
maybe you're feeling judged. You want to minimize those times with those relationships
46:20
and maximize time and relationships that are healthy. Now, combining a few of
46:27
my pillars, I want to say that the fourth pillar physical balance and mastery.
46:34
It's up to us to practice some form of relaxation, meditation, imagery
46:42
that helps us go into that recovery mode. We spend so much time in
46:46
stress. We have to find the time and take the time to literally retrain
46:52
our nervous system into a place of balance. Okay, the sixth pillar emotional
46:57
balance and mastery. When we go into a positive emotional state of gratitude,
47:05
appreciation, we literally affect our physiology. So there's a and this is an
47:12
important message and an important lesson how our emotions affect our physiology. So there's
47:19
a There's something referred to as heart rate variability, and that has to do
47:23
with how the various physiological systems of our bodies can go into alignment. When
47:30
I am in a positive emotional state and I look at my heart rate variability,
47:37
it goes into a positive and positive physiological state called coherence. Coherence is
47:45
when we breathe in, our heart rate goes up, and we breathe out,
47:49
our heart rate goes down. And this rhythmic heart rate pattern is referred
47:54
to as coherence, and it's optimal. In fact, it's one of the
48:00
it's one of the important measures that doctors look at for health, how well
48:05
our heart rate goes into this optimal pattern. Now, if we are in
48:09
a negative emotional state of anger, resentment, upset, frustration, and we
48:16
look at that heart rate pattern, it is chaotic. Oh it's got to
48:22
be now. Now let's bring in pillar number seven presence, Okay, and
48:28
presence has two directions. Receiving being present, I see my environment, I
48:35
notice I'm paying attention to what's going on in my world. Right. But
48:40
then there's the presence that we project out into the world, our presence.
48:46
Right. And you know that some people, you you experience them and you
48:52
want to you want to talk with them, you want you're attracted to them.
48:55
And then others you sort of whether it's conscious or not, you sort
49:00
of want to stay away from. Yeah, for sure. Now if you
49:05
and I were in the same room together and I monitored your brain waves,
49:12
I would pick up my heart rate pattern in your brain waves. WHOA,
49:19
I would pick up my heart rate pattern in your brain waves. Okay,
49:23
now let's go back to the fifth pillar, the sixth pillar of emotional balance
49:28
and mastery, and we and think about if I'm feeling gratitude and my heart
49:34
rate pattern is nice and coherent, now we're picking up that in your brain
49:39
waves, versus if I'm worried, anxious, fearful, upset. Now we're
49:46
going to pick up my chaotic heart rate pattern in your brain waves. How
49:51
do you think that affects you and your relationship with me? Amazing? Huh?
49:59
Yeah, that amazing. I did not know that, and I'm a
50:01
smart little cookie. Most days. If you're practicing a relaxation exercise, if
50:10
you go into a state of gratitude and appreciation, you're going to enhance that
50:17
positive physiological state that you're working to create. I love that. Well,
50:24
we're going to be doing a book signing together in Newport Beach, California,
50:31
and our heart and brain weighs are going to be all kinds of lovey dovey.
50:36
I can't wait. This has been incredible, and I love the way
50:40
that you didn't go one through nine and that you that you brought us through
50:45
them. Is there a reason why you did that today versus going through one
50:51
to two, to three to four? Because I know that there's a strategy
50:53
behind it. You know, we have a limited time together, and so
50:59
yeah, did want to be more organic. Number two, to be most
51:04
relevant to your audience. We're not going to put my whole book into this
51:09
forty five minutes cannot at long, but I wanted to give important highlights that
51:15
and takeaways for your audience to go, Okay, I can pay attention to
51:21
that in my life today. So I wanted to give your audience a bunch
51:24
of those takeaways for them, and then you know, my book is a
51:30
handbook for living an optimal life. In fact, Michael Ovitz, the former
51:37
president of Walt Disney and founder of CIA said, quote my quote from him
51:46
is it's a brilliant book, and it's a handbook for living your best life.
51:51
And I like to think that that's exactly what it is. It's something
51:54
that you can use on an ongoing basis to end your life and to live
52:00
a better life. Everybody's got to get this book into their hands. The
52:04
Nine Pillars of Resilience, the proven path to master stress, slow aging,
52:09
and increase vitality. With my darling Stephen here, thank you so much for
52:15
our time today. This has been wonderful. We could keep talking for I
52:19
will leave your audience with one one more thing. Okay, you got it.
52:23
We can now assess our biological age, how fast or slow we're actually
52:29
aging as as opposed to our chronological age. Right. So I'd got my
52:34
biological age last year, and you know, I follow my book my program,
52:40
and that's how I developed my program. My biological age was assessed at
52:45
twenty years lower than my chronological age. H Wow, tremendous things are possible
52:54
if you engage in a process of resilience. That's awesome, so wonderful.
53:00
So we can find oh goodness, we can find you at doctor Stephen sitter
53:06
Off dot com as d R S T E p h E N s I
53:10
D E R O f F dot com. We've got I'm gonna put everything
53:14
in show notes and in social media. You got to follow him on Instagram.
53:16
He's super engaged on Instagram, which is awesome. And in social media
53:21
again, the book The Nine Pillars of Resilience, The Proven Path to master
53:23
stress, slow aging, and increase vitality. Thank you so much for your
53:29
time today. It has been nothing but wonderful and I can't wait to see
53:30
you at the book signing. My pleasure. You are exclusively invited to share
53:37
this resilient, intentional, and expressive VIP pain journey together. Let's get to
53:43
the heart of how to heal with you by my side. Please follow the
53:46
Pain Game Podcast wherever you digest your podcast content, we will be there.
53:52
Visit us at the Pain gamepodcast dot com and follow us on all the socials.
53:57
Thanks for listening, my little VIPs. Catch you on the other side.