Latest / College Is Fine, Everything's Fine / #19 Your Emotional Savings Account: Learn Ways to Buffer Against College Stress by Balancing Life’s “Withdrawals” With Skills “Deposits”

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#19 Your Emotional Savings Account: Learn Ways to Buffer Against College Stress by Balancing Life’s “Withdrawals” With Skills “Deposits” · College Is Fine, Everything's Fine

We got some feedback from someone who listened to one of our more recent episodesthat theyhad a lot of curiosity about something you mentioned, which is the emotional savings account. So Liz, I was curious.  That's not a phrase I always use in my work, so I love, I wanna hear more.Yeah, , most people who are coming to see me. Have a lot of negative or stressful things in their life, and one of their goals is to be happier, be more satisfied, or feel calm or more relaxed. And I use this analogy, , that we can't always predict or prevent when stressors are gonna happen in our life.And the best thing that we can do is make sure that we have a buffer against. and not wait until we're really overwhelmed to try to accumulate more positive emotions. And so the savings account analogy is essentially that you don't wanna wait until like you've overdrafted. I mean, that's the worst feeling that happened to me in college.Far too many times for me to admit that I'd get an overdraft fee cuz I was not, managing my money effectively. But you don't wanna wait until you have no funds left to then think about how you're gonna deposit more, positive emotions into your savings account. So if you really think about that, we all have a savings account and we all have things that are taking away from.Our wellbeing, , our mental health, and we all have to work hard on putting things into that account to make sure that we're feeling the best we can.I love the idea of this. Withdrawals are kind of part of life. and Liz, are you using a metaphormy gosh. The contagion effect. It's contagious, guys.Well, you're not gonna be surprised to hear that. I actually, even though I don't use the term emotional savings account per se, right. We all have our different ways of teaching, different concepts, but I do have a metaphor for this shockinglywait.So I always think about, and , maybe it's cuz I lived in Brooklyn for so long and there are water towers everywhere.Even the kids' books that I would have for my kids would be, Three hipsters, four water towers. You know, like the counting books. It was so funny. So maybe that's why this metaphor speakstome, but it's similar to the idea of the savings account. , you can picture a water tower it's like those big things you see on the road that typically have the name of \ , the city on it, et cetera.And so they collect water and there's noway. tocontrol nature, how much water is going in. Sometimes it's gonna be like a deluge and sometimes it's just gonna be a bit of a drought. And that's similar to life, obviously, where we have no sense of when the stressors are gonna come  or we might know it's coming like exam period, but we don't have any control over it.We can't be like, eh, I'm gonna skip exams this week. And so \ , you can imagine that if the stressors that come up in your life are like the rain that comes in and fills up the water tower, and you have no control over that. The only real thing you can control isthespigot at the bottom. How much water are you gonna let out at a time?How much can you take out of that water tower so that it's not overflowing? And when I'm talking with my clients, I'm thinking, okay, so every time you turn the spigot and let more water out, that's a skill. It's something you're adding to it to kind of, to your point, led to deposit. You know, what are you gonna do to have on the ready habitually so that you're noticing when you can.Really turnupthe skills used, turn up some of the things that add Those positive deposits in your life. So metaphor of the day,Never disappoint Sarah . , in really concrete terms, how can we make more deposits and less withdraws? , and one of the caveats, I always say to clients, here's another analogy, but I compare this to bowling with little kids, you know, what do they put in, like the gutters?They put like Little buffer. Yeah.I'm, I, maybe Istill use one. I don't know. Don't worry about it.but I, I said like even with those in there, it's gonna prevent you from getting a gutter ball, like the worst possible, but I can't guarantee that you're gonna get a strike, . Just by having that, that in there. , the goal here is , how can we buffer against stress., it doesn't mean that everything's gonna be perfect, that we're gonna get a strike, things might still be challenging, but you're not hitting that bottom that lowest Yep. Usually my first step to figure out, is this something that you need to pay attention to, is.This is again, where Sarah and I have talked about. We usually are drawing these things out, . So we'll share a visual, , through social media, but I usually draw a scale, and don't judge my drawing when you guys see this in real life., but essentially on one side of the scale is a, is positive, and on the other side is negative.And I start with the negative and I ask a college student, what are some things that are stressing you out? , and immediately I'm getting like grades, friends, home, weather, sick, , boyfriend, you know, laundry , the laundry list of things that are stressing them out. I'm like, okay.I'm like, okay, stop, stop. We got enough on the list. And then I'll say, okay, now tell me about the positive things in your life. And I've done this hundreds of times, and it's silent. For a while, and it seems like it's like pulling teeth to list positives that are there, or I just get like a couple and then when we look at the scale, we see that inevitably it's tipped towards the negative.So what does that tell us? That there are a lot of things that are really stressing us out that are withdrawing from our emotional savings account, and we really do need to work harder on depositing more positive emotions. So what does that look like? So Sarah, what are some thoughts that you have? What are things some of our college students could do if they've kind of found themselves? Maybe you even draw this scale out and you see that your scale's tipped. What can we do? What are some things we can do?Uh, C B T therapists love us. We love us a scale. Well, first of all, and I think a theme to remember here is variety is the spice of life. You know, we're not going to go through and probably hit on all the things that youlistenerslike, you know, so you have to imagine that we're just givingsome suggestionshere.And again, the pointis,Have some tips, but the idea is to then start to think about your own things that feel like you. But if someone's coming in saying like, okay, I've got all these stressors, I start to think about, all right, how can we think about things that you enjoydoing, bothbig and small? My clients hear me say this all the time.I will say it again on thispodcast. I thinkabout pleasant things that you enjoy, and I always say there'scapital.Pleasant. You know, like going on a really long hike with your best friend and having a very cathartic talk. Wonderful. We can't do that all the time, obviously. So then also, what are the lowercase, smaller, pleasant things that we can just sprinkle in throughout the day? What are the big peas and yes, let's see if we can schedule that. And what are the smaller things that you could. during the day. So for instance, I, , went and got some flowers, a couple, just a little bitty vase, you know, nothing, no big deal. It boosted my mood, it made me feel better.Now Ican lookat it here and there. Is it a biglife-changing event?It is not. , but if you do enough of those things a day, actually, the research shows sometimes things like lighting a quick candle,while or listening to some really great music.a lotof more of those smaller things during the day can add up and be just as effective as the larger, bigger things.I love that too. , Thinking about things that are manageable that you can do those smaller ps I think sometimes when I'm working with coll students, they're like, , I'm so busy. I don't have time, , to do some of the things that I wanna do. So doing some problem solving to really think about, are there little ways that I can boost my mood?And I always say, pay attention now. Okay. lot of people don't like this. And C B T therapists love rating scales, , uh, many, so manyscales. I'm always like, from zero to 10, they're like, not this scale. And I'm like, I know. Butanyway, but develop, I don't care what it is, I don't care if it's an emoji scale. I don't care what it is. But sometimes we're doing things that we think are promoting positive emotions, but , they might be dull, they've lost their potency. They're not really giving us the same, emotional reaction shine is the. . So pay attention to that cuz even though you're doing something, you could be replacing it with something else. A new activity that might actually boost that savings account a little bit more than the thing that maybe you're just habitually doing out of habit. I don't know about you, Sarah, but one other thing that I think is really important to pay attention to is finding things that you can do alone activity-wise, and then finding things that you can do with other people. And I think some people really prefer to be with others during activities. I'm probably one of those people, it's just not always realistic.And then I find other people. Struggle with initiating things with other people, but having a balance between things we do alone activity-wise and attending to relationships and making sure that we're doing shared pleasant activities, I think is important.I also, if we keep to the variety,isa spice of life theme. We know that relationships in general tend to promote wellbeing. Now, obviously, and we've talked a lot about finding your people in college. We have a whole episodes on that finding and keeping your people, but we've seen that there's a lot of research to show and I think all of us probably have our own, you know, study of one during the.but some of those smaller day-to-day interactions lift us up a lot. There's a woman in the Grand Central building where I workI work in Grand Central in New York, and I have to pass through this one building to get to mine, and there's this woman in there and every time I go in she's like, good morningeveryone.And it just is such a great way to start the day. Now there's a term for this, of course, in research it's called the consequential stranger, right? . But it's the stranger who actually does have an impacton.To the extent that I went up to her one day and I was like, you actually boost my mood. Thank you. I, I really appreciate the good morning.She's just like, we gotta spread the love. You know, she just is this beam of light. During the pandemic, I think we all noticed, wait a minute, I kind of missed the little chit-chat I have with, for instance, the Trader Joe's checkout person who just has that twinkle in their eye or. I. , you know, the guy that I go in my office building and we just have a small quick hello when I goget myafternoon coffee.So , again, it doesn't have to be all about big friendships. Sometimesif youare able to make sure you're getting outside and having some of those smaller interactions that those help too. But of course, . We know that having closer, not so consequential relationships, like not consequential strangers, but our actual friends there's so many benefitsto makingsure you're spending time with, people who lift you up.Obviously we have a lot of different people in our lives, and sometimes we might call people friends who, that's a pretty big word, right? . There area lot of different kinds of but the people you know who have your back. When you're spending time with those people, there's so many benefits to that. Obviously promoting a sense of belonging, peopleget me,they understandme. Sometimes there's contribution, we know that contributing or attending to our relationships makes us feel, worthwhile. That there's something about our self-esteem that it really does help. And that helps Yeah. Even if your friend's not helping you, if you help a friend, it feels really good. Wealso know that friendships. Offset stressors. So when you, you know, you're stacked up andyou've gotthe big list of things stressing you out, spending time with friends and not talking about exams for asecondhelps offset that a lot.I also know that there are friends I have who are the ones who say, Hey Sarah, let's take a yoga class together. Or Do you wanna try this? Or, well, let's go for a walk. They're the people who I can go to to help me have some good, healthy behaviors that maybe I wouldn't have done before. That doesn't have to always be exercise. Having friends that you know are a good influence on you can be really helpful as well. Sometimes those are the people who I'm sure we have those friends. You know, I've got , the friends who I can go, you know, like I said to the yoga class with, but I'll also have the friend that I know I can go to and have a really deep conversation with.I have the friend I can go to and geek out over psychology jokes with, , but people who can influence you, make your brain start to work a little bit, get those neurons flowing, that has a lot of benefit.Yeah. I guess to summarize, always keep in mind from an evolutionary perspective, we are social beings and so if we think about how we can promote positive emotions,somepiece of that pie needs to be attending to relationships, and whether that means like the conversation with the barista at your coffee shop, or talking to your professor after class or meeting up with a friend to go to a workout class, whatever, it might be, big or small.If we're not socializing to some extent, it likely is going to have more of a withdrawal effect on our mood than, a. deposit Impact.Yeah. But then again, . Obviously can be with friends sometimes and not when you're by yourself, we've said, okay, sure, you can do a few pleasant activities. I always think about actions like, what are you doing with your hands? What are you doing with your speech? What are you doing with your legs?Those are pleasant activities, right?Calling afriend, texting someone, but there's also that internal world, the ways that we can. our mind , to give us a little bit of a pep talk. And one of the things we are big proponents of is self-validation, but that is a term that might need some explanation. I don't know about you, and whenever I say the word validation, there's always a lot of assumptions about what that means.Yeah, I think, you know, the easiest way I think for people to understand what it means is that you wanna acknowledge that whatever you're thinking or feeling makes sense. Essentially. And doing that we know actually helps regulate our mood state., and it can promote positive feelings in the same way that if I looked really stressed out and Sarah said, Liz, ugh, you must be so overwhelming, right?Right now I would notice a positive emotion because I'm like, ah, Sarah gets me. She understands what I'm going through. The same works for us internally if we can kind of acknowledge our mood state. Acknowledge that what we're thinking or our experience makes sense. It does promote positive emotions or regulate like down regulate, like get rid of negative emotions.There's nothing worse. And I, I have been guilty of gaslighting myself,Of saying things like, oh, you shouldn't be so upset about this. So I'll give youan example of a time where I didn't really validate what I was going through, and a time where I. Now have learned, oh, okay, this makes sense. So when I was really little, I moved to anew schoolin fourth grade, rough year to make friends, and I was finding my way through.Also, I was about this height. For those of you, I, I'm about five seven. I'm not that tall.but whenyou're in fourthgradeAnd you're already five seven. I mean, I was, I wasn't quite there, but I was pretty tall and I'm gangling look, it was a, it was a rough time and I was, I guess I can think back to this sleepover when I wastold,oh, you know, you're only invited because you're so-and-so's neighbor.And I still remember. The feeling that can come up of just shame and embarrassment and all the things that happened that year where I just went through some really rough times. Now, throughout the rest of my kind of life, there was some highs and some lows, as we probably all have in high school, right?Some years had more lows, some years had more highs. but for a long time after finding my people and becoming an adult, or even turning 40 when you're supposed to like not care at all anymore about anything, apparently that's what they say.  I would get my feelings hurt or I'd really worry about where there's someone likes me.And despite all the evidence to the contrary, these are people who've been my friends for decades at this point. Back in the day, if I had that feeling, I'd be like, oh my gosh, you're sostupid. Whycan't you just get over that? That's what I would say to myself. I'd be like, why can't you just get over that time?Gosh, you were in fourth grade. Now I will say something like, oh, here it is again. . You know, like that sort of core memory is popping up and I'm barely familiar with it. Don't have to act on it, but I get it. Like that was, that was a really a tough time. You must have really absorbed that.Sothat's an example of a time where I.By not validating what I was going through. Not only did I experience that sense of like, oh gosh, I'm kinda struggling with this friendship or feeling insecure. Then I also bashed myself on top of that and just made myself feel even worse and judged my own experience. So that's what we're trying to say with self-validation.Sometimes it's not to say everything you think is correct , or right, but saying, oh, I understand the story of how I got here.and that makes sense.Yeah. And I think it's really important as we're asking you to think about depositing more positive emotions, that to even be motivated to do that, , , we want our mood state to not be extremely negative. And if you're able to have a reaction, like you said Sarah, and be able to like self validate even the way you said it, it was kind of matter of fact, right?There wasn't like tons of emotion behind it. You're gonna be able to be like more activated or be able to problem solve more. If you're really self invalidating, let's say, judging all your stressors, all those negatives you listed, it's gonna create a negative emotion. And when we have a negative emotion like that hanging around, it makes it even harder to drudge up, the mental energy and physical energy to do some of the things that you need to do, um to create more, positivity.  One of the last things I was hoping we could touch on, Other skills maybe they fall in the self-care kind of realm, but they are things that promote positive emotions. Whether that's being mindful of moving more or doing a meditation or just relaxing, like doing things that, that are soothing to yourself that we know doing some of those activities does promote positive emotions and are things you should probably have in that diverse diet that you spoke about earlier.Absolutely. You know, Liz, you're so naturally prone to taking a run or doing moving her body in that way, and not everybody like always joke. I was like, that was more musically inclined. than likely Lying growing up. , I do think exercise is really important. Ialsothink that, I think there area lot ofways to pay attention to what makes you feel good. What are making your muscles feel good? You're kind of get your blood feeling the way it should. For me, sometimes it's just stretching , or just taking a quick walk, getting some fresh air. It doesn't have to be, Super athletic. You know, if you're not someone who's inclined to take a run or go to an exercise class, that's fine.Startwith what does make your body feel good that you've taken care of it today. Some people, if they are working out a lot, perhaps they're a college athlete, maybe for them resting their body and allowing themselves to rest their body feels really good. So just paying attention to what your muscles need. Okay. So Liz, this week, what are you gonna do to make some deposits?Okay, so. I think I might have mentioned it to Sarah, but I'm doing this thing called frozen feet. It's like six weeks. You have to do a mile, walk, run, hike, whatever outside each day. Yep. , I found a new tea that I really wanna try, so I'm gonna try to have a cup of tea every night, which I got out of the habit of doing.And I have two friends that I scheduled calls with that I haven't talked to in a while that I miss that I'm.Mm-hmm.and do that actually on one of my walks.Oh, I'll have a good.ketchup.I read something about the eight minute phone call,I have a friend who we never we're both horrible at the phone and I texted herthe other day. I was like, oh wait, there's this thing called the eight minute phone call. Can we do an eight minutehmm. I love that. Maybe I'll trythat. I gotta look into that. Those are, those are my, um, Those are, my, deposits for the week. What about you, Sarah?So I have also tried to be better about reconnecting. Youknow, the holidays get really busy, but I have a poker. Sarah, you play poker. Why am I just founding this out?no, no,Sorry.I have a .Ihave a group of girls who were trying to learn how to play poker together and I have wonwhole dollars So, um, sir.future Poker shark and making I was picturing you like on a flight to Vegas on the side, you're just like winning championships No. Picture mewith a cheat sheet and all of us going, is this better? You know, we, we, but it's fun and it's funny. So that's, that's something that, because holidays got busy, we got out of the habit of, but we're always laughing hysterically by the end. So that'll be sort of my big capital friendship.thing.I think the smaller stuff would be something like making sure I'mgoing on awalk every day.I've been so busy between this podcast and be, youknow, otherthings going on. I just have always, I'm always putting exercise to the back of Burner,so I'vemade a promise to myself. Even if it's a 10 minute walk, just do it. Just really quickly try to get itin betweenother things. I always feel better when I've been outside, even when it's dark andIt isleafless like it is now. Hence, the flowers So those are the, those are a few things I'm gonnatry to dothis , so our hope is for you, like, take a moment and be aware, are there too many withdrawals kind of going on? Could I pay more attention to my emotional savings account? And what are some of the things that I could do to more frequently, deposit, more positive emotion. All right. Go forth. Happy savings guys.