Changing the way you think about Stress | Dr Libby Weaver | TEDxCurrumbin
Summary
TLDRThis talk delves into the nature of stress, challenging the conventional approach of managing it and advocating for a reduction in stress hormone production. It explores the impact of stress on health, including digestion, sleep, and immunity, and emphasizes the role of our thoughts and perceptions in creating stress. The speaker encourages understanding the evolutionary context of stress response and offers strategies to reduce stress by questioning our thoughts and seeking truth, ultimately aiming for a state of trust over constant stress.
Takeaways
- 🌟 The speaker proposes a shift from managing stress to understanding and reducing the production of stress hormones.
- 🔍 Stress is viewed through the lenses of nutrition, biochemistry, and emotions, impacting various aspects of health and well-being.
- 🌱 Acknowledgement of real stress in the world is essential, but the focus is on the self-created stress that stems from our thoughts and perceptions.
- 🧠 The speaker emphasizes that stress is not caused by external factors alone, but our responses to them, highlighting the need to change our reactions.
- 🌐 The rapid changes in the 'commercial era' have led to an evolution in how we produce stress hormones, affecting our bodies and minds differently.
- 🏃♀️ The speaker suggests that our bodies have not yet adapted to the constant production of stress hormones due to modern triggers like caffeine and perceived disapproval.
- 📝 The concept of 'foreign words' is introduced as a tool to identify personal traits we desire others to see in us, which often lead to stress when perceived as threatened.
- 📈 The speaker discusses how social media and other modern stressors can amplify stress, especially when they become channels for perceived judgment.
- 💬 The importance of questioning our thoughts and the dialogue we have with ourselves is highlighted as a way to reduce stress and live more authentically.
- 🌱 The speaker concludes by encouraging the audience to trust the unfolding of life, to embrace the lessons and growth opportunities that come with stress.
Q & A
What is the main focus of the speaker's approach to stress?
-The speaker focuses on understanding why individuals produce stress hormones and helping them produce fewer of them, rather than just managing stress.
How does the speaker suggest we perceive stress?
-The speaker suggests that stress is not just from external factors but also from our internal thoughts and reactions to those factors.
What are the three lenses through which the speaker views health?
-The speaker views health through the lenses of nutrition, biochemistry, and emotions.
How does the speaker relate stress to human evolution?
-The speaker relates stress to human evolution by discussing how our world has rapidly changed in the last 75 years, which is a very short time in human history, and how our stress hormone production has adapted to these changes.
What is the term the speaker uses to describe the traits we want others to see in us?
-The speaker uses the term 'foreign words' to describe the traits we want others to see in us.
Why does the speaker believe that social media can be a source of stress for some individuals?
-The speaker believes social media can be a source of stress because it is one of the modalities through which some individuals allow others to judge them.
What is the speaker's view on the relationship between stress and our perception of others' opinions of us?
-The speaker views stress as often stemming from our perception of how others see us and the need for their approval, which can be a significant source of stress if not managed.
What does the speaker suggest is the opposite of stress?
-The speaker suggests that the opposite of stress is trust, particularly trust in the unfolding of our lives and the lessons we are meant to learn.
How does the speaker propose we reduce the production of stress hormones?
-The speaker proposes that we reduce stress hormone production by training our 'new brain' to catch ourselves in the space between our initial reactions ('old brain') and our conscious evaluations.
What is the significance of the 'space' mentioned by Dr. Viktor Frankl according to the speaker?
-The 'space' mentioned by Dr. Viktor Frankl is significant because it represents the opportunity we have to choose our response to stimuli, which is where our growth and freedom lie.
How does the speaker connect our thoughts and self-perception to stress?
-The speaker connects our thoughts and self-perception to stress by explaining that our judgments and negative self-talk can lead to a cycle of stress and poor self-care, which can be broken by questioning and changing our thought patterns.
Outlines
🧠 Understanding Stress and Its Impact
The speaker proposes a shift in the way we approach stress, moving from managing it to understanding why we produce stress hormones. They emphasize the importance of looking at health through the lenses of nutrition, biochemistry, and emotions. Stress hormones can disrupt various bodily functions, including nutrient absorption, sleep quality, and immune response. The speaker acknowledges the existence of real stress but focuses on the self-created stress stemming from our thought patterns. They explain that stress is not caused by external factors but by our reactions to them, using the example of a pile of dirty dishes to illustrate how our response can vary. The speaker also discusses the rapid changes in human life over the last 75 years, which they term the 'commercial era,' and how these changes have affected our stress hormone production. They suggest that our bodies have not yet adapted to the modern triggers of stress, such as caffeine or perceived disapproval, which were not present in our evolutionary history.
🌟 The Power of Perception and 'Foreign Words'
The speaker delves into the concept of 'foreign words,' which are the traits individuals desire others to perceive in them. They encourage self-reflection to identify these traits and then consider how stress might arise from perceived judgments that contradict these desired perceptions. The speaker highlights the difference between actions driven by duty and those by genuine care, noting that the latter is energizing while the former is depleting. They discuss the impact of social media on stress, particularly among younger individuals, and how it can be a source of judgment and stress. The speaker also touches on the stress caused by being late and the underlying fear of judgment from others. They emphasize the importance of being selective about whose opinions matter to us and the need to recognize that our worth is not determined by others' views.
🤔 Challenging Our Thoughts and the Quest for Approval
The speaker discusses the human pursuit of love, approval, and acceptance, which are deeply ingrained for survival reasons. They point out that this drive is now unnecessary for adult needs and must be unlearned. The speaker challenges the audience to question their thoughts, especially self-judgments that are not based on truth. They use examples of negative self-talk following the consumption of too much ice cream and how these thoughts can lead to a cycle of negative behavior. The speaker introduces the work of Dr. Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, who emphasized the power of choice in our responses to stimuli, which is key to personal growth and freedom. The speaker differentiates between the 'old brain' and 'new brain' thought systems, explaining how the old brain operates on unconscious patterns and associations, leading to automatic emotional responses, while the new brain applies reason and logic but is optional and slower to respond.
🌱 Trust as the Antidote to Stress
The speaker concludes by suggesting that trust, rather than calm, is the true opposite of stress. They encourage embracing the unfolding of life and its lessons, which may be uncomfortable but are essential for personal expansion. The speaker reminds the audience to listen to the universe's whispers and to live authentically, embracing both the pain and beauty in life. They end with a poetic reflection on the journey of the soul and the importance of recognizing the hidden depths within ourselves.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Stress Hormones
💡Nutrition
💡Biochemistry
💡Emotions
💡Adrenaline
💡Human Evolution
💡Commercial Era
💡Self-Talk
💡Foreign Words
💡Old Brain and New Brain
💡Trust
Highlights
Stress management is not effective; instead, understanding stress hormone production is key.
Stress impacts various health aspects including digestion, sleep, immunity, and energy.
Real stress exists, but much of it is self-created through our thought patterns.
Our response to situations, not the situations themselves, determines stress.
Human evolution has not kept pace with modern stressors like caffeine and perceived disapproval.
Adrenaline production has shifted from life-threatening situations to daily stressors.
Understanding 'foreign words' or traits we want others to see can reduce stress.
Social media is a significant stressor for some due to perceived judgment.
Running late can be stressful due to concerns about others' judgments.
Stress can be a teacher, revealing areas where we feel judged by others.
Anxiety is linked to the number of people we allow to judge us.
Our worth is not dependent on others' opinions, a truth often forgotten.
Stress hormones can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms like overeating or exhaustion.
Pain and beauty coexist, and we can choose to focus on growth amidst pain.
Questioning our thoughts is crucial for managing stress and emotions.
The quest for love and approval is outdated and should be unlearned for mental health.
Dr. Viktor Frankl's insights on the power of choosing our response to stimuli.
Our 'old brain' generates feelings unconsciously, while the 'new brain' applies reason.
Training our 'new brain' to evaluate the 'old brain's' responses reduces stress.
Trust is the opposite of stress, and we should learn to trust life's unfolding.
Our life's purpose is our unique expansion and growth.
Transcripts
it's time to change the conversation
about stress for too long we've been
told to manage it and i'm not that
thrilled with how that's working out for
any of us with our health and our
quality of life so instead i want to
learn what leads an individual to make
stress hormones in the first place and
then help them to make fewer of them
when it comes to health i look at
everything through three lenses
nutrition biochemistry and emotions
relentless stress hormone production
disrupts the function of so much inside
us from nutrient absorption and
digestion to sleep quality sex hormone
balance immunity and thyroid function
energy and resilience are also often
impacted as is our self-talk and the way
we speak to everyone around us so the
ripple of stress is significant
it's very important to acknowledge that
there is very real and genuine stress
going on in the world and in people's
lives right now
but there's also a huge amount of stress
we create for ourselves because of how
we think and that's the part i'm
interested in because that's the part we
can change
we think that stress comes from
everything outside of us
from that person or that situation
but what we've lost sight of is that
it's actually our response to that
person or that situation that makes
something stressful or not
so think about a pile of dirty dishes in
the kitchen some days you simply walk
past the dishes and you think i just
hope an angel will turn up and sort them
out for me but then other days when you
see a pile of dirty dishes you think my
entire life is falling apart so the
dishes are the same but our response to
them from day to day can be vastly
different
to understand why we do this we need the
perspective of human evolution
our world has radically and rapidly
changed across the last 75 years a time
i refer to as the commercial era we've
seen the introduction of color
televisions pesticides fast food chains
credit cards the internet mobile phones
and social media alongside a burgeoning
theme of i want it all and i want it now
but let's ponder the past 75 years in
the context of the enormous expanse of
time humans have been on the planet
consider a 14-hour flight from sydney to
la and let's have this flight time
represent the 150 000 years our species
has been here
this means that the last 75 years would
represent a mere 25 seconds of the trip
shorter than the air steward's arrival
announcement
and in this tiny amount of time so much
has changed including our pattern of
stress hormone production
up until the very recent past we've made
adrenaline in a burst in response to a
physical threat to our life
and not enough time has yet passed in
our evolution for our body to comprehend
that adrenaline production can be driven
by other factors now
in modern times we make adrenaline
anytime we consume caffeine yeah i know
sorry not ideal
we make it when we perceive pressure or
urgency sure some things are urgent if
you get a phone call from school that
your child's been injured that's urgent
but what most of us do is we make what
we get to do each day
full of urgency
and we also make adrenaline when we
consciously or unconsciously perceive
that others disapprove of us
a colleague from work might phone you
and ask where's that work i needed it
yesterday
now that request for work is not in and
of itself stressful
but we will usually make more adrenaline
in response to this request why
because we don't hear what someone says
we hear what we think they meant
so what you might hear is my colleague
thinks i'm inefficient or lazy or i've
let them down
in other words you perceive some form of
disapproval coming from your colleague
which you've entirely made up and we do
it all the time
our old pattern of adrenaline production
was a spike when our life was in danger
followed by a return to baseline now
it's a daily escalation a constant
relentless climb from thoughts about
endless emails a conversation we had
yesterday the health of someone we care
about among a million others
and this climbing pattern of adrenaline
is very new to us as a species
our body responds to the information we
give it it has not yet learnt to discern
between the adrenaline we make when
we're worried about our workload and the
adrenaline we make when a car drives out
in front of us
so it's time to do what we can to
communicate the truth to our body which
is that we are thankfully relatively
safe
to do this i encourage you to explore
what i call your foreign words which are
the traits you need others to see in you
so at some point take pen and paper and
ask yourself how do i need others to see
me
there's no right or wrong just what is
unique to you
some common ones i've had people share
with me over the years are i need people
to see me as kind thoughtful
selfless efficient reliable hard working
perfect creative strong the best
intelligent or the biggest ray of
sunshine who ever walked into a room
and then the next time you're stressed
pause and consider am i perceiving that
someone is seeing me in a way that is
the opposite to one of my foreign words
because most of the time the answer will
be yes
we might run ourselves ragged or agree
to help another to ensure their needs
are met and yes we do this because we
care
but if you peel another layer back what
becomes visible is that we care very
much what these people we run ourselves
ragged for think of us
we want them to see our forehead words
well and truly on display
yet doing things out of duty is
depleting
while doing things from a place of
genuine care is energizing
so the key is do you have any
flexibility in how you can handle others
seeing you sure we'd prefer to be liked
but we will never control what another
thinks of us and if you have no
flexibility in how you can handle others
seeing you this will be an endless
source of stress hormones
i ran some focus groups as part of some
research i was doing to look at what
stressed women of different ages
in the 18 to 25 year old group one thing
that consistently came out as a major
source of stress was social media all
the groups don't understand this because
social media would never feature on
their list of things that stress them
out and that's because they use social
media to see photos of their family or
to watch funny dog videos
whereas for those for whom social media
was a significant source of stress it is
simply one of the modalities through
which they allow others to judge them
for the 35 to 50 year old group a common
source of stress was running late yet
running late doesn't stress everyone out
that's how you know it's not real
what can make running late stressful is
that we worry what the person who'll be
on the receiving end of our running late
will think of us
and when we know that this is what it's
really about
it changes the conversations we then
have with them
so your stress can be an insightful
teacher for you if you allow it to
it will show you where you allow others
to judge you
now what i've just described is one
reason my anxious feelings have become
so common how many people do you allow
into your inner circle when i was
growing up i could have counted them on
my fingers these days because of social
media too many people care about what
thousands of people think of them and
most of them they've never even met
we want to be highly selective about
whose input we listen to
always remember you know your own heart
and your worth is not dependent on how
others see you
but we have to address our stress
hormones because what is their constant
relentless production costing you how do
you cope with stress do you drink too
much alcohol or too often
do you eat too much or do you eat too
much poor quality food maybe you don't
eat enough or are you always exhausted
and searching for more energy
you might yell and overreact to the
people close to you or perhaps you
withdraw from those you love and they
don't understand your silence
or maybe you mask other emotions with
stress i think sometimes when we say
we're stressed we might really be sad or
grieving or frightened or disappointed
or devastated
and there are times and experiences in
our lives that are
truly horrendous
and that might hurt us deeply
yet even when it's truly painful there
is still so much beauty in that moment
so may we be able to remind ourselves
that what hurts can be a luminous
offering to learn and grow
and may we be able to untangle that pain
from the magnificence of our being
that is always present pain and beauty
coexist it's just that we usually focus
on one or the other we or we perceive
more drawbacks than benefits to the pain
and we can switch these if we choose to
but to unravel this we need to train
ourselves to question our own thoughts
and the dialogue started out for me
sounding something like
do you believe your own thoughts
what do you mean that voice in my head
is not who i am don't i think my
thoughts well if that voice in your head
is you then who's listening to it
so your thoughts are not who you are and
not all of your thoughts are true
so start to notice does your thinking
oppose things as they are
do you react with thoughts of how things
should be
do your thoughts focus on what you
perceive is missing rather than on what
is start to become aware of all the
thoughts you use to deny yourself
contentment and foster tenderness for
yourself in that process because it's
been going on for a while from childhood
onwards humans endlessly pursue love
approval appreciation acceptance and we
do it to try to stay safe to ensure we
are fed and we have a home
we test out all sorts of ways to please
others or even just experience fleeting
moments of their admiration
but we don't really notice our efforts
we just think that's life or how we are
we don't realize as adults that this
drive for approval we have linked to our
survival is now superfluous to our needs
and we need to unlearn it
the quest for love and approval is at
the heart of so many of our thoughts
the trouble is seeking love and approval
leads us to lose the awareness of both
you can lose the awareness of love but
not love itself because it's what we are
yet we persistently seek it because of
how we think
we think thoughts and we believe them
but they aren't true
i hate too much ice cream i'm hopeless
i'm pathetic i have no willpower if you
think such a thought do you pause to
consider if it's true no you just keep
going you might not even realize you've
had the thought the first part of the
sentence might be true you might have
eaten too much ice cream but the second
part of the sentence the judgment that
you're hopeless you've made that up and
if you create a story about yourself
that this is who you must be to have
eaten too much ice cream you will have
judged yourself in similar ways endless
times across the day in response to all
sorts of situations
and if you never question whether such
thoughts are true thinking this about
yourself over and over and over again is
what will lead you to go back and smash
the ice cream again the next night
because you don't believe you're worth
taking care of
which is not true
but it's challenging to change our
behavior until we learn how we think and
teach ourselves to question our thoughts
do your absolute best to deal with
what is
rather than imaginings
we are so fortunate to have the work of
dr viktor frankl in the world
he was a psychiatrist author and
holocaust survivor
dr frankl his wife and extended family
were all sent to concentration camps
where he witnessed then be tortured and
murdered
and yet
despite experiencing such unspeakable
atrocities
he still had the most insightful
presence of mind to offer us this and he
wrote
between stimulus and response
there is a space
and in that space is our power to choose
our response
and in our response lies our growth
and
freedom we get to choose how we respond
to everything
and i mean
everything
even the genuinely tough stuff
but it's a little tricky because of
where we humans are at with the
evolution of our brain at this point in
time and the way that we think we have
two thought systems and they don't
really speak to each other i've named
them old brain and new brain our old
brain the first thought system we
evolved to have works at lightning speed
and it generates a feeling
it works out what feeling to generate
based on patterns and associations we've
unconsciously created since we were born
and that's part of the challenge with
old brain what it generates is
unconscious to us
and still until we seek to make it
conscious
it's always operating and at this point
in our evolution our old brains
responses are completely automatic
our new brain is relatively slow to
respond but it has the ability to apply
reason and logic it's conscious so we're
aware of it but at this point it's
completely optional
so let's look at the two thought systems
in action an acquaintance walks past you
at the farmers market and doesn't speak
you might consciously think you've upset
her
but before that your old brain generates
a feeling that you're unaware of based
on an association you have tucked away
in there
unconsciously and at warp speed you
might perceive her disapproval of you
and believe this is a risk to your
survival because it was when you were
five years old
but you don't consciously think any of
this through all you notice is that when
you went to the market you felt fine now
your mood is flat or irritated and all
you can think about is how you can't
wait to polish off the ice cream or the
wine or whatever it is you choose in
those moments when even though you know
better you can't stop yourself
we don't have to stay in this state
though because we have our second
thought system new brain ready and
waiting to be used and new brain would
help you see
that your acquaintance had the weight of
the world on her shoulders or perhaps
she had a pimple on her face and she was
really hoping to not run into anyone she
knew that morning
so so much of our emotional overwhelm
what we now refer to as stress stems
from what our old brain generates and
what our new brain fails to examine
can't stop our old brain doing its job
nor would we want to it's just that the
less time we spend between what our old
brain generates and what our new brain
evaluates the fewer stress hormones we
make and the more we live from truth
we have to begin the journey of training
our new brain catching ourself in the
space
for that's the stress solution
so what is the opposite of stress
i think many people today think it's
calm
i'm going to suggest to you that it's
trust
yet we forget to trust
to trust the unfolding
during our turn on earth our lessons
can't be avoided
and they can be minorly or majorly
uncomfortable
when we avoid what is true for us
the universe does everything it can to
coordinate our reorientation
initially this might arise as a whisper
but it will become a raw if we don't
tune into it
our entire life
is a grand odyssey dedicated to our
unique expansion it's all for you
all of it
to finish and to paraphrase my favorite
poet david white
we are all a sun-lit moment come from a
long darkness
what moves us always comes from what is
hidden
what seems to be said so suddenly
has lived in a soul for a long long time
this has lived in my soul for a very
long time
thank you
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