biting your nails when you're stressed
is it just a bad habit whoa this is a
good one taking a vacation will cure
burnout big big myth stress is always
bad can i do this
stress is not always bad hi i'm
stephanie cook i am an assistant
professor at new york university school
of global public health i seek to
understand how things like stigma and
discrimination based on race and sexual
orientation are associated with mental
and physical health and i'm terry solero
i'm an associate professor in clinical
psychology at rutgers university and i
study the intersection of anxiety stress
and substance use disorders and today
we'll be debunking myths about stress if
stress-free life is the best life
stress-free life is definitely not the
best life we need it to survive imagine
you are out on a hike with your friends
and in the pathway ahead you see a mama
bear in her cubs
immediately you're going to start
sweating and your heart's going to start
racing really really hard this is called
a fight-or-flight response and this is a
stress response and for these situations
stress is very very valuable because it
helps us as human beings decide are we
gonna fight or are we going to run from
the stressor i also like to think about
it as something that can motivate your
behavior when we feel stressed out we're
often going to be motivated to work
toward a goal and to work hard toward it
however over time when this stress
response system is continually triggered
and it's prolonged in any way this can
be bad for our health it opens us up to
all kinds of sicknesses and disease
associated with foreign mental health
welcome the good stress and do your best
to mitigate the bad stress you should
shield kids from stress
this is a good
to all the parents out there who do do
this on a regular basis i feel you right
however you're doing a disservice to
your child we often call this helicopter
parenting hovering over them making sure
that all barriers all dangers are swept
to the side unfortunately kids with
helicopter parents often develop
difficulty with anxiety and
self-regulation we have to learn stress
processes and how to handle stress when
we're young so that they can learn to
tolerate distress and learn how to
self-regulate and develop
adaptive coping tools make sure that
they know that you're there supporting
them and to valid and acknowledge the
emotions that they're experiencing while
allowing them to work through them
on their own we want to raise resilient
children and the way to raise resilient
children is really to help them learn
how to deal with these experiences at an
early age oh i love this one
taking a vacation will cure burnout big
big big myth you're preventing it in the
moment you get back home and all of
those feelings of exhaustion and issues
are going to return immediately so
burnout is actually a prolonged form of
stress and exhaustion caused by a
variety of stressors but we're often
thinking a combination
of a different responsibility that you
don't have the capacity to manage and
feel overwhelmed by the only way to
really cure burnout is to remove that
aspect of your life where you're burned
out which isn't a possibility for most
of us but as a clinical psychologist i
think of what are kind of the basic
emotion regulation tools that you can
make sure that you are including in your
every day so um making sure that you are
going to bed at a reasonable time waking
up at a reasonable time eating
relatively healthy and throughout the
day staying away from mood altering
substances taking prescriptions as
prescribed to getting your regular
exercise in and pleasurable activities
another strategy to think more
critically about is mindfulness or
meditation so really taking time
throughout your day to center yourself
and breathe just try not to think about
it
uh okay i have a task for you don't
think about a pink elephant for the next
30 seconds
anything at all yeah okay so stephanie
already right two seconds later she's
like yep ding ding ding thinking about a
pink elephant when we try not to think
about something we're actually more
likely to then think about it and if you
actually think about something in a lot
of detail you can actually kind of bring
down the distress associated with it
what i want to know is is it a thought
or is it a fact we call that flexible
thinking or cognitive restructuring can
you actually challenge the
thing that you're thinking about is
there any evidence of it can you come up
with a more helpful
alternative or can you at the same time
maybe hold to a posing perspective so i
think what you're saying is we really
need to think about the stressor
to deal with the stressor yeah in that
way
we'll start to feel better about it in
some way or we'll start to get some
resolution about it absolutely
stress helps people work faster and
better
we all have those moments who are like
yeah nailed it under pressure got it
done right but that's that's not the
norm that's more the exception to the
rule
when you put people under stress they're
more likely to make
silly mistakes that they wouldn't
otherwise make especially
if you're working under prolonged stress
this is not going to go well in the long
term when people report that they work
better under stress usually it's
actually other factors so
they happen to work better at night or
work better in the morning but they're
saying oh i think i just work better
under stress it's also really important
to think more critically about the
working conditions in which you work
best in so do i work better at home do i
work better at the office because the
whole idea is to reduce stress and
improve the output and the quality of
your work biting your nails when you're
stressed is it just a bad habit it's not
just a bad habit there's a physiological
component to it nail biters usually bite
their nails because they're under arouse
actually meaning they're really bored or
overarousal so an overall for example of
the stress system if you like bite your
nails a lot you open yourself up for
infections some of the ways to prevent
nail biting number one we need to
understand the stressor can we reduce
that stressor in your life and if so
does that handle the nail biting issues
if the stressor is constant and chronic
put nail polish on your hands and then
also you know in more extreme places
people wear gloves alcohol helps you
de-stress alcohol is something that can
alleviate stress initially but if we
think about
consistent use over time it's actually
going to increase the likelihood that
you develop
problems with anxiety and just regulate
your stress system overall leading to
poor physical and mental health outcomes
we really want people to be developing
more
long-term adaptive techniques to cope
with stress can we do a quick
distraction or game so if i turn to
stephanie right now and i say we're
going to go through
different types of food i'm going to
start with the letter a you go b and so
forth ay apples b banana the carrots the
point is that when we do something like
that we become focused in the moment
we're able to maybe add some levity to
the situation so that when we're done
going through the alphabet we can choose
a more helpful activity maybe i'm gonna
go on a run do some yoga bake some
cookies call a friend to catch up stress
is always bad can i do this
stress is not always bad it really
depends on the context and our
interpretation of it if we're getting
ready to walk down the aisle
and say i do to
somebody for the rest of our lives we
might feel
really really stressed out right but in
this case it's accompanied by this
positive warm
loving excitement so stress can actually
indicate that you're really really
excited about something thinking i can
do this i've got this this stress is
actually going to help me to perform it
actually allows our blood pressure
to go down a little bit so our heart is
working hard but it's able to actually
get that blood through our body to our
brain
where it needs to get to add on a little
to moderate stress good research shows
it's good think of it as a helpful
friend that's going to push you over the
finish line stress eating is no big deal
i'm a big stress eater i am confessions
but
stress eating isn't great for us guys
it's a negative feedback loop you know
you might have a really stressful day at
work and in addition to your lovely
glass of red wine you have have a
chocolate cake you might have immediate
relief from your stress you'll then feel
bad about eating the chocolate cake and
then you'll feel stressed out about it
and then you might want to eat again and
have a rest to that cake exactly
everything in moderation right we are
absolutely not saying to
not eat or avoid eating when you're
stressed we're just kind of warning
about the potential
negative effects of it when it becomes
kind of this relied upon a quick
fix in the absence of other coping
strategies
ptsd only affects soldiers and people in
war zones ptsd does not only affect
soldiers and people who have lived in
war zones historically a lot of the work
that we've done to understand trauma and
ptsd
has been with our armed forces and
veterans the first term for it was shell
shock however post-traumatic stress
disorder can arise based on intimate
partner violence or big events like 9 11
we also see post-traumatic stress
disorder diagnosed based on things that
we might not see as big traumatic events
so for example experiencing a
microaggression so you know a smaller
discriminatory event and it's important
to note that the majority of people who
experience the trauma
won't go on to develop post-traumatic
stress disorder so when we're talking
about post-traumatic stress disorder
diagnostically
we are
looking for a few criteria we want to
first establish what the traumatic event
is or was then we're looking for
intrusive or unwanted thoughts about the
trauma they relive the trauma you know
in terms of nightmares but also during
wakeful hours as well we're also looking
for avoidance so avoidance of
situations that might remind you of the
traumatic event we're also looking for
alterations in
cognition or emotion so these are
changes in the way that we maybe think
about the world as being safe or unsafe
we might have emotional blunting it
might be difficult to have warm positive
strong emotions that you used to have
and then we're looking at changes in
arousal here we might see an exaggerated
startle response to something that
wouldn't otherwise be
alarming or distressing and so a lot of
what people in my field are working on
now
is trying to structure prevention
interventions to address
non-military-related trauma stress is
this natural process it's helped us
survive as a species to this point
identify things that cause you
negative or harmful stress in your life
and develop adaptive coping tools and
make sure that you're also paying
attention to ways in which you might be
coping in ways that are unhelpful so
stress is not a bad thing it's important
but if you don't have it you're going to
get mauled by the bear in the world
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