Stressed? Try one of these quick resets

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You ever just get completely overwhelmed. The phone is ringing non-stop. You've got dozens of unread emails just from today. Your kids are fighting over a toy. You open the mail and you've got a huge unexpected bill from the doctor's office.

Oh, and you're hangry, so that doesn't help anything.

This stressed, you know, sometimes it just reaches a fever pitch that can feel terrible in our bodies. For some people, it's very physical. Jenny Tates is a clinical psychologist and she says stress also shows up in our thoughts and our behaviors.

So if I'm feeling really angry that usually includes some sort of judgment of that was really unfair, in my body I may be feeling really tense and scowling and maybe behavior may be to send an aggressive text or say something really rude or yell. In these moments when we're overextended, it's hard to carve out a path forward. Jenny would like you to try something, though, called a stress reset.

Stress resets are quick ways to improve how you feel in minutes and that allows you

ultimately to do things that will help you solve problems rather than make things so much

worse for yourself. Jenny wrote a book called "Stress Resets" how to sue your body and mind in minutes. On this episode of LifeKit, we're going to give you a whole bunch of resets for your mind, your body, and your behavior. You'll pick what works for you, depending on what your stress feels like and how it's

showing up. Jenny, in the book, you outline different types of stress resets for your mind, for your body, and for your behavior. How are these different? So mind resets specifically target thinking in ways that don't serve us, body resets

really target our physical experience of stress, and behavior resets are meant to improve our behavior so we don't act in ways that just makes stress skyrocket.

“So how would you know that you might need a mind reset?”

When you are really, really stuck in overthinking, thinking the worst, and lacking clear perspective, and you're thinking in ways that don't ensure closer to problem solving but you feel like you're drowning in worst case scenario thoughts. Yeah, I've been there, I guess we all have. We all have.

Okay, so let's walk through a few of the mind resets from the book. I'll tell you a few of my favorites. One was named that emotion. Tell me of what that one is. Beaming your emotion, just taking a step back and observing and describing your emotion

to notice. I'm feeling sad, and then labeling its intensity. Maybe you're feeling sad at a three on a zero to five scale. Loosen the grip of sadness because when you're able to observe your emotion, this allows us to not be engulfed by them, but to see them with distance and openness and naming them

technically, kind of disrupts activity in your limbic system, which is the emotional part of the brain, and allows you to engage your pre-fungial cortex, which is the more reasonable part of your brain. Even if this sounds very simple, it actually physiologically makes a profound difference. I find that it helps to, if I say, what am I feeling, and then it might be for instance

fear.

“Sometimes I'll journal this, and then I'll be like, of what?”

And it helps just to write down what I'm actually afraid of, because sometimes looking at those things, I'm like, well, those are very unlikely to happen. Or if they do happen, I am able to handle that. I love that, and I also love simply thinking, like, if I'm feeling sad, it's pretty likely that I am a magnet for sad thoughts, and so rather than taking them very seriously, being

really aware that my thinking is governed by sadness rather than the reality at hand. Yeah. Okay, another one I really liked, another mind reset, is sing your thoughts. What is this one about? So singing your thoughts really gets at the concept of cognitive diffusion, which means

playing with your thoughts rather than taking them so seriously, and one of the funnest ways to remember this is, if you know that you have a recurrent thought that's simply not true and not helpful, but something that's likely to come up when you're feeling

tends to break you with the thought that I'm a loser rather than telling yourself you're

not or trying to convince yourself, really seeing that for what it is, it's just noise. To remember that, if you did something like sing, I'm a loser to the tune of, do you

“believe in magic or when my clients taught me this and I think this is like the best way”

to apply this is even just thinking what are thoughts, like to the how to weigh song, what is love, love can't hurt me no more, you know, what are thoughts, can't hurt me no more. So if your thoughts are more like Plato rather than cement, they can't hold you back in your life. Yeah, I will say there's one that I find pops into my head, the repeating thought, like,

nobody likes you, but it also sounds like just as such a silly thing to sing, like, I was just listening to a build me up Buttercup, you know, so maybe something like that, like, why does everyone, everyone hate me so much?

“That's perfect because now you can't sing that without laughing, so that automatically puts”

your inner wisdom in the front seat and your irrational thoughts where they belong.

Yeah, that's such a powerful way for people to realize if this is working or not, if you

have a sense of humor rather than a sense of defeat, then that's a good clue that you're on the right track and this is not, this is not for thoughts like I need to get my work done, this is for thoughts that are downright, unhelpful and ridiculous. Okay, all right, so the other mind reset that I really liked was make a pie chart of your life. Can you explain this one? Yes, so making a pie chart is really a way to remember all of the things that matter to us,

and so if we take a step back and we write down with a pen and paper, all of the various domains of our lives that matter, let's say our health, our career, our friendships, our hobbies, and then visually representing them, so their relative weight is aligned with how much they matter,

“so maybe health is like 30% and hobbies is 20% or, you know, you need to really do some”

soul searching and come up with the numbers that represent what's true is to for you and making a

pie chart of our lives is such a essential way to gain perspective when something disappointing happens

because it's so easy if you're doing something like interviewing for a job you really want to think that everything is terrible if you don't get that role and of course it's a huge disappointment and I don't want to minimize that at all, but I also want people to realize that even if something feels like it's everything, there are a lot of other things that matter. You say it's kind of like zooming out to see the full picture. Exactly, got it. Okay, let's talk about body resets,

when would you know that you might need one of these? If you are feeling really physically stressed, if you're really tense, if your shoulders are up to your ears, if you're finding that you're short of breath, if you feel really distracted by your body, like you can't fit at your desk because you feel so restless or overwhelmed physically. Okay, all right, so one is move your body in short, quick bursts. What might that look like? If you're feeling very revved up, a lot of times people just

use that as evidence that something is really wrong. And so if you instead do something like do some jumping jacks and then you can attribute your physical symptoms of stress to the exercise or doing rather than something that you're catastrophizing and feeling afraid of. Another one is expand your gaze and I have to say I tried this the other day when I was feeling really stressed out and I was out to lunch but thinking about and overthinking about something. And this really

worked. Can you talk about what it means, expand your gaze? I'm so happy this really worked for you. Yeah, a lot of times as part of our stress response, we hyper-focused or we zoom in on what is we're stressed about. And so simply zooming out to adopt a more relaxed view. So you might notice three sites, maybe you notice three sounds because when we're stressed, our people tend to dilate and we narrow our attention. This is part of our fight or flight response. But when we literally

relax our gaze, it's a little easier to just realize that there's so much more than the narrow focus of our stress. Yeah, I was sitting at a restaurant. I had been looking at my phone, but I just

across the street. I looked at somebody walking their dog. I looked at a bookstore. Just different

“things like that, literally zooming out the camera lens in my own eyeball. And I love that because”

that allows you to naturally experience gratitude. A lot of people feel like gratitude is something being forced upon them that feels fake. But when we just look a little wider and bigger, there are so many things within our periphery that allow us to genuinely experience. Thanks and awareness. Yeah. All right. One more body reset. Sign it out. Now, let's talk about this one because I do find that this helps, but also if you're around other people and you're deep sighing,

it can make them feel a little bit uncomfortable or anxious. Yeah. In real, this is the reason that there's 75 options in here because different things really work for different people. But to do this, you gently close your lips and you inhale through your nose, then take another inhale through

“your nose. And then an extended exhale. And this is called the physiological sigh and repeating it”

a couple of times. Is known as cyclic sighing and researchers have found that people practicing this for five minutes a day experience more positive emotions. And when you intentionally sigh, your lungs expand and so you release more carbon dioxide and a lot of carbon dioxide is associated with anxiety. And so by practicing this, you can kind of reset your breathing pattern, feel a little bit more relaxed and then doing this can kind of lend itself to slowing down your breathing

in general. I get it. So it sounds like this is a very particular kind of breathing practice. It's not just like, all right, everybody deep sigh, like, you know what I mean? Like, I come from a family of deep sires is what I'm saying. And it is often used as a tool to indicate

“frustration to one's family members. But this sounds like a different thing where it's kind of a”

private moment. And you're just inhaling through your nose and then inhaling again a little bit and then exhaling long. Yeah, and it doesn't, it doesn't need to be a grunt. I could do it right now, you know, um, to back to back. Inhale is a longer exhale. And that may just seem like I'm the most like recalibrating. We'll have more life kit after the break. All right, so our last category is behavior resets. How might you know that you need one of these? When you are acting in ways that are

almost like the equivalent of a high interest credit card, where a short term you might be feeling pretty good, but long term your behaviors are going to come back to haunt you. So oftentimes stress isn't just a feeling, but also a behavior. And it might be helpful to just take us to back and think about what are your go to stress behaviors that you want to improve? Is it being mean to the people around you? Is it cancelling plans with that you actually would

enjoy because you want to curl up in bed? And so the first step would be to get really clear on

what you tend to do when you get stressed and know that there are a lot of ways to make this moment better that don't aren't going to hurt us long term. Okay, so some examples from the book are for instance to build a hope kit? What would that look like? If you're focusing on the negative, it's really helpful to have a way to quickly lean into hope and hope isn't just a feeling, but it's a behavior and creating a collection of objects, pictures, other sorts of momentos that remind

you of things being better can help keep you going. And if you're someone that has a really good

friend group and you could look at a picture of some close friends or if music has always been a

really powerful mood boost for you having a playlist that you go to remarkably. There's an app called the virtual hope box app and people that struggle with suicidal feelings who use the virtual hope box app actually have a reduction in feelings of wanting to die. And again, reminding ourselves in our hardest moments that we can't continue forward and things will get better and have been better. It's such a gift to ourselves rather than predicting and rehearsing all the ways things

will continue to be terrible. Yeah, for me it's often pictures of my family and friends and my friends, kids and dogs and like I'll just pull them out and look at them. Like there's even one recent picture of my friend's daughter eating a marshmallow and her cheeks look so big and the it's just

when I have felt down. I love that pictures are so powerful like pictures actually can reduce our

experience of pain like looking at uplifting pictures or pictures of people that we love. I personally love music and I love greeting cards that people have written me that I can keep handy. Yeah, that's really lovely. Um, okay, another behavior reset is to do a good deed. What might you do? What are some examples? There are so many ways to do good deeds. It could be something big. It could be something small even just noticing someone that might not normally be noticed sending someone a card just out of the

“blue is a really sweet gesture than if you want to really commit to this even finding a volunteer”

opportunity could make a really big difference. And this is such a nice way to feel like you have a sane your life. A lot of the reasons that we feel stressed is because we feel powerless or we're so focused on all of the things that are going wrong and doing something nice is a way to actually feel like you have some ability to make things better and also gives you a little bit of perspective and helps you feel like you can live by your values even if so much as out of your control.

Yeah. Okay, what about take one step forward? I liked this one a lot. Taking one step forward is about doing the thing that we can do and so rather than feeling overwhelmed really picking one thing that you want to try to do to move closer to your goals and so rather than

“making things feel really overwhelming by being too ambitious just being really clear on the”

one thing that you can do that will be realistic and within reach and it was really amazing Maryel for this book I interviewed someone named John Moynihan who is a police officer who was really seriously injured. He was shot while working and he was actually shot in the face. It was a very horrific injury that went along recovery and I asked him how he went from

being in critical care to returning to his life in so many ways and he really walked me through.

He just he sat one goal at a time in his first goal. Starting when he was in the hospital was doing this run that he did every summer since childhood. It was a seven mile run and Cape Cod and that was just his goal. It wasn't how I'm making a figure of the rest of my life out, how I'm making a fully recover. It was like how do I like learn how to walk again so I could complete this run somehow even if I'm walking it and setting that one goal created a positive

cycle where other positive forward movement came as a result. And even that goal I imagined started with something even smaller right? He probably had to go to physical therapy so it was like make a appointment with physical therapist and that's today's task you know or like do my exercises today. Yeah because it's so easy for us also to then think about the next thing but if it's even call the physical therapist and stand up for one moment and really celebrating that rather than

feeling less than for not having finished everything in its entirety. Okay so these are all really helpful recess that can help us in the moment when we're feeling overwhelmed by stress. I wonder what's the work after those moments right? What can we do to kind of improve or change our lives so that maybe we're not experiencing as much stress? For most of us mental health is really a series of behaviors and a lot of us underestimate that

our habits can be as powerful as antidepressants and so rather than waiting to be in a really tough

situation and trying to get yourself out of it there are things we can do in advance. You know getting a good night sleep is a huge way to relieve stress exercising every day is a really powerful antidepressant connecting with people in a regular basis is such a powerful tool that even reduces the risk of getting a cold and so rather than just leaning on quick things and difficult moments we also want

“to set ourselves up to feel like our data day life is more enjoyable and more livable and”

setting us up for success and so I don't want anyone to feel like the goal of life is to build a hope kid or to senior thoughts but doing those things will allow us to unhook from the things that are holding us back and inch towards the things that we want our lives to stand for. Wow I feel like I could talk to you about this for days.

I want everyone to really realize that a little can go such a long way. It's like small wheels on a

big suitcase, a moment of awareness and a doable strategy can make what feels overwhelming really doable. All right time for a recap. If your mind is feeling all squirrely, try a mind reset,

“name an emotion, sing your thoughts, make a pie chart of what's important in your life or maybe”

you're feeling like you need a body reset, try moving your body, relaxing your gaze,

we're doing some cyclic signing. Or if you've been acting out a little bit, maybe you try behavior reset, put together a collection of objects that make you hopeful. Do a good deed or just

“take one step forward towards a goal. Now these resets aren't everything you need to know about”

mental health but they will give you some space to figure out what you need and what changes you

like to make in your life. For more life kit, check out our other episodes. We've got one

“about dealing with anxiety in the moment and another about making gratitude at habit. You can find”

those at mpr.org/lifekit and if you love life kit and you just cannot get enough. Subscribe to our newsletter at npr.org/lifekit newsletter. Also we love hearing from you so if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, please email us at [email protected]. This episode of life kit was produced by Margaret Serino. Our digital editor is Malica Greb and our visual editor is CJ Rekalot. Megan Kane is the supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our

production team also includes Andy Tagle, Claremarace Niter and Sylvie Douglas. Engineering Support comes from Gilly Moon. I'm Mary Elzagara. Thanks for listening.