Dr. Jenny Taitz on How You Live Bigger for True Fulfillment EP 458

Home Depot
This Memorial day, click into cordless power at the Home Depot. Tackle your yard cleanup with the precision and gas like power of the Ryobi 40 volts expandit cordless dring trimmer. Then power through the heavier debris with more than an hour of runtime on the Ryobi 40 volts cordless battery blower. Right now you can get either one for only dollar 159 each. It's time to click into Memorial Day doing at your cordless power source, the Home Depot.

How doers get more done.

State Farm
When something happens to your car, you might say, no.

John R. Miles
My car. But what you really need to say is something that can actually help, like. A good neighbor state farm is there. And just like that, State Farm is there to help you file your claim right on the State Farm mobile app. So just remember, like a good neighbor state farm is there.

Jenny Taitz
State Farm Bloomington, Illinois coming up next on Passion struck, I think there's nothing. That matters more than getting clear on what your life purpose is, and not just trying to get through day to day, but also living a life that feels like it's connected to a larger purpose. I think everyone, especially these days, needs to have a purpose that is considerate of other people and that tries to help other people, and it's really incredible. A lot of my career has been focused on helping people who feel suicidal build lives that feel worth living. This goal of just trying to feel better isn't where it's at to live bigger, and that actually helps us improve our mood and the course of our lives.

Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions.

On Friday, we have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEO's, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now let's go out there and become passion struck. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 458 of Passion Struck. Consistently ranked the number one alternative health podcast. Our heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who we return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, to be better, and to make a meaningful impact in the world.

If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member. And we so appreciate it when you do that. We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we place in a convenient playlist that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com starterpacks to get started. I am so excited to announce that my new book, passion struck, recently won the gold medal at the nonfiction book Awards and also an honorable mention at the Eric Hoffer Book Awards.

You can find it on Amazon, passionstruck.com, or wherever you purchase books. In case you missed it, my interview from earlier in the week featured the legendary Robin Sharma and we delve into his latest masterpiece, the wealth money can't buy. In our interview, we discover how to redefine success and cultivate a life of true abundance using his innovative eight forms of wealth model. Don't miss this transformative conversation with the world renowned author and leadership guru. And if you liked that previous episode or today's, we would so appreciate you giving it a five star rating and review that goes such a long way in strengthening the passion struck community where we can help more people to create an intentional life.

And I know we and our guests love to hear your feedback. Today I am honored to host Doctor Jenny Tates, a distinguished clinical psychologist and esteemed author of the new book stress resets how to soothe your body and mind. In minutes, Doctor Tates brings her wealth of knowledge and experience from her clinical practice and her role as an assistant clinical professor in the department of psychiatry at UCLA. In today's episode, Doctor Taitz will unravel the secrets to combating stress with 75 scientifically backed strategies that promise rapid relief and long term resilience. We'll explore groundbreaking techniques from dipping your face in ice water to singing away your worries, all designed to recalibrate your stress response.

Get ready to transform your understanding of stress and discover practical solutions to navigate life's challenges with grace and strength. Join us on this journey to reclaim your peace and empower your life. Thank you for choosing passion struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now let that journey begin.

I'm Cindy Lauper with fellow cosmics advocate chef Michelle Bernstein. We'll share our experiences with plaque psoriasis with psoriatic arthritis, and doctor Panico will talk about the possible connection. Cosentic sekucinumab is prescribed for adults with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis 300 milligram dose and adults with active psoriatic arthritis, 150 milligram dose. Don't use if you're allergic to Cosentyx before starting, get checked for tb. Serious allergic reactions, severe skin reactions that look like eczema and an increased risk of infections, some fatal, have occurred.

Cosentyx
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Home Depot
How doers get more done.

Jenny Taitz
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I am absolutely honored and thrilled to have Doctor Jenny Tate on passion struck. Welcome, Jenny. Thank you. I can't wait to talk to you, John. I cannot wait to have this interview either.

And I've been following your interviews on so many other great podcasts since you released your book. I'm going to hold it up right here in front of me. This came out a few months ago and I'm just so happy that we could do this here today. But before we dive into the book, I understand from my research that you've been fascinated in a fundamental question, and it's a fundamental question that I ponder all the time as well, which is how can we live our best lives beyond just feeling happy? What is the most strategic path to fulfillment?

What got you interested in exploring this fundamental question? I think there's nothing that matters more than getting clear on what your life purpose is and not just trying to get through day to day, but also living a life that feels like it's connected to a larger purpose. And I think everyone, especially these days, needs to have a purpose that is considerate of other people and that tries to help other people. And it's really incredible. A lot of my career has been focused on helping people who feel suicidal build lives that feel worth living.

John R. Miles
And I feel like this goal of just trying to feel better isn't where it's at. We need to live bigger and that actually helps us improve our mood and the course of our lives. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I have been so fortunate to discover self determination theory, which I've been really pouring myself into because I think Edward DC and Richard Ryan are really on to something that they're working on. Well, I think it's important, as we go into this interview, to borrow a question that Dan Harris started your interview off with, which is how do you compare and contrast anxiety and stress?

So stress is what happens when we feel like too much is coming at us. It's those moments where we feel like it's just too much. I can't. It's, you know, you're carrying too much and you feel like you're just breaking down. It's overwhelming.

And anxiety is more internal. It's worry, it's physical sensations of anxiety. But the two go hand in hand because when we can't manage our stress, that could easily slip into struggling with anxiety. And when we feel really anxious, things that might not normally stress us out can become very stressful. And the thing that I find really remarkable, and the reason that I wrote stress resets, is because one of the most common ways we measure stress is using the perceived stress scale, which shows us that a lot of stress, even if it feels like it's just coming at us, we have a little bit of wiggle room.

There's something that we can do to make our stressful moments less stressful. Yes. And I think this is such an important topic because the American Psychiatric association continues to report that two out of three Americans say that they're extremely or somewhat anxious about their health, paying bills, keeping themselves and their family safe. But to me, the even more concerning aspect of this is that it is so much more pronounced in younger adolescents and adults, where 70% feel anxious a good percentage of the time. How do you think factors like economic pressures and social media are contributing to this trend?

I think those things certainly would cause anyone a lot of stress. And I just want to normalize. Stress is not your fault. There are very good reasons why you feel stressed. It's not all in your head.

Like you said, a lot of people are working really long hours and barely getting by or working really grueling hours. And to your earlier point, now working jobs that feel meaningful. And social media certainly doesn't help when we feel pressed for time. The last thing we need to do is spend an average of 17 hours a week putting our lives on hold to watch other people's seemingly perfect lives, which just creates unfair comparisons and can easily lead to depression and anxiety. The good news is, on the flip side of the coin, there are things we can do that are within reach to make things better.

So even taking a week long break from social media has been found in studies to improve college students mood. And so I find this remarkable because people think I can't get off social media. But these college students were able to. And incredibly, a week off led to significant reduction and depression and anxiety. And 17 more hours to do the things that actually feel fulfilling.

Jenny Taitz
Yeah. And Jenny, I'm not sure. Are you familiar with the work of Gloria Mark? She's at UC. Yeah.

Her work on attention span to me, is just mind blowing. And to think about five to eight years ago, the typical person got distracted. I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of about every 20 minutes. And now it's gone down to as much or as little as 45 seconds that people get distracted by the tasks in their lives. Have you seen this also play out in the patients that you're working with.

John R. Miles
Absolutely. And this is something that, again, is this hopeful fact that people say to me, I can't get anything done. My work is going into my evening, and then I can't do the hobbies that I'm really passionate about. Someone was just telling me yesterday that they're working a day job and their dream is to be a writer, and they feel like they just keep kicking this dream down the line, or they have goals of writing for a certain number of minutes a day, and they never seem to make it. And they just realize, wow.

If I do my work with singular focus, which is something I talk a lot about, just doing one thing at a time, which is something we can all practice, even for windows of time, like a couple of hours doing that, we do these quick hit rewards that actually aren't even that rewarding, but bouncing around various news websites and shopping websites and social media threads, which can be very stressful. Instead, to just do one thing at a time, you get so much more done, and then you can actually finally get your writing done or your dream passion project, or just finish your work at the time that you had intended, rather than letting that create, like this snowball where then you're working late, you're missing opportunities to be with friends, you're pushing up bedtime, which isn't good for your brain power tomorrow. Absolutely. I appreciate you bringing that up. I want to go back to stress and living a meaningful life that we got into before.

Jenny Taitz
I brought up Gloria and Mark because I believe that you have to have stress in your life as you do to live a meaningful life. And in my own book, I bring up this concept of being an anxiety optimizer. And it's really finding this equilibrium between having harmful stress and the stress that contributes to personal growth. And this is something that you explore in detail as well. Can you explain for the listeners how they can view this paradigm?

John R. Miles
So stress is the price we all have to pay for a meaningful life. If our lives were just spent on vacation, drinking cocktails with our feet up, our lives wouldn't be meaningful. We would be disconnected from reality. We wouldn't be pursuing things that created a higher sense of purpose. And so I think the first thing we all need to do is normalize.

Realize that stress is understandable and okay. And actually believing that stress is bad for you is actually bad for you. People that believe that stress is harmful for their health, those people are at risk of dying from stress related causes, like in a study of more than 28,000 people, the belief that stress was bad for your body, actually increased risk of premature mortality by 43%, which is obviously so significant. But instead, if we can normalize stress, if we can see stress is an opportunity that we can grow, that our body stress response is adaptive, that feeling, even like knots in your stomach, is helpful and helps performance that actually improves how people perform on difficult tests like the GRE. And so this, we need to notice what we're doing that stresses us out, like multitasking and social media, and also not judge the stress that's inevitable in our lives and then strategize how we can approach the things that matter more skillfully.

And that starts with normalizing your body stress response and noticing the ways that we typically avoid and approaching. Instead. Throughout the book, you mention the stories of several of the people who you have come in contact with in your practice. And the first one you talk about is the story of Laurie, and you highlight the common reaction to stress and the self judgment that accompanies it. Can you share with the audience a little bit about Lori and how she learned how to break free from the cycle of stressing?

Jenny Taitz
About stress? Absolutely. So, an interesting thing happens when we're stressed is a lot of times we don't just feel stress. We feel ashamed, we feel guilty. We feel stressed about being stressed.

John R. Miles
And so, in order to protect patient privacy, the stories that I include in my book are very much adapted to reflect a lot of things that I share. Common themes, but no one's. I don't have an actual client in my practice named Lori because that would be a breach of confidentiality. But Lori's Torrey is someone who started a job remotely, which so many people are doing these days, and feeling really worried about what her team thought of her, because it's really hard, in the absence of casual chit chat over coffee in the office, to know how you're getting on with your peers and if your manager actually likes you or is just fake nice. And the story includes her, her partner, well meaning, trying to give her some keep calm swag and telling her to calm down, and then maybe encouraging her to quit.

And a lot of this story centers around her normalizing. Like, it's okay. It makes sense to feel stressed. I care about my performance. I care about my relationships with my colleagues.

And this goal of trying to calm down is what stressed her out. And another thing that she did that I see a lot of people do is when things start to feel demanding or taxing, we drop all the things that once helped us. So, in Lori's case, she stopped volunteering, she stopped doing pleasurable activities with friends, just started to give more and more to her work, which didn't work, obviously. We need to have a diverse life portfolio where we have other things that nourish us, where we, like, have good times with friends, and we see that we matter in other relationships, and that can boost a feeling of capability and confidence in the work setting. And so Lori's story is really about accepting stress, not letting stress dictate your days, and not chasing this quest that so many of us chase for calm rather than continuing forward.

Jenny Taitz
Yeah. Another side of that I saw is that instead of trying to calm down, you explained that she shifted to trying to get excited. And I didn't understand this at first until I thought about the situations that I often find myself in, such as public speaking or important meetings. Can you use maybe one of those two different examples to showcase what this really means? Yeah.

John R. Miles
So a lot of our stress response is very physiologically similar to the emotions we have when we're excited. And oftentimes we tell ourselves we need to calm down, but then that's not physiologically similar. If you think about it, stress and excitement, or more, there's energy in you, there's maybe a more rapid heart rate, maybe you're going a little faster. And so this remarkable study by Alison Woodbrooks, who's at Harvard, she did this thing where she had people perform karaoke, the song don't stop believing by journey. And people that were taught ahead of this practicing karaoke as part of a research study to get excited to reframe their, like, what we might typically call our stress responses, excitement.

Those people performed better. They sang for longer, that they were more true to the actual words of the song. So there's something about this, like, pressure of, like, our appraisal is everything. Appraising stress is bad, and needing to shut it down is not helpful. But seeing it, like, why did Lori care?

Laurie cared because she wanted to do well. She was excited about adding value to her team. She was excited about thriving in a new setting. And all of us oftentimes think I need to just be all the way down here when I'm up here. But if we can see that this is actually something that matters to me and reframe it in a more positive direction, it's a lot more tenable.

And I think these days, so many of us are trying to feel comfortable and distract ourselves. But if we can see that, we can sit with nerves and we can radically accept them. That's a lot more effective this Memorial. Day, click into cordless power at the Home Depot, tackle your yard cleanup with the precision and gas like power of the Ryobi 40 volts expanded cordless dring trimmer, then power through the heavier debris with more than an hour of runtime on the Ryobi 40 volts cordless battery blower. Right now, you can get either one for only $159 each.

Home Depot
It's time to click into Memorial Day doing at your cordless power source, the Home Depot. How doers get more done.

John R. Miles
When you. Buy a new house, you might say. Shut the front door. Winning. No, seriously, shut the front door.

We own this house now. But you actually need to say, like. A good neighbor state farm is there. That's right. The local state farm agent is there to help you choose the coverage you need.

Jenny Taitz
Welcome to my crib. No one says that anymore, but I don't care. So just remember, like, a good neighbor state farm is there. State Farm, Bloomington, Illinois do. Yeah.

It's interesting because you and I were talking about Lori Gottlieb before we got off on the show. Someone that I've been following recently has been Jen Gottlieb, and she seems to be everywhere these days. And it's interesting because when I watch her getting prepared to go on stage, she's doing exactly this. Instead of trying to calm herself down, she's trying to get herself super excited. So when she comes on stage, she's having that energy that people feel from the moment she steps out.

And I've seen Ed Millett and other major speakers do this, so I think those are some good examples to highlight also what you were talking about. I mean, you would never enjoy a speech with someone that was, like, too calm. And that might be a good speech to put you to bed, but that wouldn't be a good speech to capture your attention. In chapter two, you write that in the same way that improving your relationship with stress calls for not judging the experience. An initial first step in regulating your emotions is noticing if you're criticizing what you're feeling, what's the best way for a listener to approach this?

John R. Miles
Yeah, I think we need to take a step back and look at what are our beliefs around emotions. Do you believe that feeling fear is fear? Does that create fear for you? Because oftentimes people struggle with panic if they're afraid of feeling anxious. Do you feel shame and guilt around feeling angry?

And so taking a step back and asking yourself, what are my beliefs about my emotions? What are the things? Do I tend to judge when I'm feeling something that it's the wrong thing to feel. It's too much. It's going to go on forever.

Because our beliefs about our ability to cope with emotions and our beliefs about our emotions actually predicts how we'll face them. And so if I believe that my emotions come in waves, that they make sense, that if I stay present with them, they'll pass, then I'm willing to sit with them. And if I believe that they're bad and I need to push them away, then I will avoid them in ways that are probably really problematic. If I think I can't sit down and start something really stressful because it's just too much, then I will probably just do things to procrastinate and to escape go for snacks that only make me more stressed down the line. And so it's really helpful to ask ourselves, we have so many emotions, but have we checked in with what do we make of them?

Do we think that we're able to sit with them? This is something, John, I have to tell you, that is one of my favorite tips myself. When I'm going through a hard time, or when my patients are going through a really hard time sitting with them. With this fundamental belief that, like, all emotions come in waves, all emotions come in waves. No matter how bad things feel in this moment, you will return to baseline, you will return to your innate resilience.

It's just a matter of time. And the emotions you're feeling in this moment makes sense. You don't need to push them away. You can allow them to be there because they're telling you something and they're motivating you. Yeah.

Jenny Taitz
Thank you for sharing that. And an episode that I just wanted to turn the audience attention to is I interviewed Liz Foslan last year about her book big emotions, which is another good episode to look into how you deal with painful emotions or emotions in general. But speaking of emotions, in the same chapter, you bring up an acronym called Arc. What do you mean by the arc of our emotions? And how can we use this to recalibrate our emotions?

John R. Miles
So before I get to the arc, I just want to share one more thing. So this idea that emotions come in waves might seem, like, optimistic or not true for you. And so one thing that I do with my clients that I encourage you to think about is we actually do a mindful mood induction. I help people watch brief video clips. So we watch a scene that is like a scene of a deathbed that's very emotional from the movie the Champions, and then we watch something that's a gun violence scene that evokes fear, and then we watch something that would make incite anger.

Quick documentary. I just show a minute of a documentary on the cost of college tuition and how people's jobs don't end up paying for their college debt. And then we watch something happy, the pharrell song Happy. And people really see in real time that their emotions truly rise and fall. In a couple of minutes, they can have the full array of feelings, and we forget this if we don't see this firsthand.

And so to just even see for yourself, like, maybe you had something really upsetting happen to you. At the end of the day, you got a really nasty email. If you stay really present on your walk to your car and you catch, like, a glimpse of a beautiful sunset or a really cute puppy crossing paths with you, then you can see that these things really do move. Our emotions do move when we stay present, but they get stuck if we are replaying the upsetting thing over and over again and you're just chewing over the email in terms of the arc is an incredible way to just break down your emotions so they are almost like a recipe. You can see how they unfold, so you can tweak the ingredients at each step.

The arc entails noticing what the antecedent is like, what the initial prompting event was, then your response, which includes three components. It includes your thoughts, your feelings, and your action urges, your behaviors. And then it also includes consequences to see what happens, like short term and long term as a result of acting on the response in the middle portion. And so when you take a step back and create an arc, you notice, what are your triggers? What typically gets you stuck or what typically drives certain thoughts and physical sensations and behaviors, and then you can intervene at each point.

And so if an antecedent is going to sleep and telling yourself that you need to go to sleep right away because you have an early morning, then thoughts like, I have to go to bed right now. It's getting really late. Tomorrow's going to be terrible. Those could create physical sensations like muscle tension and restlessness in your legs. And then that could lead to behavior of picking up your phone.

And then the consequence of that could be you're a bit distracted from that thought of, like, pressure to go to sleep, but then you're up later and later, and you're not able to fall asleep. And so that gives you a lot of clues into what you could do better tomorrow. You can antecedent could be you tell yourself your job is just to do a body scan, to slowly scan your body, which is something that often helps people fall asleep. And then your attitude about pressure to fall asleep instead could be something along the lines of, it's none of your business. You're not the sleep police.

You can't force it. There's no on demand button for falling asleep and getting your phone out of your bedroom. So again, the arc is a way that we can feel empowered at so many different steps along the way, like changing a recipe. If you tweak one ingredient, the whole thing can change. And the arc is a really helpful way that anyone can start to practice managing their emotions across various situations.

And the same tools that help us manage our emotions are the same tools that help us manage stress. This is something I'm going to have to try out because on Thursday I have to wake up way early because I have a 05:30 a.m. flight and I am always stressed out the night before because I'm trying to get to bed. And it's always so much more difficult when you put that self imposed pressure to fall asleep because of the day that you've got coming up. So perhaps this arc will be something I can utilize.

You can use it in every situation. I have to tell you that even just normalizing, like, it's fine. I'm sure there are so many times, especially in your career as a seal, that you didn't sleep long hours and you didn't sleep well and you still performed incredibly well beyond what you maybe had imagined possible. Yeah. And Jenny, just one correction.

Jenny Taitz
I served with the seal. I did not go to Bud, so I am not a seal, but I did have a great time serving with them and did have many times where I was faced with multitudes of situations, of sleep deprivations. So you mentioned college in your previous discussion, and in chapter three, you write about a college student named Max who is having a really hard time relaxing. And this one hit home for me because I have a daughter who's currently a sophomore in college who herself is having issues, I think with the class load that she has and finding time to relax versus putting the constant pressure of having to study on her shoulders. Can you discuss the story of Max and how his habit of overthinking was impacting his life?

John R. Miles
Absolutely. So the story of Max is a story I think all of us can relate to, which is a lot of times if we can't immediately solve a problem, we think we need to keep holding on to it in our mind. And so Max is a college student that was really worried about being able to support not only himself, but his parents, because they're immigrants, and he wanted to take care of them because they had worked so hard. And on top of his parents, he also has a brother with special needs, and he wanted to have enough income to not only give his parents a break, but also take care of his brother and all of the costs of his various therapies and living expenses. And so too, in our own lives, if there's something, a goal that we're trying to work towards, it's easy to think that thinking about it and thinking about it is getting us closer to actually doing it.

But the thing that we know for sure is that ruminating or replaying and worrying and continuously hovering over something that we can't immediately solve is actually the habit that turns something stressful into chronic stress is possible. This is really remarkable, this incredible fact about our resilience. You can have chronic stressors or things over the course of your life that don't affect your health, that don't become like chronic stress, and like the bad physical heart disease kind of territory, high blood pressure, but you can also have short term stressors that do. And so the chapter with Max includes ten different ways out of the rumination habit. Because a lot of people I very much related to ruminating when I was in college and as a young adult, and a lot of my clients have told me that they're professional ruminators.

And I just want people to know that even if you are a professional ruminator, you can break free of the shackles of rumination. There are a lot of skills and tools that you might not have tried that are counterintuitive, that can help anyone, for example, writing about something that's very upsetting for 20 minutes, college students who did this over the course of five days had reduced scores on rumination. Six months later, also reduced scores on depression. We think when we're just like a news ticker and having a quick, fleeting, stressful thought, that we're dealing with it, but we really need to actually go deep into feelings at times. So if there's something that you're really struggling with, actually taking the time to singularly coming back to this idea of singular focus, to actually dive into it in more detail, is different than just juggling it among the many other concerns.

So that's one thing. If there's something serious that you need to actually allow yourself to feel your feelings. And remarkably, on that note, also for people that I see that have had very traumatic events. Writing about the trauma over five sessions spanning 30 minutes. Each session is actually an evidence based way to treat PTSD that the VA is now rolling out.

And so, a lot of times we think we have these longstanding habits and we've been through hell and we can't enjoy the moment, but there are actually a lot of new, exciting things happening in psychology that are very well researched to help you reclaim this moment and future moments. And then we also often have ruminations that don't help us at all. We just are tell ourselves that we're a loser or no one likes us, and that's just noise. And we need to create ways to develop a spam filter within us. And so I talk a lot about ways that we can create our internal spam filter so we're not responding to noise in this time, where there's actually a lot that we need to conserve our energy to actually solve things in our lives.

Jenny Taitz
I often talk about that the greatest enemy we will ever face is the person who stares at us in the mirror every single morning, because we are our own worst critic. We're our own worst enemy when it comes to self doubt and confronting fear and everything else. And I know for me, you were talking about some of the treatments at the VA. I am someone who had a lot of PTSD from time that I spent in the military, and I was definitely one of those who had triggers underneath the surface that were causing me to overthink. And it was really when I initially went through cognitive processing therapy to start understanding what those stuck points were, which I think are the same things as the triggers that I started to realize the impact that they were having.

But I then use prolonged exposure therapy, not the writing that you mentioned, to help then get even further into those stuck points to get to the point where they weren't even causing me any issues any longer to overthink. But it does take a lot of work and repetition and sitting with it till you get to a point where you don't ruminate about it at all. And I guess that's what you're trying to explain exactly. And it's so refreshing to talk to you because so often people have never heard of some of the treatments that you're mentioning. But for a lot of people have tried a lot of different things, and I want people to know that even if some of these things do take a little bit of time, they're well worth the time.

John R. Miles
They're life changing and life saving. And you mentioned cognitive processing therapy. And written exposure therapy was tested against 20 sessions of cognitive processing therapy. And the five sessions of written exposure performs just as well as the 20 sessions. And so new things are coming out where maybe it won't just take five sessions, but that might not have taken as long as they once did.

Or for people that are really worried about the time commitment, there are ways to see change in less amount of time. And I want to hit on Generation Z and college students again. Earlier this morning I was having coffee with a friend who has a junior in college. As I mentioned, mine's a sophomore, and I also have a 25 year old son. And I think I see in many kids this generation.

Jenny Taitz
I was just on a podcast the other day specifically targeting Gen Z, and it seems like there's just this overwhelming anxiety that they're feeling and also a sense of unmattering, or they're trying to understand how their life is going to hold significance. And they're very concerned about some of the changes that are coming about in the future, whether it's the impact of artificial intelligence, how digital in, in totality is going to impact their jobs. But I'm hearing just a profound sense that they do not see in the future how their lives can be as prosperous as their parents and generations that have come before them. Is this something that you see in the patients that you're treating as well as a common theme? Yes and no.

John R. Miles
I really try to. I want to validate. Of course, AI is very stressful and scary for people that are looking towards their career prospects, and I want to normalize that life is stressful, and a lot of people are very understandably worried about things like the economy and political divide and climate change. There are so many things that are very stressful. War.

But I also think that there are a lot of things that my clients are excited and hopeful about. And some of what I do is try to help them see what they can. Hope isn't just a feeling, but it's also a behavior. And how can they do things that give them a sense of agency and chance? And one thing that I see a lot in my college students, in particular younger students, is this sense that some of the things that they've leaned on for stress reduction have actually backfired.

And so some young adults that I've been working with are really empowered and excited about. I may be excited is the wrong word, but willing and committed to doing things like reducing their cannabis use and benzodiazepine medications like Xanax and Klonopin, because they're realizing that these things that they did to take the edge off are actually demotivating them and compromising their ability to have a strong drive to troubleshoot and design lives that feel they do have a chance to thrive professionally and personally, even with all these things going on in the world? Well, this whole topic of benzos is something that you talk about, actually, later in the book. But considering the complexities and the broad impact of these types of medications, it worries me, because they really suppress neural activity, not just in the targeted fear centers across the brain, but also what gets me worried is the side effects, especially the prolonged use of them, and how it can impact your cognition over the long term. What's your perspective on the use of these drugs?

Jenny Taitz
And what other approaches do you think we should be considering for managing anxiety symptoms that a lot of people are turning to pharmacology to be the solution to achieving. Right. So, benzodiazepines are not a great way to treat anxiety long term. I would say benzodiazepines might be good once or twice a year. If you are someone that needs to give a eulogy at a funeral tomorrow and you are so distraught and you want to be able to function, that I would understand taking something like that once in a blue moon for potentially sleep.

John R. Miles
But there might be other things that are better, or if you are having major surgery and you need to try to relax a little bit beforehand. But taking benzodiazepines on a regular basis is really problematic. As you mentioned, long term use of these drugs does lead to cognitive decline. The withdrawal is really difficult. A lot of my patients have really struggled.

It's very difficult. And you need a help of a psychiatrist to do a very slow taper, because it can be really dangerous to do this too quickly and incredibly unpleasant as well. And a thing that people really don't realize is that to do behavioral therapy, to actually work with me on facing your life, you need to withdraw and discontinue from these medications, because a huge part of what I teach people, and a big way that I treat anxiety, is by teaching people able to radically accept it. And there's no opportunity to radically accept if you are sedated and not feeling your feelings. And so it's also incredibly ironic to me that when we need to be our sharpest and when we are facing big problems, we're taking something that makes us sluggish and compromises our ability to not only use our brain down the line, but also think clearly in this moment.

And so I just want to put out a public service announcement for, like you mentioned, exposure therapy. Exposure for panic is an incredibly powerful treatment. If you've had panic attacks, that is actually one of the best diagnoses to have because that is one of the most treatable conditions. People that come to me with panic might have struggled for many years, but learning to actually recreate the physical sensations that stress you out if you feel short of breath, we practice helping you recreate that so you can really literally put out a welcome mat rather than feeling like you're fighting it, like, almost like a chinese finger trap. And learning to sit with your body is discomfort.

And continuing to use the tool of the arc to notice what are your thoughts, what are your behaviors? Because if you can accept your body, think more flexibly, and continue to approach the things that matter to you, you will win. And anxiety and panic will be in the trunk. Yeah. I was recently interviewing Gabby Bernstein, and she and I were talking about the same topic and how she, in her case, was finding herself using dating or drugs or alcohol to help calm her anxiety and her trigger points.

Jenny Taitz
And I have used some of the same things in my life to mask the symptoms that I was feeling, but have been sober for a while now. And I have to tell you, once you come to terms with that and you get all that stuff out of your life, the clarity that you feel and the way you train yourself to process the emotions is so much more powerful than I ever felt when I was addicted to any of the things that we get addicted to, whether it's work, sex, being in constant relationships, drugs, whatever, what have you. And I have just found that since I have stopped trying to use coping mechanisms, I have found myself so much more able to cope with the stress or anxiety that I feel. Is that a common occurrence? I love what you're saying.

John R. Miles
Yes. I just want to say loud and clear that my philosophy is that peace of mind is not life being easy, but it's knowing that you can count on yourself regardless of what shows up in your life. And so, again, we don't realize that we can feel our feelings, that we can change our thoughts, that we can sit with our body sensations until we actually give ourselves a chance to do that. Absolutely. Yeah.

It's similar to a great workout. You might not realize that you can run a mile until you persist and keep at it, and then you can run a mile and a half and 2 miles, and that builds up this priceless feeling of mastery. Self efficacy is priceless. This feeling of I did this, I can do this is so much better than popping a pill like instead, learn some skills. And the skills give you this added dose of confidence and competence and faith.

Jenny Taitz
I want to jump to your chapter five. In this chapter, you talk about a gentleman named Gary, who was nicknamed Grumpy Gramps. And as I was reading this, I was thinking of a chapter that I wrote in my book called the Bee and the Turtle Effect. And what I talk about here is that so many of us often consume our lives with the habits of it be where we're so much prioritizing the immediate challenges that we're facing and what we're trying to do to overcome them, that we don't think about the turtle and the long term dreams and aspirations that we have. And I find, going back to the initial question that I asked you about, how do you thrive in life?

That to truly thrive requires us to think more broadly and to take the time for the things that give us meaning and purpose. Using that as a setup. How was Gary so focused on his immediate concerns that he wasn't considering his hopes and dreams? And what can a listener take away from this story? So Gary is the story of a man who was in a car accident and had a lot of chronic pain.

John R. Miles
And understandably, chronic pain is so distracting and it shrinks the scope of our lives to really focus on how do we free ourselves from pain. And this was especially difficult for Gary because this happened at the time of his retirement. So he had this vision of his life of playing golf and traveling. And those things were really compromised by the pain condition that he developed after this accident. And I think a lot of us were just programmed to think about what we're going to get from life.

Like, I get to travel, I get to play golf. I worked hard. I deserve this. But instead, we also need to think about how do I want to show up? And so we need to take a step back and think about what are the various domains of my life that matter to me?

My health, my relationships, my hobbies, giving back, continuing to learn, and how do I want to show up in each domain. And so what happened to Gary is something that I think happens to a lot of us. We get fixated and the problem becomes like the whole totality of our lives. And we stop focusing on other things until we fix the perceived problem. But what Gary came to realize is creating visual of what do I want to move towards?

What do I want to move away from finally seeing? What do I want my life to be about? How do I want people to celebrate me and remember me? I don't want it to be about like calling the doctor and going from doctor to doctor and complaining nonstop and being self focused. And instead I'd want to be the kind of person that still gets up and makes a cup of coffee for my wife and asks my grandkids how they are and checks in on friends of mine, even if I feel like things are pretty lousy for me.

And doing these things maybe feels like a stretch, but it also shrinks the role that problems are playing in your life. Well, thank you for sharing that. Jenny and I wanted to touch on part two and part three of your book. We've been primarily talking about part one. Part two of the book.

Jenny Taitz
You go through a series of stress resets that a reader can use to help them deal with their stress they may be feeling. And I was just going to ask you about a couple of them. So the 6th one you bring up is something that we talked about a bit earlier, which is name that emotion. And you use the metaphor of an emotion wheel. Can you talk about this emotion wheel and how it could help someone notice and name what they're feeling?

Yeah. And for people that are listening and feeling a little confused, just my thought was that a book on stress is such an ironic kind of concept because usually we read when we have a lot of time to relax, and a lot of times when we're stressed, we just need like a quick, give it to me, tell me what to do. And so part two of my book is something that you could just turn to right away. It's I'm really stressed. It provides you with quick things to do, like a manual, how to change, how to reset your mind, how to reset your body, how to reset your behavior.

John R. Miles
And so labeling your emotions actually activates a part of your brain that helps you regulate them. So just putting words on your emotion actually helps you go from feeling like you're swimming in your emotions to giving you a little bit of working distance. And so just labeling, I feel sad, I feel anxious, I feel angry, is a step towards bringing your mind on board, not just letting your emotions drive the ship. Okay. And a couple of the other ones that Jenny mentions in this section are find your wise mind, bring the love was another one.

Jenny Taitz
Turn your nightmares into dreams. Number 29 is one that I use quite frequently, which is to take a walk outside. I find especially when I'm feeling stressed about something work wise, if I can get outside and just get my mind off of it for a short ten to 15 minutes, it typically helps me to reset. And number 30 was one that I thought was fun, which is to be your own dj. Can you explain a little bit about that one?

John R. Miles
Yes. So one of the things that inspired me to write this book is there was a study done at University of Pennsylvania that looked at people before they were going into surgery. And this was spearheaded by doctor Veena Graff, who's an anesthesiologist, and people that were about to go into surgery, which is obviously so stressful, had the choice to either. Sorry, they didn't have the choice. They were either given a benzodiazepine, a medication, like we mentioned earlier, that has a lot of side effects and long term use can cause cognitive decline, or they had the chance to listen to this song called Weightless by Marconi Union.

And remarkably, the song had almost the same benefits as the benzodiazepine. And obviously, songs have no side effects. And so hearing about this study got me really excited about sharing all sorts of things we can all lean on quickly in a matter of minutes that work as well as some of these things that are full of side effects. And so in terms of being your own dj, you can certainly listen to wait lists if you are needing to quickly calm down. But this is a very sedating song, so do not listen to this while you're driving if you want to listen to this before bed.

That's something that I do with my four year old, and it works wonders for any parents out there. For people that struggle with insomnia, this is one of my favorite things to recommend. But we also might need different playlists for other situations. If you need to get up and go or get excited, creating your own peppy playlist could do a lot for you. And so, a lot of times, again, like we, like you mentioned, we look at, we're our biggest critic, but if we can have some sort of pump up, pump up the jam playlist that really helps us get going and face our lives and pushes us.

Music can be a really powerful motivator for a lot of people and can be really helpful in terms of changing people's moods. Yeah. Music is something that I love and find so energizing. And a lot of times when I'm working, I've been listening to baroque music because I found that it actually has a beat that helps you to concentrate more, which I found effective, ironically. Yeah.

And I just want to make it clear the playlist needs to be helpful for the situation. And so sometimes people, when they're sad, like to listen to sad music when they're angry. Maybe they listen to more heavy metal or angry music, but we need to listen to something that's going to help us move in the direction we want to move towards. Okay. And then, Jenny, the third portion of your book goes into stress buffers, where you're really encouraging the reader to practice self care and doing something straightforward and establishing a daily care routine.

Jenny Taitz
And I'm just going to highlight the first one that you write about in this chapter, which is the need to untangle yourself from your core beliefs. Why did you choose to start with this one? This is something that a lot of people maybe aren't sure how to start to do, and that feels overwhelming. And so a core belief is a way that we view ourselves with a world that maybe stems from a painful experience in childhood. Maybe you were bullied, or maybe you felt like people couldn't be trusted.

John R. Miles
Primary caregivers couldn't be trusted. And so you go through the world, maybe feeling like an awkward adolescent, even if you're a well respected person, or you feel like you can't trust other people, even if people are proving trustworthy. And so a way to start to chip away at this is really to even just notice that we have these core beliefs and to be mindful of them and then to act in ways that transcend them, because a lot of times we act in ways that keep them going. Maybe we keep people at arm's length. Maybe we constantly criticize ourselves or do things to compensate, get really expensive clothes, or act in overly perfectionistic ways to try to make up for this fact that we feel awkward or unworthy.

And so knowing that this is something that can hold us back, but that we can take a look at it, see it for what it is, and not let it dictate our lives is an incredibly powerful way to transform your inner narrative and your reality. Yeah. So, Jenny, we've covered a lot today, and we've really just touched the tip of the iceberg when it comes to your book. If there was one key takeaway you wanted listeners to get from our talk today, what would it be? By choosing your behaviors in the moment and stacking different ways to change your relationship with your thoughts, and being really intentional about your behavior and not micromanaging your body, but having faith in your innate resilience, you can transform this moment.

You can transform the rest of your life. And not only that, but you can create a positive ripple effect for the people around you. A lot of times, people think self care is for you, but it's also to create positive change in the world at large, because us being stressed can easily lead to stressing other people out, and us managing our emotions can really help the people around us as well. And I want you to realize that there's so much you can do in this moment to change right now and change tomorrow and inspire the people that need your warmth. Well, Jenny, thank you so much for joining us today.

Jenny Taitz
If the listener wanted to learn more about you, where's the best place for them to go? You can visit my website, drjennytates.com. you can check out my book. I just want to say really committed to the goal of actually helping people transform their lives and the power of giving back. A percentage of proceeds from my book are going to really remarkable causes like the arc which helps promote job opportunities for people with developmental disabilities the Breath Body Mind foundation which helps people in disaster zones lean on their breathing to have profound ability to change their physiology and second nurture which is a foster support network.

Well, Jenny, thank you so much for being on the show today. It was such a great opportunity to talk to you and I found this book very helpful and as I went through it, there are so many easy things that a person can look at this and use in their immediate need if they're feeling a stress response. Thank you John and thank you for all your incredible work. What an incredible interview that was with Doctor Jenny Tate and I wanted to thank Jenny and workman press for the honor and privilege of having her appear on today's show. Links to all things Jenny will be in the show notes@passionstruck.com dot please use our website links to purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show.

Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at Johnr Miles and our clips channel at Passionstruck clips please go and join over 250,000 other subscribers who view our content daily. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place@passionstruck.com. deals please consider supporting those who support the show. If you want daily doses of passion struck motivation and inspiration, then follow me on all the social platforms at John R. Miles and if you want to join our weekly courage movement, then sign up for live intentionally, our weekly newsletter@passionstruck.com.

dot. Are you curious to find out where you stand on the path to becoming passion struck? Then dive into our engaging passion struck quiz. Crafted to reflect the core principles I share in my latest book, this quiz offers you a dynamic way to gauge your progress on your journey to becoming passion struck. With just 20 questions and ten minutes of your time.

Go to passionstruck.com right now and take the quiz. You're about to hear a preview of the Passion Struck podcast interview that I did with doctor Gary Walls, who joins us to share her revolutionary approach to health and wellness. Join us to discover how she defied conventional medical wisdom by developing the walls protocol, a diet based treatment plan that transformed her entire life and her fight with multiple sclerosis, as well as how our dietary choices can influence chronic diseases and our overall health. Improving your sleep, improving your exercise, your stress management. We can create a better calmed immune system, less reactive microglia, fewer relapses, less fatigue, better moods, a higher quality of life.

Gary Walls
And fortunately, my message, because I kept doing the research and publishing it as finally winning people over that diet really is important, that exercise really is important, that sleep and stress management are in that modifiable lifestyle factors are just as viable or just as critical as any disease modifying treatments. So it's certainly possible that you can have a great life. You can still be enjoying your spouse, your kids, your grandkids, even if you have a diagnosis of Ms. And there is a whole lot that you can do to support your wellness and your healing journey. Remember that we rise by lifting others.

Jenny Taitz
So share this show with those that you love and care about. And if you found today's episode with Doctor Jenny Tates useful, then definitely share it with them. In the meantime. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. And until next time, go out there and become passion struck.

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How doers get more done.

State Farm
When something happens to your car, you might say, no.

John R. Miles
My car. But what you really need to say is something that can actually help. Like a good neighbor state farm is there. And just like that, State Farm is there to help you file your claim right on the state farm mobile app. So just remember, like a good neighbor State farm is there.

Jenny Taitz
State Farm Bloomington, Illinois.

Dr. Jenny Taitz on How You Live Bigger for True Fulfillment EP 458

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1: Introduction to Dr. Jenny Taitz

2: The Science of Stress Management

3: Practical Applications

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