EP 39: Listener Questions About Stress

Our mission is to give you tools and strategies that will help you move from being stressed to feeling your best.

In this episode we answer questions submitted by podcast listeners around the stress in their lives. 

Co-hosts Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are certified HeartMath® Trainers, and certified stress educators, who are skilled at helping people discover the power of living form the heart.  To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in Canada, click here. To take the Stress and Wellbeing Assessment in the US, click here. 

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Barb Fletcher, Deb Timmerman

Deb Timmerman  00:00

You're listening to the less stress in life podcast. Your hosts, Deb Timmerman and Barb Fletcher are on a mission to help individuals and organizations manage stress and change. Together, they bring you real conversations, inspirational stories, and strategies to help move you from being stressed to feeling your best.

Barb Fletcher  00:23

Hello, everyone. I am Barb. Fletcher. Welcome to our series of 52 Practical Tools for Less Stress in Life. This is episode 39.

Deb Timmerman  00:34

Good morning, everybody. I'm Deb Timmerman. Our goal is to give you tools and strategies that help you move from feeling stressed to feeling your best. Today we're going to answer some of the questions that you've been submitting to us on Facebook. So Barb, you want to shoot and start with the first one?

Barb Fletcher  00:52

Sure. So one of the questions was about adrenal fatigue and people being told that they actually have that. What is it and how do you get it?

Deb Timmerman  01:03

There are two schools of thought on adrenal fatigue. So really, when we talk about adrenal fatigue, it's a medical diagnosis. That's called adrenal insufficiency and it comes because our body produces less of the hormones as they relate to our adrenal glands. So, adrenal glands produce a lot of the stress hormones. And the only way that you can figure out whether or not you have adrenal insufficiency is by having a lab test. So, they draw blood, they look at the amount of corticosteroids that are floating around in your blood, and there's a normalized standard for that. And if you're out of that norm, then they say you have adrenal insufficiency. Mayo clinic.com, says that when we talk about adrenal fatigue, it's really a theory. And it's all about the insufficiency that's caused by chronic stress. And nobody's actually done the research to prove that. So, it's more about the constant demands of being in fight flight all the time and the blood tests for that aren't sensitive enough to pick up those deviations, but our body is. So, our body's telling us that something's wrong and a lot of times, especially natural providers like naturopaths, and those kinds of providers, they will help you choose extra supplements to support that and many times those symptoms will go away. So you can take supplements for it but honestly, if you're not dealing with the underlying problems that are giving you stress or causing you stress or learning some way to manage stress, it's not probably going to go away. Over time, you're always going to be feeling those stress symptoms, and may get that diagnosis again, of adrenal fatigue.

Barb Fletcher  03:00

What I love about that is that when people use stress tools, and they're consistent with the practice, they actually take some of that power back and actually allow the adrenals to recover on their own without a lot of intervention. Now, it does take some consistency, and it takes some practice weirdness, but it works.

Deb Timmerman  03:25

So have you taken supplements for adrenal fatigue in the past? Never.  I have and at the time, I did not have a practice and I don't know if I felt it. I can't remember or recall feeling any better on those supplements. However, when I started really looking at and adding breathwork tools, and some of these other strategies, that's when I really started to feel better, and it didn't happen. Right away. It wasn't instantly, but small steps over time. I mean, I feel better today, and I'm rounding the corner at 65 in a couple of weeks, than I felt 20 years ago.

Barb Fletcher  04:09

And, you know, it's not one or the other. It's really about the combination and how to how do we use the tools and the supports out there to actually help us move forward? And we've talked about that before, but for sure. You know, the practice, and that nutritional support can really make a huge change in how you feel. Y

Deb Timmerman  04:32

Yeah, and I think that there is quite a bit of research from the standpoint of nutritional support, and these kinds of products. I guess what I'm saying here is probably if you're just going to take a product and you're not going to deal with the root cause of that problem, you're probably not going to get as Good Are the results, as if you ban that together with those tools that you're mentioning.

Barb Fletcher  05:05

I always look at that as if we were building a foundation of a house. And so, you know, when we take pills, without actually getting down to what the base is, we're really just kind of, you know, we're building a little bit on sand as opposed to something solid.

Deb Timmerman  05:28

So that's funny that you mentioned that because in the trauma informed world, as I'm working with my county, our phrase has been stop doing short term band aids, and do upstream prevention, because those short-term band aids only last a little bit of time. And, you know, if you've changed the band aid enough times, the skin around there gets irritated and every time you take the band aid off, that gets a little deeper. So, it's really a change in how we're looking at the whole concept of health. And I know, some of my naturopath friends have been doing some studies and publishing some stuff about now what happens on the cellular level with stress. And that's been really interesting to follow. So, if our cells can't recover, and our whole body is made up of cells, it makes sense that we're going to have issues in areas of our body or symptoms does to me.

Barb Fletcher  06:27

So, another question we got was, I can't sleep at night. How do I know that I just can't sleep, or that there's stress involved.

Deb Timmerman  06:39

You know, I'm not a scientist, but in my experience, typically, people who can't sleep at night, there's something keeping them awake, or something going on in their head, thoughts, they can't turn off. And in all of the work that I've done with people, what it seems to be is they are stressing about something, whether that's running in their subconscious, or, they do know that they are stressed about something. It has to do with the brain thinking that we are stressed and those stress chemicals that don't turn off. That's what keeps us awake. So that stress response, that increased adrenaline, and when that happens over time, then the steroid piece starts so the corticosteroids start happening. And that's what keeps us wired at night and we can't wind down.

Barb Fletcher  07:51

I raised my hand to having had those experiences. And so, I also know that if I happen to grab for the blue light that is on my cell phone, that doesn't necessarily help the situation. So, it's usually clear to me that I've woken up and I'm on the hamster wheel. The stories are going faster and faster and I know the only way to get off of that wheel is through self-regulation in it. And using the breath. I can't think my way out of it, because I've already in a catastrophe situation by the time I've woken it up. So, I get that. And I think, you know, when people wake up, and they feel their mind racing that stress.

Deb Timmerman  08:46

So you mentioned going to the breath for self-regulation. Today in my inbox this morning, Dr. Roger Jahnke, he's the person who wrote the book that they use for Taichi Easy. He started this new thing called Breath medicine and I loved that phrase, breath and medicine. So simple. We have that tool with us every day. It's always with us and to think about the power of that breath, activating medicine inside us. Just, I mean, it geeks me out. I was looking at it and going, I want to learn more about why and what those other exercises are. Because how powerful is that? You're lying there in bed at night, and you can't shut that hamster wheel off. We go to HeartMath tools, but there are obviously many other breathwork tools that would work in that instance, and I think that's just having that knowledge is really powerful.

Barb Fletcher  09:50

So, I have clients who when they arrive, they talk about, well, I feel like the other shoes going to drop. They feel anxious and they're, you know, they're fearful of what might actually happen. So, is that stress that's causing that feeling? Or what is that?

Deb Timmerman  10:11

Yes, that's stress. So, our brain records those memories, we've talked about that before. and when it perceives that we don't have enough resources on board to deal with whatever life is throwing at us, then our brain starts going into that stress reaction mode, starts that whole cycle, and what it does is it looks at the current situation, and it compares it to similar situations that you've experienced before. And if there's something that you were fearful about, it will go automatically to that fear-based thinking mode and it's really a protection mechanism.

Barb Fletcher  10:53

And we know that there are, there's a term that speaks to negative bias, which is really about how we perceive the world. And it's not good or bad. It's just how people perceive the world. And so some of those folks, you know, live their whole life without any interventions, experiencing it from that negative bias perspective. And so, you know, you shouldn't beat yourself up, if that's how you feel. What we want you to know is that there's tools that can help.

Deb Timmerman  11:37

So, I was surprised to get that question, because it was as if I asked that question, because I can relate to that. That used to be me. I was very negatively wired or had a very negative bias or slant. And that was because when I was growing up, my house was a little bit chaotic. It was always unpredictable about whether my dad was going to come home and if he was coming home, how was going to be, what shape was he in. So, I learned that in my environment, I'm always scanning for those possible threats and I'm preparing. So, you get everything set in your mind, and you think something's going to go a certain way and then dad doesn't come home, the shoe falls. So that was a pattern that I had to work really hard at changing, because I always would think the negative versus thinking the positive.

Barb Fletcher  12:35

And so we know that if we can rely on that breath medicine, to do some quieting of the nervous system, those messages that are going between the heart and the brain, that we can actually feel better in those situations. The fourth question we had was, I'm really stressed out my partner doesn't have a clue doesn't know, he or she doesn't know what to say or do any suggestion?

Deb Timmerman  13:08

Yeah, I think the first suggestion is, you can't rely on your partner to solve a problem that is your problem internally. And chances are, even if they did say something, it's not going to be the right thing because only you know what you need in here.

Barb Fletcher  13:27

And that kind of sucks. Because we, we, you know, it's always easier to look to somebody else to change your behavior, so we can feel better.

Deb Timmerman  13:42

Yeah, I do have somebody that I'm working with right now who has the same issue, where they have expectations of what the partner should do or could do or should have said, and it's never what that person wants. Because number one, that person's stress response is in the "on mode" all the time because of previous experiences. and the filter through which that person sees those responses is through the filtered lens of previous relationships with her dad and her first husband. So that's really difficult. And the only way that you change that is to stop or interrupt that stress reaction and stop that stress loop so that you can settle and connect and feel within what you need. I think a lot of us look for external validation. I did in a previous relationship.

Barb Fletcher  14:45

And our partners, it's like you said there, they're never going to get it right. But they can't read our minds, to understand what our life experiences have been. You know, I've spoken about a situation when we were away on a trip and somebody reacted in a particular way, which was very unlike the situation and who they really were. And as I was walking away from that situation, I said, well, there is something behind that story there, there was some kind of trigger. So, it's not for everybody else to solve. I think this individual when she actually verbalizes what the trigger might have been. Once she was aware of it, it's almost like it doesn't have any power anymore. It's like it neutralizes it.  It is like, we have a balloon, and somebody pokes it with a pin, and the air comes out. There may be other things that come up, but probably isn't going to catch us again.

Deb Timmerman  15:47

Next week, our guest is going to talk about Emotion Code and that is really all about how those emotions are stored in our body. So, it'll be interesting for people to tune into that and to hear about how that happens with us.

Barb Fletcher  16:02

So, our call to action for people: I think, you know, we have loved receiving these questions and having an opportunity to answer because these are real life questions. These are things that people are struggling with. So, we would be happy that if other people want to continue to send us questions, we would be happy to continue this conversation before the end of the year. 

Deb Timmerman  16:33

Yeah, and I think adding to that the call to action is to really think about where you might need to change internally. And what tools could we use to support ourselves internally so that we could change or shape a new stress lens and see stress differently.

Barb Fletcher  16:52

I think that's great.

Deb Timmerman  16:59

Less stress in life is possible. If you're new to this kind of thinking and would like to explore what's possible for you. We'd love to connect. You can reach us through our website at less stress in life.com. That's less stress in life.com.