33: What Stress Animal are You? with Dr Lindsey Cooley

Hello, you Zendient Balls of Stardust. Welcome to Struggle Care, the podcast about self-care by a host that hates the term self-care. Today, I am with Dr. Lindsey Cooley. Say hello. Hey, guys. Happy to be here. And so I wanted you to come on today because I saw your TikTok about stress. Yes. And I love the topic of stress, but I don't even know enough to make good content on it because I make so much content about like, okay, here's how we can sort of care for ourselves when we have functional barriers. And a lot of people hear that and they see like the list of diagnoses like, oh, if you have ADHD, if you have autism, if you have mental illness, if you have a chronic illness or a disability, like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think there's so many people out there that relate to my content about like life being hard, but they're like, I don't, but I don't have a diagnosis. And so that's why I was so excited to talk about stress today because I feel like stress can take any able-bodied, able-minded person and just like put them on our level. 100%, 100%. And I think that's also part of the reason why, because like you said, a lot of people relate to your content and you talk openly about your diagnosis and everything. And they're like, well, I relate to this. And then it causes this kind of explosion that we see very commonly on TikTok of everybody thinking they have a diagnosis. And that's not how it works. There's just a lot of experiences out there that are just universal and are just all, you know, we all experience it. And I think now that we have technology that connects us a bit more, people are starting to realize that, but unfortunately they're realizing it in a way that's a little bit not great for, you know, people with diagnosis and the field of psychology. And I think there's a lot about having a diagnosis that can be so validating. And I feel like that's really what people are looking for. Like, people that relate to, let's say they relate to ADHD content, but they don't meet all the criteria. And it doesn't mean that you're not struggling. And it doesn't mean that you're not struggling with executive functioning because stress affects your executive functioning. 100%. But I really relate to it. I've been seeing doctors for a couple of months now about just like some chronic fatigue that I've been experiencing started when I had my second daughter over two years ago. But now it's been two and a half years. So it's like, it's really hard to pinpoint like, okay, like when did the like normal postpartum hormones and lack of sleep or whatever? And then like when did this like weird other thing take over? And is it psychological? Is it just stress? Is it, you know, metabolic? Is there something else? And I find myself like the more that I talk to my doctors about it, like part of me is like, I almost wish they would just give me a diagnosis. Like I wish they would be like, wow, Casey. You have chronic fatigue syndrome. Even though like chronic fatigue syndrome doesn't say what's wrong with you. It's just like naming a constellation of symptoms. So it's not like that would give me any answers. It's just that when I struggle to get through my day without wanting to go to bed, when I struggle to do my normal day to day tasks, because I'm so tired when I struggle to have the motivation to do something and I trace it back to them, just freaking tired. It's like I find, I feel like if somebody gave me a diagnosis, it would be easier to be kind to myself or like easier to make other people be understanding. Yeah. But the truth is, is like we deserve to be kind to ourselves, even if we don't have a diagnosis. Like the symptoms are there, even if they're not being named. Very true. And I think the one big thing you just hit on is it would help other people be kind. Because so many people are like, well, if you don't have any, if the doctors don't think anything's wrong with you, then nothing's wrong with you. And they're not willing to give that sympathy. For instance, I myself have a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, which was after my energy. I'm in pain a lot. And I started being kinder to myself. Like you said, once the doctors told me that, because I was constantly on myself of trying to push through my day, which caused stress, which made the pain worse and just this never ending cycle. And now I can at least be like, oh, today's not a day for me to be able to push through. And being kinder. And I know it's helped my friends and family. They were always like kind. My mother also has it, but it just helps a little bit for them to be like, oh, that's why Cooley's not, you know, able to go out tonight instead of it just sounding like a, oh, I don't feel good excuse, you know, totally. Yeah, I remember like being on vacation and family being like, do you want to go on a walk and me thinking like, God, I just, I feel like there is molasses in my blood. All I want to do is sit here. And for someone who's like big champion message is like laziness does not exist. For some reason, I've had a hard time applying like legitimacy to the fact that like I have such low energy for however long it's been like, this isn't a normal amount of energy. Like I know it's not. I know people should be able to energize themselves to go on a walk at 1 p.m. And I think it just says a lot. I mean, certainly there are things that you need a diagnosis in order to access, but I think a lot of times the things we're wanting out of a diagnosis, we don't actually need a diagnosis for like, it's you said like your pain, your fatigue, your frustration, your confusion, like all of it can be legitimate, even if there's no diagnosis. So that kind of brings me to stress. So here's my first question. Usually I have a bunch of questions about a topic because I want it to like lead into something I know about it. I do not know almost anything about stress. So I'm going to ask what is stress? So that is to be honest, the million dollar question. Because there's, so I was looking it up because I remember, you know, I know stress and I talk about it, especially I work with teens. And so their stress, kids in school, man, their stress is out of this world. And I think a lot of adults don't validate that kind of like we were just saying with our diagnoses are feeling like, you know, we feel like crap. It's so hard to walk in someone else's shoes. And so I know about stress. And so I started looking up because I was like, well, what theories are we looking at? And there are more stress theories than I remember from school. But the one that we usually see is called the general adaptation syndrome, model of stress. And what that kind of looks at is that stress is a defense mechanism and then it follows certain stages. So if you look, people can look this up, but there's actually like a cool little chart that's like an almost like a bell curve except the left side of the bell curve starts in the middle. And there's three stages of stress. And so it's alarm, something's wrong, the resistance of pushing back to it, which is really that peak stress that we feel and an exhaustion, which is like that collapse or the release. And just like a hump that goes down. But what happens is when we have prolonged stress, we stay in that resistance area for far too long. And when that happens, that's when we see things like what a lot of people call diseases of adaptation, we adapt to the stress and our body and our behaviors. Not necessarily make it work for us, but they adapt to it. And too much stress can even what a lot of these articles start talking about is too much stress can lead to death. It's right. Heart attacks and cardiovascular issues occur. And what we really want to aim for is learning how to react to that alarm and get out of that resistance a bit more quickly so that our exhaustion is an absolutely plummet. So the resistance stage, when you were talking about that, I sort of envisioned that feeling of like when you're treading water and you're trying so hard just to like keep your mouth and nose over the water. And so what is it that we're resisting in that space? So when we hit that resistance space, we're actually that's what many people would know is the fight or flight response. So we're stuck in that survive. It's a survival response. Like you said, treading above water, if I don't keep fighting for my life to keep my head above here, I'm going to sink. And that's exactly what's happening when we're in our different stages of stress. And that's why it can lead to issues because when we're caught, I mean, you get tired. And then you crash and when we're tired, no matter if you have a diagnosis or not, we're tired, our mental health suffers. We don't have the resilience to push back against it. Do you think our culture normalizes like too much stress? Oh, yeah. You know, side hustles and constantly working. I mean, right now we have this concept going around of the quiet quitting amongst- Just like doing your job. Right? You're not pushing yourself. And somehow that's bad that you're not willing to, you know, put in that extra hustle for God knows whatever reason because, you know, you want to, you should be getting paid more adequately or it's just too much work. You're doing the job of five people, whatever it is. We're literally looking down on people who are doing their jobs because we collectively, I don't believe it, but you know, we think that they should be doing more. Or if you're not constantly out there being social, we get the stress from that kind of pressure or activities and, you know, oh, you don't have any hobbies besides sitting at home playing video games type of thing. We're shamed for it. A lot of shame. And we don't really put a lot of validity to being stressed. And in some ways it's like a badge of honor, right? Like when I used to wait tables, it was like sort of this badge of honor of like, I didn't sleep last night or I've worked 19 doubles in a row or even with kids, like you said, like kids that get overloaded with homework or they're dealing with social things and we just kind of act like, hey, suck it up. Don't worry about it. When I was talking to sort of some psychiatrists and doctors about the fatigue that I was feeling, a lot of them would say, you know, when I hear you talk about your experience during the pandemic, like having a baby immediately being locked down, being alone and isolated, having post-partum depression, like the sleeplessness, the constantly feeling like you have to be on for your young children. They're like, I mean, it might just be that. And so I don't mean just as in like, that's a small thing, but like it can take your body so long to recover from burnout. And you want it? Which is when I guess you in that stress period too long. Yeah. So what's actually super interesting and you just gave me like a perfect segue, even though we said we weren't like, we're not scripting this out. So I love this. An article was just released two weeks ago in the LA Times by a psychologist and it's called Kids Are Suffering from Toxic Stress. Here's some advice on how we can help them heal. And her main point is that these kids for the last two and a half years have been under a constant state of stress that their little bodies and brains are just not capable of or capable of handling appropriately, whatever that might mean, and even attributing it to the adverse childhood experiences scores and how maybe that's going to have to be reframed and redone because of this prolonged stress that we're all under. And she talks about adults to the doctor's name is Dr. Pemberton. And she is the professor of educational psychology and counseling, marriage and family therapy program at Cal State Northbridge. That is a mouthful. But I want to make sure to give her the credit she deserves, but she mentions being stuck in the house with family and how many kids do you have? Two. And they were a newborn and like 21 months old when the pandemic started. Yeah. So that's like, I don't care how big your house is with those ages, it's not big. And she talks about that, especially with kids from maybe lower income where there wasn't as much space in the house, but when everybody is out, it's fine. But when everybody's stuck there, it's absolutely horrible. And so we're all seeing this across the bench. And you mentioned the adverse childhood sort of scale. And I know there's also like the is it the homes and ray scale or ray and homes? I never know what the I think it's Ray and homes, Ray and homes. I would encourage anyone who has never looked at those to go. It's like this list of stressful events. And there's like a point system for each stressful event and you like tally it up and you get the sort of little measurement at the end. And when I've done that with clients, they are genuinely shocked at the stress that they're under. And we don't give enough credence to like how that affects our executive functioning, how that affects our relationships, how that affects our energy and and all of these things. Yeah, I actually, so I use the ACEs scale during my dissertation. I was talking about the wounded healer and how all of us psychology students had something going on. So that's why we went into the field. And it was really interesting because there was a dichotomous question on there of do you believe you experienced trauma as a child? And then they also had the ACEs study and people were answering no to the trauma question and then getting mid to high scores on the ACEs study. And the ACEs study is adverse childhood experiences. Yes, sorry. That's all right. I know, but I don't think everyone knows. I know I have to remember that sometimes when I'm talking to people. And so I think that goes back to this idea of how we've normalized stress is that there's so much stuff that occurs that it's normalized and tell you step outside of that and go, oh, what do you mean? That's not what everybody feels or that's not how everybody feels when everyone doesn't experience burnout. What do you mean? And it's just this idea that no, it's okay. And I think as a society, we're for us to be healthy physically and mentally. We have to step away from this idea that we have to be on the constant hustle. We have to be constantly working. Okay, I have a thought for this, but let's pause for a break and then I'll come back. Okay, sounds good. Summer is on its way. And that means more daylight hours to get outside, get active and enjoy the outdoors. The one key ingredient that you're going to need? A good night's sleep. Wake up feeling rested and refreshed with the softest, most luxurious sheets with bowl and branch. I've got bowl and branch in my guest room right now and I always get comments on how soft and breathable the sheets are. And that's because each sheet set is slow made for an unmatched softness with 100% traceable organic cotton that gets softer with every wash. So sleep better at night with bowl and branch sheets. Get 15% off your first order when you use promo code STRUGGL at bowlandbranch.com. That's bowl and branch B-O-L-L-A-N-D branch.com. Promo code STRUGGL. Exclusion supply, C-site for details. One of the things that can happen when you struggle with mental health is you can find it difficult to get into the shower. And if that's you, I have a brand that you really need to know about. And it's called Lumi, a uniquely formulated PH balanced deodorant. It's a whole body deodorant, the first of its kind. Lumi is seriously safe to use anywhere on your body. Pits, under boobs, thigh folds, belly buttons, butt cracks, vulvas, feet. And it's aluminum free and skin safe. Lumi starter pack is perfect for new customers. It comes with a solid stick deodorant, cream tube deodorant, and two free products of your choice like a mini body wash or deodorant wipes. And free shipping. As a special offer for listeners, new customers get $5 off a Lumi starter pack with code STRUGGL care at lumideodorant.com. That's L-U-M-E deodorant.com. $5 off. That equates to 40% off a starter pack. So visit Lumi deodorant and use code STRUGGL care. Okay, we're back with Dr. Lindsey Cooley. We're talking about stress. And I want to circle back to something you said at the beginning where you were saying, like, okay, everybody is sort of experiencing difficulties in their life and then they're listening to people talk about their diagnoses. And everyone's starting to think, well, maybe I have a diagnosis. Maybe I have a diagnosis. And I'm someone who tends to think that like self diagnosis is totally valid. There are some real accessibility issues to mental health. But one thing that I think is interesting about what we're talking about is that, like, I think, again, self diagnosis is valid. And I think this like over desire to get a diagnosis, not when we're talking about access, because obviously some people need a diagnosis for access, but it almost works against us because we have so normalized that stress isn't a big deal, that like living in chronic stress isn't a big deal. And so you want that one thing that kind of gives you validity. And I think maybe what I'm hearing you say is like the better a response instead of going, I need this diagnosis to validate is to go, whoa, let's look at this whole system. Like the whole system we are living under is like not good for mental health. Like I'm having a normal reaction to a really dysfunctional societal system because it's, you know, there are people out there working three jobs because that's literally how they're putting food in their mouths, right? And like if my kids in a school, and I think there's a little too much stress there, but I don't necessarily have a lot of other options on where she needs to go. And I think that that like in order for us to have almost like a collective pushback on changing things systematically, I think we need to legitimize that like we're having normal reactions to like dysfunctional systems. Right. Yeah. And I think one thing that's interesting about that is that, sorry, I like had a thought and had to come back and finally reloaded in my brain is when we look at like the different models of even diagnoses. So we have the medical model, which is kind of what the field uses and that's, you know, it's all physiological and stuff like that. But then we have the social model of disability. And that's what you're talking about is that it's not necessarily something inherently wrong with us, which is kind of what the medical model preaches is no, it's in you, it's chemicals, it's in balance, all this stuff. But with the social model of disease, we start talking about how the environment around us is what's hurting us. The stress is what's causing our depression or anxiety, not chemical imbalances. And that has been harder to get into just because of our culture, at least here in the United States with pharmaceuticals and insurance companies and that'd be a whole different topic for a podcast. But we are starting to slowly shift to that social model. And I think once we get a bit more people over there, we're going to be able to focus on the fact that the way society is structured is hurting us. So what would you say are some symptoms, let's say someone's listening and they're going, I'm having a really difficult time in life, what would you say are some of the symptoms of being in that sort of stress cycle or at least being in that stress cycle too long where it's starting to cause physical, mental, emotional issues? Like what kind of issues do you see both in children and adults? Yeah. So physically what we'll see and it's because when we're under stress, we release a hormone called cortisol, which is known as the stress hormone. And that activates a ton of stuff in our body. So when you're stressed or a term we use a lot in the workplace is burnout, burnout. And what we're going to see with that is sometimes there's weight gain because with that cortisol and that fight or flight response, it's thinking, oh, I'm in danger, so I need to store everything I'm taking in just in case. We'll see muscle weakness. Maybe you start feeling really tired, you feel weak, then you weren't or used to. Sometimes we will see even things like you can see excessive hair growth or hair loss from stress. So people are like, no, my, I'm pulling my hair out. Isn't necessarily just a euphemism. And it's interesting that these physical things happen. Now emotionally we're going to feel maybe like we have less patients, less drive. I know for instance, I am in a Facebook group called the burnt out therapist and it's therapists talking about how this stuff impacts us and how we're there for our clients. And I've actually, I posted a video quite a while ago about therapist burnout, just basically we're human to type of thing, but we see that and just that stress, our response is going to be to try to make our body slow down. You're going to want to stay in bed. You're not going to want to get up. We're going to maybe have some executive functioning issues where we're starting to be more forgetful or long task where us out. And that's when we start seeing things like, oh, maybe I do have ADHD because I'm distracted all the time or maybe this is depression because I'm tired and I don't have enjoyment in what I used to do. And it's not necessarily that. It's just the fact that the world is pushing us far too hard that our brains start defaulting into these things we call disorders. When in reality, is it really a disorder if it's a natural response to the human condition? And you know, I feel like a lot of times when we think about stress, we think about like physical and mental exertion. So we think about having to work long hours. We think about maybe worrying over like not having enough money. We think about maybe family dynamics and conflict. But what would you say about the stress of just like the state of the world? Like I feel like I have like unprecedented access to like the tragedies happening in the world. That's like a whole different level. I think that we really have not seen because that's on a global scale at this point. There's so much going on and they're starting to study. I believe they're starting to study what that's doing to us. But there's this kind of idea that's been floating around that because we are all under this constant state of stress, which there's different types of stress and how that impacts us. And this prolonged stress is actually what we would see in somebody who's starting to develop like PTSD. So there's acute stress, which is like that quick stuff, quick sudden danger with a short period of time. You almost get hit by a car and that jump of adrenaline you have is acute stress. We have chronic stress, which is long-term stress, which I guess is more kind of what we're going through with the feelings of anxiety and frustration that are just consistent. And that's usually what we'll see typically with chronic illness is that kind of stress. But then we have traumatic stress, which is what PTSD is. And that's a lot of this is life-threatening events that induce fear and or helplessness or seeing PTSD can be caused by seeing other people experience these bad events. And that's I think what's happening here. We are seeing so many people experience this stuff. It's wild to me that the DSM, which is the diagnostic manual for these diseases, it is wild to me that in the criteria for PTSD, it specifically excludes seeing something traumatic through media. It does. Unless you work for media. So like a news anchor can get a PTSD diagnosis for because they were the one reporting about 9-11. But a person at home- I'm grabbing mine. Yeah, getting your notes out. The person at home can't get a PTSD diagnosis for saying I was 12 years old and I watched video footage of people jumping to their death over and over and over. And that to me is like one of the major ways where psychiatry has not caught up to the social media aid. And I particularly think about when the murder of George Floyd happened and anyone in my proximity that was a black woman, a black man, just a person in the black community would talk about the stress that they experienced seeing that video over and over and over and over. And it seems like such an oversight that according to the DSM, you can't get a PTSD diagnosis for that. Even if you meet all the other symptoms. And I think that's also, yeah, no, it doesn't. It's a weird rule out to me that they have that. And again, that could be a topic for a whole other podcast is how the DSM is political and it's, you know, the psychiatric association is predominantly older white men. So maybe they're not being traumatized by that so they don't see it. But if we talk about the fact that you and I, where in case anybody listening does not know what we look like, we are not black Americans. So imagine what that is doing to the black community to see someone who looks just like them be killed on TV and then repeated over and over and over again. You won't convince me that that's not creating a generation, especially with the kids, a generation of kids who are experiencing or will have a PTSD diagnosis if we ever fix this DSM BS. I mean, I feel like they put that carve out in there when like half of Americans had one black and white TV showing I love Lucy on it. Like yeah, if they saw one news, like I get it. If you see one news briefing of a tragedy, that is probably not going to give you PTSD. But like that's not a reality anymore. Like we have information, graphic visual information streaming into our skull sockets. 24 seven. And I think especially when you talked about the employee, like there's this stress of, you know, when I watch the footage of protests, when I watch the footage of, you know, things like that with that stress of like, oh, then the world is scary. But even that is nothing compared to watching violent footage that drives home that you personally are not safe, not just like the world is scary, you know, climate change. Like you personally might be fall some sort of violence when you walk out your door right now. It's. And I remember the first time I felt that was as a lesbian when the pulse shooting happened. And I was in grad school at the time and my, it was actually my marriage and family class, but the professor was like, forget the lesson for today. We're processing, which was actually fantastic. We actually, another professor did it after Trump got elected. We just sat in process. But with that pulse shooting, as I was suddenly like, wow, I'm not safe. And there had always been little moments. I grew up in them from Michigan, where there's a lot of small right leaning towns who don't really like me. But all of a sudden I was like, wow, that was supposed to be a safe place. And in that moment, I remember talking to one of my black classmates. And I was like, I always felt for you. So is this what it's like every time you see that? And she was like, yeah, this is every time there's a report. This is what we feel. And it took the empathy I already had and the anger I already had to like the next level. And there's no way that that didn't impact, you know, the queer community because we're still, I mean, the pride parades and everything like on edge, like you're always watching the same way we see, you know, that you would expect the kids like let's say over in the Middle East that see bombings all the time. You can't tell me that the type of fear that's being projected to them isn't also the type of fear that's being projected on a different kind of scale to our youth. When something's constantly happened with our school shootings, I posted a video about that when the little girl said when it happens, instead of if it happens, these kids. I mean, the teachers, everything and parents too. I'm sure you're terrified. And it's yeah, I am terrified and I have two kids in school right now. They're both too young for public school, but one of their schools has a gate and one of them doesn't. And it's like a genuine fear of mine. What if somebody just walks in the door? What if somebody just, you know, does this or that? And I think the other thing that's really interesting to me is I have really strong feelings about active shooter drills. I think that active shooter drills are not providing enough safety to outweigh how traumatic they are. Like it's scary and I don't ever want to downplay the scariness of it. We had a, it was a hoax, but it was felt very real for the students who had to put their hands up when the cops ran in with guns right down the street from me. But statistically speaking, our most, you know, like my children are probably not going to be in a school shooting. However, I cannot imagine how traumatic it is to reenact one over and over and over, starting at four years old and talk about that happening. And the other part of me that is like blowing my mind is like the majority of school shooters are students from that school who have been in these stupid drills. They know exactly what's happening and where everyone's hiding and like, it just doesn't make any sense. Yeah. And it's out. The kids I see talk about this. I had one come in last week and they did an active shooter drill and they weren't expecting it, but the police that were there actually started pounding on the doors, like to make sure that, you know, the kid doesn't have the instinct to open it or whatever. And this kid is middle school and he was like, I didn't think I'd be scared, but all of a sudden I was scared. And they don't have, kids are brilliant, don't get me wrong. They're smarter than we will ever give them credit for, but they don't have the brain mechanisms to fully comprehend this. There's not that break between, I mean, it scares the adults. I worked in schools and we had two threats that went, put us on soft lockdowns. And then it's over, but we also did the drills and there's a different logic that adults have where we're able to go, okay, it's a drill. We'll move on and then we'll go on to whatever. The kids' bodies are reacting to the stress. Their cortisol levels are activating and then they don't have the logic ability to bring themselves back down. Okay. That reminds me of something that I want to tell you about after we take a little break. Okay. So we're going to break and come back. Hey, everyone. I'm Kristin Meinzer and I'm Jelinda Greenberg. And May is Mental Health Awareness Month. If you've ever listened to our podcasts, How to Be Fine and by the book, you've heard us talk about how important this is to the both of us. Absolutely. We talk about mental health a lot on How to Be Fine. In each episode, we dive into a trending wellness topic and we help our listeners navigate their own mental health journeys from accepting help from others to being kinder to themselves. We also share what works for us like going on morning walks in my case and for both of us going to therapy. That's right. You can tune in every Thursday to hear more on this and other wellness topics. Listen to How to Be Fine. Wherever you get your podcasts, again, that's how to be fine. If you love books and you're looking for a new job that you can do from home, consider starting your own business and becoming a book coach. Think of a book coach like a personal trainer or a coach for writers who are serious about reaching their goals. Book coaches help writers bring their dreams to life through support, feedback, project management and accountability at each step of the book writing and publishing process. And the best part, you don't even have to be a published author to succeed at this work. That's where author accelerators book coach certification program comes in. It teaches you the key editorial, project management, organizational and people skills needed to launch your own thriving book coaching process. To find out if this is the right career for you, author accelerator is launching a new five day challenge to help you envision your new chapter in their $99 one page book coaching business plan, you'll narrow down your business idea, ideal client, ideal service and more. Enrollment opens May 15th and runs through the end of the month. So visit bookcoaches.com slash podcast and enter the code podcast at checkout to get 50% off that one page book coaching business plan challenge. That's bookcoaches.com slash podcast. Okay. So I saw this tweet one time from a child psychologist that was talking about like children and media. And she said, please be careful what you let your kids watch. Your young children do not possess the cognitive contextualization to deal with scary and sad scenes in movies. And she said, every single Disney movie, a scene where a parent dies, a scene where there's a flood, a scene where someone is scared, you as an adult aren't frightened by those because you can cognitively contextualize. Oh, and then everybody turned out okay. And this is a Disney movie. And I know everyone's going to be okay. But your kid can't do that. Like the memories of the stress, like the literal body memory of the stress they experience in that moment where something bad happens in that movie are not undone just because three scenes later, everyone's okay. And that really opened my mind to what you're talking about about kids not having. And I think about like when I watch a movie that has scary parts and I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know what kind of movie this is and the visceralness I feel and how even if everyone's okay in the end, you still might go to bed thinking about it. And it really, I mean, speaking of stress, like I feel like there's a lot of things and a lot of ways that we can help our kids reduce the amount of stress that they're sort of put to. But one thing I want to get to before we wrap up is I want to talk about the stress animals. Oh, yes, our stress animals. I love the stress animals. I used to do this for a group activity when I worked in a rehab and it was so fascinating to everyone. Yes. Yes. So tell me about the stress animals. So the idea of the stress animals comes from something by Lynn lot, this woman named Lynn lot came up with it and it's called top card and the idea is it's we call it top card because it's the card you play when you're stressed. And the way we walk through this exercise, I just love that you did it. I've never heard anyone else who does this outside of like my positive discipline classes. So I'm super excited. So what we do is we say, well, you've had a really hard day at work, at school and a UPS driver shows up at your door and he brings you four different boxes. And these four different boxes contain things that no one really wants to deal with, but he has to drop them off. And so one of these boxes contains stress and pain. One contains criticism and ridicule. One is rejection and hassles and the other one is feelings of meaninglessness and unimportance. And you're like, dude, take these away. I don't want them. And you go, all right, I can take one back. And so we ask the people, which box are you going to send back out of these four boxes? And the box they send back is the last thing they want to feel when they're stressed. However, that means that's the unhealthy way you handle stress. So for instance, there's a bunch of stuff that goes into all of this. And it's a recommend that people go to Lynnlott's website, Google Lynnlott Top Card. And she actually has a really cool interactive dropdown menu that I absolutely love to use. I do this with kids sometimes and then they'll draw the animal they are. It's great. It's a great activity. Yeah. And so for instance, my top card is criticism and ridicule. When I, my personality style is control. When I am stressed, I need stuff to go my way. Do not tell me I'm doing it wrong. I am not open to any type of corrective feedback when I am stressed. And that's something I work on. And so it gives me an idea of how I can work through that. And for other people out there who are thinking about theirs, if yours was stress and pain, your personality style is comfort or avoidance. And you're like a turtle. If the box you gave away was rejection and hassles, your personality style is pleasing and you're like the chameleon. And if it was a meaninglessness and unimportant, your personality style is superiority and you're like the lion. So that's what you do when you're stressed. So when it comes to the chameleon of that pleasing style, you're just trying to make sure everybody's happy because you're stressed so you want everybody else to be okay. And probably the fact that you're a pleasing type of person only leads to more stress. So I'm going to add a case of what animal are you? What was the fourth one? Turtle, lion, chameleon and eagle. So that's the control one, which is what I am. Oh yeah. I'm trying to remember. I think it was lion. So when we did it, we also had them on like an x, y axis. Oh, love that. Where you had one of the axes was like active and passive. Oh, okay. And so the turtle was the turtle and the chameleon are passive. And the lion and the eagle are active. Okay. Yeah. Other axis because here's why we talked about it as conflict management styles. Oh, how we talked about stress. Okay. The two axes were like your concern about goals and your concern about relationships. Oh, I love that. Yes. So when you come under stress, like it's stressful situation. And if what you're thinking about is like you become sort of active or passive, but it's like I'm worried about the relationship. And so if I'm worried about the relationship and I react by sort of trying to make everything sort of harmonizing it, or if I get really over the top about goals, like you were talking about like getting controlling where I try to control everything. So that's what it was. It was like whether you got like active and passive and then whether you were more concerned with goals or relationships, right? Like when I experience stress, I become, it kind of depends. Like if I'm experiencing like work stress, I get into like, we must do this goal. We must get this goal and screw everybody else. Yeah. And I like, I lose all social skills and like appropriateness, but then I do the opposite at home. Like if there is a an issue and we're all under stress, I become like the chameleon where I'm like overly functioning about like, is everyone okay? Are we okay? Are you okay? And my poor husband is like, yes, oh my gosh, we're just stressed. We're okay. It's good. Yes. And it was interesting to talk about like, you know, what that shows up like because like you said, they do correlate to like the thing that I want to avoid the most. Like, please don't make me feel this right now when everything else is going badly. Yes. Okay. And again. So it's stress and pain, criticism and ridicule, rejection and hassles and meaninglessness and unimportance. Oh, God. It's really hard to choose one. I think it's interesting the one feedback I would have to lend a lot if I ever talk to or not really, I have talked to her before at a conference, but I think the idea of we're talking about stress and then one of the things is stress and pain. I think it's a little confusing for people. It's like when you use the word in the definition, the meaningless one would probably be like the short, like number two would be the belittling one, but probably the meaningless one. And so what we talk about when we use this in the positive, because we use this with parents is the point usually. I mean, it works great on all levels. I've used it in multiple places, but we talk about the second box you would get away with or be done with is actually your method of operation when you're not stressed and the more positive attributes of that. So my second one, it seems like we're kind of flipped. My second one is the lion, the meaninglessness, but that means we have more gifts like it still gets a lot done and it's about like making people laugh and you just do things. That's my second one. Whereas like for you, if you're the criticism and ridicule being good leader, good crisis manager, you can take control, you're persistent. And I mean, all the stuff you do that what I know about you that fits you, you are there until the end. And that's why that's your second card. I'm great in a crisis. I will slowly wither to death in the face of meaninglessness, but I am great in a crisis. That's really fascinating. So I feel like it would be helpful for me to know my own profile and the profiles of the people around me so that I kind of know what's going on when stress is happening. Here's what I would love to chat for a second as we land the plane is that so someone who's listening and they're like, Oh my gosh, it is. It's like stress in my life. Like now what? Like especially people that can't necessarily, I mean, obviously if you can move out of a stressful situation or find a way to do like, we know that answer, right? Like quit the stressful job, but what about people that it's like, okay, like you guys gotta go to school or like, Hey, this is my job. They're out of the jobs out there. Like what things can they be doing to be? I don't even want to say managing stress, but maybe just learning how they can care for themselves in the midst of that stress. Yeah. And it can be hard because when we're stressed, we often feel like we don't have time. How can I take care of myself if I'm already super strapped then, you know, or stretched in, but there are ways. And one of the, and I was looking through all like my documents and stuff about stress and looking up the articles I remember getting in when we talked about this stuff. We've really talked about how there's like three ways, three to four ways of dealing with stress and there's cognitive level, physical level, environmental level. And then there's like an other, but so cognitively, of course, because I'm on a psychology website and these are psychology papers, the number one options therapy. But obviously not accessible to everybody. If you're stressed about time and money, that may not be the answer. Right. Go deal with your insurance issues and then sit for 50 minutes and, you know, use your lunch break for that. But stuff like pay off or like meditation, mindfulness and the issue that really comes into because the other stuff is like taking, making planning stuff out, which doesn't work great for those of us with he he he he he he. Taking time to read time management. And it's almost like I feel like a lot of times when we talk about this stuff, it was written by people who don't know what stress is. But the issue here is you have to take time out for yourself. There's no way to beat stress unless you can take time out for yourself. And it's a long process. Like you're not going to make long weekend your way out of burnout. Right. In fact, oftentimes you'll see that that's worse because you're like, what did I miss? Environmentally, we talk about you can put in music. Maybe there's calming music that you like while you do another activity. Um, nature, pets. I mean, it feels like it really does come down to like the actual answer is like the stressful environment that you're in, like finding some way to modify it, to change it, or at least plan a way out of it. Even if that plan takes you several years, right? Like baby steps, baby steps and recognizing some of us. It's a forever thing. Some of it's a time constraint thing. You know, like if you're a parent, they're not going to be little forever and all these kinds of things. But I think that there's something that can feel both defeating and sort of validating about that where it's like, you're not failing. This isn't a situation where like if you did better coping skills, you wouldn't be so stressed like. And I think that's where a lot of the shame comes from is because they're like, well, what exercise works for me? Why haven't you tried it? It's like me and you were retired. Exercise would not help us. I mean, I go on walks and I know it does help on some level, but it wouldn't make my stress go away. But what I like to tell people, and as you're saying, you know, as long as you're trying, one thing I say this to most of my patients is that the only thing that matters about today is that you tried your best. And that causes anxiety because when we think about trying our best, it's usually pushing ourselves to the limit and that's not what I mean. I mean whatever you could handle that day. If the only thing you could do today was take a shower, bravo, look at you, you rocked it. If that was what you gave, that's what you gave. If your best day was that you got your butt up, went to class, aced an exam, came home, made like if you were above and beyond, fantastic, but that doesn't mean when the next day you feel like shit, you're a bad person. As long as you are trying your best for whatever best means for you on that specific day in that moment. And I wonder what it would look like. I know for me, I have a hard time sort of identifying, even when you say like what you can handle, I'm like, could I have handled more? Like I have this weird thing in my head where like, if I could physically get out of bed, I could have done more, right? Like I did this when I would like around sickness for a long time. Like if I could physically get out of bed, I should go to work. And nobody ever really gave me like a realistic, like what manageable is supposed to feel like. And I think a lot of us think that manageable is still this like overextending thing that they're doing. And like I would almost rather a client purposefully underestimate their energy for the day than overestimate it, right? Like sometimes I feel like hitting manageable is almost like too much pressure of a goal as opposed to like, I want you to like undersell yourself every day. Take the nap, be a little late, leave the dishes there one day like. Well, yeah. And the way I put it with some of my kids who are like struggle in school and then they'll get an assignment and they're like, it's too hard. I'm not even going to try it. That zero in the grade book, throw your name on it and answer three questions because an F that's 50% is a hell of a lot better than an F that's a zero percent. And that's the same thing here. If what you could do. All points are positive. Yep. So, undersell it. Do the bare minimum. But at least get some a few points in there. Yeah. I find that when I undersell myself, I get more done. Mm hmm. Because then I'm surprised. I'm like, look at me go. Wow. I really did that. I did that. Yep. Oh, I love that. Great conversation. Where can people find you if they want to follow you? So I am on TikTok at Dr. CoolBeans with a Z underscore side PSYD. And from there, there's a link tree with all my contact information and everything like that. But TikTok is pretty much my home base for what I like to call edutainment. I love your username. It's very like nostalgic of my childhood. I don't know why. I know who said cool beans all the time in my childhood, but it's like very much takes me back. Yeah. My wife gave me the nickname in college and I was like, that's a fantastic tag for every social media I now have from here on out. And is your logo two beans inside of a head? It is. Like a brain. Like a brain. Yeah. I thought the brain was overdone. I was like beans. Beans. That's amazing. Okay. Well, this was awesome. I really appreciate it. I hope everyone goes and follows you because I really enjoy your content and I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for having me. I respect you and everything you do. So this is a great honor. Thank you. Real truth alert, pregnancy, birth and having a baby isn't all sunshine and rainbows. I wish it were. But the reality is that many people struggle and suffer through this time without the right help or even knowing what they're dealing with. I'm perinatal psychologist, Dr. Katayune Pianni, also known as Dr. Cat. My podcast, Mom and Mind, aims to shine a light on the difficult reality that so many hopeful and new parents experience and raise the volume on how we can better support mental health, which is a big part of our overall health. Most include personal stories from people who have healed through things like pregnancy and postpartum anxiety, depression, PTSD, and so much more. I also talk with specialists and experts who explain and educate on these conditions. All of this just support parents to know that they are not alone, that healing is possible, and there are resources that can help you today. Listen into Mom and Mind and walk with me through the world of perinatal mental health.