Making friends with stress | James Brady | TEDxHobart

[Music] thank you I think I'm trauma bonding with stress today actually so I've got a question for you if you could right now the Press of a button no strings attached remove all stress from your life we take up that offer interesting well I'm a PhD candidate at the wicking dementia research and education center here in in Hobart and I do study amongst other things stress and it's my job here to tell you today that taking up that offer would be a fatal error so stress becomes problematic when it's chronic that means that the things that are causing our stress called stresses have gone unresolved for a long time research tells us that chronic stress underpins lower well-being lower life satisfaction it may underpin and exacerbate illnesses and is also recently discovered a significant contributor to the onset of Alzheimer's disease and dementias so why wouldn't you want to press that button so the idea for this talk came up after I was doing a science meet and greet at the the t-mag here in Hobart and I had my hair frizzed up I was wearing a lab coat which I don't usually wear and I had a big button there that said trauma Buster it was pretty bold ready to have some quite intense and personal conversations with people you've never seen in your life there are probably better things you can do but I was very glad for the conversations you know I felt quite privileged to be led into people's histories of trauma and things like that experiences in their families it was really nice but the thing that perplexed me the most was not a conversation about trauma it was about stress a lady had been sort of waiting in the wings like you know you stand around you have a chat as a sort of loiter about awkwardly until someone chats to you and then you nervously explore that for a bit so she came up to me and she said ah stress so I don't know never get stressed pretty cool what's your secret I could do a thesis on this I said ah it's easy you know anytime I start to get stressed or there's a situation where I'm stressed I just go nah not not dealing with that telling me more she had the grandchildren um I have no idea how she got anything done with them at all but she was interested to chat so you know we kept having a conversation much like the one I'm having with you today so if it's easier really you don't have to wait for someone to finish talking that kind of thing it's much more simple thank you I will wait for you to finish laughing though thank you I love that um after that after we had this church said ah so I should do things even though they stress me out yes okay really really really should and you've got me thinking you know how many people go about their lives avoiding situations because they might might be stressful how long has she been doing this I don't know I wish I'd asked her at the time it would have been great for this chat so I did what all good researchers do when they have an important question in mind although deep into the archives of Google and after I searched how to live stress free I didn't even bother the question markings one of those days in less than half a second there were a Hundred Million results from hyperlinks How To Live stress-free living your best stress-free life 10 tips for your dog to be stress-free they've had everything really really interesting but the thing that stood out to me the most was not that these things well they they didn't have anything in common in terms of living stress-free what they did tell us to do teach us to do they had tips and tricks for living well with stress all of these things that you hear to be stress-free you know walking on the beach you know there's all these inspirational YouTube videos of yogis and sunsets and you know name it they will tell you that the teaching you how to be stress-free and that's the ideal lifestyle but there's no such thing that's because everything we do generates stress our muscles move our hearts beat our brains fire that generates stress jokes are only funny because you get LED down the Garden Path until left of center is a punch line that surprises us and if it's a good joke you feel so uncomfortable you're going to get it out somehow that's stress you let it out and you feel better after laughing not because you've returned to zero stress but because you've returned back to your comfortable nice familiar level of it that's called homeostasis now stress is a potent performance enhancer and I'm angry at the wellness culture and I'm angry at The Institute Instagram influences because they have contributed to the character assassination of stress true that's true one of the people who is responsible for popularizing the term stress there are many it's a researcher who's Hungarian Canadian called Hans salier there's a fantastic quote it was one of the first ones that my supervisor gave me when I started my project a couple of years ago and it's this earlier says complete freedom from stress is death we must not and indeed cannot avoid it rather we can meet it efficiently enjoy learning about its mechanism and adjust our life philosophy accordingly pretty sick isn't it we're all going to be stress-free eventually you don't have to do much to get there and you probably won't have much choice in the matter when it comes that's great isn't it only take a load off your mind who was uh who was raising their hand earlier please it's coming but I mean it's a great quote it's eloquent it's beautiful it's lovely all of that but there's just words you know they represent some ideas so explore those ideas you know how do we use this how do we use it to our advantage where's the life hack I'm going to be lodging one of these hyperlinks soon so I broke it down and actually interestingly when I was doing that in preparation for today I found that there were three key components to Celia's words that are also common underpinnings of some of the best tools that psychologists have available to them most useful anyway some of them so the first one is learning about stress's mechanism what is it this for if you're looking for psychological term or something similar it's called psycho education you can't attack what you don't know you can't use something if you don't know what it is or what it's doing to you so the first step is really to learn what it is what is stress hopefully this chat here today will help a little bit there if I've done my job right the second one is once you know what stress is then you can start to change your mind about it you can change your life philosophy this is cognitive reframing cognitive restructuring literally changing your mind is stress something that's you know something that's concerning is it scary is that energy that's coursing through your body is that nerves or is that you just getting ready to go is your brain firing at 100 miles an hour because you're anxious or if you're just not given it a point of focus yet you can use stress you know what it is you know what it's doing to you you can change your mind about it once you change your mind about it then you can start to meet it efficiently that means stress without the stress how often is it when you start getting stressed you go oh my God I'm so stressed you're adding layers of stress on top of the thing it's ridiculous that's not efficient once you know what it is once you've changed your mind about stress and perhaps seeing it as the potent performance enhancer that it is you'll realize that you're charged and ready to go you won't worry about that that's a great feeling I tell you giving a tedx talk is extremely stressful um we're sitting here watching these wonderful talkers uh you know this afternoon thinking oh God but um you know you can get hyped with it that's actually excitement you know this is this is great fun it's terrifying but it's awesome it's a bit of cognitive reframing you know also interestingly watching tedx talks is also stressful but stressful enough to hold your attention for long enough novelty is stressful it directs our attention so now that we know a little bit about what stress is what do we do with it how do we use it so the way that we deal with these stresses remember stresses that go unresolved for a long time become chronic and they can make us sick so how do we go about dealing with stresses these are coping strategies I looked at some of the literature before coming up today and there were three key coping strategies that make us feel great they're fantastic they're awesome they're super super effective they're easy to do but they really undermine our efforts this is called maladaptive or avoidant coping styles so a stressor comes up right a stress is a motivator you know physiologically if you're hungry you get food that's stress if you're thirsty you take a drink if you're if you're cold you put on a jacket if you're hot you take some clothes off go to the beach these are stresses driving our behaviors psychologically if we want to get something anything done in life achieving goals going to work literally getting out of bed in the morning we need stress to drive that and so what happens when we start cheating we start finding these coping strategies that drop our stress below that action threshold we get pretty comfy that's pretty nice but it doesn't help us so the first one is substance use having a drink three ten when you're stressed you know you'll really you feel great if you can remember what it is you're feeling great about but it drops us down we don't act the second one is social support this isn't asking your friend how to deal with your problem this is going to your friend telling you them you've got a problem and them telling you that you'll feel better it's fine don't worry about it and you don't and again you drop down your stress you do nothing it hasn't gone anywhere the last one is called Behavioral disengagement and that's doing something anything you know I'm classic for this and doing a TED talk instead of my thesis run thank you sorry Duncan anything that isn't what you should be doing um you know and that that includes you know burying your head in the sand you know making your house really really tidy when I when I had exams my house was like there's a spot on I felt great but I wasn't dealing with the stressor and you know you got chronic stress as a student and so I guess although these are very effective coping strategies they're super effective they will undermine anything that you want to be achieving in life if you've got dreams that you want to pursue engaging in these as a habit it's okay for winding down but as a habit of coping with that stress that should be motivating you and pushing you that will kill those dreams if you think about yourself in the future and you've got a particular view of who and what you would like to be engaging in these strategies will think that it's that simple and so okay well you know what do we do about that that's depressing isn't it yeah if you like a drink now um so there are effective coping strategies there are adaptive copers research tells us that people who COPE in an Adaptive manner a proactive manner have higher quality of life they have better well-being and if they are not experiencing that chronic stress they're going to be better for longer they're going to have a higher life satisfaction and they are going to drop their risk quite literally of Alzheimer's disease and dementia so what do they do well they just do it they just do the thing so be curious go out and do the thing so it's not that simple right like you know if you're stressed about something clearly there's a few blocks there probably there's a bit of work to do there and so what I'm asking you to do is yeah be curious about it if you can start coping adaptively you can start doing the things that you want to do and that doesn't mean you know tomorrow if you've got troubles with confrontation I'm not telling you to go to work in a couple of days from now and tell your boss to go jump that's going to cause you chronic stress you don't want that then you've got some unresolved Personality Crisis all these things that come with it what I'm saying is that you should start small low stakes find a friend you really trust someone who's a really good listener and have a chat with them and tell them to go and jump and then find the next person up from that maybe the lady at the shop the postman go jump and I promise you probably not like this but what I'm saying is that by starting low stakes it's just like working your muscles at the gym you start low you get better at it you get better at it you feel better you feel good you feel good you'll be more willing to go at the things the more willing you are to do the thing the more things that you do the more skills that you get the more skills that you get the more able you will be to deal with that kind of stressor when it comes up and it will it's by starting small and being curious about our stress that we can start to make a difference for our lives we can start doing the things that we want to do and we can nail it that's saying you know if you want something done get a busy person to do it they just know that leaving things is a is a pain in the butt you know they come back around they linger they sit there you know that's not great they know that just by getting it done by ticking it off they can finally relax they start to feel better as soon as they begin to address the problem that gives them a little hit of dopamine carried on a stick they're doing it and they keep doing it because it makes them feel great doing the thing it's pretty it's pretty great Ted X talk isn't it it's a great toy start there and do the thing but actually addressing it if you're curious about it why does this make me stressed am I just excited about it why am I stressed about it in the first place is it my lack of exposure to this thing do I need to build up some more experience is it a lack of skills do you need to ask a friend no don't tell them to Pat you on the back tell them to teach you how to use PowerPoint you know starting small building the skills by addressing your stress you can make friends with it and when you start to realize you start to feel that stress rather than going to your usual if you're a maladaptive or avoidant Copa rather than going to usual habits use it to drive you use it to motivate you've just sat down on the couch oh the clothes and you're doing all right fine I'll do it you know you're starting to tick off jobs straight away You're Building good habits into your life so if there's one thing I'd like you to take away from this talk is that you can be friends with stress don't keep don't keep trying to be stress-free for for the sake of your better selves don't buy into it thanks [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,780

Keywords: Career, Curiosity, English, Life, TEDxTalks, [TEDxEID:51350]

Id: haTe83WjUqI

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023