Why We Need to Invest in Our Emotional Health with Dr. Guy Winch

foreign what's up folks welcome back to the whoop podcast where we sit down with top performers athletes researchers scientists and more on a mission to unlock Human Performance that's right I'm your host will Ahmed founder and CEO of Loop and this week's episode whoop VP of performance science principles scientist Kristen Holmes is joined by Dr Guy winch the licensed psychologist and author is a relationship and emotional health expert with one of the most highly regarded TED talks in the business Kristen and Dr guy will discuss how guy began researching emotional health the approach and skills needed to improve emotional health for example simply expressing gratitude once a day can be a major driver how to deal with rumination the connection of breath work and stress to emotional health they touched on how important the breath and heart are to Signal relaxation to the brain this is fascinating getting space to grieve properly redeveloping self-esteem after a failure or breakup have to work to fill the holes in your identity that have been created by a loss or breakup that's a key theme ways to have a good work life balance they touched on the pros and cons of working from home and how the pandemic has opened people's eyes to the importance of connection a reminder if you're new to whoop use the code will w-i-l-l when you're checking out get a sixty dollar credit on whoop accessories that is join.woop.com if you have a question you want to see answered on the podcast email us podcastup.com call us 508-443-4952 here are Kristen Holmes and Dr Guy winch Dr Guy winch is a licensed psychologist author and keynote speaker whose books have been translated into 30 languages his first Ted Talk why we all need to practice emotional first aid has been viewed over 13 million times and is rated as the fifth most inspiring talk of all time on ted.com Dr winch's work has been featured in Outlets such as the Boston Globe NPR the Atlantic and Business Insider Dr Guy received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from New York university did postdoctoral work at NYU Medical Center and opened a full-time Private Practice so whoop is not just a wearable for athletes or those looking to improve their performance it is a comprehensive tool that helps people evaluate how various behaviors habits and patterns in their life can manifest both physiologically and psychologically but honestly I I feel like what gets a lot of attention is the trading Behavior side and how we recover from training but I think what is really missing from the conversation is the mental and emotional side and how that moves around our physical health um Dr guy went so so happy to have you here to kind of discuss and go deep on all things emotional health we really appreciate uh you being here with us today thank you so much for having me it's a pleasure to be here so I'd love to start off by just talking a little bit about your history uh what got you excited and uh you know really going down the path of the science behind emotional health so I was always interested in Psychology and when I got my PhD during that training it became very clear to me that I'm actually not that interested in Psychopathology in other words severe schizophrenia or bipolar or you know very severe Psychopathology interested me less what interested me more was everything that happened before a diagnostic category so to be classified as having it's a major depression you have to have this many criteria out of this many but if you're missing one of those criteria you're not officially depressed but boy are you depressed and it always seemed to me that the preventative side of things everyone who's suffering before they get officially and if they ever do get officially diagnosed all the regular slings and arrows of regular life we don't really address things like loneliness or heartbreak or rejection or stress even rumination we you know that's not something that gets a diagnostic category that insurance reimburses on and to me it was much more compelling how do we help people avoid getting mentally ill how do we help people live a much more thriving life and I consider that emotional health with a line to mental health coming at the diagnostic point so I was always interested in emotional health and then when I graduated and started my practice I kept into the habit of it was a PhD it's a research degree and I kept a habit of looking at the research and there was a lot of research about emotional health things that are not about the the mental health aspect of things and I started taking that research and seeing if I could translate it into tools or interventions that I could offer my patients and then I would see which resonated which worked and I slowly began to acquire this toolkit of interventions of tools techniques tricks mind hacks to really boost our emotional health and you know over the decades the the research is really mushroomed in so many different ways but that's how I really started getting into the science of emotional health and what it can do and what it can teach us so I guess it's safe to say that you see it really as you know an opportunity to build skills um you know what would you say are uh you know if you were to kind of a laundry list of of skills that help buoy emotional health what would be a few that you would want to highlight so I'm going to mention a few but before I do I want to mention the approach and you're talking about physiological you know like athletes you're talking about athletes you're talking about training well when you're trying to push yourself to achieve certain physiological milestones in running and whatever the sport is the idea that you would be able to do that without training is ridiculous of course you have to train and to the extent that your goals are far from where you are presently you have to train quite a bit that should be the approach to emotional health it's not a part-time thing it's something that we need to be aware of and we need to be mindful of and we need to practice every single day because life happens every single day so if we want to be healthier emotionally that's something we have to be aware of a few of the things that I practice every day and I recommend everyone does for example and these are all evidence-based scientifically so gratitude is an amazing thing because we evolved to look out for danger there wasn't an evolutionary advantage to being happy you can pass along your genes whether you're happy or not there was to scouting The Horizon for dangers and so we're much more biased in that direction we will pay attention to the negative much more than to the positive we will note what's lacking in our lives much more easily than we will what we have and so gratitude exercises are a way of balancing that aspect of things a bit but on a daily basis noting the things for which we're grateful and the best way to do that is in narrative form it's not just about sitting down and going well I'm I'm glad it's sunny all right you're glad it's sunny but I'm not grateful for the sun because the sun will rise or not not based on your gratitude you can be grateful it's a sunny day because for you that is associated with well-being and the outside outdoor season beginning and you like the feel of the sun on your skin and so you can craft a little bit of a story it doesn't have to be a long one but the worst way to practice gratitude is jot down a paragraph a day about something you're grateful for and why and do it in a little bit of a story of why that matters to you that little exercise it takes five minutes has such profound effects on our optimism and our happiness on our truly emotional health on our and our physiological health because they're obviously connected as which we'll get to um so gratitude is one thing that I I I practice every day and I highly recommend that people do and is there a difference between uh what's happening kind of in the brain when you're receiving gratitude versus kind of giving gratitude so I I can't quite speak to that I I don't do functional MRI studies I read that and and the way they are done actually having a conversation with somebody who does that um search because the way that's typically done is you'll have somebody you know lie in the function MRI and and and think of something they're grateful for it doesn't necessarily get prompted to be done in narrative form the form that I suggest and and if you want to get the most bang out of your buck and this is not something you can do every day but for once in a while if you want a real lift for mood and for everything then think about someone who was really meaningful influential helpful did something that really made a difference to you over your life in your life at some point it can be 30 years ago it can be they you know something small they had no idea it was having that impact but you were having that kind of day where that small thing and write them a letter telling them um what the context was for you what they did whether they remember that or not and the impact that had on you that evokes really powerful gratitude because you're thinking about it in the context of your life and in the context of what it did and it's often people who and I've done that a number of times already and many of the times people like not even quite sure they remember what I'm talking about but it's even more impactful for them because then they realize that oh I did this small thing I had no idea it had that significant an impact so I hope they study those kinds of things in the functional MRI because doing reading or writing a letter like that while you're lying there that will I think activate perhaps other areas of the brain that that the regular one does not so but this is still something that we're you know obviously researching and trying to understand fully how that works so interesting okay so gratitude excellent what are is there uh what would you say is the next uh the next skill that you would recommend okay so because it's emotional health and there's as many if not more don't Do's as there are dues and so because like I said a tendency we evolved for certain purposes that were not quite suited for modern day life and so this tendency to scan the Horizon for danger can turn into anxiety and the concern about whether your social standing is um okay in the tribe um when we were hunter-gatherers was super important because if you were going to be ostracized then you're going to die you're not going to survive alone so it was super important to know that you're well positioned and not in any kind of danger in the tribe um it's not a life or death situation today if you have a falling out with a friend but that Legacy of the importance will cause us to ruminate ad nauseum to sit and spend five hours going through one version of a fantasy argument or a fantasy telling off that you're never gonna have to your boss or to whoever and the impulse to do that is incredibly powerful it's a rabbit hole people spend a lot of time in and when they're in that Rabbit Hole by the way all they're doing is they're marinating in stress and in cortisol and doing major damage for their body depressing themselves stressing themselves again for a conversation they even will tell you in a moment they will never have so we have a lot of tendencies that are very unhealthy and so a lot of what I practice is catching those and stopping them and not indulging them despite how compelling that might feel to do is it safe to say that that is kind of our default is to ruminate not everyone's no it's a personal thing some of us have a much bigger tendency towards doing that than others some people are remarkable at um shrugging things off at compartmentalizing at you know reframing things so I'm not bothered by it um they're not the majority but but they're many you know who who do that and you know and it's all some kind of bell curve where a distribution where some people do it a lot at the ends and very little at the other ends and most of us do somewhat in the middle and but um it's very strong tendency and the more uh stressed we feel the more likely we are to do it the more upset we feel the more depressed we feel the more anxious we feel all of those things uh feed the tendency to ruminate and and just to to clarify something for you know the the viewers and listeners um it is useful to self-reflect on our experiences that's something we do by default to gain meaning to our gain understanding to to to get our bearings to get you know action items out of it it's natural to do that there are healthy and unhealthy ways to self-reflect the unhealthy ways involve a form of rumination where you're really just spinning and having the same unproductive cycle of thoughts over and over again you'll relive that argument that you had or you'll again have the fantasy argument or you'll really think of how unfair this is and then you'll go through a greatest hits of all the times you were treated unfairly of course you're feeling horrible as you're doing this you know difference between physical and emotional health is like if you sprain uh or break a leg and you think back to the time you broke your leg your leg's not going to hurt from the recollection if you think back to a time you're incredibly aggravated you will get aggravated even if it's 30 years ago so every time we marinate in those things we are literally reliving those wounds picking at Sky which is what I call it and and it's really bad to do because it doesn't lead anywhere we're not gaining Insight we're not figuring anything out we're not getting New Perspective we're not finding the Silver Lining we are just marinating in the bad sometimes we'll do it alone in our heads sometimes we'll call a friend and tell them about the horrible thing that happened and then we'll call another friend and tell them about the horrible thing that happened and we can call 10 friends and tell them the same story and they're all going to say the same thing the validation feels useful but the ROI is terrible because you might feel validated for a bit but that's going to last for two seconds and meanwhile you've just put yourself in a bad mood and you've painted a picture of the world as being really negative which is going to impact your perceptions your mood your confidence your self-esteem and all kinds of other things would you say uh folks are more vulnerable to rumination uh and not being able to start the cycle when they're sleep deprived under recovered I would imagine that's the case but would love to hear your your thoughts on just how some of the kind of physical like physiological things can kind of manifest and heighten uh some of those uh responses to you know some of these natural tendencies that we all have yeah when when we are depleted um energy wise because we've over trained under slept undernourished whatever the thing is um we're depleted not just in physiological resources but in mental resources as well so all our thresholds will get lower that threshold above which we get triggered for anger or we start to ruminate or we get upset or we get anxious all those thresholds come down we are much more prone to do those things because you know our reserves have been taxed so as a general rule it's not true for everything all the time but as a general rule if you're feeling that you're physiologically depleted unrecovered unrested it's gonna that's how you're gonna be in the mental side and the emotional side certainly as well so you need to know that because then if you're going into a situation where that might not be the best time to have a really important talk with your partner your wife or your husband whatever it is because you might not be in the best frame of mind for it just like after you're recovering from a marathon maybe not the best time to do a 10K the next day kind of thing you know um so so we have to be aware of where we are physiologically because that's going to impact where we are emotionally and vice versa amazing would you say you know kind of staying on rumination for a second just because I feel like it's such an important uh uh I think the future of The Human Experience right and and but there's making sense of a scenario and then there's ruminating so maybe just talk through how do you help a patient who is you know kind of going Beyond just making sense and really kind of constantly ruminating how do you get them off that track you know how do you get them into a healthier place in terms of thinking about this this problem or so so actually let's look at an example of an athlete who um you know trained for a long time for a race an event competition and um or the Olympics and didn't make it yeah that'd be me yeah oh yeah okay so that say that you know I'm so sorry for that but but say that that's right um it's it's absolutely devastating and um it's and because you trained for such a long time the window to succeed is so small then the window passes the wait is so long you might not be in the same Condition it's often people really dedicate years and years and years for that one goal that then doesn't happen it is extraordinarily natural to grieve that to really be in a tailspin about that and to ruminate about oh if I've just done that different if I've just done this different if I had if I were able to just maybe if I could go back mentally I know I kind of felt shaky in that corner but if I could have just taken that corner again and you can spend hours doing that and days and years and months and you can thoroughly feel like what's the point of trying if like you put so much into something and then it gets snatched away from you I can go on and on and on but you know not to believe the point but but yeah you can go down those rabbit holes now when something like that happens there's a due diligence to be done for sure it is highly useful to look at what you can learn from that experience what you can learn from that failure as it were and what you can learn from it you have to approach that with zero judgment it is useful to say for example I should never have gone to that party two days before the race because even though I left early it was a distraction I shouldn't have done it legit not legit I'm such an idiot why did I do that I'm a loser you know and I'm never gonna get like that not useful because the message was shouldn't have gone to party all the loser idiot stuff adds zero value and does a lot of damage and it is our want to become very self-critical in such moments now an Adaptive way to think about those things is to do the due diligence to give yourself time to grieve the loss when it's a big deal but to then move on in other words you're in the mire don't get sucked into it waist high try and you know wait and feel what the feelings are get informed by the emotions that are coming up for you you'd be surprised because maybe you feel loss and Devastation and embarrassment and all kinds of things but maybe there's also a bit of relief maybe there's also a bit of not too bad because it was such a sacrifice for your personal life for your professional life or or and you know maybe now this frees you up to do that and emotions are complex so figure out what the feelings are get informed by them but then you have to get yourself away from the rumination so to do that you have to um one option to do that is to reframe because the urge to ruminate is about the urge to like scratch that wound to refrain is to take the toxicity out of that poison to take the Barb loosen the Barb that's kind of lodged in your head that keeps you spinning one way to reframe this kind of experience was that um this is going to make me stronger because now I know what it's like to really dedicate myself to really train to really get there this didn't work out for me because of a b and c I learned what I needed to from that where else can I take I mean maybe I'll just try again and figure out what I do differently or where else can I take this wisdom and apply it in other areas of my life that I can benefit from the lessons that I've learned how can I turn this disappointment into fuel into motivation into drive how can I use this moment in which the eyes are on me for not succeeding to strengthen my personal relationships to feel more connected to the people around me people care about me they're reaching out it's an opportunity to actually feel the love of the people around me to feel the support which I don't ordinarily do because I'm too busy training there's a lot of different ways I'm just giving some examples I'm throwing out but in every situation you can look for a different perspective that's less toxic and less dramatic and has more pluses more you know and and doing that helps release the urge to ruminate as much and ultimately with rumination if you just keep going back to it what the research says is a two to three minute distraction will get you off that cycle it's like um craving for cigarettes for people who stop smoking the craving is not consistent it's a wave just you've got to ride that wave so the same with the urge to ruminate um and what I what the research says two to three minutes of concentrating on something else so reading a book's not going to do it it's too passive um my go-to is world so that's not so good um but you know it can be anything that requires concentration and memory tasks try and remember the names of the kids who sat around you in grade school whatever the order of the songs in a playlist that concentrating for two minutes is enough for that wave to pass and then go about your business and repeat the exercise if the rumination occurs breathing techniques I feel like are money for me because it's really hard to think about anything as you're breathing you know and focusing on a specific kind of cadence because you're counting your breasts right and you have to count yeah so but here's the other way that that's the two reasons that breathing more than two but but the other reason that breathing is really important is when you are ruminating about dramatic things up goes your heart rate up goes your blood pressure right and your breathing becomes more you know shallow and more accelerated you're getting less you know oxygen so slowing your breathing doing you know um that you prefer um is a way of slowing your breathing it is telling your brain it's a brain hack you're telling your brain really because if it were that bad would I be breathing this slowly no so it couldn't be that bad and you're activating yourself you bring that safety nervous system and your brain right and your brain goes oh I guess it's not too terrible because we're breathing really slowly and down goes the heart rate and all of those things so it actually really holistic response to do the breathing as long along with these other exercises breathing is an amazing thing to to to regulate when we're dysregulated yeah definitely it's definitely something we uh we we shot the feature built into the app um well it's we measure stress so it's called the stress Monitor and we have uh breathing techniques that you can use to kind of if you recognize you're in kind of this heightened state of stress you have the ability to deploy this uh it's called the physiological side it's a double inhale followed by an extended exhale and it you know calms the nervous system and reduces anxiety and your perception of stress in the moment and even after the session's over so we really anchor around breathing as an awesome strategy to kind of uh deal with with uh with you know perceptions of of stress and um yeah right and Jimmy just isn't about it because that mimics a sigh right that that Hill EXO mimics a sigh in a way and sighing is you know people have the wrong idea about sign they kind of think like well what's that a sign of this or that but it's actually an amazing it's actually an amazing release and it's actually an amazing recalibrator the same is true of crying by the way sign of weakness no it's actually a great recovery mechanism because it releases a lot of stress and you kind of you know reset after you cry and so sometimes yes it's it's a very very useful thing that we judge very incorrectly I totally agree like when I have a good cry I I swear like my next day recovery is so much high like my heart rate variability is higher next day uh like I always you know whenever I just it's part of this I think just that release and just that acknowledgment and you know there's an element of of you know kind of grief and letting go and you know I think that comes along with crying that it's I think is really powerful and it's it's interesting to see that manifest in the in that in the data yeah and sometimes people come to me and they'll argue with me and they'll go like well I never cry and I'll be like well I'm so sorry and I hope one day you do have access to your feelings good that's a shake them shake them up I like it that's awesome you said you said something um I think that's like so important you said space to grieve uh maybe talk about creating space for oneself because I feel like in today's world there are so many distractions we have access to food we have access to social media we there's just we can you know watch Netflix for hours on end you know it shows that are really interesting to us like you know there's an element of um you know and this sounds so cliche but actually sitting with our thoughts so we can start to understand what what is actually coming into our brain and whether or not those thoughts are serving us but you know I think there's distraction but there's also creating space for yourself so you can kind of sift through some of those emotions uh because they'll surface and and I think maladaptive ways if we're not if we don't actually deal with them so maybe just talk through like what does space actually mean in a and and we can take grief as a as an anchor Point potentially you know thinking about it from you know romantic heartbreak or you know the loss of a loved one and maybe use that as an example so you know yes I completely agree that we need the space to sit with our thoughts but it's our thoughts and our feelings that we need to sit with and we are remarkably um the emotional vocabulary tends to be very limited um some more than others um but generally uh our uh see if you know when I ask people how do you feel in that moment I get primary colors right it's like happy sad angry I don't know you know not great you know like so I tell people all the time and I truly do use this myself I there's something called the emotion wheel where you have a wheel of all the different emotions grouped by kind of kind of hear the all the angers resentments the this the the positive ones challenging ones all of them and I say to my patients and I say to friends even and I use it myself and in a moment I'm feeling a lot it's difficult to unpack and I start looking at the wheel and and anything that registers on the radar there could be a two here and a 10 there but and when you start it could be 20 different feelings that you're experiencing in that moment that's a lot of data that's a lot of information to actually look at and go okay if I'm feeding all of these things let me figure out what's this about and what's that about and well why why some relief there why some you know why some happiness there oh yeah I really don't like that person so I didn't you know like it just to you know to really kind of you know unpack um uh what's going on that we need the space and time for and it's especially true when we're grieving it's true of every emotional injury we um sustain to be honest when I said earlier that it's very obvious to for people who are active that they need time to train or they need time to warm up or they need time to cool down this is the training when it comes to emotional health this is the time that you devote when something big happens in your life it doesn't you don't get over it automatically when when I talk about heartbreak romantic heartbreak for example um uh I have a TED talk about it it has over 15 million views and and the reason it has so many views is because people's idea of romantic heartbreak is time just give it time and a that is useful and B there's so much more we could be doing to make that time shorter and to make us suffering less except that we're not aware of what those tools are and again they're involved do's and don'ts that's true of any kind of grieving there are things we can do to process the grief and it's not uh one size fits all different people need different things there's some people who need to talk about it all the time there's some people who would rather not but there's you don't have to talk about it but you have to process it grief means you are getting your brain adapted and your heart that hurt not literally but you know emotionally um adapted to a new reality of a loss and that takes time it doesn't happen on a dime you know it takes time to accommodate while you wake up in the morning oh that person isn't there or that person broke up with me or that goal of mine that I've dedicated so many years to is now gone it's you're a different person in a way after a loss and so it takes time to sit with to adapt to to process to understand to see how it impacts the different areas of your life and to experience the feelings that it evokes and so we sometimes don't do that naturally when it comes to heartbreak or tendency is to do all the wrong things right our tendency I know this person broke my heart I'm gonna spend 16 hours of every waking moment stalking them on social media so I can see this curated version of that they put out in which they seem terribly happy and feel miserable by it you know I mean that's what people do hours I know it's not good for me I know it makes men happy but I just have to see what they're doing you don't have to you're allowing yourself to you're indulging a bad urge if you had the urge to slice your arm up and hopefully you wouldn't indulge it because you would realize well that's silly and but those negative emotional psychological urges we indulge way too much a because we don't know that it's that damaging and once I explained to people how and why and the extent to which it is people go like okay maybe not um but there's one another one will become significantly when it's a romantic breakup we become intensely self-critical in our effort to understand the why which is important we feel that it's necessary to review all our faults and shortcomings and then you know oh if only I with this if only I would that if only I didn't if only I did you'll folds and shortcomings like if there are things you can work if if it was like oh I should never have said that to his friend and that lesson learned there maybe there's something to be taken away but I'm not tall enough I'm not rich enough I'm not big enough I'm not small enough I'm not this I'm not this those what's the point you know you can what you should be doing in that moment is entirely the opposite after a heartbreak after a romantic rejection even doesn't have to be heartbreak you should be listing all the qualities you bring to the table not highlighting what you don't your self-esteem is already hurting you don't need to Savage it further you want to actually revive it and that is happening that happens by really focusing on we'll hear the things that I know I have to offer that other people have or would appreciate let me focus on those because that's going to make me more hopeful for the future as opposed to feeling like I'll never find anyone because you just reviewed everything that you think is wrong with you would you say higher self-esteem a higher Baseline self-esteem the shorter the time to kind of get over that rejection s is a buffer full rejection for anxiety for certain things our self-esteem fluctuates um some of it some of us are set at a regular Baseline that's higher than others but there's a Goldilocks zone for self-esteem too high tends to get brittle then you fall into the narcissism range and that's and then you you know you might think a lot of yourself but you're also intolerant of any criticism or any negativity because internally your self-esteem is it might be high but it's brittle it breaks easy so that's not good either too low then you're too self-critical to unconfident you know see yourself in a really negative prison rather than a realistic one there's a happy Zone in the middle but self-esteem I always say it's like having a bad hair day but I used to have been up here to have one um it's like you wake up you can wake up feeling like crap about yourself and you could wake up feeling great and why you know maybe who has some correlations and answers that we can get to in terms of self-esteem and why you know what's happening to us physiologically what happens during the night or the day before that promotes that but but in general you know like it can fluctuate and it and and and and you know we it and there are other programs to improve self-esteem they don't work because they give you an initial boost of a day or two and when we do studies it's some people will come out of a self-esteem weekend and say that they're in a much better place that their self-esteem is higher but when you give them self-esteem questionnaires there's no difference so interesting you know it's yeah because self-esteem is a very specific thing and today we like to talk about self-compassion instead of self-esteem it's a much more useful concept and self-compassion means to the ex what's the extent to which you have a compassionate internal voice rather than a critical one or a phoning one for that matter a compassionate one in which you just treat yourself as you would a dear friend in what way do we have to you know after a romantic heartbreak uh what is a healthy shift in identity because sometimes you know it I know that your identity can be really wrapped up in that other human you know and um you know I feel like that's probably not super healthy uh how to how does one kind of think about that um and they might be in a what is a kind of a you know a great relationship but they is it important for them to recognize that oh wow my identity is actually really really wrapped up in this person and how do you kind of pull back without making that person feel rejected even though you might not be breaking up but you just start kind of pulling yourself out a little bit to kind of reclaim your sense of self a bit and uh I don't know also I think about protecting in the event that it doesn't work out and I know that might not be the right way to think about it but what what's your take on on that's a great great question right because the way we enter into romantic relationships is not sustainable um we we get infatuated um a brain gets addicted literally to the no truly to the other yeah totally it looks like addiction it looks like you become obsessed it's like opioid right like it's like literally very much like an opioid it's the only thing that makes us happy nothing else really matters you know and then suddenly we didn't hear from them for a few hours now we go into withdrawal now we're in a severe panic and so we just want to spend every minute with them every second with him and maybe at the beginning if the feeling is mutual that's terrific it's not sustainable you're not gonna be fused like that you want to avoid codependency because that is a problematic that's like a blurring of boundaries it's an eneshment that's not actually useful psychologically or emotionally nor is it sustainable um and so but it's very much a what you describe is very much true of a lot of people when they enter in they're just so smitten and it's mutual and then at some point they realize I haven't seen my best friend in like three months I haven't done this I stopped going to this class I love this stuff listening to this music because I'm with them all the time and they don't love that artist so I'm not listening to that it's very important to reclaim your Independence you have to communicate about it you have to have a conversation and say hey look this is amazing almost a little too much though because I haven't noticed but I've been neglecting a lot of things that I really used to enjoy doing I'm sure you have two so can we talk about being able to slowly kind of re-engage in some of those other things it might mean seeing each other a little bit less we might need to reassure each other that we're very much still in it but this feels good to me I want it to work and I know that I'm not going to be happy in the long term if I don't do this thing and if I stop I stopped training I stopped doing this I stopped doing that those are not things that are going to make me happy in the long term I got carried away and I'm glad I did because we have a great launching pad but now we have to shift gears a little bit and make this more sustainable is that okay with you tell me how you feel about that yeah in a in a scenario where you know there's been a breakup how do you kind of in let's say you were really codependent previously and now you're you know you've broken up and um and you're trying to reclaim that that that identity what would be the process to kind of get back to your sense of self so number one you need to start asking yourself um what do I want to keep that I took on during that relationship maybe I was introduced to this kind of music or this kind of food or I got into this habit you don't have to throw the baby with a bath water what is something that I would like to keep Associated mix or no um and what are the things I don't you know identity is a real issue because we go from being a we when we're in a relationship to an eye so there's a massive shift in personal identity from a wheel like how was your weekend well we did this and this and this for the holidays well we did this for the weekend well we're going to see this film to I and and that can feel like a huge loss you know the beginning and part of that loss and so identity Reformation is something we have to do whenever life throws a curve at us that's tilted us significantly loss often does that physical injury can do that when an athlete has to retire from the sport they love because they no longer can perform at the professional level there's a lost gymnasts go through that at very young ages it dancers go through them through that at varying ages they devoted their entire lives that's who they were and now they cannot be that anymore so who are they there's an exploration identity is not something we curate from you know take a little piece of this a little piece of that it's something we have to ask ourselves discovering ourselves wrestle with us very active process of figuring out well what do I think what do I believe one example is we're all raised in homes in which there was a position on politics religion all the hot button topics and you know we couldn't adopt wholesale where we came from but maybe we need to pause and go but what do I think and and maybe what I think or what I believe turns out to be similar maybe it turns out to be different maybe it turns out to be different but I want to stay with that community so I'll adapt maybe it turns out to be different to the point that I really need to not hide that I feel differently all of that is a result of exploration asking yourself questions being honest with yourself about the answers um and and what we have to be careful of again with like with the Heartbreak and stalking people or with identity and just quickly coming up with an answer that's not well thought through um oh I know what I'll do I'll do it pray love I'll just go on a trip and that will be the well you know that's a great book and movie but it's not something most people can would should do right and and I um I have a newsletter it's called the do wrong uh the the get wrong do right newsletter because it every month it goes through one thing we get very very wrong and that we do very wrong and how to do it right it can be things like apologies that we get very wrong because we make them about our excuses rather than about the feelings of the other person it can be how we deal with rejection which is to become a self-critical and think it's because of us when often it's not and there's no point in becoming self-critical somebody already did that for you you know like there's so so and it's important people to understand the mistakes so that they don't amplify um negativity or they don't make wounds emotional or otherwise bigger when it comes to Identity part of our mistakes is that we don't think of it as an active question of who am I when you ask people and if you know some anyone's listening wants to ask a friend who are you they'll get demographics this age this this I do this what's on your driver's license kind of thing that's part of who you are but who you are is what you believe is what you feel you might unbeknownst to a lot of people spend four hours a day drawing Comics that no one knows about but if you're spending four hours a day on Art you're an artist in part that's part of Who You Are and and you know I for example can cook a meal for people and if they literally expel it back onto the plate my feelings will not be hurt because the cook is not a part of my identity it's not something I do well think I do well that's important for me to do well so you know if I get criticism there it bothers me less somebody will come and say you don't understand anything about what's going on with me I'll find that more upsetting because as a psychologist I would hope I would um and so you know it's so the different aspects to our identity to our self-esteem and those different aspects have different meanings and they're complex there are overall sense of identity and our identity how do I feel as a partner how do I feel as a son how do I feel as a brother you know and good brother bad brother good friend bad like what are my qualities what do I bring to the table all of this is an exploration so you start by asking a lot of questions and seeing what resonates with you emotionally what what comes up what you feel and it's a process and the process of identity formation is a lifelong process because we go through changes and losses developmentations all the time we're not the same person yeah and it seems like that kind of part of retaining the sense of self that is so important the more we kind of have a clear definition of of who we want to be in the world it seems as though we're that would be a real buffer to a lot of the vulner you know being that would make us a little less vulnerable um I would think and and and and I think a big piece of this too is is environment you know kind of creating an environment where we can reinforce that identity you know and and outlet for the things that enable us to kind of almost practice that identity maybe if you want to talk a little bit about that because I think you know oftentimes that's where we kind of go wrong with emotional health and that you know our environment our friend group our you know Arnold in line with the things that we say we really care about and that we value and as a result we get this mismatch in terms of our behaviors and what we say we care about and the person that I want to be in this world so maybe talk a little bit about emotional health and just environment and boundaries okay so so um emotional health uh you know and when it comes to Identity um it's you if you're an athlete say and you don't have a Social Circle of athletes you don't get to express you can tell them this or that statement but you're not really discussing you're not you don't feel a part of a community of athletes and that's really damaging to your sense of identity it's almost like you have to bury a part of yourself that's super important and so we get validation and we get to explore identities when we have a group affiliation of people who feel the same about themselves so we have that in common with and there's huge power to that group affiliation because the research is for example that when people encounter bias if they're really affiliated with the group of people towards whom that bias went they are much more buffered because they're almost like sharing the insult with the group rather than sustaining it individually or being picked out individually it feels very different to face bias when you feel like you're standing alone versus when you feel like no there are people behind me who feel the same know the same experience the same and would understand completely if I told them not just what just happened so that group affiliation part is is super important for our identity it's where we really can can strengthen and can experience that those aspects of ourselves and again it's not writ large we're not one thing we're many things so that group affiliation let's say you're a black person and you experience bias being with black people you know because you can't be black and not experienced buyers so they will get it hopefully you know and and and that is is very very um strong you know in that in that way and you asked about um boundaries it's the subject of the most recent uh newsletter what we get wrong about boundaries is when we're you know and I'm talking about the boundaries we try to set with other people to let them know when they're stepping on our toes that's my analogy of it like somebody stepped on your toes they didn't realize oh didn't realize you had a toe there um I do so you just stepped on it and when you said boundaries with someone and you say hey so this is where you don't step because that's where my toes are that's where I'm I have a sensitivity or that's where you do something that I don't find comfortable or or Pleasant what people get wrong about that is they think it's a one-step process it's hard enough to have the talk with someone about boundaries that look this happened and when they're done everyone's like I got through it or there was a fight or whatever it was boundaries is a two-step process the small small step is the first one in which you set the boundary the big step is everything that happens thereafter in which you maintain the boundary boundaries always have to be maintained we don't live in a magical Society where your requests gets internalized and adhered to immediately by all around you that would be nice not the case even people who care about you will get it wrong a lot so as long as you know that and you know that you need to maintain the boundary remind people do this nicely as possible as non-confrontationally as possible if you don't you're giving them the message that you know that thing that I said it really upsets me when you do sometimes it's fine it's the message you're giving when you don't maintain the boundary which is confusing to the other person so they'll do it so so even in boundaries it's important to be actively uh maintaining them and again I get back to the message about emotional health which is it is an active daily process of self-examination and getting the information because it starts with the fact that this information is not out there people don't know it so they don't know what how to do and when but once even once you have that information that's where the work begins it's like you can get all the equipment but then the training you've got to show up in the gym it won't happen magically right and it's so it's crazy because you think about I mean I think about myself like how much I program my workouts and like think about my when I'm gonna do cardiovascularly and strength perspective when the recovery modalities I'm going to engage in which has a correlation you know a relationship to emotional mental health for sure um but in terms of like really carving out like actual real time to think about my emotional health your data no one does it I mean 0.0001 of the population is engaging in some sort of like like real time that is set aside each day and I you know meditation mindfulness I think these are all paths potentially but what would what would that time frame like really look like if we're thinking about like building this muscle uh this skill of emotional health like what what is that time frame need to look like for us so okay let's distinguish between um injury recovery and maintenance and training so the injury we recover is uh recoveries I got rejected I sustained the loss I had a failure I had a you know like something that really so like emotional injury where it just kills you up yeah emotional injury it tilts you off the track it tilts you off your Center and you just want to Soldier on and keep going um there is really specific tools and techniques my book emotional first aid is was that like here's the two perfect two years for daily life small stuff small stuff but you can treat those injuries like I you know I sustain failures as much as everyone else but every time I do I am only in the spot my my best example of this was like I was about to give a really important talk and three weeks before the talk I had a rehearsal and it got torn apart torn apart while I'm on stage rehearsing you know in the room was like this is that bad and and I was like we're ready to go it's three weeks away and wow what went through my head is you wrote so many articles and chapters about failure do it so it's like I was don't don't be frozen you know do yeah and I had immediately I it it bounced me out of it and I immediately started right remembering okay here's what I would have suggested for someone to do in that moment do that and I certainly entered to get the emotions you know to get this not disregulated I mean it became intensely curious about what was the direction they thought I should be going what do they what is it they think the right thing would be listen really carefully if they think this is bad they're not just saying this is bad they have an idea so listen be there and work with them and collaborate with them now as you're on stage and sweating bullets do it now and I have that on video in fact and I went to look at it you know like a week or two later um after I had Rewritten the thing and it was approved and and and nicely so and I was and I was like so proud of myself for being able to implement my own advice in a difficult moment it's difficult it's really emotionally uncomfortable but that's the training that's the idea that you're sustaining a wound triage it now don't let it Fester don't let it get infected you know be on it and so so a treating injuries you know is one thing and the other is the building up is working on your identity working on gratitude I think mindfulness and meditation especially mindfulness meditation are amazing there's so much research about that I'm not you know again it's all evidence-based stuff that I tend to go for here and and those are wonderful things I'm not great at meditation I practice it intermittently I'm not very good at it because I haven't spent enough time training the muscle to be able to sit and do it for sustained and by sustained I mean 10 minutes I'm not good you know like you know it's like I open my eyes like well that must have been an hour oh look three minutes um you know it's like that but it's like there's a lot of muscles you can train that's not the one I focus on but but I should and I know that and it's in the it's on the list of things um but there's so much you can do to train emotionally psychologically to beef up yourself to to learn things to reframe difficult things so that they're more optimistic when you feel discouraged to you know restore your motivation when you feel rejected to restore your self-esteem when you feel helpless to restore a sense of control when you feel anxious to restore a sense of certainty I can go on and on and on and on and on they're active things we can be doing every day to beef ourselves up and especially to address the impediments that we should be doing in a natural way like we do when it comes to a physiological and physical health but we but we know less about the emotion and the psychological health so we don't do as much but but that's where the training is do you feel like the world is becoming more aware and more conscious of just some of these tools that exist and at least you know we're not there yet uh in terms of practicing these skills uh regularly but do you feel like the conversation is at a better place you know globally around mental I think the pandemic yes and I think the pandemic did a lot there I I'm a psychologist who writes books as TED Talks skips talks that's you know but I'm not you know the head of this department at this University and um a year and a half ago and this is this is um slight humble brag but I you're on Dodge me for a minute um I I got invited to 10 Downing Street in England to speak to the British government and they said we want to hear what your recommendations are for mental health policies we should Institute across the UK and I literally said to them that's amazing why on Earth are you asking me and the response was because you'll be talking to policy makers and bureaucrats and those kinds of people and we need somebody who can talk to people in way you know and not talk at people and you're good at Community not an academic lecture this is a conversation correct we've had those they both them they don't do anything and so I went in talking to them about work stress and about because one thing I knew all of them maybe they're depressed maybe they're anxious all of them are stressed the nature of the beast when it comes to being a civil servant in any government um and so I don't know about work stress and what they need to how they need to think differently about work stress and the idea that the interesting thing about work stress is that we don't experience it at work we're too busy we experience it outside of work in the form of worry anxiety rumination all of those things and because that's the case we have much more control over it than we actually think and so I just went in with a whole you know when I gave those talks a lot of different companies because that that idea of how you manage yourself and your own stress is super important and that really spoke to them and they even instituted a law uh uh based on on the talk at some at some point and and so the the idea that again I apologize for the humble Brack but the point I wanted to make is no I don't think that would have happened pre-pandemic I think the pandemic made the point with everyone like everyone who thought I'm immune I don't need this I don't get depressed I don't get lonely well the whole world shut down and we don't know if the fabric of civil society is going to hold let's see how you feel right now so getting after the pandemic you know people were much more open to the idea unfortunately this is a window that will close very soon because as humans we like to not think about you know uh those kinds of things and just assume that we're all robust and immune and so that awareness in in you know in the shadow of a huge worldwide Global event uh is not going to last once life comes back to normal and is already almost there and so there is a window of opportunity for people to get informed and to take on board half the equation that they've been missing I love that I mean there's no question our thesis at woof is is very much around you know it's not what's happening in your craft like during those eight hours that you're you know uh in the emergency uh you know your acute care surgeon like you know dealing with the huge trauma that that just happened or you know a military operator professional athlete like your craft that's kind of the easy part it is the the other you know kind of 13 14 15 hours of the day that that's what you need to manage and and I think that's that's where um the opportunity is really you know to and I love that you have this opportunity to kind of talk to folks about that concept and and you know when you when you talked about kind of work stress um and and the stress that's happening outside of work and how to manage it um did you kind of talk about it from like a physiological and psychological lens in terms of like how you actively manage stress and and just yes I mean first of all yeah uh you know um when you're ruminating about work in the off hours you are going to have sleep disturbances that's what the research shows you're going to eat unhealthier Foods because you're trying to soothe you're going to be more at if you're chronic you're going to be more at risk for cardiovascular disease because you're flooding your system with cortisol and other unhealthy you know hormones and and mental States um over big hours of time and unnecessarily so so you're literally you know predisposed I also spoke about loneliness for example people think loneliness is unpleasant yes it's unpleasant it will also kill you loneliness is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day it impairs longevity it will make you infirmed and sick compared to somebody who's not lonely and it will kill you early the chances of an early death Rise by 30 something percent with chronic loneliness these are huge physical and longevity manifestations there's research even about smiling and mental attitude that you look at the smiles of kindergarten kids in these very long-term studies and you can't the crow's feet around their eyes and those kids on average live longer than the ones with fewer crow's feet just in terms of smile and their approach to the world because when kids smile with crow's feet that's an authentic smile when they just put up the thing it's not so you can see the kids who are able at that point to really connect to a happy moment and that's hugely impactful to how long we live and the health we have so yes the the Mind Body Connection is is huge we're at uh you know we're at the initial stages of the of that mountain of you know Excavating exactly all the ways in which it operates I'm excited for the years to come because I think we'll discover so much more and that doing that will give us all kinds of Pathways not just to emotional and psychological but the physical health and performance in athletics and other and every other domain because it impairs thinking cognitive thinking you know for example um so so I'm I'm very hopeful that we'll learn more and more about those things and I'm very hopeful that private citizens with whoop with other you know you know devices and with the sophistication that that is just starting and will come will become much more informed about their own mental processes physiological processes the connection between the two and be able to have much more control over this aspect of their lives that we literally didn't have any control over a short while ago not so beautifully sad I love that um maybe you know we're getting toward the end here but I'd love to ask you just you know some folks are still working from home um you know our kind of remote working uh maybe you know what have you learned over the course the last few years with just now this very new model of of work what have been some of the benefits of of working from home and yeah once you're just kind of overall take on on what goes right what goes wrong you know in terms of emotional health yeah look the the science is that um and this was pre-pandemic we're as productive not more at at home um as we are in the office the downsides uh the many pros and cons but just to be very you know brief about it the downsides are that that lack of face time um can be a disadvantage if somebody's able to be in the office and somebody not then they have more access they might have certain advantages more face time with the bus and that can be an advantage for them what people started doing at some point and I gave a ton of talks at the beginning of the pandemic to so many different companies um saying like you have to add elements to meetings which are connective emotionally connected between people because otherwise people are going to feel hugely disconnected and that's going to impact the employee loyalty their engagement their productivity their happiness your attrition rates are going to grow um and so people need to feel connected they don't have a break room to meet in coincidentally I said like for example you go to a meeting you leave your cubicle you say hello to this one over there you rub the shoulder of that one over there you go to the cuff to the break room you get coffee you chat for a few minutes you get there early you go how's your kid doing yeah none of that existed when when the the group meetings began virtually um and and yeah you have to you know you have to introduce it artificially you have to bring in and again that's a leadership thing the leaders have to start by saying let's do a round and check in with everyone about how we're doing I'll start I'll say something vulnerable you don't announce that you just do it but I'll say something slightly emotionally vulnerable to you know demonstrate to you that it's okay that we're here to support one that we're a team we're working together we spend more hours together than we do with our families let's care for one another more companies you know who who have a a central tenant of of caring and they're not many um um do much better in terms of you know the the you know what they get out of their employees because people want to be cared for when they're devoting so many hours of their life to something and so that you know how we manage the Hybrid models or the work from home models entirely it is on us to um truly uh make up for the lack of connectivity touch can be important like some people don't are not touching anyone literally even if it's a rub on the shoulder that's an important thing and of course these days you want to be careful about rubbing someone's shoulder without consent but you know like friends Etc like we we need that and and so it's it's it's a really important thing and I would ask anyone to pay attention if you're working remotely entirely or in a hybrid model track yourself if you're getting data from your Loop get data from your brain by adding to whatever the spreadsheet is um you know things like um and how did I who did I speak to today and who do I feel connected to and all of that I love that what would you say so if if you were to kind of give us um kind of your your top three or five uh things to kind of manage your emotional hygiene what would that laundry list look like for you ask yourself how am I doing how am I feeling and what do those feelings tell me what information can I gather from them and when I ask people how how are you feeling when I say ask yourself at least 10 feelings have to be there and you don't fulfill all of them intensely but but you know understand the complexity of your feelings understand why you have them ask yourself what do you want to do with those feelings which ones are useful to you which are not get informed because there's you know it starts with basic information you know that you know you need to you know for example nutrition wise people know so much about what they showed or should not be eating they do not know what they should be taking in psychologically or emotionally what's nutritious what isn't again people ruminate with that understanding that it's not just not nutritious it's toxic certain times of certain kinds of self-reflection like problem solving or you know uh perspective taking or reframing are actually very nutritious so a get informed and and then start practices and then track I'm again experimental method track how you do on those practices and so you have data that tells you this works for you this doesn't you know for example there are many pain relievers on the market I know you know on over-the-counter pain relievers um when I have a headache there's one of them that works for me the others don't I only know that by trial and error because there's no magic to it so this is trod and error what tends to work for you you're having a really low day who's the friend that really lifts your spirits versus the friend that you're busy but it didn't really do anything for you who made you feel connected who made you feel heard who you know again it might not be obvious to you your best friend might not be the best listener and if they're the best listener they might not be the best person to express the validation that you need they might listen to you go on for 50 minutes about how your heart is broken and go dude bummer hmm not so useful we need a little more than that so like so ask yourself like be intentional and purposeful in how you curate the people around you the life you want the practices you have see what works for you make notes of it and and just take it seriously yeah I love it so good uh dang this is so fun I I just we appreciate your time uh so much you've been just wildly insightful and I think our members are just gonna absolutely love this conversation so uh just thank you for your time today um where's the best place for folks to to find you I know obviously we'll link to your books and your your TED talks and um and if you have a website but um are you on Instagram LinkedIn yeah I'm I'm on I'm on everything um Tech talk we're starting soon not yet but but we're starting very soon um but uh just guywinch.com um we'll have links to everything I do the things I would highlight you'll have links to three TED Talks there you'll have links to three books they're in 30 languages so if you'll speak a different language you probably will find them in your language even Mongolian most recently so hello to everyone in Mongolia and um um I also have a a podcast called dear therapists um which I co-host which in which we do live therapy sessions so you'll be able to hear live therapy sessions and in which we give the person advice at the end of the of the session they go and do it and they come back and Report what happened so you need to get a complete Arc of someone's uh story and it also gives you a sense and and it'll it'll make you think because the questions we ask you know our guests are the questions that you can ask yourself as well in many of these situations the Articles all those things so so you will find a link to the to the newsletter to subscribe really that's the the portal that you can go through and you should be able to find everything there amazing amazing well thank you again big thank you to Dr Guy winch for coming on the whoop podcast emotional health and relationships are critical if you enjoyed this episode of the podcast please leave us a rating or review don't forget to subscribe to the woop podcast you can check us out on social at whoop at will Ahmed if you have a question you want to see answered on the podcast email us podcast whoop.com call us 508-443-4952 and we'll answer your question on a future episode new members can use the code will w-i-l-l get a 60 credit on Loop accessories and that's a wrap this week thank you all for listening we'll catch you next week on the whoop podcast as always stay healthy and stay in the green [Music]

Channel: WHOOP

Views: 940

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Id: 1VPKcXw9SZ4

Length: 68min 25sec (4105 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023