Dr. Aditi Nerurkar
Appearances
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Because all of those emotions that you have kept pent up, whether you are psychologically aware of it or not, are now coming to the surface. So it's important to understand that if you are feeling a sense of horizonlessness, you are not alone. Or if you feel like, wow, I feel worse now than I did in 2020. You know, the whole world is telling you that, oh, we've moved on, get over it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And yet you don't feel that way. You're not engaging in the same way, perhaps with holidays or a change of seasons, right? Like I'm over it. It's because of the dam and the dam has broken within you. And so when I say psychological safety, it sounds like a positive thing. And it certainly is because you finally feel psychologically safe for those true emotions to emerge.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Those true emotions could be horizonlessness, right?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Yes. And it's almost like you don't even see a future anymore.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So it's less about being confused or I'm not sure what I'm doing. That's that acute stress response you're living in the moment. Yeah. But it's almost like, it's that meh feeling. And that is what a lot of people are feeling.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It's that feeling of not really being excited or the opposite of that is being really angry or frustrated about, oh, I want this for my future, but I'm not able to achieve it. These are all healthy emotions because there's a charge to it, right? Whether it be a positive charge or a negative charge. But horizonlessness is almost a lack of emotion.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It's kind of just like, whatever, I'm not really working towards anything because there's really nothing worth working towards.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
That's exactly right. So biologically, you have been living in amygdala mode and you are thinking purely about survival and self-preservation in the immediate, in the now. The prefrontal cortex lights up that part of the brain that we were talking about earlier. Anticipation, forward thinking, strategic planning, the prefrontal cortex is what governs that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So when you have that sense of anticipating the future... In studies, the brain scans have shown that your median prefrontal cortex lights up because you're starting to think about a future. You know, forward momentum is what has created the human species and has really propelled the human species forward, right? Like this forward momentum is an incredibly important part of evolution.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And so when you don't feel that sense of forward momentum in your life... You use words like feeling stuck.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So this thing, clinically speaking, it's called the delayed stress response.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So the delayed stress response is what we're talking about. Damn breaking and all of those uncomfortable, negative feelings and emotions are coming up for you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And that is why so many people, especially now, right? The messaging, the external societal messaging is like, we're out of the woods. Everything is great. Individually, collectively, we should be rejoicing. We should be celebrating. It's the roaring 20s. If you think back to the pandemic, so many articles with headlines like,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
We just got to get through this time and we're going to hit the roaring 20s. The roaring 20s are going to come roaring back. And I would see these headlines and I would laugh because I would think that is so not how the human brain works. Because your brain is a dam and when that dam breaks, it's not the roaring 20s. You have to move through it. The only way around is through.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Once you move through all of this stuff, whether you seek counseling or you do some of the strategies that you and I have talked about in the past, then you can get to the roaring 20s. But
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
But for now, when you're sitting in that discomfort of whether you are highly emotional and maybe you're feeling a sense of real emotional charge when the world is telling you, you should be OK, everything should be great. But you do not feel that way. There is a disconnect between your internal experience and your external environment. And that causes a lot of difficulty for many people.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It's the same difficulty that my cancer patients had when they given a clean bill of health. I should be doing this. I should be doing this. I should be feeling this way. And yet you don't. And then that creates all sorts of blame and guilt and shame.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
The first step always when you're going through a difficult experience is to normalize and validate that difficult experience. Understand that if you are feeling this way, you are not alone. It is not your fault. It is your brain and biology doing exactly what they should be doing. Your brain and body are not broken. There's nothing wrong with you.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
There is so much more right with you than wrong with you. That's what Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of my meditation teachers, has always said. It's very easy to start that self-critic, right? Like it's so easy for you to say to yourself, oh, something must be wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with you. This is the biology of stress and you are seeing the manifestations of that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So the first step is understanding that. The second is to have a sense of self-compassion. We know that self-compassion is not a soft metric. In fact, it changes your brain. Self-compassion works directly on your amygdala. The amygdala, that small almond-shaped structure that you and I have talked about. How does self-compassion work on the amygdala?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
When you are feeling a sense of stress or anxiety or these uncomfortable feelings, the volume of your amygdala is turned up, right? It's your self-preservation response. And so the goal is about dialing down the volume of your amygdala. The reason self-compassion works on your amygdala to dial down the volume is because it changes your neural circuitry. It helps you get out of your own way.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
When you're feeling a sense of stress and this feeling of the dam breaking, you can't get out of your own way. Like we talked about, anticipation, thinking about the future, that's your prefrontal cortex. You have to get there. But if you're stuck in amygdala mode, you biologically cannot get there. So the first step, normalize and validate this difficult experience. Next, start small.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
You have to also be authentic in this journey and discovery. So when someone says to you, oh, it's mind over matter, just think about something that you can do a year from now or six months from now. You are biologically inept and incapable in that moment to living in amygdala mode to use that prefrontal cortex to think about what you are going to achieve six months from now or a year from now.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It's not mind over matter.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Is that right? Yes. It's a telltale sign of being psychologically depleted. And so, again, it's also normal, Mel, to berate yourself and say, I should be doing more. I need to be doing more. Again, that's your amygdala speaking. That's your inner critic speaking. Instead, take your foot off the gas and focus on two things.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Even if you can only focus on one thing, say, I'm going to look forward to getting my cup of coffee this afternoon.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So there are many things that you can do that are immediate, free and science-backed. So for example, if you are feeling like this, prioritize your sleep. Think about sleep as a therapeutic intervention and don't power through and stay up till midnight. Go to bed at 9 p.m. for one week and see how that makes you feel. We know the golden hour of sleep is from 10 to 11.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So if you, you know, as close to the 10 o'clock bedtime as you can get. Next, think about doing something, even if it's five minutes every day to move your body. Get out of your head, get into your body. We know that's what's good for your body is good for your brain and vice versa. So it's truly about blood flow and getting good blood to the brain. And so think about that.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
If you would like, consider doing some journaling. So a gratitude practice. five things you're grateful for every day and why. You can connect with friends or community. There are so many small, tangible ways that you can get out of this mode. But even if that feels too much for you, what you can simply do is say, I'm gonna look forward to my cup of coffee this afternoon.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And then maybe you'll be like, oh yes, I feel better. Oh, I'm gonna take a walk around my block tomorrow. What is that walk around the block doing for you? Is it doing anything for your body in terms of fitness? No, this is about mental fitness. But what it's doing for you is that it's creating a sense of agency.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
When you feel a sense of agency, and what agency means is, I have the power to make a difference in my life. You, Mel, you are the poster child of human agency.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It's like we have... There's two types of energy. There's potential energy and kinetic energy. And Newtonian physics. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It is just changing to a different form. And so when you have that... When you're stewing in your own stuff... And you can't get out of your own way. There's a lot of potential energy there.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It feels like you're wading through molasses, but there is a lot of potential energy there. And when you take that first step, that's the science of action. When you take that first step, it doesn't have to be a big step. It can be getting outside, lacing up your sneakers, going outside, feel the sun on your face, taking a deep breath of fresh air. Take a little walk if you can. Anything. Anything.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
a small step, you are transferring that potential energy to kinetic energy. And kinetic energy is energy in motion. Over time, when you feel that sense of, oh, I did this, maybe I'll do it tomorrow. And when you feel that sense of completion from a small act, like walking around the block or making yourself a cup of coffee or anything else,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
small, you want to have that feeling again and again and again. And then you build up on it.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It'll take you eight weeks. Eight weeks? It takes eight weeks. Can I feel better on the first day? It takes eight weeks to build a habit in the brain. falling off and just starting again, it's part of habit formation. So it takes eight weeks for you to just get into a habit of daily walking. But... you're asking the question, how long does this take?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
You'll feel better by the end of your walk because it's that immediate sense of agency that you have, which makes you want to do it again the next day and the next day and the next day, which is why when you're starting something new, it's important to do it every day rather than once in a while because you avoid decision fatigue. Making a decision is taxing on your brain.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So that's why something like going to a gym and when you're feeling horrible, saying, oh, I'm going to exercise and I'm going to work out for an hour, you know, three times a week. That's why it doesn't work. I want to share a real world example. I have a friend who's going through a job crisis right now. She's potentially going to leave her job. And so we were having a conversation recently.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And she said to me, trying to put in all of these things and trying to do it, but I'm just so stressed out. And my response to her was, forget it. Just focus on sleep because she was in crisis mode. And I said, just focus on your sleep, focus on laughter, community, and that's it. You can get to the other things later.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And so she had this big sigh of relief, like, oh, even Aditi is telling me that I don't have to do everything all at once.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Because when you are in that mode, you need to just almost parent yourself and really think about what are you going to do to lean into that idea of self-compassion and really nurture yourself so that you can feel stronger to then do all of those big things that you have planned.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
But when you start off thinking or when other people tell you, oh, you're feeling stressed, you know, join a marathon or do this or that, it feels so inauthentic. And so you don't do anything. It's that all or nothing fallacy. It's like, oh, I have to do all of it or none of it. No, you can do a little bit at a time and you can fan that flame of empowerment.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Loneliness is actually one of my favorite topics to talk about. How come? I just find it fascinating. Just like stress and burnout, I love discussing these topics because I like to... demystify things that people feel like it's only happening to me. See, I have this unique vantage point, right? Because I've been a clinician and seeing patients, and then I've also been giving talks.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So I see that perspective of what people tell me when the door closes. And I wish more people knew. So let me share the data with you. Loneliness is a global epidemic. Data shows that globally, 330 million people go two weeks without speaking to a friend or a family member. Two weeks? Two weeks.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
The Surgeon General, who, by the way, Vivek Murthy is my friend from college, and now he is the Surgeon General. Look at that, right? The Surgeon General has said that loneliness is an urgent public health crisis. He wrote a book about it. When you look at the statistics for loneliness, it is so eye-opening. In the U.S., 50% of adults experience loneliness.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Amongst Gen Z, that number is even higher. So from 18 to 25, that number is even higher, 78%.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
I love that. I will also say, Mel, that when you're talking about something like loneliness, the first step, like we talked about earlier, right? Normalize and validate. So when you share data, it is meant to shock in terms of like, wow, I can't believe that this is what's happening. Maybe I'm not alone then.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And so the data, yes, it is jarring and striking, but it should hopefully, if you're listening, make you feel like, wow, 50% of adults, 78% of Gen Z. In the latest report by the Surgeon General on parental stress and mental health, 65% of parents feel lonely and 77% of single parents experience loneliness. So it's everywhere. The difference, I love your question.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
What is the difference between feeling alone and being lonely? Alone is a physical state. So you can be alone and feel fine. Loneliness is an emotional experience. So when you think of yourself like Sawyer just traveled alone through Asia. I have also in my single days traveled alone. Didn't feel lonely. It's a physical state of being. You're alone.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Feeling lonely is an emotional experience and you can be lonely in a crowd of people. So it's less about interfacing, you know, who's around you and rather what's happening internally.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
The fascinating thing about loneliness, and this is why I was saying I love talking about it, is because when you think about loneliness, most people, you'll say it's a mental health thing, right? We know that it increases your risk of anxiety or depression, insomnia. But loneliness doesn't just have mental health manifestations. It also has physical health manifestations.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
In one study, the risk of death of loneliness was equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Yes, it increases your risk of heart disease by 30% and your risk of stroke by 30%. it can shorten your lifespan, particularly if you feel a sense of loneliness in older age. So loneliness is not something that's just about mental health. It has physical health ramifications.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It's this nod. It's a feeling that like nausea.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
The research points to a really interesting discovery about loneliness and finding your way out of loneliness. So whether you're a parent who has, you know, I'm a parent and I very much understand having low bandwidth, not enough time, energy, and then you're, it's difficult to form relationships when you don't have much to give, right? Yep. Very much something that many parents can relate to.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Or if you're a Gen Z and you're studying, I mean, no one has enough time. And so what can you do? You can lean into the science of casual conversation. In one study, one of my favorite studies, a group of people were given two clickers. One clicker. It was a study that lasted six days. One clicker was for every interaction you had with a close contact. In the study, they called this strong ties.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So family member, dear friend, someone you're really connected to. When you think about loneliness, when you say, what is the antidote to loneliness? It's community. So you think, oh, I'm going to just lean into community or rather that's the advice that you're given. Spend more time with friends and family.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
But your story, and I've had very similar experiences, sometimes you just don't have that bandwidth to give. And so this study, one clicker was for strong ties. The other clicker was for something called weak ties, casual conversations for parents, for example, at the playground.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
your barista, when you're dry cleaning, when you're bagging your groceries at the grocery store, just people that you meet along the way. Former science may have said, oh, these sorts of interactions aren't very important for loneliness. You need deep, meaningful conversations.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
But this study and another I'll share in a second really turned this notion on its head because the study found that people who had lots of the clicker going off with weak ties, so casual conversations throughout the day, had a decreased sense of loneliness, a greater sense of happiness and well-being. So the researchers concluded that it's not about these strong ties.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Of course, it's important to have deep, meaningful, connected relationships. But equally so, you want to have these engagements with weak ties, casual conversations that don't require a lot of bandwidth. And so that's good news for someone who's feeling lonely or withdrawn and doesn't have a lot to give when they're running on fumes. When you're at the
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
grocery store, have a short, brief conversation with someone in the aisle. Or when you're bagging your groceries, you're picking up your dry cleaning, have a chat with someone there. It can be very perfunctory and terse, but it will increase your sense of community because you will feel engaged in your surroundings. Another study did something similar, looked across eight countries.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It was a study done by the Harvard Business Review. And I found similar things that when there's a mix of social interactions with strong ties and weak ties. So, of course, conversations with weak ties, it increases your sense of well-being, happiness and connection. And so really, you're getting at connection through the back door in this situation.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Because when you hear about loneliness, you know the antidote is connection, community, fostering these things. But when you are experiencing that sense of loneliness that you and I have talked about, that gnawing sensation, you feel isolated, you feel alone. And also, I just want to mention the paradox of stress. When you are feeling a sense of stress, you feel isolated.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And yet you look around and everyone is feeling that too, based on the data, right? 21 people in a room of 30 are experiencing these things, and yet they feel alone in their experience. So we are experiencing all of these things, but we don't talk about it for lots of reasons. Blaming ourselves. We feel a sense of shame and guilt. And so conversation is really the antidote.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And we also know based on the data that one of your prior guests, Bob Waldinger, one of my colleagues from Harvard is the head of a study that has been running for 75 long years, the longest running study on happiness and found that of anything else, not money, not your wild travel stories, of all these things that people think are gonna make you happy, the quality of human relationships is the greatest predictor of your happiness.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And you don't meet a best friend overnight, right? Like you chat with your barista, you chat with someone at the grocery store, dry cleaning, the drugstore. And over time, it's one awkward hello after another, after another, until you kind of fall into friendships and relationships that one day could be part of this study. One of the greatest relationships of your life.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So the Surgeon General snapshot paints a bleak picture. It shows that parents are struggling and quite badly. In this snapshot of data, 50% of parents, almost 50% of parents say that they are overwhelmed with stress on most days. 65% of parents are lonely. 77% of single parents are lonely. And we know that from prior data, 75% of parents have parenting burnout.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And I think that based on all of this data, my hunch is actually that this data, as shocking as it may seem, is actually underreported for all of the reasons you and I have talked about. Feeling a sense of guilt or shame, feeling like, oh, I can do it all. I'm not stressed. This is just what parenting is. And so people aren't coming forward and actually sharing that, yes, in fact, I am stressed.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
I'm surprised that it's only 50 percent of parents because I'm a parent and I know all of the science and I'm still stressed simply because we need a cultural shift. When we're talking about parenting stress, of course, we need a cultural shift. We need better policies, child care, parental leave, all of these things.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And while people are working on that, we also need a cognitive shift within ourselves to think about parenting. And the Surgeon General says it beautifully, parenting is sacred work. And another phrase which I loved in his report was that, simply put, caregivers need care too. And so my solutions are more on the individual basis while the cultural shift is happening.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
There's more conversation about childcare and parental leave than ever. But what can we do while these policies are being worked out? We can think about what we can do in our own lives. And we lead with parenting ourselves. We are so good as parents on setting boundaries and limits for our children when it comes to bedtime or screen time or what they eat or how much they socialize.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
We are fantastic with creating all sorts of guidelines for our children. And yet we don't do that for ourselves. We tell our kids to go to bed at eight o'clock or seven o'clock because they need a good night's rest. Their brain and their body needs to develop. Yes, an adult's brain is not developing in the same way as a child's. But due to this concept of neuroplasticity,
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It's this idea that your brain, it's not a grab bag. It's not like, oh, the brain I have at birth is a brain I've had for life. It is constantly evolving and changing based on external stimuli. So when you do prioritize your sleep or connection or do movement, or when you do all of these things, which might bring an eye roll from parents, you are actively changing your brain.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And so the science of action is important, yes, for that sense of agency, like we talked about, for parents as well, but also because it actively changes your brain so that you can manage the stressors better. The fascinating thing about parental stress in this particular study was that there are many types of stress and they change based on the lifespan of the child. Wait, lifespan or age?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
The age of the child.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
The lifespan, meaning depending on the age of the child, you have different stressors, of course, right? You've gone through the parenting journey from birth to now all of your children are in their 20s. I don't know. I know your daughters are in your 20s.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
No, I love that framing, but no.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Because you, again... it is very easy to say, okay, this is just how it's going to be. I'm going to be stressed out of my mind for the next 18, 25, 30 years, right? Like they say, you have 18 summers with your children. I've seen all of those social media, the funny videos of, you know, people being 45 and dancing saying, oh, my parents are on the 45th summer. And it's really cute. But
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Of course, we know that parenting and raising a child takes hard work. And of course, it is stressful. But we need to parent ourselves because you can only pour from a cup that is full. And if you don't feel a sense of well-being and health, this is not just about the parent and mental health for the parent. Research shows that it impacts future generations.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So in one study, parental stress and mental health, poor parental mental health, impacts the child because children of caregivers with poor mental health had a four times greater likelihood of having poor general health themselves.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
I would say once again, because we mentioned this prior, but we didn't talk about it specifically for parenting. You know that when you are going through a period of stress, your amygdala is on and that inner critic has a megaphone. And when you are parenting, that experience is amplified because of societal messaging, familial messaging, and messaging that you are internally creating.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And so that inner critic, that megaphone, sometimes you have a megaphone in each hand when it comes to parenting. So first, understand that you are doing so much better than you think you are as a parent. And like we talked about, self-compassion, being gentle on yourself. If you mess up, you know, we know that in the parenting research, repair is really important.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And so, of course, no one is going to be a perfect parent 24-7. That's humanly impossible. But understanding that you have to turn inwards and give yourself the same care, attention, compassion, and parent yourself through the journey is really important.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It is such an honor and privilege always to join you, Mel. Thank you for having me. It has been, again, the joy of a lifetime.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Because you are the ultimate in parasocial relationships.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
It means when you feel a sense of connection with someone, but you have no idea, you've never met them. And you are the ultimate for me in parasocial relationships. And I don't know, 15 other, 15 million people.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
I mean, to get a chance to be on the Mel Robbins podcast once is incredible and being here again today. It's beyond my wildest dreams, hopes, expectations, and aspirations.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
I mean, couldn't have said it better myself. Truly, that's exactly right. And a recent study found that, yes, like you said, 70% of people are struggling with stress in the US. A study in the UK found that over 90% of people are experiencing burnout. So just think about that. If you are feeling a sense of stress or burnout, you are not alone. It is not your fault. Just look at the data.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Anywhere you are, when you are in a room of 30 people and you think, oh, I'm probably the only one who's feeling this way, the data says otherwise.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So the first thing that we're going to talk about is this idea of horizonlessness. It is a term coined by journalist Kayana Mogadam. I first heard about it during the pandemic when writer Nina St. Pierre interviewed me for an Elle magazine feature on horizonlessness and this uptick of people who are feeling like they don't really have many options and they're not very excited for the future.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So when they think about their own future, they draw a blank. And that is very problematic because in the science, we know that when you anticipate a future that is potentially hopeful, it is beneficial for your brain. It is also beneficial for stress, mental health, and wellbeing overall.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
In one study, they looked at brain scans, so MRIs of people who were anticipating a future and found that that sense of anticipation acts on an area called the median prefrontal cortex, and it's correlated with well-being. And now when you ask around and say, what are you looking forward to?
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
You know, back in maybe 2018, you may have said, oh, I'm looking forward to getting married or having a child. I'm looking forward to graduation or getting this new job, maybe buying a car, taking this trip or... setting up a garden. I mean, there's so many things that people used to look forward to. And now it's like, we just draw a blank.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
I felt that certainly that sense of horizonlessness you probably have as well, because it is how our brains are working right now. It's really a telltale sign of this post COVID era and this new mindset that we're in. How common of an experience is this? You know, we don't have enough data in terms of studies to look at what is horizonlessness. How do you define it? And we do need more research.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
But the reason that many of us are feeling the sense of this blank sensation when we think about or anticipate the future is because your brain is built like a dam. So under normal circumstances, let's say you're going through an acute stress.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
You shore up your internal reserves and you keep it together at all costs. So let's think back to 2020 when we were all in lockdown and we were told, okay, you're going to be in lockdown for three weeks, four weeks tops, right? You remember that messaging. And so you kept it together.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
Yeah, the wall is up. So I've noticed this many times when I was seeing patients, my patients who had a cancer diagnosis. They would get a diagnosis of cancer and they would come to see me concurrently while they were seeing their oncologist, their radiation specialist, and lots of other people. And they wouldn't shed a tear. Their doctors would refer them to me.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And I would say, you know, are you feeling a sense of stress? Are you feeling a sense of burnout? Do you want to talk about anything? No, I'm fine. I'm good. I can handle it. I'm managing a sense of stoicism.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
They got that clean bill of health. Congratulations, you're cancer free. See you in six months for surveillance. They were in my office the next day crying, saying I should be having a party. I should be celebrating. Why do I feel like this right now? And the reason you feel like that is because when you are going through a period of acute stress, you keep it together.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
You hold it together, all of those emotions, those difficult feelings, you keep them pent up. When you feel psychologically safe, let's say you get a diagnosis that congratulations, your cancer is cured, or you move through an acute stress and you come out the other end and you feel that sense of psychological safety, which is what many of us are feeling now, by the way.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
So we're feeling a sense of both. So for example, let's continue with the example of this, a patient who has cancer and is given that clean bill of health. Okay. You come into my office and the dam breaks. You're psychologically safe. And so you allow that opening and release. And it's often a deluge. And the only way around is through.
The Mel Robbins Podcast
If You Struggle With Stress & Anxiety, This Will Change Your Life
And so when I say psychological safety, yes, you are feeling psychologically safe enough to allow those true emotions to emerge. The dam has broken. Now, for many of us right now, we have lived through that pandemic era. We have come out the other side and we are squarely in the post-pandemic era. And so the sense of horizonlessness that you feel is associated with that dam breaking.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Resilience and stress go hand in hand. When you think about what is resilience, the scientific definition is that it's your innate biological ability. So we all have it. And it's that ability that you have to adapt, recover and grow when life throws you a curve ball or you have a challenge. Now, resilience doesn't function in a vacuum.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
You need a little bit of stress, that healthy, positive stress for resilience to show itself. What happens though, is that that word resilience, you and I hear it and others who are listening to this conversation may hear the word and have a visceral response because it's gotten a really bad rap over the past several years.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
The word resilience is a positive connotation, but it feels very negative when you hear it. And the reason it feels negative now, you're like, oh, don't tell me to be resilient. It's because that definition has changed and morphed societally. We've moved away from true resilience towards toxic resilience. And so what is true resilience?
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
True resilience, it's like, like I said, it's your innate biology. We all have that ability to be resilient. It honors boundaries. It honors your human limitations for rest and recovery. And it really focuses on self-compassion and leaning into that versus toxic resilience. Toxic resilience is when you and I hear the word resilience, immediately you cringe. That's toxic resilience.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
It's a mind over matter mindset. It's productivity at all costs. It's like all systems go all the time. It's the energizer bunny here in the US, you know, just keep going. In the UK, keep calm and carry on. Every single society has some concept of toxic resilience because it's a manifestation of hustle culture.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And so I hope that the entrepreneurs listening, what they take away from our conversation is that you can be resilient and you can still get burnt out. That's called the resilience myth that, people think, oh, I can't be burned out. I'm so resilient.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
Those two things, because what you're likely living through is this idea of toxic resilience, because we've been taught from a really young age that resilience is about tolerating a lot of discomfort, but that's not actually true resilience.
Young and Profiting (YAP) with Hala Taha
How to Stay Motivated and Avoid Burnout as a Content Creator | Presented by OpusClip | YAPCreator
And so I want to dismantle that idea of resilience as being toxic and rather lean into your true resilience, which really honors your need for rest and recovery. Because then that is how your brain, you know, newsflash that your brain really needs rest and recovery to be productive and to really be functioning at its optimal level.