What’s The Worst That Could Happen?

When we talk about the five lifestyle factors that make the biggest difference to health, stress management would be a worthy addition as number six. We haven’t focused explicitly on that for a while, so let’s get ready to start the New Year on a good footing…

You’re not going to have a stress-free 2024

What a tender world that would be! Hopefully your stressors will be small and manageable, but rest assured, things will stress you.

And that’s key: “rest assured”. Know it now, prepare for it, and build resilience.

Sounds grim, doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to be, though.

When the forecast weather is cold and wet, you’re not afraid of it when you have a warm dry house. When the heating bill comes for that warm dry house, you’re not afraid of it when you have money to pay it. If you didn’t have the money and the warm dry house, the cold wet weather could be devastating to you.

The lesson here is: we can generally handle what we’re prepared for.

Negative visualization and the PNS

This is the opposite of what a lot of “think and grow rich”-style gurus would advise. And indeed, it’s not helpful to slide into anxious worrying.

If you do find yourself spiralling, here’s a tool for getting out of that spiral:

RAIN: an intervention for dealing with difficult emotions

For now, however, we’re going to practice Radical Acceptance.

First, some biology: you may be aware that your Central Nervous System (CNS) branches into the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS).

The PNS is the part that cues our body to relax, and suppresses our fight/flight response. We’re going to activate it.

Activating the PNS is easy for most people in comfortable circumstances (e.g., you are not currently exposed to stressful stimuli). It may well be activated already, and if it’s not, a few deep breaths is usually all it takes.

If you’d like a quick and easy Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) technique, here you go:

No-Frills, Evidence-Based Mindfulness

Activating the PNS is hard for most people in difficult circumstances (e.g., you either are currently exposed to stressful stimuli, or you are in one of the emotional spirals we discussed earlier).

However, we can trick our bodies and brains by—when we are safe and unstressed—practicing imagining those stressful stimuli. Taking a moment to not just imagine it experientially, but immersively. This, in CBT and DBT, is the modern equivalent to the old samurai who simply accepted, before battle, that they were already dead—and thus went into battle with zero fear of death.

A less drastic example is the zen master who had a favorite teacup, and feared it would get broken. So he would tell himself “the cup is already broken”. One day, it actually broke, and he simply smiled ruefully and said “Of course”.

How this ties together: practice the mindfulness-based stress reduction we linked above, while imagining the things that do/would stress you the most.

Since it’s just imagination, this is a little easier than when the thing is actually happening. Practicing this way means that when and if the thing actually happens (an unfortunate diagnosis, a financial reversal, whatever it may be), our CNS is already well-trained to respond to stress with a dose of PNS-induced calm.

You can also leverage hormesis, a beneficial aspect of (in this case, optional and chosen by you) acute stress:

Dr. Elissa Epel | The Stress Prescription

Psychological resilience training

This (learned!) ability to respond to stress in an adaptive fashion (without maladaptive coping strategies such as unhelpful behavioral reactivity and/or substance use) is a key part of what in psychology is called resilience:

Psychological resilience: an update on definitions, a critical appraisal, and research recommendations

And yes, the CBT/DBT/MBSR methods we’ve been giving you are the evidence-based gold standard.

Only the best for 10almonds subscribers! 😎

Road to resilience: a systematic review and meta-analysis of resilience training programmes and interventions

❝That was helpful, but not cheery; can we finish the year on a cheerier note?❞

We can indeed:

How To Get Your Brain On A More Positive Track (Without Toxic Positivity)

Take care!

The problem with active listening

Listening is an important skill to keep well-trained at any age. It’s important in romantic relationships, parent-child relationships, friendships, and more.

First, for any unfamiliar or hazy-of-memory: active listening is the practice of listening, actively. The “active” side of this comes in several parts:

1. Asking helpful questions
2. Giving feedback to indicate that the answer has been understood
3. Prompting further information-giving

This can look like:

• A: How did you feel when that happened?
• B: My heart was racing and I felt panicked, it really shocked me
• A: It really shocked you?
• B: Yes, because it was so unexpected; I’d never imagined something like this happening
• A: You’d never expect something like that
• B: No, I mean, I had no reason to

And… As a superficial listening technique, it’s not terrible, and it has its place

But unfortunately, if it’s one’s only listening technique, one will very quickly start sounding like a Furby—that children’s toy from the 90s that allegedly randomly parroted fragments of things that had been said to it. In fact this was a trick of programming, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.

The point is: the above technique, if used indiscriminately and/or too often, starts to feel like talking to a very basic simulacrum.

Which is the opposite of feeling like being listened to!

A better way to listen

Start off similarly, but better.

Ask open questions, or otherwise invite sharing of information.

People can be resistant to stock phrases like “How did that make you feel?”, but this can be got around by simply changing it up, e.g.:

• “What was your reaction?” ← oblique but often elicits the same information
• “I’m not sure how I’d feel about that, in your shoes” ← not even a question, but shows active attention much better than the “mmhmm” noises of traditional active listening, and again prompts the same information

Express understanding… But better

People have been told “I understand” a lot, and often it’s code for “Stop talking”. So, avoid “I understand”. Instead, try:

• “I can understand that”
• “Understandable”
• “That makes sense”

Ask clarifying questions… Better

Sometimes, a clarifying question doesn’t have to have its own point, beyond prompting more sharing, and sometimes, an “open question” can be truly wide open, meaning that vaguer is better, such as:

• “Oh?”
• “How so?” ← this is the heavy artillery that can open up a lot

Know when to STFU

Something that good therapists (and also military interrogators) know: when to STFU

If someone is talking, don’t interrupt them. If you do, they might not start again, or might skip what they were going to say.

Interruption says “I think you’ve said all that needs to be said there”, or else, if the interruption was to ask one of the above questions, it says “you’re not doing a good enough job of talking”, and neither of those sentiments encourage people to share, nor do they make someone feel listened-to!

Instead, just listen. Passive listening has its place too! When there’s a break, then you can go to one of the above questions/prompts/expressions of understanding, as appropriate.

Judge not, lest they feel judged

Reserve judgement until the conversation is over, at the earliest. If asked for your judgement of some aspect, be as reassuring as you can. People feel listened-to when they don’t feel judged.

If they feel judged, conversely, they can often feel you didn’t listen properly, or else you’d be in agreement with them. So instead, just sit on it for as long as you can.

Note: that goes for positive judgements too! Sit on it. Expressing a positive judgement too soon can seem that you were simply eager to please, and can suggest insincerity.

If this seems simple, that’s because it is. But, try it, and see the difference.