As a society we are currently experiencing unprecedented rates of stress and burnout, and feeling stressed is now more common than not. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the constant pressures of modern life, wondered how to discern between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ stress, or sought strategies to manage stress that actually align with your body’s biology, this episode is for you.
In this conversation with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar she advocates for managing stress while exploring the impact of chronic stress leading to burnout. We discuss practical strategies for managing stress, including creating digital boundaries, protecting sleep, and specific exercises like ‘stop, breathe, be,’ while touching on the importance of incorporating self-compassion and grace. Tune in to discover how to harness healthy stress to propel your life forward, all while maintaining your sanity in the process.
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TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: Yeah it’s a painting.
Monica Packer: That was beautiful. I love the colors.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: Are we going to, when you record this, is there an audio portion as well?
Monica Packer: So I, I use the audio for the podcast and that’s where most people, my, my numbers are highest on the podcast of all, wherever I am online, but I do use some video on YouTube and stuff like that and Instagram. Okay. All right. Well, welcome you to the show. Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, welcome to About Progress.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: Thank you so much for having me, Monica. It’s such a pleasure to be here.
Monica Packer: Well, as you know, I’m a big fan. I feel like I’m your number one stalker. I almost had to tell you, don’t worry. I’m a safe person. I’m not going to stalk you, but I just can’t help it in many ways. I feel like I’ve learned so much from you on something that has been a longstanding struggle, I think for so many of us, but you teach about stress in ways that make me feel both seen and normal, and also give me a way out, which I appreciate more than just take a bubble bath.
Which we’re all sick of, just the
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: of that
Monica Packer: bath advice. Well,
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: that means so much to me. Thank you.
Monica Packer: I’m so glad to hear that. And let’s start though, with you doing what you do so well. You, you, you talk straight and I want you to give it to a straight about stress in general, just why, why is stress bad and is it even bad? And how do we know if we are perpetually stressed?
Because actually this is one of the funny things. I think a lot of us don’t think we are, but we are, we just think it’s normal.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: So currently, right now, if you took a snapshot of the world and looked at the numbers of stress and burnout, we have unprecedented rates of both.
Across industry, seven out of 10 people have had at least one feature of stress and burnout. And approximately 50 to 70 percent across industries are feeling a sense of stress and burnout.
So if you are feeling this way, you are not alone. It is not your fault.
These numbers show that in a room of 30 people, 21 people are struggling with stress and burnout. So this is no longer the exception. It’s the rule. And the other really important thing to recognize is when you and I and everyone else, when we talk about stress, right?
Like you may say, Oh, I’m so stressed. Or I might say, It’s been a really stressful week. What does that actually mean? In fact, what we’re talking about scientifically is maladaptive stress, or the unhealthy, bad kind of stress. But in fact, there are two kinds of stress, and not all stress is created equal. We have healthy, good, positive stress. In scientific terms, adaptive stress and maladaptive or unhealthy stress. This stress is dysfunctional, unproductive, can cause all sorts of mental health and physical health manifestations. And so the goal of life is not to live a life with zero stress. It is to live a life with zero stress.
Impossible and biologically implausible to do that because healthy stress moves your life forward, you know, rooting for your favorite sports team, getting a new job or a promotion, the
birth of a child, planning a vacation, meeting your new best friend. All of these are versions of healthy, positive stress that help move your life forward. The goal is not to live a life with zero stress. It is to live a life with healthy, manageable stress, and to reset our stress away from these unhealthy maladaptive levels back to the healthy levels. So it can help us rather than harm us.
Monica Packer: How do we know if we’re stuck in the maladaptive version of that?
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: So right now, when you’re talking about stress and a version of stress, chronic stress is burnout. We can talk about the difference. Typically what you want to think about is, are you different from your baseline? And for many people, that baseline or where you started. You might not even remember because chances are,
I would say for most of your listeners today, for most of the people listening today, both you and I and everyone else, we are stressed because of the numbers and particularly because the past four to five years. I won’t talk about the, you know, the P word pandemic, but in 2020, we all suffered very greatly, both at the individual level and global level, it was a collective and individual trauma, so to speak, and when your brain and body were designed, you know, so Our brains and our bodies are expertly designed to handle short bursts of acute stress. But when that becomes a chronic ongoing issue, that’s when problems can arise. So during the pandemic, we shored up our internal reserves, kept it together at all costs. We thought it was going to be a two to maybe four week thing of being Quarantined, right? Like
stuck at home. And instead it was a shifting finish line.
And so we went from a pandemic sprint to a marathon. It was a cognitive leap that we weren’t prepared to make and certainly not trained for. And over time, that goalpost has just continued to shift. The onslaughts of On us over the past four to five years have been relentless. Your brain and your body can handle short bursts of stress, but not when it’s ongoing like this.
We’ve undergone, of course, the pandemic. Then we had a racial reckoning here in the U. S. Then climate disasters, multiple climate disasters. Now around the world, there’s humanitarian crises. There’s an upcoming election. That cycle of bad news just isn’t stopping. Doesn’t end and that unfortunately has an impact on your brain and your body and can lead to stress So if you are feeling, you know, the mental manifestations of stress are vast you could have anxiety or depression lethargy fatigue Or anxiousness and feeling that sense of hyper vigilance and quick to anger. There are a million flavors of stress. Physically. Some people have no mental manifestations of stress or burnout, and instead might develop physical symptoms like worsening headaches or neck pain, shoulder pain. back pain, abdominal discomfort,
dizziness, nausea. So the list is vast and it is very much a person to person situation.
The key, if you’re trying to figure out, am I feeling stressed? Do I have these negative Impacts of stress. Think about how you were maybe in 2017 or 2016 and think about how you are now. Chances are, for most of us, you have that baseline underlying stress simply because you are living in a As a informed citizen in the times,
Monica Packer: Yeah. I joke that there is a pre and post pandemic face that I experienced just due to the stress. And that happens. We all go through those seasonal shifts of, of there being more stress than we typically are dealing with in ways that are chronic. You mentioned how burnout is a different version of that.
Can you tell us what burnout is and how that’s different than just a typical stress load?
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: so when you are, you know, your brain under normal circumstances, you function in resilient mode and that’s led by a part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex. If you put your hand over your forehead, it’s the area right behind your forehead. That area governs things like memory, planning, organization, forward strategic thinking in layman’s terms, adulting, right?
It’s called general executive functions. It’s adulting. Now, under stress, your brain is governed by a different region called the amygdala. And this is a small almond shaped structure deep in your brain. And it is cave person mode. Its sole purpose is survival and self preservation. We can function for short periods of time in cave person mode.
Like I said, your brain and your body is interconnected. expertly adaptive to handle these short bursts of stress. But when that cave person mode becomes chronic,
that is when burnout sets in. So you don’t have that rise in your stress response in your body governed by your amygdala and then back to a baseline comfort level.
And then again, you know, you think about like the waves of an
ocean, it’s like a peak in a valley and a peak in a Now that baseline or where we We have that peak, but we never really get back to where it once was. It’s just the next peak and the next peak and the next peak. So those onslaughts, that cycle of trauma, unrest, and all of these things that are happening, both in our individual lives, because things happen to us, but also externally out there in the world, shape our stress response. But over time with these constant onslaughts, it can lead to burnout. And so the real question is, how do you reverse burnout? Because both stress and burnout, the good news is that they are fully reversible. So that’s
the good news. It’s not all doom and gloom. But the real question is, how can you do this?
How can you reverse your stress and burnout? In the middle of a messy, overscheduled, overburdened and complicated life. We can’t all just jet off for six months or a year to Bali for a surf holiday. I mean, sign me up for that plan,
but we
Monica Packer: I don’t even surf. I do that.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: just hang out on the beach. But you know, the real, the reality of life is that we have.
Constraints. We have obligations,
family constraints, financial constraints, time constraints, that that is not feasible and ultimately you come back from that wonderful six month vacation and everything is, you know,
not has the same. It hasn’t been addressed. So really, it’s about resetting your stress in the here and now in the messy middle of your life, really thinking very much about how you can work with your biology of stress.
to rewire your brain and your body for less stress and more resilience in the midst of this cycle that is just ongoing.
Monica Packer: It’s fascinating that the effects of stress are so biological and how they come from a, you know, a good place to, of, of us trying to survive and to function well in the world, but it can just come to a place of not functioning well. And this is where I kind of get a chicken and the egg question with stress.
And I think in large part, it connects to something I track both in myself and my friends and women I work with, where we downplay that we get to deserve to feel stressed. You know, when we’re, we’re talking about the news and all that’s going on there and we just think, well, I’m not there. I’m not dealing with that.
So I don’t get to feel stressed or I don’t feel stressed. My body’s just, I just have ulcers all the time, or I’m just, I’m just snappy with my kids a lot. So that’s not stress. It’s just me. It’s me. It’s my fault. Something is wrong with me. Um, and so the question here is when stress has such a biological effect, And we tend to downplay our own reasonings for it.
This is when I kind of feel like, is it real? You know, is it in our minds? Is it, is it, uh, circumstance driven? And I know that’s a really confusing question, but I think that is the point here is it can be confusing when we’re trying to piece this out and figure out how we’re feeling stress and why we’re feeling stress.
So is stress real and how is it existing for a lot of people?
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: Stress is very real and we hear these sorts of messages all the time. It’s all, it’s just in your head. It’s mind over matter. Come
on, toughen up. You can do it. And that’s all a manifestation of toxic resilience. So I’ve used that
word resilience throughout our conversation, and you may have heard it yourself.
There’s lots of messaging around resilience. Oh, you can handle it. Just take on a little more. You’re resilient. You’re not living in a war zone. You’re, you know, you have food on the table, you’re
resilient. And so the first thing I will say is when you are consuming graphic images of content happening around the world, you know, whatever it may be, climate disasters, humanitarian crises, you are in fact at risk for developing PTSD without ever having. been in those environments just
by consuming that information. So your stress level does go higher and your, you have an impact on your brain by consuming,
um, graphic images and videos. That’s not to say it’s important to be an informed citizen, but not at the expense of your mental health. And the second thing I would say is. We have been inundated from our childhood with messages of toxic resilience and
what is resilience? So in scientific terms, the true definition of resilience is your innate biological ability to adapt, recover, and grow in the face of life’s challenges. Now that is true resilience. True resilience honors your human limitations and boundaries.
It understands your, your, Need for rest and recovery only then can be, can you be truly resilient? Toxic resilience. However, that word resilience has really morphed over the past several years. I hear that word now when I cringe and I
have a visceral response. You likely do too, because it’s this idea of toxic resilience.
It’s not even the true word of what resilience is. Toxic resilience is mind over matter productivity at all costs.
Just keep going. You don’t need rest. You don’t need recovery. It’s like the energizer bunny mentality. It just keeps going and keeps going and keeps going without a rest and that’s a manifestation of hustle culture It’s not even the word, you know, it’s not even true resilience So we have been fed this idea of toxic resilience ever since we were children We were told at a very young age that we must endure high levels of discomfort
and only that is truly resilient. I would argue that the biological need for rest and recovery is not just a nice to have and luxury. In fact, it changes your brain and is very protective. It is
a need and not a want. And so when you hear things like, Oh, stress is just in your head, just toughen up. It’s a mind over matter issue. Yes, stress is in your head because it does impact your brain and your body, but not in the way that you think so.
And certainly not with that messaging. So I have a lot of, you know, that messaging is very problematic. And so if you are feeling a sense of stress and stress can show up in lots of different ways, like we talked about, it is real. If you are
having that experience of stress and you are not feeling the Good. That’s real and you have to take it seriously. And yes, you could compare yourself to, well, someone in this other place or in this other country or this other family or household is dealing with so much more. Yes, of course, people are managing lots of varying degrees of difficulty, but that doesn’t take away from your lived experience of feeling a lot of stress.
Monica Packer: So this is already soothing me in many ways. It’s also clarifying things for me too, because yeah, like I said, that it’s so easy to feel like you have to hit a certain threshold of things happening in your circumstances to count as being stressed, or even things with your body, or even your mind, if you’re having mental health struggles that are stress connected.
And also that you have to have the certain threshold of resilience, like you said, that is really the mind over matter bent, which a lot of us can access. You know, especially when our brains have been trained. So while it does start, you know, we may experience in our minds, it is biological. Like it’s changed us biologically.
And that to me is so fascinating. And, but you talked about earlier how this can be reversed. Uh, let’s go into the hope now. Let’s, let’s move into what we can do about this. How do we reverse the effects of stress by, by I think better managing it with that true resilience you brought up. That seems to be the biggest factor is building true resilience, but in ways that we’re resetting our stress in ways that are, are helping the full picture.
Sure.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: that if you are feeling worse now than you were in 2020, you are not alone. We are seeing an uptick in mental health conditions and stress and burnout now. And the reason is because your brain is built like a dam under periods of acute or chronic stress. For example, in 2020, 2021, you short up your internal reserves.
And you really kept it together at all costs. Most likely, of course, people suffered, but chances are you really held it together. And I’ve seen this with my cancer patients. You know, they get a diagnosis of cancer and they go through their cancer chemotherapy, irradiation, et cetera. They come to see me and they’ve held it together. They get that first clean bill of health at the end of their treatment. They’re in my office the next day, weeping, saying, I should be celebrating. How come I don’t feel this way? And it’s that moment in time right now where we’ve come out of a very difficult time. And now it’s supposed to be a celebration.
Like, oh, we survived this horrible, terrible thing that happened to all of us across the world. And now we should really feel a sense of being, you know, relaxed and without any stress. And in some ways rejoicing for what we’ve done. coming out of this difficult time. And that’s not how your brain works.
Your brain is built like a dam. So during an acute episode, whatever’s happening in the world, you shore up, you keep it together. And then when you feel psychologically safe, the dam breaks, your two emotions emerge, and it can be a deluge. So now for many of us, there’s that sense of psychological safety simply because we are. You know, living at a time where we may, uh, feel not acutely threatened. Of course, we’re seeing lots of things in the news and around the world, but perhaps in our own lives and in our own towns and families and communities, whereas back in 2021 and 2020, certainly we did feel that sense of hyper vigilance.
So I would say that if you are feeling bad right now, perhaps worse now than you were before you are not alone. It’s not your fault. And I, like I mentioned, and, Monica, you may want to edit that cancer part into, you know, this part because I kind of started earlier. Um, as I’ve seen with my patients who’ve undergone cancer therapy, that can happen too.
It’s, it’s a very normal healthy process and the only way around is through, it’s called the delayed stress response. It happens to all of us and likely you may be experiencing that now. So how do you get out of that delayed stress response? How do you move through and how can you reset your stress?
Thanks. and your burnout and reverse the process because it is reversible. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a little bit of time. It takes, give yourself eight weeks. It typically takes anywhere from three months to a year to fully reverse from burnout, depending on how bad your burnout has. become, but you will start seeing changes and you can build new habits within eight weeks. And the reason is because it takes about eight weeks for your brain to create a new habit. And when you build a new habit, understand that you falling off the wagon and getting back on and then not doing it and getting back on is part of the process. Of habit formation. It is how your brain rewires itself to build better habits. And so it’s more important to do something every day than once in a while. So there’s a couple of very simple strategies. I talk about this in the five resets, but the first would be to, you know, we can talk about, would you like to talk about the resets and just go
through them quick?
Monica Packer: Yeah. Yeah. Give us an overview. Okay.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: most.
And M O S T is an acronym. It stands for. creating a most goal. So M is motivating, O objective, S small and T timely. Often when we are thinking about having less stress or less burnout or another goal that we may have, you know, um, having more energy or better sleep or better physical fitness or mental fitness. The aspirational elements, so where the destination is and where you are at the moment feels very vast and far, and that’s not very motivating my goal with this book with patients in audiences is to help people close that gap from where you are. To where you need to be, because often it’s not a deficit or a lack of knowledge or information.
We know stress is bad. We know burnout is bad, but it’s about taking those actions. And how do you take an action to get to where you need to go? And so the first is to know your why. And you can create a MOST goal and this first reset can help you. There are three science backed strategies in the book to help you create a MOST goal.
And the reason it’s important is like we talked about when we’re feeling a sense of stress, we are living in that amygdala, cave person mode. We are hypervigilant, focused on survival and self preservation. That part of our brain, the adulting brain that is responsible for strategic thinking, making a plan, moving forward, the prefrontal cortex, that’s not working that great.
Because it’s governed, you know, it’s the, the energy is taken over by the amygdala. And so it’s about shifting gears, moving out of that amygdala mode back into that prefrontal cortex mode. And that first reset can do that for you.
Uh, then
Monica Packer: you get to a place where you feel like not only are you able to sort through why you’re wanting to shift things, but also you’re, you’re making the literal brain shifts that help reset
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: right. That’s right. Cause you’re zooming out. You’re looking at a perspective because when you are feeling a sense of stress, it’s hard to get out of your own way.
Monica Packer: Yes.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: about the times when you’ve been extremely stressed or feeling burned out. It’s very difficult to plan for a week in advance or even two weeks in advance.
Often you’re just living minute to minute, hour to hour, you know, at best day to day.
Monica Packer: Okay.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: You just don’t have that kind of bandwidth and literally you don’t have the bandwidth, you know, we use that expression a lot, I just don’t have the bandwidth, I’m just trying to manage day to day,
but quite literally your brain uses a different part of the brain when you are feeling a sense
of stress, it’s the amygdala versus the prefrontal cortex.
Monica Packer: Okay. So after we’ve had more of that time to kind of try to move up more towards that prefrontal cortex, what else can we do to reset our stress?
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: So once we get that foundational element and a roadmap, then you can start thinking about, you know, creating a little space. So find quiet in your noisy world. And the
two biggest, the two biggest shifts that you want to make when you are trying to find quiet in your noisy world is number one, create digital boundaries. And the second is to protect your sleep.
And those are very tied together because, for example, with digital boundaries, what does that mean? We are engaged with our devices. Mostly from the minute we wake up all the way through to the end of the day and sometimes throughout the night for many people, or some people, let me say. Right when you wake up in the morning, often more than 50 percent of people, the first thing that they do is check their phones. And so that is setting off a whole cascade of chemical reactions in your brain to
continue heightening your stress. So
you may have had a restful sleep or perhaps not very restful sleep.
We’ll talk about sleep in a second and how that. How stress impacts sleep. So my first strategy. Would be to get your phone off your nightstand, invest in a low cost alarm clock instead create a bit of a buffer. So right when you’re waking up, you’re not engaging immediately in headlines and your work email
and all of the activities that you have to do for the day. Give yourself a second stretch, take in the morning light, open up both eyes. Cause often we’re checking these headlines with one eye closed still, maybe visit the bathroom, brush your teeth and then check the news. This is not about becoming a digital monk. In fact, studies have shown that when you are engaging and, you know, it is actually, you know, within limits, abstinence from digital devices is not very helpful for health and well being,
decreasing your reliance.
With your digital devices is actually what’s more helpful. So decreasing your reliance, reconsidering your relationship with your phone, all very important things. We have boundaries with every relationship in our life, our partners, our children, our coworkers, our friends, and yet we have no boundaries, exceedingly porous boundaries when it comes to our relationship with our digital devices.
And so the first reset. Is to create a digital boundary, geographic boundaries, keeping your phone off your nightstand and then during the day, keep it out of, off, out of arm’s reach away from your workstation. And the reason you want to do these sorts of digital boundaries is because that amygdala, when you’re feeling a sense of stress and cave person mode, you are hypervigilant.
Your fight or flight response is on the fight or flight responses, your stress response, and you are scanning for danger. The amygdala, that’s what it does. It. Is all about survival and self preservation. And so what’s our modern day version of scanning for danger? Scrolling.
We scroll and that is what doom scrolling is all
about.
We scroll. We’re looking around. Are we safe? Oh no, this has happened. Oh, I don’t feel safe. Then your hypervigilance kicks in some more. And then you scroll some more and then you scroll some more. So it is a vicious cycle and it’s all powered by the same machinery. That’s what news consumption is powered by the same machinery that powers your fight or flight response, your stress response, the amygdala. And so how can you get that prefrontal cortex to take over again and say, you know what, you are safe and there are many things that we can do to help you feel safe. That is all about digital boundaries. It’s about being intentional with your media consumption. It’s about making things a little more inconvenient,
not too much, just a touch more inconvenient. And so you avoid the primal urge to scroll because it is a primal urge. And instead you can become more intentional and parent yourself. You know, we are so clear with our kids.
I’m a working mother. You are too.
We are so clear with our kids. About screen time and bedtime and all of these things and yet we don’t have any screen times for us We are just you know We can be on screens at all hours of the day and night if we want Of course, the adult brain is not developing in the same way as
a child’s but certainly because of the concept of neuroplasticity It’s still developing which means that neuroplasticity is just a word meaning that your brain Actively changes and in fact studies have shown that it does does change physically and chemically.
It changes based on what you feed it. And so when you create digital boundaries, when you create a little space and spaciousness in your everyday life, this is another way of like, you don’t need to go to Bali. You can try to manage your stress right here and here now by creating this space and time, just a brief moment to help reset your stress and then sleep.
You know, this is so tied. Screens are so tied to sleep,
especially for all for all of us as adults and really aiming to protect your sleep like the vital resource it is, and that first step of taking your phone off your nightstand can help. And there’s lots of other strategies I offer. In that chapter about sleep in the five resets, but really, the tenant, the central tenant of all of this is that your screen time and your sleep are very much tied and really actively working to become more intentional with your digital consumption and media use can help also. Protect your sleep.
Monica Packer: Sounds like a two birds, one stone kind of situation, you know, to one can help the other so drastically. So that’s a good place to start. And if they’re still struggling with it, that’s where I think it’s worth digging into more of the techniques that you, that you offer in your book. So, so Aditi, what I’m kind of thinking is I want to go back to number one a little bit, the first pillar, because I have a couple more follow up questions about that, and I think we’ll just focus on more of those two and then I’ll have you just, Briefly introduce the final three resets as a way to share about your book in the end.
Does that work for you?
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: Works great.
Monica Packer: Okay. So I’m going to put this in with
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do as you wish. Post production is a
Monica Packer: I know. Isn’t it so great. Okay. So when I hear you describing about creating your most goal and how that uses more of a part of your brain that you can’t easily access when you’re feeling stressed, this is where I’m like, but then how do you do that?
Uh, how do you, how do you, how do you move from, from being back here in the amygdala to being up here in the hypothalamus? I always
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: Prefrontal
Monica Packer: Thank you. I was like, it’s not hyper. Thank you. The prefrontal cortex. Um, how do we actually do that? And is the reason more so that you can have a way out?
Are you just trying to be strategic about what’s coming next? Or is there another reason?
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: There are three strategies in this reset that help you move out of that amygdala fighter flight cave person mode and back into that thriving prefrontal cortex mode. And the way you do that is first you create a most goal. And so there’s, you know, step by step we can walk through it. I’ve done this with many of my patients because people come to me when they’ve been struggling with their stress and burnout.
And so my job is to hold up a mirror and help them figure out what is your most goal? What really drives you forward? And this is not an existential exercise, like what is your meaning and purpose in life? It’s simply what do you want to achieve in three months?
So for some people it is very, you know, it’s very basic and simple. Let me rephrase that. For many people, it’s very straightforward. Your most goal. It’s not this existential, vast meaning and purpose exercise. It is simply, what do you want to achieve in three months? So
for some people, some patients of mine have said, I want to have enough energy, physical energy to throw a softball with my granddaughter or. You know, baseball with my son, or people have said, I want to have enough. I want to have decreased pain so I can go on a bike trip through Holland.
I want to have, I want to sleep well enough that I can engage better at work.
Or there’s so many, there’s so many most goals again, it’s very personal, but it’s this, these sorts of exercises help you get to what is that North star for
you. And then once you figure out, okay, this is what I want to do. It’s, I would like to achieve this in three months. Again, your most goal can of course change. And it should change as you continue on your journey towards less stress and more resilience. The goal is that you meet that goal. That most goal. And then you create a new goal for yourself.
So let’s say you have a most goal and then how do you get there? There is a strategy in the book called the backwards plan. And so it’s about moving, thinking about achieving that goal. And what’s the step right before you get to that goal. And then what’s the step right before that step and then that step.
So you are micro, these are micro steps that you’re taking. Let me take, let me not say the micro thing. Um, these are small steps that you are taking to. Get to that most goal. It doesn’t happen overnight. It takes about eight weeks to build a habit, but with time. And when you go through these exercises, as you create these most goals and the steps to get there, then you kind of see your way forward rather than seeing something in the distance, this behemoth that you feel like,
Oh, I’m never going to be able to achieve that.
So why bother trying, right? When you’re
feeling a sense of stress. And so for me, I can give you my personal example
because I became, I became a doctor with an expertise in stress because I was a stress patient looking for answers myself, and I couldn’t find them. And one of the ways that I helped myself is that I wanted to engage in some sort of movement program every day. I had a state of the art gym in my building. I was working 80 hours a week as a medical resident.
And I went down to the basement. I looked at the fancy equipment and the mirrors everywhere and the loud techno music and I walked right out
and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t engage in that sort of behavior.
Again, it felt like a behemoth thing out in the distance, very aspirational, didn’t fit my immediate needs. And certainly when I was in cave person mode, it just didn’t feel good. And so I took a walk around the block. It was one walk around the block
and that felt good. So the next day I added a few more minutes and took a A 10 minute walk around the block and the day after that, a 20 minute walk around the block.
And so over time, I did meet my most goal because I wanted to create some sort of movement program in the middle of my life working 80 hours a week. I was a stressed resident. I was having difficulty sleeping and really just. A very dark and challenging time for me, and that was one of the many interventions that I used for myself, but it didn’t start by going into some state of the art gym and suddenly
getting this motivation to exercise.
It happened in very small bite sized. Steps. And so that is what that first reset helps you do. It helps you get out of your own way, create a roadmap to get to where you’d like to go, and then through backwards planning and a couple of other strategies in that first reset helps you figure out exactly the steps that you need to take.
For me, it was quite literally steps, but for others, it could be another kind of goal, the steps that you need to take to get there.
Monica Packer: What I love so much about that first reset is for those who get stuck in thinking they have to have a giant, like 20 part plan and know all the stress factors and how they’re going to heal everything. It’s, it’s going back to what is. What matters most. And I love that you even just phrasing that question is what, like you said, it can be so straightforward.
I mean, the answer is often just right there. Like, I just want to feel this way in my body. I want to be able to have this experience with the people I love and that’s where they can start. And. Also the trickle down effect that you talked about, how not only you can get to that point step by step, but then once you there, there’s, there’s, there’s another what’s next, what’s most important next.
So that’s such an incredible reset.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: The other thing I want to say, the other thing I want to say, Monica, is that, you know, often when we’re feeling a sense of stress and burnout, you say to yourself, you know, what’s the matter with me? What’s going on? What’s the matter with me? And instead it’s a reframe. It’s not about what’s the matter with me.
It’s about what matters most to me.
Monica Packer: Yeah. Okay. You’ve given me so many light bulbs today.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: And the other, and I would like to just add something about this particular reset. The, One important thing about this reset and what it does is that it keeps the rule of two in mind. And the rule of two is really how your brain responds to change. The example that you used of having all of these various plans in place and all of these steps that you have to take.
You know, it’s the everything but the kitchen sink analogy. And. What happens like so January 1st, let’s say you make all these New Year’s resolutions and then by
February you’re done You haven’t done any of those and that’s not you. It’s not a personal failing It’s just how the brain works Your brain can only sustain two new changes at a time if you want those changes to stick anything more and that is not Sustainable and the reason is because there was a landmark study done ages ago in the nineteen Sixties it showed it was by two psychiatrists, and it was a real seminal study because it looked at 50 of the most common conditions, including happy things like marriages, births of Children, promotion, appointments. Excellent personal accomplishment, life events, along with the, what we perceive things like negative life events, divorce, death, job loss, unemployment, et cetera, and what these researchers found that life events, cumulatively, whether they are good or bad, have an influence on your stress. So stress by nature, any sort of stress. The things that happen to you that are positive, the things that happen to you that are negative, all of these cause some form of stress because your brain is adapting to these changes. And so your brain can only really handle two things at a time. So, for example, the example of a New Year’s resolution, right?
We have a long list of 20 things. The reason that it’s not sticking is not because you are weak. It’s not a personal failing. It is simply because you need to just pare it down to two things. So as you’re creating your most goal, it’s one goal that you’re trying to reach, right? And so figuring out a couple of the resets that could help, the strategies that could help you achieve that and do those two at a time.
Give yourself eight weeks because it does take eight weeks to build a habit. And then once you. have achieved those two things and you’ve been able to fold those into your life, then add two more things and then add two more things. So using that rule of two approach is really the way forward. It’s a way to work with your biology rather than against it.
Monica Packer: Well, I’m always a fan of that, especially when that biology piece makes, uh, it clears up why we think we are failing at something when we’re making it a personal failing. It’s like, nope, this is just biology. This is just the way our brains and bodies work. So
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: That’s right. Yeah. Your brain and your body are not meant to sustain huge lifestyle overhauls during periods of stress. There’s just not enough bandwidth. aim for those two things at a time.
Monica Packer: speaking of life overhauls, so much of what you’ve shared, and even just these two resets are very habit and behavior based, which I think to me feels very exciting because I’ve lived this out, but for people who were maybe like me, and I haven’t lived it out yet, because that that’s a whole other story that my listeners all know about.
So I’m not going to bore you with it. It can feel both like. Oh, just another, someone’s telling me to take a bubble bath thing. How is what you’re sharing different than those band aids versions of, of go to the spa or take a bubble? Even though those things all do help. I do think they help when you’re not in a chronic state of maladaptive stress, right?
It can, it can help. Uh, but how are these habits different than just that mindset thing we talked about? Like, oh gosh, let me, let me think about that. How did you say in the beginning? When you’re in the mind part, not grin and bear it, get
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: over matter. Mind over matter.
Monica Packer: That was it. So how, how are what you, how is what you’re talking about different than both the band aid self care kind of things people push and also just the the mindset, just mind over matter.
Come on, just get over it.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: So to answer that question, I can share a little bit more of my story. Was a stressed medical resident working 80 hours a week. I had palpitations across my chest. It
felt like a stampede of wild horses. Happened every night for several weeks, never during the day. Went to go see my doctor. She did a full medical workup.
Heart ultrasound and EKG, blood tests, you name it, she did it. And at the end, she had a big reassuring smile. Congratulations, everything’s normal. It’s probably just stress. Just try to relax more. Try to relax more. I was working 80 hours a week, I had very little time, so I did what anyone else would do when you hear that phrase, just try to relax. I watched movies, I had a spa day, got a massage, got a new haircut, had some dinner with friends, spent time with family, nothing seemed to work.
Monica Packer: Hmm.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: At only when I dug into the science and started reading everything under the sun of what happens to your brain and your body with stress. What are strategies that can change the biology of your stress to rewire your brain and body for less stress is When I got myself out of my own stress struggle, and
then I said I wanted to be the doctor I needed during that difficult time and so to answer your question Yes, bubble bats, Netflix binges, spa days Pedicures, manicures, yummy dinners, even a quick trip to someplace warm when it’s the, you know, hot summer Dark, cold winter, at least in the Northeast, in the U S where I live,
all of these are wonderful short bursts of what are called hedonic pursuits or hedonic happiness.
They give you that little jolt of joy. There’s a real chemical reaction in the brain, but it’s not long lasting and it
doesn’t change your brain
versus a lot of the resets, like protecting your sleep, creating digital boundaries. You know, some form of daily movement every day to get out of your head and into your body, a gratitude practice.
There’s, you know, 15 different resets in this particular book of mine that do change the biology of stress and actively rewire your brain and your body for less stress and more resilience. So while a bubble bath is lovely as a thing to try once in a while, it’s along that prescription of just relax more and it feels better. You know, it doesn’t feel good because it is somewhat of a gaslighting of your lived experience when you’re told, Oh, just try to relax. It goes back to toxic resilience.
It’s just something, it’s, it’s probably just something inside of you just toughen up. Just try to relax and then you’ll feel better in the morning and then you’ll be able to take on all that you are meant to take on. Instead, actively every day, a little bit every day, you know, a lot of the resets only take five minutes and sometimes a brain break can take as little as 10 seconds. When you do these things incrementally throughout the day, over the course of several weeks, these things change your brain and they change your brain for less stress and more resilience. A bubble bath is lovely, but it’s not changing your brain.
Monica Packer: And that’s what I love about those behavioral changes is, you know, those, those habits, why they are more effective is because they help with that baseline. They help raise the baseline. So you feel more like, Oh, I’m back to a healthier version of this. So when I am able to take a bubble bath or do like a face mask or go to dinner with friends, that feels good.
But I don’t have such a huge drop off after to this, like really low baseline. And that’s probably why a lot of people think that they’re, they’re not handling their stress. Well, like when they’re trying to fix it, it’s just because they’re not doing it in these deeper ways that you have so thoughtfully and so expertly taught us today.
So I want to know all the pillars and I know my listeners do too. But I think, let me say it again, I want to know all the resets and I know my listeners do too, but this is where I’m going to say, you’re going to need to get the book because not only are they more, um, built out there, but the strategies that you’ve already shared so many of, it’s full of practical ways you can apply them and, and, and, and in ways that I know I need.
And so to my listeners. So how about. Do you, this is what I’m going to ask you. Cause you have just a few minutes left. Should we just direct them to the book to find out the rest of them or do you? Okay.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: I can do anything. You want me to list them, or we can just direct them to the book, or
however you want, Monica. You’re,
you’re the boss.
Monica Packer: We’ll, we’ll direct them, but then I’ll ask you one question I think can help. Okay. So while there’s five that you talk about in your book and we’ve covered two of them, is there one in particular that you find yourself coming back to often that you would like to share with us today?
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: Yeah, there’s one reset particularly, sync your brain to your body, and that’s about the mind body connection, and how to tap into your mind body connection. It was the first one. strategy I ever learned. So
when I was that stressed resident working 80 hours a week, trying to find my way out of my stress struggle, as many of your listeners are likely at that exact step, it’s stop, breathe and be,
and it’s a three second exercise.
That can be repeated throughout the day. I did it about 30 to 40 times a day. And I did it every time I would knock on the door of a patient room as I was turning the doorknob. It was my doorknob exercise.
And what you do is you stop, you breathe, And kind of ground yourself and you be, and it takes three seconds and just saying, I said that to myself over and over and over again.
It’s really great with mundane tasks. So right before you’re joining that zoom, a mundane task that it’s about to start a cascade of negative emotions or stress, right? When you’re leaving the house, for example, you know, dropping your kids off at school or at the bus stop. I do that all the time in the mornings. The doorknob,
I just stop, breathe. And B, and it’s the instructions are in the title and that three second exercise over and over and over incrementally throughout the day can have a profound impact first, because you tap into the mind body connection, you decrease your anxiety because anxiety is a forward focused emotion.
It is about what is rather than sorry, let me say that again. Anxiety is a forward, is a forward focused emotion focused on what is. What if this doesn’t go right? What if I fail? What if I’m not good enough? What if, what if, what if, right? We are all, we know that all too well, that runaway train of anxious thoughts and stop, breathe, be helps you move out of what if thinking and back towards what is.
is. And when you are more present and grounded in what is, then that prefrontal cortex can take over. But what if is, of course, powered completely by the amygdala. It’s a self protective mechanism. It’s meant to keep you safe because if you stay in your comfort zone and listen to that inner critic, you won’t try something new.
And then, you know, new can be scary. So. Really focusing on stop, breathe, be. It works great in the mornings. I do it multiple times a day. I’m a working mother and that morning rush or the evening bedtime rush. There are so many moments and pockets of the day when you can try stop, breathe, be. That is just one of the benefits of it. Many strategies in the book, but that seems to be a very effective strategy for working parents, not just mothers, but working parents in general, because it helps us stay grounded in the here and now, regardless of the chaos that may be all around us. It also can help you tap into, you know, a greater sense of patience.
And, you know, we all know what mom rages, right? It really
helps you tap into a greater sense of presence and patience and spaciousness in the here and now. It’s a way to practice mindfulness, but in the midst of a chaotic home life or, you know, and happy chaos. Of course, I don’t mean to
say that it’s unhappy, but
Monica Packer: what you mean. Yes.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: it’s just like frantic energy.
Monica Packer: Yes. Yeah. And that goes back to what we do. You know, we were talking about how we can downplay it so much by saying it’s such a good thing. Why is it so stressful?
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: That’s right.
Monica Packer: And so we’re going to go full circle here and just say validate.
Validate, if you’re feeling like your baseline is not working for you, then you’re stressed and you deserve to feel stressed and then move through these ways where you can, uh, reset your stress levels in, in ways that are both deep and practical. You know, I learned so much from you today. I love your book so much.
I want to direct people to your book, the five resets. We’ll make sure we link to that in the show notes, as well as to your Instagram. Which is always so helpful. Is there anything that you’re like, if there’s one thing you can do today, after listening to this episode that I think you should do, what would that be?
Aditi?
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: The number one thing that you can do after listening to this episode is to increase your levels of self compassion
and give yourself so much grace. Because when you have a sense of gentleness with yourself, as you are moving through your day, your life, your world, that is just one of the most effective ways to reset your stress and build resilience from the inside out.
Monica Packer: So don’t just get over it, not just mind over manner. I love that so much. What a powerful sendoff for all of us. Dr. Aditi Nirakar, thank you so much for being here. We appreciate your time.
Dr. Aditi Nerurkar: Thank you, Monica. Always such a pleasure talking to you.
Monica Packer: Okay. Fantastic.
