IIC 2: Our Stress Responses: Discovering, Understanding and Improving Them

Dr. Peter walks you through a process of identifying and understanding problematic stress responses so you can better meet the underlying, often hidden needs that drive those responses.

[00:00:13] Welcome to the podcast, Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem, where together we embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. This is episode 2, March 25th, 2020. And this is the Feast of the Annunciation. I’m Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist with Souls and Hearts, and I’m honored to be with you as we journey together through these uncharted waters. Thank you for being with me and tuning in with me. Hello, friends. Hello, Croatia. We have an international following now from our first podcast and that just launched two days ago. So we’re excited to have the French and the Croatians with us. Today we are going to talk about our stress responses. Stress responses. We’re going to define what stress responses are. And we’re going to talk about how they give us very valuable information about ourselves, our psychological functioning, and also our spiritual development. So what are stress responses? Stress responses are those things that we habitually do when we’re experiencing stress or distress. They are ways of coping and they are ways of trying to adapt to the situation. So some of you already know what your stress responses are. It’s that thing you know you do when you are stressed. So let’s throw out some examples, right? Raiding the fridge, biting nails, getting caught up in video games or solitaire, online shopping, obsessive exercise. That’s not so much my issue. Staring off into space, starting arguments with other people, maybe your spouse.

[00:02:03] Some of you do that. Some people get into cleaning as a way of coping with stress. When I was in graduate school and we had exams coming up, I would bake. I never baked any other time, but I realized that I would bake when I had exams coming up. So now we’re going to explore our stress responses. Now why do we do that? Why should we even care about stress responses? Why should you care about your stress responses? Well, I’ll tell you. Our stress responses tell us what we need, or at least what we assume we need on some level. So when those stress responses are maladaptive, when they don’t work, when they work against our best interests, we can fight them head on. And sometimes that’s what we need to do, right. We have a temptation to raid the fridge, or a temptation to waste time noodling around on the internet, or a temptation to look at pornography in some cases, right? We have to fight that head on. But there’s another way, another approach. And that is, if we can find the underlying need that is driving this stress response, we can address it in an entirely different way. And not just a real underlying need, but also an assumed underlying need. Sometimes what seems to be a need is not really what we need, but we’ve got some unconscious assumptions that, if we take the time, we can discover.

[00:03:48] So those of you that have followed me at Souls and Hearts know that I absolutely love experiential exercises. I love the kinds of things that help us gain insight into ourselves. I’m a depth psychologist. It’s what I do. So in this exercise, it’s going to be a little guided exercise. This is not therapy, of course. We’ll put the standard disclaimers in. And also remember if you don’t want to do this, that’s okay. I’m offering this to you. You can take it if it’s helpful. But this exercise is going to help you to consider what your stress response is. We’re just going to take a little time to put it into words. Now, you may assume you know what it is, but putting it into words makes it clearer. It makes it somehow seem more real. So what is it that you do when you are stressed? What is it that you do when you’re feeling that stress? Your stress response may make sense to you and it may not. So, we want to answer that question, my stress response is… And fill in the blank. So the next question, once you’ve identified what that stress response is, is to find out what it does for you. Or what that part of you that engages in that response, what it assumes it’s going to do for you. Now, here’s the really interesting thing. If you listen in, if you just ask the question of yourself, you may well find the answer.

[00:05:53] You may already think you know the answer and you may be right. You may think you know what the stress response is and what need it’s trying to address. But let’s see if we can go a little deeper. Now I’m going to do this with you and I’ll tell you about my own stress responses and the needs that underlie them in just a little bit. But for now, let’s have an open mind and an open heart. Let’s love ourselves on this and let’s understand ourselves on this. It’s not in the spirit of criticism, not in the spirit of judging ourselves in terms of the moral rights and wrongs, but just with that open heart towards ourselves and that curiosity about, what might this mean? So your stress response is… And you fill in the blank. And let’s just take a minute and see if with that open heart and that open mind, we can find out more about why. Just have a little space here for that. Okay. And if you need more time later on, you can go through this exercise, stop the podcast if you need more time to write, you might have more insights than you can take in all at one time. So we have a stressor and that is this whole coronavirus situation and all the things that go with it, and we have a stress response and we have the need that drives that stress response.

[00:07:37] And we’ve put that need into words. We’ve defined it. We’ve captured it somehow in words. Now, if you prefer to do this by drawing it in pictures or representing it in some other way, that’s fine too, but we want to somehow wrap our minds around that and get it symbolized in some way. Now we’re at the big theme of this whole podcast episode, and that is that our stress responses show us our growing edges, the areas in which we need to receive grace and help. So here’s the final part of this exercise is we bring those needs into the spiritual life in whatever way seems like it’s going to be helpful to us. So we bring them into our two relationships with our Lord and our Lady. Because being in a crisis like this, the need often has to do with being secure or having a sense of safety. And as Catholics, our need for safety and security can’t be met by maladaptive stress responses. They just don’t work. Chocolate really can’t rescue you from the coronavirus. Nail biting doesn’t resolve the economic problems that are going on in your household. Right? So to flush this out, I’m going to share a little bit about like how I’ve been responding to the stress of the coronavirus. My stress response is to read economic news on the internet, right? Market data. I was doing it today.

[00:09:09] I was doing it today. So I’m skimming articles. I’m not taking it in. I’m flashing back and forth to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I’m catching up on the latest efforts the Congress is making to try to come up with some sort of bipartisan agreement about the next aid package. I’m getting more and more wound up. Right. And what am I doing? What am I doing? Well, I’m looking for knowledge. A part of me believes that that knowledge, if I follow the markets closely, is going to help me to predict the future, help me to have more control, and somehow that’s going to help me to be more safe. But that’s an illusion. More and more information doesn’t lead me to feel safer or more secure. That assumption is way off. And so I put off my prayers. I delayed getting started on this podcast and I was more irritable, so I stopped. I got myself together. And I went back to prayer. This stress response, this internet surfing, this rapid intake of economic and political information helped me to recognize my need, which was for a sense of security. I thought I’d have it through controlling, through having more information. But that’s an illusion. So that led me back to an adaptive way of meeting the need, going back to prayer, which I was forgetting, connecting with my spiritual father, God the Father, and with my mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. And therein lies my hope, in becoming little again, like a little child, and trusting in my spiritual parents to care for me, not in being able to predict the market crash.

[00:10:53] Even if I was right and I could predict the future, how would that actually help me? It wouldn’t. It wouldn’t. I had a deeper sense of security. I calmed down, I was able to focus again on the things that I really needed to do. I could even use my falling back into my maladaptive coping patterns earlier as an example of how this cycle works for this podcast. So all things work together for good, even the sins and mistakes, if we love the Lord, and I had a sense even that our Lady could delight in this with me and for me, on this day, which celebrates her motherhood of Jesus. So let’s recap, right? Let’s recognize which of our behaviors are stress responses. Let’s name them, acknowledge them, own them, and be real about them. So for me, what was the stress response again? Way too much internet surfing and way too much study of the economic data and political data. Second, let’s reflect on how to be open to the needs or assumed needs we have that drive those stress responses. So in my case, an assumed need to predict what was happening and to control it. But that was really just above a need, a real need for safety and security. So step three, then, we take those assumed needs and those real needs into the spiritual life in some way that’s helpful to you.

[00:12:19] So in my case, bringing that need for safety and security to God, to God the Father, and to Mary, that’s what I really needed. Okay, so we’re winding it up for today. Don’t just subscribe to this podcast and become a regular listener. I want you to do that, but I want to hear from you, right? Email me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com and let me know what was helpful to you in this podcast and what wasn’t. Let me know what you need from this podcast. We’re working on getting our community comments up. We want a greater sense of community. You know, obviously like this thing. Share it. We’re on Apple Podcasts now. We’re on Spotify, we’re getting on Google Play. But also check out soulsandhearts.com, right? I’m gonna have a new blog post up tomorrow on the relationship between fasting and the coronavirus crisis. Dr. Gerry just launched his course for married couples who are recovering from the discovery of porn use in the marriage. That’s a stress response for a lot of people, the use of pornography. All right, and most of all, let’s pray for each other. Now, I’m going to see you on Friday, March 27th, just two days away. And let’s invoke our patron and our patroness. Our Lady Untier of Knots, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.