Episode 208
Brian Sachetta:The Hidden Connection Between Chronic Stress and Autoimmune Flares
Brian Sachetta:
The Hidden Connection Between Chronic Stress and Autoimmune Flares
In this episode, I'm joined by Brian Sachetta to discuss how our ancient brains handle modern stress and how it triggers autoimmune flares.
We explore evolutionary mismatch, chronic stress effects on autoimmune conditions, and practical tools like breathing techniques, movement, and grounding to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and break the anxiety cycle.
We explore evolutionary mismatch, chronic stress effects on autoimmune conditions, and practical tools like breathing techniques, movement, and grounding to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and break the anxiety cycle.
First Aired on: Sep 8, 2025
Episode 208
Brian Sachetta:The Hidden Connection Between Chronic Stress and Autoimmune Flares
Brian Sachetta:
The Hidden Connection Between Chronic Stress and Autoimmune Flares
In this episode, I'm joined by Brian Sachetta to discuss how our ancient brains handle modern stress and how it triggers autoimmune flares.
We explore evolutionary mismatch, chronic stress effects on autoimmune conditions, and practical tools like breathing techniques, movement, and grounding to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and break the anxiety cycle.
We explore evolutionary mismatch, chronic stress effects on autoimmune conditions, and practical tools like breathing techniques, movement, and grounding to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and break the anxiety cycle.
First Aired on: Sep 8, 2025
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents:
In this episode:
In this episode:
Introduction
Brian Sachetta is an author, blogger, and mental health advocate from Boston who has been through his own journey with anxiety and depression. He's the founder of Get Out of Your Head, both a brand and book series that helps people navigate anxiety and depression. In this episode, Brian joins me to discuss the connection between chronic stress and autoimmune flares, and why understanding our evolutionary wiring is key to managing modern anxiety.
Episode Highlights
Evolutionary Mismatch: Why Our Ancient Brains Struggle with Modern Life
Brian explains how our nervous systems evolved for acute threats but now face chronic modern stressors that keep us in perpetual fight-or-flight mode.
- Our brains and nervous systems haven't evolved much in the past 30,000 years
- We're designed for acute stressors like encountering a lion, not chronic daily stress
- Modern life creates constant stimulation through screens, social media, and rapid change
- This "evolutionary mismatch" explains rising rates of anxiety, autoimmune conditions, and health problems
- Understanding this helps normalize anxiety as a natural response rather than personal failure
The Physical Connection Between Stress and Autoimmune Flares
We discuss how chronic sympathetic nervous system activation directly impacts inflammation and physical health conditions.
- Chronic stress leads to elevated cortisol and adrenaline in the bloodstream
- The body can only allocate resources to fight immediate threats, leaving immune system suppressed
- Autoimmune symptoms often appear during or right after major stressors
- Healing, digestion, and detox only happen in parasympathetic state
- Stress management becomes essential for managing chronic health conditions
Practical Tools to Activate Your Parasympathetic Nervous System
Brian shares accessible techniques that work with our evolutionary wiring to calm the stress response.
- Movement: Go for a walk or run to use up stress hormones as intended
- Eye movements: Move eyes back and forth (from EMDR) to calm the amygdala
- Deep breathing: Focus on full exhales to activate parasympathetic response
- Cold water: Splash face to trigger the dive reflex and slow the body down
- These can be used discretely in meetings, traffic, or other stressful situations
Understanding Stress vs. Chronic Stress vs. Anxiety
Brian breaks down the important distinctions between these related but different experiences.
- Stress: When demands outpace your available resources
- Chronic stress: Living in that heightened state consistently over time
- Anxiety: Future-oriented fear, like facing a "tiger" that isn't immediately present
- All three activate the same sympathetic nervous system response
- Chronic stress makes it easier to tip over into anxiety
The Role of Trauma in Anxiety (And When to Seek Professional Help)
We explore when trauma work is necessary versus when anxiety can be addressed with stress management tools alone.
- Don't go digging for trauma if you don't sense you've experienced it
- Most people who've been through trauma have some awareness, even if suppressed
- Life itself is inherently challenging and can create anxiety without major trauma
- Start with stress management tools; if they don't work, consider deeper exploration
- Work with professionals when trauma is suspected or identified
Why Modern Life Creates More Anxiety Than Ever Before
Brian and I discuss the factors contributing to rising anxiety rates in our current environment.
- Social media creates constant comparison and fear of missing out
- 24/7 news cycles expose us to harrowing headlines consistently
- Rapid technological change creates workplace pressure and uncertainty
- We've lost chronic boredom but gained chronic stimulation
- People are finally speaking up about mental health struggles
Building Your Personal Stress Management Toolkit
We emphasize that different tools work for different people, and finding what works for you is liberating, not failing.
- All healing modalities only work slightly better than a coin flip
- The key is finding which "coins" turn up in your favor
- What reduces stress for one person might increase it for another
- Experiment patiently and don't take failures personally
- Build small habits and stack them on top of each other
Notable Quotes from this Episode
Your brain is so powerful and your sympathetic nervous system is so powerful and you are wired for survival. Your brain will do anything it needs to do to get you out of potentially threatening situations. You get all caught up in that as just a product of how the brain works.
Brian Sachetta
We now find ourselves in a very different world than that of our ancestors, but we have the same internal wiring. So we still have that sympathetic nervous system, we still have the acute stress response. The problem is that the world is so different today.
Brian Sachetta
When you deal with a lot of stress and you're putting too many demands on your sympathetic nervous system, then you're living in that state of high adrenaline and high cortisol and making it such that not only are you experiencing more anxiety, but those neurotransmitters and stress hormones, if they are perpetually circulating around your bloodstream, eventually that's gonna have negative effects.
Brian Sachetta
Other Resources:
Other Resources:
Connect with Brian Sachetta
Connect with Brian Sachetta
Watch this interview:
Watch this interview:
Episode Transcript
Brian Sachetta:(Teaser) So I often say that anxiety is future oriented fear. You know what fear feels like you're in front of that tiger and you're like, I gotta get the heck outta here before something bad happens. Anxiety is that tiger situation, but abstracted out over a period of time in the sense that that threat is not immediately in front of you right now.
(Intro bumper)
Julie Howton: Welcome back to The Inspired Living with Autoimmunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Howton, and today we're joined by Brian Sachetta, author, blogger, and mental health advocate from Boston, Massachusetts. After grappling with anxiety and depression throughout his young adulthood, Brian became determined to find better ways to navigate such challenges.
As a result, he turned to therapy, immersed himself in mental health literature, and experimented with a wide array of tactics for managing his wellbeing. Over time, these efforts led to significant breakthroughs on his mental health journey. Inspired by his progress, he began sharing his story to empower others (Intro) facing similar struggles.
Today he's on a mission to guide individuals toward taking control of their mental health, and he brings that mission to life through his popular book series. Get Out of Your Head and on podcasts like these. In today's conversation, we're talking about the physical impact of anxiety and chronic stress. (Main interview) Brian, welcome to the podcast.
Brian Sachetta: Thank you, Julie. Excited to be here.
Julie Howton: I am excited to have you. I really, I know it's not even, I believe this is, it's such an important topic, um, and an important conversation, right, as people didn't use to talk about things like anxiety. So I would love for you to just introduce yourself a little more informally with listeners and, and share some of your journey.
Um, because I, I always feel like that's the most inspiring part of the Inspired Living Podcast is people's journeys and, and what brought them to a place where they're, they're sharing with the world.
Brian Sachetta: Definitely, I'll try to keep it kind of brief, but then we can jump in in more detail after this. So, great.
I'm Brian Scheta, the owner and author of Get Out of Your Head, which is both a brand and book series that seeks to help folks overcome anxiety and depression. I got into this space as a product of personal experience going through anxiety and depression myself and along the way, right? I think anybody who has dealt with anxiety or depression can relate to the fact that dealing with those things is really painful and you know, you go through years of anxiety, you go through some bouts of depression.
It hurts, it really affects you in a negative capacity. And so as I went along my own journey and I started to make progress with both of those conditions, you know, I held onto that idea of knowing how painful the anxiety and the depression were and can be. And I talked to a lot of different people, right?
And they, they kind of, you know, relayed their own concerns and issues in saying that they too deal with. These same kinds of things. So seeing that pain in other people, uh, you know, it makes me empathetic or the the empath in me comes out and makes me want to help. And so along the way, I, I came up with different things that helped my own conditions and eventually just got to the point of wanting to around and helped some of those people that I had talked to on that journey.
So the journey continues today in the sense that, you know, I've got two books out on the marketplace, one on anxiety, one on depression, but, you know, I'm not a doctor. I'm not, and I'm certainly, uh, I'm human, right? Where mm-hmm. I still experience some anxiety. I still experience some depressive days, right?
And so what I'm trying to do, and what I've always been trying to do is sort of use my life almost as if it were a little bit of a science experiment, right? Trial and error. Figure out things that work for me, things that don't, and then just write about those things and talk about those things, and share them with other people in hopes of helping even more folks along the way.
Julie Howton: I love it. It is amazing. And, and thank you for stepping into that place where you're taking your experience and helping others, you know, through your story and through the things that you've learned that, I love that you said life is a science experiment because whether it's anxiety, depression, autoimmune, you know, diet.
Like I have people say to me, well, what do you eat? Tell me, tell me what you eat. You're, you are better. You know? And I'm like, but that's me. You can try certain things or, you know. Um, and so I, I do think that for all of us, wherever our focus is just realizing that like, if this doesn't work, we try something else.
And, and that's the, the gift that we get, you know, and maybe what worked. Two years ago isn't working right now. Um, and, and so I think both anxiety and depression can be really isolating and lonely. And so you using your voice to, to guide others is, is really important. And, um, I feel like I'm allowed to say this 'cause I'm married to a physician.
Like a, a doctor isn't necessarily the right person to help you with the tools depending on their experience and their knowledge. And, and so sometimes when we've come through something, um, that's what people need is that, that, like you said, you know, the, those of us that are em can be empathetic and, and really understand.
Where somebody may be sitting, whether it's with autoimmune or anxiety, or both. Um, I do think, and I'm excited to talk about it, but you know, they, they are definitely connected. Um, and, and as somebody who grew up with anxiety, um, I, I definitely feel like that certainly if I had the tools I have now, you know, maybe I would never have had autoimmunity express.
Um, who knows? I don't know. I know, but then what would I be doing? You So I am where I'm supposed to be. Uh, but I, I, I love it and I love, I love your brand and your website and, and it, if you can, this is gonna sound strange, but you make it fun. Like you're just, you're relatable. And even just the, the name of your brand is like, oh my gosh.
Yeah. Get outta my head. How do I get outta my head? Brian's gonna help me do that. Um, and, and so yeah. So good. So good job with that. I don't know how you came up with that, but it, it's sometimes the most simple is the best.
Brian Sachetta: I totally agree with that, and I appreciate the compliments. Yeah. On the, on the brand side, right?
The, the, the name is, get out of your head. It really comes down to the fact that like our brains and our minds are so powerful. Yes. It's almost like this reality distortion field that we put on ourselves. Yes. So you have a public speech coming up or an interview that you're going on. And our brains are so powerful that they can turn that thing, which is, sure it's scary, but it's, it's, it is most literally not the end of the world, right?
It can turn those things into what feel like the end of the world. And so one of the challenges in this space is you have people who are totally on the outside and they will say, it's a job interview. Get over it. And then you'll have people on the inside who are like, I, I feel as though I am dying right now and I'm going off into battle willingly putting myself on the line, and I'm gonna get shot and I'm gonna die.
Right? And so the two sides of. The argument are really talking past one another. So one of the work, you know, some of the work that I try to do is bring that approachability and say, Hey look, let's think about what's going on inside of that person's mind. Who is dealing with the fear? Who's dealing with the struggle?
And maybe if we have an open conversation, we can get to the point of allowing other people to see the fact that, hey, maybe this thing isn't the end of the world, but the response that is occurring inside of that person's brain and body makes it feel that way. And so the get out of your head piece right is, is kind of that constant reminder to folks to say, it's not downplaying what you're going through.
It's saying your brain is so powerful and your sympathetic nervous system is so powerful and you are wired for survival. Your brain will do anything it needs to do to get you out of potentially threatening situations. You get all caught up in that as a. Just a product of how the brain works. And so it's a reminder to say every once in a while, take a step back.
Yep. Just, you know, do your little mantras, do some deep breathing. Remind yourself that being in your head, running those cycles, those ruminative cycles doesn't always get you to the place that you want to be. Sometimes you need to get back into your body and allow the stress response to work itself through you, and then eventually, sometimes the anxiety goes away as well.
Julie Howton: Yeah. Uh, so well said. And, and I love that, that you, you know, we are wired with this, it's a survival trait, right. Our, our stress response and, and, um, and being stuck in a sympathetic state. Is, you know, is one of the fa it does drive inflammation. It does, you know, compound autoimmune symptoms, whether I, you know, cause effect, but it, it definitely plays a, a part.
Um, and, and I I just love that you said, you know, how, how powerful the mind is, right? I used to eventually work with clients on mindset when I first had had started my coaching business and then I realized like, oh, I'm doing it backwards. We have to start with mindset and then all of the other stuff is gonna work better.
Um, and, and so because of modern times we have to be exercising our para, it used to be. That our, our natural state was the parasympathetic state, right? And then we would have this acute stress response, and then we would return to the parasympathetic state. And I really feel like even for people who don't identify as having anxiety, if you're living in modern times and you're not exercising that parasympathetic state, you need to be like it, it really takes intention.
Um, and, and so I love, I love that you, you know. We're, you're not broken if you're in your mind all the time. Like, that is, it is how we're created. It's, I have people tell me all the time, oh, I'm a bad meditator. I, I can't, you know, I can't make my mind blank. And I'm like, well, the mind doesn't get blank if we're alive.
Like, it just doesn't, you're not gonna not have thoughts. So, um, so thank you for just showing up and, and normalizing the things that I, I think we all at least need to pay attention to. Um, I know. So, so do you have, and I know you, we, we were cheating before we hit record, um, about some of, again, these, these crossovers because we're whole integrated humans.
Um, do you have go-tos for creating a pause. Or getting out of your head? Um,
Brian Sachetta: yeah, I, I definitely do. I, I, I, I think this sort of warrants a little bit of a stepping back and talking about what you alluded to a minute ago, right? So, yeah, I, I use this term, and it's not my own term, but it gets thrown around quite a bit and I honestly, I think it's kind of amazing this term called evolutionary mismatch.
Yes. So essentially, right, you go back 500,000 years ago and think about the fact that, you know, we used to be essentially evolved apes that further evolved on the planes of Africa, right? And at that period of time, or in that epic, right, we had certain mechanisms in our brains that. Rewarded us for certain behaviors or sort of like disincentivized us to do other things.
And so one of those mechanisms in our brains is the fact that, or, you know, I guess within our entire bodies, right? We have our nervous system and we have that sympathetic response or that sympathetic nervous system, which is essentially that fight or flight response. And so what happened was over long periods of time, you know, many, uh, I guess many, many centuries, the body evolved to say, Hey, if there's something threatening in front of me, I need to essentially put my body into a heightened state and find a way to run away from this thing or fight with it.
So that's that fight or flight response. You now move forward into today's times? Mm-hmm. We haven't really evolved all that much in the last 30,000 years, and honestly it's probably even longer than that. But I would say we haven't evolved at all in that period of time. Uh, and another thing that we could definitely say is we still have pretty much the same brains in the same nervous systems that our ancestors did, you know, a half a million years ago.
So what does that mean is we now find ourselves in a very different world than that of our ancestors, but we have the same internal wiring. Yeah. So we still have that sympathetic nervous system. We still have the acute stress response. The problem is that the world is so different today. So whereas a half a million years ago, you know, one of your ancestors came across a lion or a tiger.
Every once in a great while and ran away from it or fought it got, you know, God willing they got away from it. Right. Probably wouldn't be here if they didn't. Right. Um, today we, we obviously don't face lions and tigers, literal ones on a daily basis, but we face a lot of stress and so our bodies are designed for acute stressors like that.
Tiger. They are not designed for the chronically stressful world that we now find ourselves in. And why I really want to take time to make this emphasis is, you know, there are times in the world where I look around and I'm like, oh, everything's so broken. How did it get this way? Whatever. And if you look at the timeline that I kind of just laid out, it all kind of falls into place and makes sense.
And when you say, why do people experience so much anxiety? Why do people experience so much stress? Why are rates of heart disease as high as they are? Obviously there's a million different answers that we could provide, but you think about it and you say, oh, we really weren't evolved. To live in this kind of world.
Yeah. And so the amount of stress we experience on a daily basis revs up our nervous systems and puts us into that sympathetic state. You live there long enough and as you suggested right, you might flare up some conditions Yeah. That look like autoimmune. You might lead to, you know, those things might lead to high blood pressure.
They might lead to, um, you know, like paranoia or some, some like pervasive or chronic feelings of fear. And eventually, you know, you run that sympathetic nervous system long enough over long enough periods of time, uh, hard enough over long enough periods of time, and you're building up cortisol in the bloodstream and affecting your blood vessels and potentially leading, you know, to cardiac events down the road.
So all of that is to say. It's sort of meant to be this way, as unsettling as that may be. The reason that I give such a preamble like that is to say that that's reality. We now need to go figure out how to deal with that reality, if that makes sense.
Julie Howton: Sure. It's so true. It's the, it's the same. And I'm gonna throw in the you healing, you know, digestion, detox, resting, all of that only happens in the parasympathetic state.
Uh, and so, you know, no wonder, right, it, it's, it's really not any different than looking at the amount of chemicals and toxins we're exposed to every day. Right. We, we are creating chemicals way faster than our body has evolved to be able to clear them. It's just, it's, it's. The same problem or opportunity.
I don't wanna say it's a problem, it's, it is just, it takes in it, again, back to intention, right? We have to be intentional. Um, you know, did we need to have stress management techniques back in caveman times? No. 'cause life was set up that way. Um, just like we didn't need to think about grounding or getting sunlight in our eyes or, you know, all of the other things as we've evolved away from nature.
Um, and, and so I, I do think, and then you can add in and I'd, I would love for you to share your opinions too, on, like, I feel like when I was in high school and I was struggling with anxiety, um, I was the, and I don't know if it was a, nobody was talking about it or it was not as commonplace as it is now.
Um, but. I, I, I feel like more people are aware that there's, they struggle with anxiety now, um, than, well, I'm old, so, you know, 40 years ago. Um, and I, I think again, some of that leads to, is also connected with modern times and, you know, the, this, the good and the bad, right? I love that we're in different states.
We can have this conversation. It feels like we're together. Listeners from around the world are gonna get to, to join in. That's amazing. But then there's also this, you know, other piece of it where I think I, I can't imagine like having grown up with social media and screens and all the things. Um, and so do you think that, that it, it, do you think it's, it?
Just that people are sharing more, or do you think that that the amount of anxiety that's out there is just really increasing?
Brian Sachetta: I really do think it's both,
Julie Howton: yeah. Okay. From the
Brian Sachetta: standpoint of everything we just talked about and the fact that even 20 years ago, you know, I, I, I don't think I was quite in high school yet, but when I was in grade school and in high school.
Things were not nearly as stressful as they are today. And I'm not saying that life was all, you know, was peachy keen or anything like that. Right. There was obviously stressors, but you think about the world today, right? Uh, social media, as you mentioned. You know, we go online, we see harrowing news headlines, we see the latest creator or, uh, persona, online celebrities that are, you know, kind of showing off their lifestyles and their bodies and, and you know, indirectly showing us how we, we don't measure up.
Right? Right. So there's this comparisonitis kind of thing going on mm-hmm. Uh, in the workplace, right? We, all of us are, are scrambling to keep up with AI and the rapid pace of change. And so the environment has been changing quite a bit and it continues to change. And honestly it continues changing at an accelerating rate.
And I think people are finally getting to the point of feeling like, I really can't keep up. Right. I'm experiencing so much stress. And when you put that much. Of a burden on your sympathetic nervous system or on your body, you're going to experience that stress and probably at some point, right, that stress tips over into anxiety or autoimmune disorders or even just, you know, symptoms in the body that are not official disorders, but still ones that you don't want to deal with, you don't want to experience, right?
So I certainly think that. The world has gotten more stressful. That's led to more anxiety in general. And then, you know, two other things is one, more people have spoken up. So I think other people feel more comfortable speaking up. And also I think that as the world gets more stressful, everybody's kind of like holding on for dear life and being like, I didn't want to speak up, but now I feel like I have to because I just can't deal with this anymore.
You know, I can't cope. And so all of those things come together and, you know, we have this conversation that is, uh, and I use that, that word in the broad sense of like, the conversation around mental health has grown. Yes. Uh, and it has goodness become, you know, more compassionate, uh, more comprehensive, that kind of thing.
Uh, I will say, right on the, on the. Evolutionary mismatch piece and all that. Like, I actually look at a lot of these things as pros and cons. I'm an engineer. Sure. There's a, there's an idea that comes from engineering that basically says, uh, there's no solutions. There's only trade-offs, right? So, uh, to your point of if we went back 20 years ago where there's less stress, one of the effects of that is that you and I would not be having this conversation via Zoom.
So there's trade-offs in every aspect of life. Some of it these days means more stress, means more anxiety, but it's certainly not all bad. It's just No. Some pros here, some cons there.
Julie Howton: Yeah. Yeah. Which means our tools need to change, right? We just need, you know, to, to find solutions, um, to make things more of a win than a loss.
I was thinking as you were talking, like it is interesting. If you think of the acute stress and, and it's just like, you know, we talk about inflammation and people think inflammation is, is a negative and chronic inflammation is a negative. Inflammation is actually a, a healing signal. So it, it's the same thing, you know, without stress we don't grow.
Um, so it's the, the, the difference is the chronic piece, right? Because certainly, I don't know the, you know, even I, maybe it's 'cause I live in Colorado, so sometimes I, I think of like the people that were here in the 18 hundreds and just, you know, how rough the terrain and the winters and the, so it's not that life was easier per se.
And, and the, the concerns about survival were actually real yet. Still, we weren't in a chronic stress state. And, and so now, like you were saying before, it, the things that, that are sometimes driving the most anxiety are not, the world isn't coming to an end, or your life isn't coming to an end. Um, yet that's, that, it's, it's, it's the chronic piece.
I think that that really tips it over into, into a problem. Again, maybe not to be solved, but to be supported for sure. Um, yes, most definitely.
Brian Sachetta: And I, I do find it fascinating thinking about those people, right? Yeah. In the 18 hundreds, 19 hundreds, whatever. I look back and I think to myself, they probably, you know, they didn't experience chronic stress, right?
They probably experienced a good amount of chronic boredom, to be honest. And, and boredom is no longer something that. Pretty much any of us face, right? Even when we are bored for a second, we pull out our phones, we go on Instagram, we go on Twitter. So it's just different situations and different quote unquote problems or, you know, different solutions that we need to find for those problems.
Julie Howton: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I, I'm curious, your take on, you know, you were talking about like that chronic stress and, and either whether it leads to a chronic illness or leads to feeling stressed out or know, or, you know, identifying as like, oh, I, I, I'm anxious. Um, I come across a lot of clients who, when we start to talk about stress, they'll say, oh, I'm not stressed.
Um, and then they share, you know, I'm like, okay, well tell me what your life is like. And I'm like, wow, I'm stressed just listening. So I like, is there such a thing as like. Numbing ourselves. In other words, like we, we just, some people are living in such a constant sympathetic state that they, they're, they don't feel stressed out, they're not aware because that's their normal state.
Brian Sachetta: Yeah. I think it's very possible sort of a, a metaphor or just like example that I like to give on this front is, is the idea that, so there's this, this term called hedonic, uh, hedonic adaptation or the hedonic treadmill, and it's applied to happiness 'cause hedonism, right? The, the sense of, uh, feeling positive affect, uh, and eventually that, that affect kind of goes back down.
We get used to it. We get back on the treadmill, always seeking more happiness. Obviously that's a great term used throughout psychology and all the literature and whatnot, but I think that's just how the brain operates in general, in the sense of the brain is very adaptive. So on the sa, like we can make that same connection to stress itself.
So you find yourself in a stressful state or you're in a stressful job. I'm not saying that every single person on Earth is always like, Hey, I have the most stressful job on earth, but I just figured out how to deal with it. What I would say though is that in general, the brain understands that it needs to adapt to certain situations, so that way you don't always have to think through every single move that you make throughout your life.
So yes, it can very much go that way. And another example, and this is cr, this is a crude example, but there's a quote that basically says. You know, I've been wading through poop or feces for so long that I don't even smell it anymore. Right? And it's that idea that you adapt to your circumstances just as you may be going through stress on a regular basis.
And it just becomes the water that you swim in that you don't notice anymore. And so one of the really like challenging things about dealing with all of these issues is you can't see them unless you take that pause or you work with somebody else. And the most fascinating thing that you said, right when you said, I feel stressed out just by you telling me that story about your life, right?
That's, that's the response that gives feedback, that aha moment, uhhuh. And you need that. Otherwise you'll probably, I'm not saying you'll never get the message, but the fact that your brain just is adapting to all these circumstances, it will take you longer. To see what you are doing wrong or the fact that, hey, maybe your daily existence is not as helpful as you would like it to be.
Julie Howton: Yeah. Uh, so well said too. It is true. We sometimes that step back in so many, so many aspects of life. Um, so in your opinion, if somebody, and, and I, I say this all the time, especially, there's my response always when somebody says, you know, oh, I'm, I'm not stressed. They're working with me because they have chronic illness that's impacting their life.
So I call bs, you know, and not that they're lying, but that they're just not a, you know, just having chronic illness is stressful and, and so and can be. Right? And, and I think that sometimes the, like head in the sand is, is not serving people. Um, and again, whether it's. You know, watching the news, social media, your job, your family, finances, chronic illness, whatever it is.
Um, I, I, I just, I think that, like you said, taking that step back, it, it doesn't mean it's not a cop out to say, you know, like, yeah, we, we are, we're all dealing with stress and it's definitely not a badge of honor, at least from where I sit of like, you know, um, who has, you know, who has the most stressful life or, um, you know, who crams the most into a day or sleeps the least, or none of that is, that's how you end up working with somebody like me.
So that's not, um, you know, not recommended, but how, how do, how do you encourage people to take that step back? Um, and because sometimes. Like I was saying before, like the stressors a hundred years ago versus the stressors now they feel the same in the body. It doesn't matter if it's a tiger or traffic and you're late for an appointment or you know, so how do we even first create that awareness of I am running on overdrive?
Brian Sachetta: It's funny because two things come to mind. The first is the person that came to you and is saying, I'm dealing with issues. I'm not saying that their situation is easy, but I will say that they're in front of you looking for a solution. So, you know, we still need to meet them on their level Sure. And provide them guidance that resonates with them.
But they are somebody that we can. Yeah, they shown up, put ideas in front of, right, exactly. They are, on some level, they are open to feedback and they are looking for a solution. Right? Yeah. So from, from their point of view, right? What, what I would say, or if I was working with that person, we just have to figure out what the leverage is for them.
So they are saying that they're not stressed out and yet they're working with you. They are experiencing these different kinds of symptoms and whatnot. We just have to put it on the table and say, why are you here? What are you experiencing? What are you willing to give up? For the possibility of not experiencing these things anymore.
And then once the calculus in that person's mind adds up to something, let's say positive, right? In the sense that, okay, I have to take a hit. I can't work as hard, and that's, you know, that's, that's a negative thing, but I will get some other benefit, uh, by not working as hard and maybe that stress reduction.
Once they can see that the benefit they get outweighs the negative detraction that they have to encounter or, um, uh, uh, incur, then they're more willing to, you know, consider what it is that we're talking about with them. The second thing that comes to mind is it's the person who doesn't know. That there is a problem.
That's the real one that I wince at because I'm like, yeah, they, they, we don't know who they are. They don't know what issue they're going through. We've, we haven't met them yet. Yeah. Uh, so we're on on two totally different paths and that scares me. Uh, again, not to say that the person who comes into your office and asks for help, uh, is quote unquote easy, but they have shown up and they are on some level, willing to do some amount of work.
We just need to convince them that they should do that work. It's more the person who is listening to this convincing themselves that they are not in a high stress state or not experiencing these things. And so even though we don't have the opportunity to Exactly talk directly to that person and say, Hey, here's my pitch.
What I would say to those listeners is be honest with yourself. Give it five, give it 10 minutes after listening to this episode, ask yourself, is the path that I'm on in life is that one that's bringing me to the place that I want to be? Or at least providing me with feelings that are uplifting, that are positive, and are not constantly stressing me out and making me feel terrible.
And even if it's not all the way to level, the level of terrible, it might just be chronic stress and not feeling great. Right? And once you make that recognition that that is occurring, that's where you kind of say, ah, okay, maybe I need to make some changes now. Let me go explore what my options are.
Julie Howton: And it's so well said.
So thank you. Um, how do you, does it matter differentiate between chronic stress and anxiety? Like. To me, there's, it's almost like a, there's a continuum, right? Of, of, um, but by definition, is there a difference from, from your perspective and yeah.
Brian Sachetta: So
Julie Howton: part B will be, is is there a difference in the body's response?
Brian Sachetta: I love Part B. We'll get to that for sure. So let's, let's talk about what stress is and then chronic stress and then anxiety. Okay. So stress, the most basic definition I can give is it's the response in the body, or it's a feeling when the resources that you have are outpaced or outstripped by the demands put on you.
Right? So as a very simple example, if you say, I have to go do this task, it's gonna take me three hours and I only have one hour to do it. You are going to feel stressed out now within the body, right? Like, what is, what is the response that occurs? Uh, it is usually the heightening of your sympathetic nervous system, right?
So it's that same circuit that basically says there's some kind of threat here. So let's get the blood pumping. Let's, uh, you know, get the heart racing. Let's get tunnel vision. Let's put butterflies in the stomach. Or at the very least, like, let's move blood away from the stomach and toward the extremity so that way we can take action.
Chronic stress is essentially being in that state and feeling those feelings. All the time, or a lot of the time, right? So how do you fall into chronic stress? You either have an insanely busy life or you are just in a few different commitments that are always putting those demands on you. And it could be, you know, a, a literal demand of like, okay, I, I have one hour, I need three hours.
It could also be more abstract from the standpoint of, I go to my job every day and my boss is demanding, or my boss is not a nice person and I only have so much tolerance for handling. You know, the fact that he's rude or the fact that he's always, you know, hurdling insults my way. Right? Again, it's, uh, it's the demand outpacing, uh, the, the supply or the resources that we have, just not always in a, you know, a nice clean one hour, two hour kind of thing.
Same response in the body there, which is when you get stressed out, right? You feel it, you're, you're on edge, you're tense, maybe your palms sweat, maybe you start, you, you know, the, the thoughts in your mind start racing. Uh, so it's very similar in that regard. It's just stress dialed up quite a bit. And quite often anxiety is similar, but not exactly the same.
So I often say that anxiety is future oriented fear. You know what fear feels like you're in front of that tiger and you're like, I gotta get the heck outta here before something bad happens. Anxiety is that tiger situation, but abstracted out over a period of time in the sense that that threat is not immediately in front of you right now.
Yeah. You're just thinking about eventually being front of a tiger or a proverbial tiger. If you think about anxiety and the response in the body, it's very similar to those other situations of stress and chronic stress, and that is essentially that heightened sympathetic response. Your heart races, your mind whirls, your palms, start sweating, blood rushes to your extremities.
And so it's all essentially the sympathetic nervous system in all of these situations gets turned up. And the challenge, right, is if we, even though stress and anxiety are two distinct things, they're also closely related and linked by that sympathetic response. So if we're always in stressful situations and that sympathetic nervous system is always turning up, then let's say we add some concern in our lives where we don't know how we're gonna pay our bills next month.
And if our nervous system is already on edge, guess what? We're already feeling those feelings of. Fear and, you know, sweaty palms and heart racing and all that. And then we add that concern to the mix and we're gonna feel even more of that. And it's gonna become easier for us to tip from stress into anxiety because the stress response is already activated.
So one of the things that I'd love to talk about on the autoimmune front or, you know, sort of the, uh, chronic conditions front is. Saying that when you deal with a lot of stress and you're putting, you know, either you are putting too many demands on your sympathetic nervous system or your nervous system, or the world is placing too many demands on you.
Mm-hmm. Then you're living in that state of high adrenaline and high cortisol and making it such that not only are you experiencing your, uh, more anxiety or more likely to experience more anxiety, but all, you know, those neurotransmitters and those stress hormones, if they are perpetually c circulating around your bloodstream, eventually that's gonna have negative effects.
Right. So that might mean eventually, right. It leads to high blood pressure or some chronic condition that you have flares up. You know, it could be, I, I've heard of stories where, you know, folks, God forbid, like they have herpes and the herpes outbreaks come when people are really stressed out. Sure.
Because what happens is the body says, I only have so many resources to fight the threats that are in front of me. And the way that I do that is I turn up the stress response, but now. I can't handle the fact that, you know, there's a, a virus, a herpes virus living in my body, and I was suppressing it previously.
I'm now putting all my resources on the stress management front, uh, on the sympathetic nervous system front, such that the herpes breaks out because I don't have as many resources as I, as I need to keep that at bay. So, long-winded way of saying that, when it comes to anxiety, when it comes to chronic conditions, stress management is actually, ooh, I don't know what percentage of the pie it is, but it's a big piece.
It's big.
Julie Howton: It is, uh, it is big and, and, um, well, and even with autoimmunity, there's often the, the, you know, the, the symptoms will appear and yes, even flares for somebody who already knows. But, um, either during or right after a major stressor. Is when all of a sudden Right. It it'll, it, it can pop up. I was thinking about, um, when you were talking about that, that kind of, that cycle, right?
Of like, here's what's happening in the body. And, and I love that you used the word tip into anxiety. 'cause that was what was playing in my head as you were talking. Um, but it, it can be a two-way street and, and so, which is to me is a good thing. Um, so if I think about somebody using a breathing technique to, it's one of my favorite places to start with people to just even like, dip their toe into a parasympathetic state.
But, but it, it, it goes both ways. Like we feel stressed, it creates this physiological response, but that physiological response also drives the feeling of being stressed. Is where people can get stuck in that snowball. And the fun part is, it's almost, I think of it as like you're tricking your brain. Like if you're using some kind of intentional breath work, like you don't, you don't have to feel relaxed just to, to start to exercise the parasympathetic state and then, you know, you can grow that into, also when I do this thing, I feel relaxed and I, you know, and just use it to break the cycle.
What, what are some of your favorite ways or where do you have people even start? If people are listening and they're like, you know what, I never really thought about it. This is for me, you know, that's why I tuned in today. Like, do you have, what's, do you have favorite place for people to start?
Brian Sachetta: Yeah, absolutely.
Uh, I will say there's a lot going through my mind right now, just of everything you said, different parts of the conversation, and I know that you even kind of asked me this question previously, and I gave my, you know, a little bit of, um, evolutionary mismatch piece. So I'm like, we're coming back to it now and we'll put a nice bow on it.
So in the right,
Julie Howton: well, yeah, in the right time, right? Like,
Brian Sachetta: exactly. So we talked about evolutionary mismatch and the fact that we, you know, we're working with the same hardware, right? The same brains, the same neurological wiring that our ancestors were, uh, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years ago.
So we almost need to meet that hardware on its level. How do we do that? Right? We now find ourselves in this chronically stressful world. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to bring, uh, you know, solution, modern solutions to old problems, if you will, uh, that don't necessarily jive with our internal hardware.
Go back to, you know, living on the, the idea of living on the planes of Africa, being in front of a tiger, being in front of a lion. What were the tools that our ancestors had at their disposal and also what aligned with the makeup of their brains and bodies? 'cause like we said, spoiler alert, same bodies.
Julie Howton: Yep.
Brian Sachetta: The main ones are the physiological ones. So they are moving your body and they are breathing. Uh, I know you just, you just talked about breathing, so let's, let's do a little bit more of that. It's funny 'cause when I think about evolutionary mismatch and, and all that, and the way that our brains are wired, right?
Imagine being in front of that tiger and the cortisol in your, in your br you know Yeah. Gets excreted and the, the, the adrenaline gets pumping and all that. Those chemical messengers are saying, get the heck out of here. Yeah. Run for your life. Fast forward to today, those same chemical messengers are still blaring out.
I know it's probably the wrong verb, but, um, they're still going haywire, right? Yeah. We need to align ourselves with the way that our brains and bodies were constructed and when we feel that stress when it's possible. Now, obviously you can't do this in the middle of a traffic jam, um, but when you feel that stress, get up and move your body.
Go for a walk. Possibly go for a run, right? The idea is we want to take those chemical messengers, hear their message and put them to good use. They are essentially saying, we are driving you to take action and get out of here. So that's really what you need to do amidst the stress, uh, all of it is in service of getting that sympathetic nervous system to quiet down or getting that sympathetic response to power down.
If we go for a run, if we go for a walk, if we move our bodies, we are implicitly sending a message to our brains that says, I got this. I've done what you asked me to do, please turn off the alarms. Now again, like I said, we can't always do the, the thing where we get up and go for a run or go for a walk.
Sometimes we're in traffic, sometimes we're in a meeting. Uh, there's a couple other good things we can do in terms of our physiology on this front. Uh, so one of them is, uh, just moving your eyes back and forth. It comes from, uh, EMDR, which is a, a kind of therapy that's often used for like traumatic experiences and, and processing those.
So EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Uh, now obviously like. Some people have dealt with trauma, some people have not. I'm not gonna go into that here. All I'm gonna do is say that the takeaway of EMDR is to say that you can send a calming message to your brain and to the fear center of your brain, the amygdala, simply by moving your eyes back and forth.
And one of the nice things about this is if you're in that, you know, staff meeting or you're on a, uh, a call with other people, if you're in. Uh, the office and you can't get up and you can't go for that walk. What you can do is you can close your eyes and then you can move your eyes back and forth while your eyes are closed.
Do it for 10 seconds. See what happens. Just take a quick pause. Uh, if that's not accessible, there are other things we can do. Like the deep breathing, right? So science shows us that when we breathe in, or we activate the sympathetic, uh, nervous system a little bit by speeding our heart rate and our bodies up.
And when we get a full deep exhale, we activate the parasympathetic nervous system, uh, effectively slowing our bodies back down. So, you know, if you're in traffic and you can't run, or you're in a, uh, that meeting or, or you're on a Zoom call and you're like, I don't wanna move my eyes, I don't wanna close my eyes, that would be kind of strange right now.
Take that pause, take that breath, uh, you know, do some deep breathing. Make sure to get that exhale. Uh, and one last one on the physical side is. Again, all, all of this in the interest of trying to slow our nervous systems down and get ourselves back into that parasympathetic, parasympathetic state, or at the very least, kickstart that transition, right?
Yeah. I'm not saying we're gonna be a hundred percent tranquil after we do this, but we're just trying to get from that totally frantic mindset into something more manageable that we can work with. And so the last tip that I would give on this front is, uh, there is something in the body called the dive reflex, and it's, it's sort, it seems to be a product of evolution as well.
Uh, and it essentially says that when you. Uh, submerge yourself in cold water. It also slows your body down. So obviously we're not always gonna go jump into a, uh, a cold pool or a bath, uh, or a cold shower all the time. But what we can do is we can get up, we can go for a walk, we can go to the bathroom, splash some cold water on our face, and get a little bit of that same response by activating that dive reflex.
So all of these things, right, are looking at the problem of stress and saying, how did our ancestors potentially deal with this however many years ago? Because again, we have that same hardware inside of us, we're dealing with that same hardware. So the solutions, they don't have to be the same, but I think it would make sense if they were quite similar.
Once we get a little bit of that parasympathetic activation, we can then go into some more modern techniques, uh, and a lot of those that I, I talk about in my first book, so.
Julie Howton: Yeah, which I love. And, and but, so I love that you, you, again, you're great at just meeting people where they are and I, I do think it's important for all of us to have tools that we can use on the fly as well.
Um, and I know this would be a whole nother episode, but I'm curious just your position on if somebody is struggling with anxiety, um, 'cause you mentioned the EMDR and, and trauma. Um, do we, do you believe that, that everybody needs to figure out what the trauma was and, and deal with the trauma in order to have the tools to overcome their anxiety?
Or do you think some people may need to do that? Some people may not. What, what is your take on on that?
Brian Sachetta: I think there's a lot of ways to look at this. The first is, if you don't think that you went through trauma, I would recommend against, you know, digging inside yourself and trying to find it. Right.
Gotcha. Don't, I'm not saying don't go to therapy. I'm just saying, uh, don't go looking for some trauma that, you know, maybe is, there maybe is not. Most people, they, they may have dissociated from the trauma. Sure. But they will know that there is something that is repressed in their minds, uh, an experience that they went through something that was harrowing that.
They don't want to talk about, right? So there's a difference between having been through something and being like, I can't touch that. And the person who is like, I don't think I went through anything, but let me, you know, go on this vision quest to see if, if maybe I did. I think most people would probably know that they went through something, even if again, they dissociated from it and they just, they don't want to talk about it right now.
Those folks who are in that position, I would definitely say those folks are in need of some kind of healing, right? Uh, you get to the point of saying, yeah, look, the brain, just in the way that it adapts to stress and to happiness and all that, it adapts to difficulty and challenge and traumatic, traumatic experiences as well.
Uh, I've done a tiny bit of work in the, uh, the psychedelic space. Uh, and I, you know, I went on a retreat, uh, a few years ago now, and a lot of people who ha, who were on that retreat who had been through traumatic experiences, they reported. Things along this lines, uh, along these lines, which is basically to say they knew that they went through something.
Really difficult. They suppressed it, they pushed it down. Their brains eventually got to the point of saying, Hey, we just need to survive here. You know? Yeah. So they kept going on and living their life. The issue is when you take some challenge, some difficulty, and you push it all the way down into your psyche, that thing starts pulling the strings in ways that you can no longer see.
So for those folks who are like, yeah, I probably went through something terrible and I just haven't been able to unpack it, or I, I'm unwilling to, to broach the subject, those are the folks that I'd recommend, uh, you know, go work with a professional, figure out a way to unpack that trauma, uh, get through it and find better coping mechanisms.
But for the folks who just have anxiety but are, are pretty confident, they don't, they never dealt with, you know, complex trauma or, uh, pervasive trauma or anything like, or even an acute traumatic experience. Mm-hmm. Uh, most folks will probably know where they are on that continuum. And I will also say, is that.
You can absolutely just experience anxiety and have no trauma in your life.
Julie Howton: Yep.
Brian Sachetta: Right.
Julie Howton: At least. No. If you think big T trauma, I think everybody, like I, I think we, I, I believe like we all have trauma, perceived trauma, right? And even if we don't identify it as trauma, I think that there are things that happen to, even if it's, I don't know, a mean kid in elementary school, you know, that you haven't thought about since then.
Somehow shaped. Those coping mechanisms or, um, so I, but sorry, that's my little qualification of
Brian Sachetta: No worries. Yeah, and I, you know, what I would really say is like, again, this isn't to downplay the capital T traumas right, but life is traumatic, right? You, you come out of the womb screaming and crying. You live a life of ups and downs of challenges and difficulties, uncertainty, everybody, you know, at some point, you know, either you're gonna die first or you're gonna watch everybody else die.
Life is a challenging thing. Life is kind of traumatic. And so when I say that you can experience anxiety without having experienced trauma, right? Think back to the entire conversation, right? The world is full of uncertainties. Yeah. The brain hates uncertainty when it. Finds that uncertainty, it can go into that high stress state, into that high alert state, and very quickly we can go from stress and tip all the way over into anxiety.
So sometimes anxiety is just a product of living in this uncertain world. It doesn't always have to mean that we went through some horrendous traumatic experience in our childhood. And like I said a minute ago is if you don't feel like you did, I probably wouldn't recommend going and digging for that kind of thing.
Right. You probably know, even if it's not, I know, you know the idea of I know exactly what I went through and all that. You would have a sense that you went through something, would be my guess. So if you have that inkling, I, I invite folks to explore that with a professional. And if you don't. Just look at your anxiety in the sense that, hey, life is uncertain.
We live in a certain, in an uncertain world. Start there and if if the tools that you are finding along the way are not working for you, then maybe that becomes an invitation to dive deeper or dig deeper in the future.
Julie Howton: Sure, sure. I love that. That's such great advice. I, I keep thinking, what keeps popping into my head is there's such a, a fine line between being a Jewish mama and being anxious, like to, to, you know, like some of us are just raised wired, how, whatever it is.
Um, but I will say from experience, it is very possible, even if you have lived in anxiety for a period of time in your life, to not stay there. Um, and, and to, to really, you know, to regulate, to, to understand and to use the tools. Um, I'm guessing you still get anxious sometimes, right?
Brian Sachetta: I, I still do, but Right.
The goal is, uh, yeah. To find ways to manage. I look back and I say, when I was 18, anxiety completely dominated my life, and I had no path forward. I had no tools, I had no idea what to do. Yeah. Today, there is still anxiety in my life because Sure. Like we said, right, life is uncertain and uncertainty can breed anxiety.
But at the same time, like I don't live there on a daily basis and when I do go there, I have my tools. So the goal is you learn things along the way. You figure out what works for you. Uh, you take those different things that work, you put them into your own mental health toolkit and then you apply them in the right context.
Uh, one quick funny anecdote that I guess I would say, and it's not really an anecdote as much as it is just a, a piece of information, is, you know, you had said earlier, you gotta find what works for you. And if you look at a lot of literature in the psychology space, the scary and kind of sad thing is that all the different healing modalities essentially only work a little bit better than a coin flip.
And so what essentially it comes down to is figuring out which of those coins you specifically need to flip. Yeah. The ones that are gonna turn up in your favor.
Julie Howton: I love that. And that's, and, and I, I don't, I actually think it's liberating to hear that, right? Because the, you know, so and so does this and I tried that and it doesn't work for me.
Doesn't mean I'm broken, right? It's, it's, I haven't, I joke, you know, just like what I eat isn't what somebody else may need to eat. You know, when people ask about my stress management, really, like, one of my biggest stress relievers and, and shifters back into the parasympathetic state is spending time with my horses.
For some people loving on a 1200 pound animal is not going to reduce their, their feeling of anxiety or stress. Right? And so that's the, the, it's not like breathing or you know, any of the, those tools, but I think we also have these. Not scientifically proven things that that can help us too, and they should be included in the toolbox.
I think the toolbox should have both of those. Um, you know, this brings me joy, therefore helps me get out of the, the sympathetic state. Um, and so, but I, I do think, I, I use the horses as that perfect example of it's not one size fits all because, you know, some of the things you that help you may drive stress for me.
Who knows? You know? Um, so I, I think that that, gosh, if listeners only get that takeaway of, you know, the, the finding what works for them, um, and, and knowing that no, no thing works for everybody, um, is really, really important
Brian Sachetta: for sure. And I, I do like your reframe of saying, Hey, this isn't actually a horrible thing.
It's. It's kind of liberating. Yeah. To say that, Hey, I'm not broken. I'm, I'm just a human. I have my own eccentricities. I have my own things that work for me and, and don't work for me. And so it allows us to just move on rather Right. Than saying, yeah, I listen to this one person and they're an idiot, or whatever.
You just, you just move on and you go try to find the next thing. Sure. It can lead to a little bit more work in the sense that you have to try out all those different things, but stay patient. They will eventually come to you.
Julie Howton: Yeah. Ah, amazing. So we're at the point of the interview where listeners are leaning in because they know I'm gonna ask you for one step that they can take starting today to improve their health, whether it's physical health, mental health.
I mean there, to me it's just health because it's integrated, so.
Brian Sachetta: I think this will dovetail nicely with everything that we have talked about, and I would, it's, it's not something that I came up with. I think maybe some listeners have heard of it before, but think about how chronically stressful the world is in which we live.
Think about how often you are spending time in front of a screen, a computer, a phone, all that. I would challenge listeners to find 10 minutes today to find an area of grass or dirt or sand that they can stand on. And when they're doing that, 10 minutes of, of grounding is what it's called. I want you to put the phone away.
I want you to put the music away and I want you to just sit there and see what happens.
Julie Howton: I love it. I can feel some people's anxiety just went up. I love that you qualified. I wouldn't have even. Considered saying, put the phone away. But I would also never consider looking at my phone while I was grounding.
But I, so I love that. Thank you for including the like, just be and be connected to the earth and let it, let it shift your energy.
Brian Sachetta: For sure. Amazing. And it's, it's, I guess the last piece that I kind of didn't say that I'd like to say on that front is for me, I, I try to do this practice when I can. And quite sadly, it becomes one of the only times of the day where I'm not in front of a screen where I'm not distracted, where I'm not totally busy.
Right. And I have to, we all have to carve that time out and be methodical with it because of how busy and frantic the world is these days.
Julie Howton: Yeah. Uh, amen. But again, it is getting back. To nature. Um, I'll share a little anecdote when I, so I've been working from home since I started my business nine years ago, and last year life shifted kind of on a d and i I, I have, again, we talk about building routine and shifting routine, right?
And so I had built this routine that I didn't have to think about. Just, you know, all of these habits that support me were built into my day. And then all of a sudden I was working in the clinic every day. And, and like, I'm literally barefoot right now. Is, is like when I'm home, I'm barefoot. And I, I really didn't even consciously realize at first like the, the shift between.
Not grounding in between, you know, I don't just ground in the morning, I, I will go in and out and, and, um, so I was grounding throughout the day. I don't have fluorescent or LED lights in my home. I was now working in a fairly hermetically sealed clinic under fluorescent lights. No more grounding, no si, you know, all the things.
And within a week I was totally inflamed. I could feel all of that stuff that I've put, you know, way behind me in the rear view mirror. And it was like, it was such a great reminder of, oh my gosh, I need to recreate a routine and, you know, my life looks different right now. And all these things that just naturally occurred during the day.
And so one of the things I love about grounding, if you will put. Technology down and just be is what, what I would do when I work from home. You know what I, it, it to me is, it's balancing right. It's not about, so if I'm tired, it will energize me. If I am anxious, it'll settle me down or feeling stressed, you know?
It really does. And, and we don't ground unless we're, again, back to intention. That's what it takes in modern time is, is to be intentional. So I'm just really excited that that was your, your one step, because it, it's huge and, and what it will do for inflammation, for mood, for energy is, is amazing. Um, and I'll throw out there, I, I think if somebody has ne, you know, if they felt their heart rate increase when you said put your phone down, just be for 10 minutes, start with five.
That's okay. Just wherever you are.
Brian Sachetta: I love that. Yeah. And as you said, that's, that's what I try to do. I try to meet people at their level, right? Yeah. I wanna make these things approachable and hey, if it's one minute, that's a win. Yeah. Just build little small habits and try to stack stack them on top of each other and keep making progress.
Julie Howton: Amazing. I'm gonna say it again. I know we already talked about get out of your head, but where for people that aren't gonna check the show notes, where is the best place to find you?
Brian Sachetta: Yeah, just go to get out of your head.com. It's all one word thing, if you will. No dashes, no underscores in that.
Julie Howton: Yeah. And, and it's, it's great.
And there's lots of, lots of good stuff on the website. So, um, Brian, thank you so much for sharing your journey, your, your knowledge, your wisdom, and your expertise with us. It is such an important topic. It is so integrated into daily life for so many people right now and again, especially for our community of listeners.
Um, so really, really appreciate it.
Brian Sachetta: My pleasure, and thank you for having me, Julie.
Julie Howton: My pleasure. For everyone listening, remember, you can get those show notes and transcripts by visiting Inspired Living Show. I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week.
(Intro bumper)
Julie Howton: Welcome back to The Inspired Living with Autoimmunity podcast. I'm your host, Julie Howton, and today we're joined by Brian Sachetta, author, blogger, and mental health advocate from Boston, Massachusetts. After grappling with anxiety and depression throughout his young adulthood, Brian became determined to find better ways to navigate such challenges.
As a result, he turned to therapy, immersed himself in mental health literature, and experimented with a wide array of tactics for managing his wellbeing. Over time, these efforts led to significant breakthroughs on his mental health journey. Inspired by his progress, he began sharing his story to empower others (Intro) facing similar struggles.
Today he's on a mission to guide individuals toward taking control of their mental health, and he brings that mission to life through his popular book series. Get Out of Your Head and on podcasts like these. In today's conversation, we're talking about the physical impact of anxiety and chronic stress. (Main interview) Brian, welcome to the podcast.
Brian Sachetta: Thank you, Julie. Excited to be here.
Julie Howton: I am excited to have you. I really, I know it's not even, I believe this is, it's such an important topic, um, and an important conversation, right, as people didn't use to talk about things like anxiety. So I would love for you to just introduce yourself a little more informally with listeners and, and share some of your journey.
Um, because I, I always feel like that's the most inspiring part of the Inspired Living Podcast is people's journeys and, and what brought them to a place where they're, they're sharing with the world.
Brian Sachetta: Definitely, I'll try to keep it kind of brief, but then we can jump in in more detail after this. So, great.
I'm Brian Scheta, the owner and author of Get Out of Your Head, which is both a brand and book series that seeks to help folks overcome anxiety and depression. I got into this space as a product of personal experience going through anxiety and depression myself and along the way, right? I think anybody who has dealt with anxiety or depression can relate to the fact that dealing with those things is really painful and you know, you go through years of anxiety, you go through some bouts of depression.
It hurts, it really affects you in a negative capacity. And so as I went along my own journey and I started to make progress with both of those conditions, you know, I held onto that idea of knowing how painful the anxiety and the depression were and can be. And I talked to a lot of different people, right?
And they, they kind of, you know, relayed their own concerns and issues in saying that they too deal with. These same kinds of things. So seeing that pain in other people, uh, you know, it makes me empathetic or the the empath in me comes out and makes me want to help. And so along the way, I, I came up with different things that helped my own conditions and eventually just got to the point of wanting to around and helped some of those people that I had talked to on that journey.
So the journey continues today in the sense that, you know, I've got two books out on the marketplace, one on anxiety, one on depression, but, you know, I'm not a doctor. I'm not, and I'm certainly, uh, I'm human, right? Where mm-hmm. I still experience some anxiety. I still experience some depressive days, right?
And so what I'm trying to do, and what I've always been trying to do is sort of use my life almost as if it were a little bit of a science experiment, right? Trial and error. Figure out things that work for me, things that don't, and then just write about those things and talk about those things, and share them with other people in hopes of helping even more folks along the way.
Julie Howton: I love it. It is amazing. And, and thank you for stepping into that place where you're taking your experience and helping others, you know, through your story and through the things that you've learned that, I love that you said life is a science experiment because whether it's anxiety, depression, autoimmune, you know, diet.
Like I have people say to me, well, what do you eat? Tell me, tell me what you eat. You're, you are better. You know? And I'm like, but that's me. You can try certain things or, you know. Um, and so I, I do think that for all of us, wherever our focus is just realizing that like, if this doesn't work, we try something else.
And, and that's the, the gift that we get, you know, and maybe what worked. Two years ago isn't working right now. Um, and, and so I think both anxiety and depression can be really isolating and lonely. And so you using your voice to, to guide others is, is really important. And, um, I feel like I'm allowed to say this 'cause I'm married to a physician.
Like a, a doctor isn't necessarily the right person to help you with the tools depending on their experience and their knowledge. And, and so sometimes when we've come through something, um, that's what people need is that, that, like you said, you know, the, those of us that are em can be empathetic and, and really understand.
Where somebody may be sitting, whether it's with autoimmune or anxiety, or both. Um, I do think, and I'm excited to talk about it, but you know, they, they are definitely connected. Um, and, and as somebody who grew up with anxiety, um, I, I definitely feel like that certainly if I had the tools I have now, you know, maybe I would never have had autoimmunity express.
Um, who knows? I don't know. I know, but then what would I be doing? You So I am where I'm supposed to be. Uh, but I, I, I love it and I love, I love your brand and your website and, and it, if you can, this is gonna sound strange, but you make it fun. Like you're just, you're relatable. And even just the, the name of your brand is like, oh my gosh.
Yeah. Get outta my head. How do I get outta my head? Brian's gonna help me do that. Um, and, and so yeah. So good. So good job with that. I don't know how you came up with that, but it, it's sometimes the most simple is the best.
Brian Sachetta: I totally agree with that, and I appreciate the compliments. Yeah. On the, on the brand side, right?
The, the, the name is, get out of your head. It really comes down to the fact that like our brains and our minds are so powerful. Yes. It's almost like this reality distortion field that we put on ourselves. Yes. So you have a public speech coming up or an interview that you're going on. And our brains are so powerful that they can turn that thing, which is, sure it's scary, but it's, it's, it is most literally not the end of the world, right?
It can turn those things into what feel like the end of the world. And so one of the challenges in this space is you have people who are totally on the outside and they will say, it's a job interview. Get over it. And then you'll have people on the inside who are like, I, I feel as though I am dying right now and I'm going off into battle willingly putting myself on the line, and I'm gonna get shot and I'm gonna die.
Right? And so the two sides of. The argument are really talking past one another. So one of the work, you know, some of the work that I try to do is bring that approachability and say, Hey look, let's think about what's going on inside of that person's mind. Who is dealing with the fear? Who's dealing with the struggle?
And maybe if we have an open conversation, we can get to the point of allowing other people to see the fact that, hey, maybe this thing isn't the end of the world, but the response that is occurring inside of that person's brain and body makes it feel that way. And so the get out of your head piece right is, is kind of that constant reminder to folks to say, it's not downplaying what you're going through.
It's saying your brain is so powerful and your sympathetic nervous system is so powerful and you are wired for survival. Your brain will do anything it needs to do to get you out of potentially threatening situations. You get all caught up in that as a. Just a product of how the brain works. And so it's a reminder to say every once in a while, take a step back.
Yep. Just, you know, do your little mantras, do some deep breathing. Remind yourself that being in your head, running those cycles, those ruminative cycles doesn't always get you to the place that you want to be. Sometimes you need to get back into your body and allow the stress response to work itself through you, and then eventually, sometimes the anxiety goes away as well.
Julie Howton: Yeah. Uh, so well said. And, and I love that, that you, you know, we are wired with this, it's a survival trait, right. Our, our stress response and, and, um, and being stuck in a sympathetic state. Is, you know, is one of the fa it does drive inflammation. It does, you know, compound autoimmune symptoms, whether I, you know, cause effect, but it, it definitely plays a, a part.
Um, and, and I I just love that you said, you know, how, how powerful the mind is, right? I used to eventually work with clients on mindset when I first had had started my coaching business and then I realized like, oh, I'm doing it backwards. We have to start with mindset and then all of the other stuff is gonna work better.
Um, and, and so because of modern times we have to be exercising our para, it used to be. That our, our natural state was the parasympathetic state, right? And then we would have this acute stress response, and then we would return to the parasympathetic state. And I really feel like even for people who don't identify as having anxiety, if you're living in modern times and you're not exercising that parasympathetic state, you need to be like it, it really takes intention.
Um, and, and so I love, I love that you, you know. We're, you're not broken if you're in your mind all the time. Like, that is, it is how we're created. It's, I have people tell me all the time, oh, I'm a bad meditator. I, I can't, you know, I can't make my mind blank. And I'm like, well, the mind doesn't get blank if we're alive.
Like, it just doesn't, you're not gonna not have thoughts. So, um, so thank you for just showing up and, and normalizing the things that I, I think we all at least need to pay attention to. Um, I know. So, so do you have, and I know you, we, we were cheating before we hit record, um, about some of, again, these, these crossovers because we're whole integrated humans.
Um, do you have go-tos for creating a pause. Or getting out of your head? Um,
Brian Sachetta: yeah, I, I definitely do. I, I, I, I think this sort of warrants a little bit of a stepping back and talking about what you alluded to a minute ago, right? So, yeah, I, I use this term, and it's not my own term, but it gets thrown around quite a bit and I honestly, I think it's kind of amazing this term called evolutionary mismatch.
Yes. So essentially, right, you go back 500,000 years ago and think about the fact that, you know, we used to be essentially evolved apes that further evolved on the planes of Africa, right? And at that period of time, or in that epic, right, we had certain mechanisms in our brains that. Rewarded us for certain behaviors or sort of like disincentivized us to do other things.
And so one of those mechanisms in our brains is the fact that, or, you know, I guess within our entire bodies, right? We have our nervous system and we have that sympathetic response or that sympathetic nervous system, which is essentially that fight or flight response. And so what happened was over long periods of time, you know, many, uh, I guess many, many centuries, the body evolved to say, Hey, if there's something threatening in front of me, I need to essentially put my body into a heightened state and find a way to run away from this thing or fight with it.
So that's that fight or flight response. You now move forward into today's times? Mm-hmm. We haven't really evolved all that much in the last 30,000 years, and honestly it's probably even longer than that. But I would say we haven't evolved at all in that period of time. Uh, and another thing that we could definitely say is we still have pretty much the same brains in the same nervous systems that our ancestors did, you know, a half a million years ago.
So what does that mean is we now find ourselves in a very different world than that of our ancestors, but we have the same internal wiring. Yeah. So we still have that sympathetic nervous system. We still have the acute stress response. The problem is that the world is so different today. So whereas a half a million years ago, you know, one of your ancestors came across a lion or a tiger.
Every once in a great while and ran away from it or fought it got, you know, God willing they got away from it. Right. Probably wouldn't be here if they didn't. Right. Um, today we, we obviously don't face lions and tigers, literal ones on a daily basis, but we face a lot of stress and so our bodies are designed for acute stressors like that.
Tiger. They are not designed for the chronically stressful world that we now find ourselves in. And why I really want to take time to make this emphasis is, you know, there are times in the world where I look around and I'm like, oh, everything's so broken. How did it get this way? Whatever. And if you look at the timeline that I kind of just laid out, it all kind of falls into place and makes sense.
And when you say, why do people experience so much anxiety? Why do people experience so much stress? Why are rates of heart disease as high as they are? Obviously there's a million different answers that we could provide, but you think about it and you say, oh, we really weren't evolved. To live in this kind of world.
Yeah. And so the amount of stress we experience on a daily basis revs up our nervous systems and puts us into that sympathetic state. You live there long enough and as you suggested right, you might flare up some conditions Yeah. That look like autoimmune. You might lead to, you know, those things might lead to high blood pressure.
They might lead to, um, you know, like paranoia or some, some like pervasive or chronic feelings of fear. And eventually, you know, you run that sympathetic nervous system long enough over long enough periods of time, uh, hard enough over long enough periods of time, and you're building up cortisol in the bloodstream and affecting your blood vessels and potentially leading, you know, to cardiac events down the road.
So all of that is to say. It's sort of meant to be this way, as unsettling as that may be. The reason that I give such a preamble like that is to say that that's reality. We now need to go figure out how to deal with that reality, if that makes sense.
Julie Howton: Sure. It's so true. It's the, it's the same. And I'm gonna throw in the you healing, you know, digestion, detox, resting, all of that only happens in the parasympathetic state.
Uh, and so, you know, no wonder, right, it, it's, it's really not any different than looking at the amount of chemicals and toxins we're exposed to every day. Right. We, we are creating chemicals way faster than our body has evolved to be able to clear them. It's just, it's, it's. The same problem or opportunity.
I don't wanna say it's a problem, it's, it is just, it takes in it, again, back to intention, right? We have to be intentional. Um, you know, did we need to have stress management techniques back in caveman times? No. 'cause life was set up that way. Um, just like we didn't need to think about grounding or getting sunlight in our eyes or, you know, all of the other things as we've evolved away from nature.
Um, and, and so I, I do think, and then you can add in and I'd, I would love for you to share your opinions too, on, like, I feel like when I was in high school and I was struggling with anxiety, um, I was the, and I don't know if it was a, nobody was talking about it or it was not as commonplace as it is now.
Um, but. I, I, I feel like more people are aware that there's, they struggle with anxiety now, um, than, well, I'm old, so, you know, 40 years ago. Um, and I, I think again, some of that leads to, is also connected with modern times and, you know, the, this, the good and the bad, right? I love that we're in different states.
We can have this conversation. It feels like we're together. Listeners from around the world are gonna get to, to join in. That's amazing. But then there's also this, you know, other piece of it where I think I, I can't imagine like having grown up with social media and screens and all the things. Um, and so do you think that, that it, it, do you think it's, it?
Just that people are sharing more, or do you think that that the amount of anxiety that's out there is just really increasing?
Brian Sachetta: I really do think it's both,
Julie Howton: yeah. Okay. From the
Brian Sachetta: standpoint of everything we just talked about and the fact that even 20 years ago, you know, I, I, I don't think I was quite in high school yet, but when I was in grade school and in high school.
Things were not nearly as stressful as they are today. And I'm not saying that life was all, you know, was peachy keen or anything like that. Right. There was obviously stressors, but you think about the world today, right? Uh, social media, as you mentioned. You know, we go online, we see harrowing news headlines, we see the latest creator or, uh, persona, online celebrities that are, you know, kind of showing off their lifestyles and their bodies and, and you know, indirectly showing us how we, we don't measure up.
Right? Right. So there's this comparisonitis kind of thing going on mm-hmm. Uh, in the workplace, right? We, all of us are, are scrambling to keep up with AI and the rapid pace of change. And so the environment has been changing quite a bit and it continues to change. And honestly it continues changing at an accelerating rate.
And I think people are finally getting to the point of feeling like, I really can't keep up. Right. I'm experiencing so much stress. And when you put that much. Of a burden on your sympathetic nervous system or on your body, you're going to experience that stress and probably at some point, right, that stress tips over into anxiety or autoimmune disorders or even just, you know, symptoms in the body that are not official disorders, but still ones that you don't want to deal with, you don't want to experience, right?
So I certainly think that. The world has gotten more stressful. That's led to more anxiety in general. And then, you know, two other things is one, more people have spoken up. So I think other people feel more comfortable speaking up. And also I think that as the world gets more stressful, everybody's kind of like holding on for dear life and being like, I didn't want to speak up, but now I feel like I have to because I just can't deal with this anymore.
You know, I can't cope. And so all of those things come together and, you know, we have this conversation that is, uh, and I use that, that word in the broad sense of like, the conversation around mental health has grown. Yes. Uh, and it has goodness become, you know, more compassionate, uh, more comprehensive, that kind of thing.
Uh, I will say, right on the, on the. Evolutionary mismatch piece and all that. Like, I actually look at a lot of these things as pros and cons. I'm an engineer. Sure. There's a, there's an idea that comes from engineering that basically says, uh, there's no solutions. There's only trade-offs, right? So, uh, to your point of if we went back 20 years ago where there's less stress, one of the effects of that is that you and I would not be having this conversation via Zoom.
So there's trade-offs in every aspect of life. Some of it these days means more stress, means more anxiety, but it's certainly not all bad. It's just No. Some pros here, some cons there.
Julie Howton: Yeah. Yeah. Which means our tools need to change, right? We just need, you know, to, to find solutions, um, to make things more of a win than a loss.
I was thinking as you were talking, like it is interesting. If you think of the acute stress and, and it's just like, you know, we talk about inflammation and people think inflammation is, is a negative and chronic inflammation is a negative. Inflammation is actually a, a healing signal. So it, it's the same thing, you know, without stress we don't grow.
Um, so it's the, the, the difference is the chronic piece, right? Because certainly, I don't know the, you know, even I, maybe it's 'cause I live in Colorado, so sometimes I, I think of like the people that were here in the 18 hundreds and just, you know, how rough the terrain and the winters and the, so it's not that life was easier per se.
And, and the, the concerns about survival were actually real yet. Still, we weren't in a chronic stress state. And, and so now, like you were saying before, it, the things that, that are sometimes driving the most anxiety are not, the world isn't coming to an end, or your life isn't coming to an end. Um, yet that's, that, it's, it's, it's the chronic piece.
I think that that really tips it over into, into a problem. Again, maybe not to be solved, but to be supported for sure. Um, yes, most definitely.
Brian Sachetta: And I, I do find it fascinating thinking about those people, right? Yeah. In the 18 hundreds, 19 hundreds, whatever. I look back and I think to myself, they probably, you know, they didn't experience chronic stress, right?
They probably experienced a good amount of chronic boredom, to be honest. And, and boredom is no longer something that. Pretty much any of us face, right? Even when we are bored for a second, we pull out our phones, we go on Instagram, we go on Twitter. So it's just different situations and different quote unquote problems or, you know, different solutions that we need to find for those problems.
Julie Howton: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So I, I'm curious, your take on, you know, you were talking about like that chronic stress and, and either whether it leads to a chronic illness or leads to feeling stressed out or know, or, you know, identifying as like, oh, I, I, I'm anxious. Um, I come across a lot of clients who, when we start to talk about stress, they'll say, oh, I'm not stressed.
Um, and then they share, you know, I'm like, okay, well tell me what your life is like. And I'm like, wow, I'm stressed just listening. So I like, is there such a thing as like. Numbing ourselves. In other words, like we, we just, some people are living in such a constant sympathetic state that they, they're, they don't feel stressed out, they're not aware because that's their normal state.
Brian Sachetta: Yeah. I think it's very possible sort of a, a metaphor or just like example that I like to give on this front is, is the idea that, so there's this, this term called hedonic, uh, hedonic adaptation or the hedonic treadmill, and it's applied to happiness 'cause hedonism, right? The, the sense of, uh, feeling positive affect, uh, and eventually that, that affect kind of goes back down.
We get used to it. We get back on the treadmill, always seeking more happiness. Obviously that's a great term used throughout psychology and all the literature and whatnot, but I think that's just how the brain operates in general, in the sense of the brain is very adaptive. So on the sa, like we can make that same connection to stress itself.
So you find yourself in a stressful state or you're in a stressful job. I'm not saying that every single person on Earth is always like, Hey, I have the most stressful job on earth, but I just figured out how to deal with it. What I would say though is that in general, the brain understands that it needs to adapt to certain situations, so that way you don't always have to think through every single move that you make throughout your life.
So yes, it can very much go that way. And another example, and this is cr, this is a crude example, but there's a quote that basically says. You know, I've been wading through poop or feces for so long that I don't even smell it anymore. Right? And it's that idea that you adapt to your circumstances just as you may be going through stress on a regular basis.
And it just becomes the water that you swim in that you don't notice anymore. And so one of the really like challenging things about dealing with all of these issues is you can't see them unless you take that pause or you work with somebody else. And the most fascinating thing that you said, right when you said, I feel stressed out just by you telling me that story about your life, right?
That's, that's the response that gives feedback, that aha moment, uhhuh. And you need that. Otherwise you'll probably, I'm not saying you'll never get the message, but the fact that your brain just is adapting to all these circumstances, it will take you longer. To see what you are doing wrong or the fact that, hey, maybe your daily existence is not as helpful as you would like it to be.
Julie Howton: Yeah. Uh, so well said too. It is true. We sometimes that step back in so many, so many aspects of life. Um, so in your opinion, if somebody, and, and I, I say this all the time, especially, there's my response always when somebody says, you know, oh, I'm, I'm not stressed. They're working with me because they have chronic illness that's impacting their life.
So I call bs, you know, and not that they're lying, but that they're just not a, you know, just having chronic illness is stressful and, and so and can be. Right? And, and I think that sometimes the, like head in the sand is, is not serving people. Um, and again, whether it's. You know, watching the news, social media, your job, your family, finances, chronic illness, whatever it is.
Um, I, I, I just, I think that, like you said, taking that step back, it, it doesn't mean it's not a cop out to say, you know, like, yeah, we, we are, we're all dealing with stress and it's definitely not a badge of honor, at least from where I sit of like, you know, um, who has, you know, who has the most stressful life or, um, you know, who crams the most into a day or sleeps the least, or none of that is, that's how you end up working with somebody like me.
So that's not, um, you know, not recommended, but how, how do, how do you encourage people to take that step back? Um, and because sometimes. Like I was saying before, like the stressors a hundred years ago versus the stressors now they feel the same in the body. It doesn't matter if it's a tiger or traffic and you're late for an appointment or you know, so how do we even first create that awareness of I am running on overdrive?
Brian Sachetta: It's funny because two things come to mind. The first is the person that came to you and is saying, I'm dealing with issues. I'm not saying that their situation is easy, but I will say that they're in front of you looking for a solution. So, you know, we still need to meet them on their level Sure. And provide them guidance that resonates with them.
But they are somebody that we can. Yeah, they shown up, put ideas in front of, right, exactly. They are, on some level, they are open to feedback and they are looking for a solution. Right? Yeah. So from, from their point of view, right? What, what I would say, or if I was working with that person, we just have to figure out what the leverage is for them.
So they are saying that they're not stressed out and yet they're working with you. They are experiencing these different kinds of symptoms and whatnot. We just have to put it on the table and say, why are you here? What are you experiencing? What are you willing to give up? For the possibility of not experiencing these things anymore.
And then once the calculus in that person's mind adds up to something, let's say positive, right? In the sense that, okay, I have to take a hit. I can't work as hard, and that's, you know, that's, that's a negative thing, but I will get some other benefit, uh, by not working as hard and maybe that stress reduction.
Once they can see that the benefit they get outweighs the negative detraction that they have to encounter or, um, uh, uh, incur, then they're more willing to, you know, consider what it is that we're talking about with them. The second thing that comes to mind is it's the person who doesn't know. That there is a problem.
That's the real one that I wince at because I'm like, yeah, they, they, we don't know who they are. They don't know what issue they're going through. We've, we haven't met them yet. Yeah. Uh, so we're on on two totally different paths and that scares me. Uh, again, not to say that the person who comes into your office and asks for help, uh, is quote unquote easy, but they have shown up and they are on some level, willing to do some amount of work.
We just need to convince them that they should do that work. It's more the person who is listening to this convincing themselves that they are not in a high stress state or not experiencing these things. And so even though we don't have the opportunity to Exactly talk directly to that person and say, Hey, here's my pitch.
What I would say to those listeners is be honest with yourself. Give it five, give it 10 minutes after listening to this episode, ask yourself, is the path that I'm on in life is that one that's bringing me to the place that I want to be? Or at least providing me with feelings that are uplifting, that are positive, and are not constantly stressing me out and making me feel terrible.
And even if it's not all the way to level, the level of terrible, it might just be chronic stress and not feeling great. Right? And once you make that recognition that that is occurring, that's where you kind of say, ah, okay, maybe I need to make some changes now. Let me go explore what my options are.
Julie Howton: And it's so well said.
So thank you. Um, how do you, does it matter differentiate between chronic stress and anxiety? Like. To me, there's, it's almost like a, there's a continuum, right? Of, of, um, but by definition, is there a difference from, from your perspective and yeah.
Brian Sachetta: So
Julie Howton: part B will be, is is there a difference in the body's response?
Brian Sachetta: I love Part B. We'll get to that for sure. So let's, let's talk about what stress is and then chronic stress and then anxiety. Okay. So stress, the most basic definition I can give is it's the response in the body, or it's a feeling when the resources that you have are outpaced or outstripped by the demands put on you.
Right? So as a very simple example, if you say, I have to go do this task, it's gonna take me three hours and I only have one hour to do it. You are going to feel stressed out now within the body, right? Like, what is, what is the response that occurs? Uh, it is usually the heightening of your sympathetic nervous system, right?
So it's that same circuit that basically says there's some kind of threat here. So let's get the blood pumping. Let's, uh, you know, get the heart racing. Let's get tunnel vision. Let's put butterflies in the stomach. Or at the very least, like, let's move blood away from the stomach and toward the extremity so that way we can take action.
Chronic stress is essentially being in that state and feeling those feelings. All the time, or a lot of the time, right? So how do you fall into chronic stress? You either have an insanely busy life or you are just in a few different commitments that are always putting those demands on you. And it could be, you know, a, a literal demand of like, okay, I, I have one hour, I need three hours.
It could also be more abstract from the standpoint of, I go to my job every day and my boss is demanding, or my boss is not a nice person and I only have so much tolerance for handling. You know, the fact that he's rude or the fact that he's always, you know, hurdling insults my way. Right? Again, it's, uh, it's the demand outpacing, uh, the, the supply or the resources that we have, just not always in a, you know, a nice clean one hour, two hour kind of thing.
Same response in the body there, which is when you get stressed out, right? You feel it, you're, you're on edge, you're tense, maybe your palms sweat, maybe you start, you, you know, the, the thoughts in your mind start racing. Uh, so it's very similar in that regard. It's just stress dialed up quite a bit. And quite often anxiety is similar, but not exactly the same.
So I often say that anxiety is future oriented fear. You know what fear feels like you're in front of that tiger and you're like, I gotta get the heck outta here before something bad happens. Anxiety is that tiger situation, but abstracted out over a period of time in the sense that that threat is not immediately in front of you right now.
Yeah. You're just thinking about eventually being front of a tiger or a proverbial tiger. If you think about anxiety and the response in the body, it's very similar to those other situations of stress and chronic stress, and that is essentially that heightened sympathetic response. Your heart races, your mind whirls, your palms, start sweating, blood rushes to your extremities.
And so it's all essentially the sympathetic nervous system in all of these situations gets turned up. And the challenge, right, is if we, even though stress and anxiety are two distinct things, they're also closely related and linked by that sympathetic response. So if we're always in stressful situations and that sympathetic nervous system is always turning up, then let's say we add some concern in our lives where we don't know how we're gonna pay our bills next month.
And if our nervous system is already on edge, guess what? We're already feeling those feelings of. Fear and, you know, sweaty palms and heart racing and all that. And then we add that concern to the mix and we're gonna feel even more of that. And it's gonna become easier for us to tip from stress into anxiety because the stress response is already activated.
So one of the things that I'd love to talk about on the autoimmune front or, you know, sort of the, uh, chronic conditions front is. Saying that when you deal with a lot of stress and you're putting, you know, either you are putting too many demands on your sympathetic nervous system or your nervous system, or the world is placing too many demands on you.
Mm-hmm. Then you're living in that state of high adrenaline and high cortisol and making it such that not only are you experiencing your, uh, more anxiety or more likely to experience more anxiety, but all, you know, those neurotransmitters and those stress hormones, if they are perpetually c circulating around your bloodstream, eventually that's gonna have negative effects.
Right. So that might mean eventually, right. It leads to high blood pressure or some chronic condition that you have flares up. You know, it could be, I, I've heard of stories where, you know, folks, God forbid, like they have herpes and the herpes outbreaks come when people are really stressed out. Sure.
Because what happens is the body says, I only have so many resources to fight the threats that are in front of me. And the way that I do that is I turn up the stress response, but now. I can't handle the fact that, you know, there's a, a virus, a herpes virus living in my body, and I was suppressing it previously.
I'm now putting all my resources on the stress management front, uh, on the sympathetic nervous system front, such that the herpes breaks out because I don't have as many resources as I, as I need to keep that at bay. So, long-winded way of saying that, when it comes to anxiety, when it comes to chronic conditions, stress management is actually, ooh, I don't know what percentage of the pie it is, but it's a big piece.
It's big.
Julie Howton: It is, uh, it is big and, and, um, well, and even with autoimmunity, there's often the, the, you know, the, the symptoms will appear and yes, even flares for somebody who already knows. But, um, either during or right after a major stressor. Is when all of a sudden Right. It it'll, it, it can pop up. I was thinking about, um, when you were talking about that, that kind of, that cycle, right?
Of like, here's what's happening in the body. And, and I love that you used the word tip into anxiety. 'cause that was what was playing in my head as you were talking. Um, but it, it can be a two-way street and, and so, which is to me is a good thing. Um, so if I think about somebody using a breathing technique to, it's one of my favorite places to start with people to just even like, dip their toe into a parasympathetic state.
But, but it, it, it goes both ways. Like we feel stressed, it creates this physiological response, but that physiological response also drives the feeling of being stressed. Is where people can get stuck in that snowball. And the fun part is, it's almost, I think of it as like you're tricking your brain. Like if you're using some kind of intentional breath work, like you don't, you don't have to feel relaxed just to, to start to exercise the parasympathetic state and then, you know, you can grow that into, also when I do this thing, I feel relaxed and I, you know, and just use it to break the cycle.
What, what are some of your favorite ways or where do you have people even start? If people are listening and they're like, you know what, I never really thought about it. This is for me, you know, that's why I tuned in today. Like, do you have, what's, do you have favorite place for people to start?
Brian Sachetta: Yeah, absolutely.
Uh, I will say there's a lot going through my mind right now, just of everything you said, different parts of the conversation, and I know that you even kind of asked me this question previously, and I gave my, you know, a little bit of, um, evolutionary mismatch piece. So I'm like, we're coming back to it now and we'll put a nice bow on it.
So in the right,
Julie Howton: well, yeah, in the right time, right? Like,
Brian Sachetta: exactly. So we talked about evolutionary mismatch and the fact that we, you know, we're working with the same hardware, right? The same brains, the same neurological wiring that our ancestors were, uh, you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years ago.
So we almost need to meet that hardware on its level. How do we do that? Right? We now find ourselves in this chronically stressful world. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to bring, uh, you know, solution, modern solutions to old problems, if you will, uh, that don't necessarily jive with our internal hardware.
Go back to, you know, living on the, the idea of living on the planes of Africa, being in front of a tiger, being in front of a lion. What were the tools that our ancestors had at their disposal and also what aligned with the makeup of their brains and bodies? 'cause like we said, spoiler alert, same bodies.
Julie Howton: Yep.
Brian Sachetta: The main ones are the physiological ones. So they are moving your body and they are breathing. Uh, I know you just, you just talked about breathing, so let's, let's do a little bit more of that. It's funny 'cause when I think about evolutionary mismatch and, and all that, and the way that our brains are wired, right?
Imagine being in front of that tiger and the cortisol in your, in your br you know Yeah. Gets excreted and the, the, the adrenaline gets pumping and all that. Those chemical messengers are saying, get the heck out of here. Yeah. Run for your life. Fast forward to today, those same chemical messengers are still blaring out.
I know it's probably the wrong verb, but, um, they're still going haywire, right? Yeah. We need to align ourselves with the way that our brains and bodies were constructed and when we feel that stress when it's possible. Now, obviously you can't do this in the middle of a traffic jam, um, but when you feel that stress, get up and move your body.
Go for a walk. Possibly go for a run, right? The idea is we want to take those chemical messengers, hear their message and put them to good use. They are essentially saying, we are driving you to take action and get out of here. So that's really what you need to do amidst the stress, uh, all of it is in service of getting that sympathetic nervous system to quiet down or getting that sympathetic response to power down.
If we go for a run, if we go for a walk, if we move our bodies, we are implicitly sending a message to our brains that says, I got this. I've done what you asked me to do, please turn off the alarms. Now again, like I said, we can't always do the, the thing where we get up and go for a run or go for a walk.
Sometimes we're in traffic, sometimes we're in a meeting. Uh, there's a couple other good things we can do in terms of our physiology on this front. Uh, so one of them is, uh, just moving your eyes back and forth. It comes from, uh, EMDR, which is a, a kind of therapy that's often used for like traumatic experiences and, and processing those.
So EMDR stands for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Uh, now obviously like. Some people have dealt with trauma, some people have not. I'm not gonna go into that here. All I'm gonna do is say that the takeaway of EMDR is to say that you can send a calming message to your brain and to the fear center of your brain, the amygdala, simply by moving your eyes back and forth.
And one of the nice things about this is if you're in that, you know, staff meeting or you're on a, uh, a call with other people, if you're in. Uh, the office and you can't get up and you can't go for that walk. What you can do is you can close your eyes and then you can move your eyes back and forth while your eyes are closed.
Do it for 10 seconds. See what happens. Just take a quick pause. Uh, if that's not accessible, there are other things we can do. Like the deep breathing, right? So science shows us that when we breathe in, or we activate the sympathetic, uh, nervous system a little bit by speeding our heart rate and our bodies up.
And when we get a full deep exhale, we activate the parasympathetic nervous system, uh, effectively slowing our bodies back down. So, you know, if you're in traffic and you can't run, or you're in a, uh, that meeting or, or you're on a Zoom call and you're like, I don't wanna move my eyes, I don't wanna close my eyes, that would be kind of strange right now.
Take that pause, take that breath, uh, you know, do some deep breathing. Make sure to get that exhale. Uh, and one last one on the physical side is. Again, all, all of this in the interest of trying to slow our nervous systems down and get ourselves back into that parasympathetic, parasympathetic state, or at the very least, kickstart that transition, right?
Yeah. I'm not saying we're gonna be a hundred percent tranquil after we do this, but we're just trying to get from that totally frantic mindset into something more manageable that we can work with. And so the last tip that I would give on this front is, uh, there is something in the body called the dive reflex, and it's, it's sort, it seems to be a product of evolution as well.
Uh, and it essentially says that when you. Uh, submerge yourself in cold water. It also slows your body down. So obviously we're not always gonna go jump into a, uh, a cold pool or a bath, uh, or a cold shower all the time. But what we can do is we can get up, we can go for a walk, we can go to the bathroom, splash some cold water on our face, and get a little bit of that same response by activating that dive reflex.
So all of these things, right, are looking at the problem of stress and saying, how did our ancestors potentially deal with this however many years ago? Because again, we have that same hardware inside of us, we're dealing with that same hardware. So the solutions, they don't have to be the same, but I think it would make sense if they were quite similar.
Once we get a little bit of that parasympathetic activation, we can then go into some more modern techniques, uh, and a lot of those that I, I talk about in my first book, so.
Julie Howton: Yeah, which I love. And, and but, so I love that you, you, again, you're great at just meeting people where they are and I, I do think it's important for all of us to have tools that we can use on the fly as well.
Um, and I know this would be a whole nother episode, but I'm curious just your position on if somebody is struggling with anxiety, um, 'cause you mentioned the EMDR and, and trauma. Um, do we, do you believe that, that everybody needs to figure out what the trauma was and, and deal with the trauma in order to have the tools to overcome their anxiety?
Or do you think some people may need to do that? Some people may not. What, what is your take on on that?
Brian Sachetta: I think there's a lot of ways to look at this. The first is, if you don't think that you went through trauma, I would recommend against, you know, digging inside yourself and trying to find it. Right.
Gotcha. Don't, I'm not saying don't go to therapy. I'm just saying, uh, don't go looking for some trauma that, you know, maybe is, there maybe is not. Most people, they, they may have dissociated from the trauma. Sure. But they will know that there is something that is repressed in their minds, uh, an experience that they went through something that was harrowing that.
They don't want to talk about, right? So there's a difference between having been through something and being like, I can't touch that. And the person who is like, I don't think I went through anything, but let me, you know, go on this vision quest to see if, if maybe I did. I think most people would probably know that they went through something, even if again, they dissociated from it and they just, they don't want to talk about it right now.
Those folks who are in that position, I would definitely say those folks are in need of some kind of healing, right? Uh, you get to the point of saying, yeah, look, the brain, just in the way that it adapts to stress and to happiness and all that, it adapts to difficulty and challenge and traumatic, traumatic experiences as well.
Uh, I've done a tiny bit of work in the, uh, the psychedelic space. Uh, and I, you know, I went on a retreat, uh, a few years ago now, and a lot of people who ha, who were on that retreat who had been through traumatic experiences, they reported. Things along this lines, uh, along these lines, which is basically to say they knew that they went through something.
Really difficult. They suppressed it, they pushed it down. Their brains eventually got to the point of saying, Hey, we just need to survive here. You know? Yeah. So they kept going on and living their life. The issue is when you take some challenge, some difficulty, and you push it all the way down into your psyche, that thing starts pulling the strings in ways that you can no longer see.
So for those folks who are like, yeah, I probably went through something terrible and I just haven't been able to unpack it, or I, I'm unwilling to, to broach the subject, those are the folks that I'd recommend, uh, you know, go work with a professional, figure out a way to unpack that trauma, uh, get through it and find better coping mechanisms.
But for the folks who just have anxiety but are, are pretty confident, they don't, they never dealt with, you know, complex trauma or, uh, pervasive trauma or anything like, or even an acute traumatic experience. Mm-hmm. Uh, most folks will probably know where they are on that continuum. And I will also say, is that.
You can absolutely just experience anxiety and have no trauma in your life.
Julie Howton: Yep.
Brian Sachetta: Right.
Julie Howton: At least. No. If you think big T trauma, I think everybody, like I, I think we, I, I believe like we all have trauma, perceived trauma, right? And even if we don't identify it as trauma, I think that there are things that happen to, even if it's, I don't know, a mean kid in elementary school, you know, that you haven't thought about since then.
Somehow shaped. Those coping mechanisms or, um, so I, but sorry, that's my little qualification of
Brian Sachetta: No worries. Yeah, and I, you know, what I would really say is like, again, this isn't to downplay the capital T traumas right, but life is traumatic, right? You, you come out of the womb screaming and crying. You live a life of ups and downs of challenges and difficulties, uncertainty, everybody, you know, at some point, you know, either you're gonna die first or you're gonna watch everybody else die.
Life is a challenging thing. Life is kind of traumatic. And so when I say that you can experience anxiety without having experienced trauma, right? Think back to the entire conversation, right? The world is full of uncertainties. Yeah. The brain hates uncertainty when it. Finds that uncertainty, it can go into that high stress state, into that high alert state, and very quickly we can go from stress and tip all the way over into anxiety.
So sometimes anxiety is just a product of living in this uncertain world. It doesn't always have to mean that we went through some horrendous traumatic experience in our childhood. And like I said a minute ago is if you don't feel like you did, I probably wouldn't recommend going and digging for that kind of thing.
Right. You probably know, even if it's not, I know, you know the idea of I know exactly what I went through and all that. You would have a sense that you went through something, would be my guess. So if you have that inkling, I, I invite folks to explore that with a professional. And if you don't. Just look at your anxiety in the sense that, hey, life is uncertain.
We live in a certain, in an uncertain world. Start there and if if the tools that you are finding along the way are not working for you, then maybe that becomes an invitation to dive deeper or dig deeper in the future.
Julie Howton: Sure, sure. I love that. That's such great advice. I, I keep thinking, what keeps popping into my head is there's such a, a fine line between being a Jewish mama and being anxious, like to, to, you know, like some of us are just raised wired, how, whatever it is.
Um, but I will say from experience, it is very possible, even if you have lived in anxiety for a period of time in your life, to not stay there. Um, and, and to, to really, you know, to regulate, to, to understand and to use the tools. Um, I'm guessing you still get anxious sometimes, right?
Brian Sachetta: I, I still do, but Right.
The goal is, uh, yeah. To find ways to manage. I look back and I say, when I was 18, anxiety completely dominated my life, and I had no path forward. I had no tools, I had no idea what to do. Yeah. Today, there is still anxiety in my life because Sure. Like we said, right, life is uncertain and uncertainty can breed anxiety.
But at the same time, like I don't live there on a daily basis and when I do go there, I have my tools. So the goal is you learn things along the way. You figure out what works for you. Uh, you take those different things that work, you put them into your own mental health toolkit and then you apply them in the right context.
Uh, one quick funny anecdote that I guess I would say, and it's not really an anecdote as much as it is just a, a piece of information, is, you know, you had said earlier, you gotta find what works for you. And if you look at a lot of literature in the psychology space, the scary and kind of sad thing is that all the different healing modalities essentially only work a little bit better than a coin flip.
And so what essentially it comes down to is figuring out which of those coins you specifically need to flip. Yeah. The ones that are gonna turn up in your favor.
Julie Howton: I love that. And that's, and, and I, I don't, I actually think it's liberating to hear that, right? Because the, you know, so and so does this and I tried that and it doesn't work for me.
Doesn't mean I'm broken, right? It's, it's, I haven't, I joke, you know, just like what I eat isn't what somebody else may need to eat. You know, when people ask about my stress management, really, like, one of my biggest stress relievers and, and shifters back into the parasympathetic state is spending time with my horses.
For some people loving on a 1200 pound animal is not going to reduce their, their feeling of anxiety or stress. Right? And so that's the, the, it's not like breathing or you know, any of the, those tools, but I think we also have these. Not scientifically proven things that that can help us too, and they should be included in the toolbox.
I think the toolbox should have both of those. Um, you know, this brings me joy, therefore helps me get out of the, the sympathetic state. Um, and so, but I, I do think, I, I use the horses as that perfect example of it's not one size fits all because, you know, some of the things you that help you may drive stress for me.
Who knows? You know? Um, so I, I think that that, gosh, if listeners only get that takeaway of, you know, the, the finding what works for them, um, and, and knowing that no, no thing works for everybody, um, is really, really important
Brian Sachetta: for sure. And I, I do like your reframe of saying, Hey, this isn't actually a horrible thing.
It's. It's kind of liberating. Yeah. To say that, Hey, I'm not broken. I'm, I'm just a human. I have my own eccentricities. I have my own things that work for me and, and don't work for me. And so it allows us to just move on rather Right. Than saying, yeah, I listen to this one person and they're an idiot, or whatever.
You just, you just move on and you go try to find the next thing. Sure. It can lead to a little bit more work in the sense that you have to try out all those different things, but stay patient. They will eventually come to you.
Julie Howton: Yeah. Ah, amazing. So we're at the point of the interview where listeners are leaning in because they know I'm gonna ask you for one step that they can take starting today to improve their health, whether it's physical health, mental health.
I mean there, to me it's just health because it's integrated, so.
Brian Sachetta: I think this will dovetail nicely with everything that we have talked about, and I would, it's, it's not something that I came up with. I think maybe some listeners have heard of it before, but think about how chronically stressful the world is in which we live.
Think about how often you are spending time in front of a screen, a computer, a phone, all that. I would challenge listeners to find 10 minutes today to find an area of grass or dirt or sand that they can stand on. And when they're doing that, 10 minutes of, of grounding is what it's called. I want you to put the phone away.
I want you to put the music away and I want you to just sit there and see what happens.
Julie Howton: I love it. I can feel some people's anxiety just went up. I love that you qualified. I wouldn't have even. Considered saying, put the phone away. But I would also never consider looking at my phone while I was grounding.
But I, so I love that. Thank you for including the like, just be and be connected to the earth and let it, let it shift your energy.
Brian Sachetta: For sure. Amazing. And it's, it's, I guess the last piece that I kind of didn't say that I'd like to say on that front is for me, I, I try to do this practice when I can. And quite sadly, it becomes one of the only times of the day where I'm not in front of a screen where I'm not distracted, where I'm not totally busy.
Right. And I have to, we all have to carve that time out and be methodical with it because of how busy and frantic the world is these days.
Julie Howton: Yeah. Uh, amen. But again, it is getting back. To nature. Um, I'll share a little anecdote when I, so I've been working from home since I started my business nine years ago, and last year life shifted kind of on a d and i I, I have, again, we talk about building routine and shifting routine, right?
And so I had built this routine that I didn't have to think about. Just, you know, all of these habits that support me were built into my day. And then all of a sudden I was working in the clinic every day. And, and like, I'm literally barefoot right now. Is, is like when I'm home, I'm barefoot. And I, I really didn't even consciously realize at first like the, the shift between.
Not grounding in between, you know, I don't just ground in the morning, I, I will go in and out and, and, um, so I was grounding throughout the day. I don't have fluorescent or LED lights in my home. I was now working in a fairly hermetically sealed clinic under fluorescent lights. No more grounding, no si, you know, all the things.
And within a week I was totally inflamed. I could feel all of that stuff that I've put, you know, way behind me in the rear view mirror. And it was like, it was such a great reminder of, oh my gosh, I need to recreate a routine and, you know, my life looks different right now. And all these things that just naturally occurred during the day.
And so one of the things I love about grounding, if you will put. Technology down and just be is what, what I would do when I work from home. You know what I, it, it to me is, it's balancing right. It's not about, so if I'm tired, it will energize me. If I am anxious, it'll settle me down or feeling stressed, you know?
It really does. And, and we don't ground unless we're, again, back to intention. That's what it takes in modern time is, is to be intentional. So I'm just really excited that that was your, your one step, because it, it's huge and, and what it will do for inflammation, for mood, for energy is, is amazing. Um, and I'll throw out there, I, I think if somebody has ne, you know, if they felt their heart rate increase when you said put your phone down, just be for 10 minutes, start with five.
That's okay. Just wherever you are.
Brian Sachetta: I love that. Yeah. And as you said, that's, that's what I try to do. I try to meet people at their level, right? Yeah. I wanna make these things approachable and hey, if it's one minute, that's a win. Yeah. Just build little small habits and try to stack stack them on top of each other and keep making progress.
Julie Howton: Amazing. I'm gonna say it again. I know we already talked about get out of your head, but where for people that aren't gonna check the show notes, where is the best place to find you?
Brian Sachetta: Yeah, just go to get out of your head.com. It's all one word thing, if you will. No dashes, no underscores in that.
Julie Howton: Yeah. And, and it's, it's great.
And there's lots of, lots of good stuff on the website. So, um, Brian, thank you so much for sharing your journey, your, your knowledge, your wisdom, and your expertise with us. It is such an important topic. It is so integrated into daily life for so many people right now and again, especially for our community of listeners.
Um, so really, really appreciate it.
Brian Sachetta: My pleasure, and thank you for having me, Julie.
Julie Howton: My pleasure. For everyone listening, remember, you can get those show notes and transcripts by visiting Inspired Living Show. I hope you had a great time and enjoyed this episode as much as I did. I'll see you next week.
settings
Divider Text
My Guest For This Episode
My Guest For This Episode
Connect with Brian Sachetta
Brian Sachetta
Brian Sachetta is an author, blogger, and mental health advocate from Boston, Massachusetts.
After grappling with anxiety and depression throughout his young adulthood, Brian became determined to find better ways to navigate such challenges. As a result, he turned to therapy, immersed himself in mental health literature, and experimented with a wide array of tactics for managing his well-being.
Over time, these efforts led to significant breakthroughs on his mental health journey. Inspired by his progress, he began sharing his story to empower others facing similar struggles.
Today, Brian’s mission is to alleviate psychological suffering and guide individuals toward taking control of their mental health. He brings that mission to life through his popular book series, "Get Out of Your Head," as well as his many podcast appearances and blog posts.
Popular Episodes
Popular Episodes
Episode [Block//Episode Number]
Aired on: [Block//Air Date %F j, Y%+0]
Aired on: [Block//Air Date %F j, Y%+0]