Understanding Stress: Causes, Biological Basis, and Increasing Resilience
On this episode, Dr. Rick Hanson and I take a deep dive into defining stress, how it functions, how it impacts our lives and bodies, and what we can do to repair from its effects.
We discuss how to distinguish stress from effort, the influence of the modern world on how stressed we feel, the various biological mechanisms involved in stress, and the challenges presented by chronic exposure to it. Then we consider what we can do to positively respond to our stressors even in the midst of limitations and uncertainty.
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Key Topics:
0:00: Introduction
1:50: What is stress exactly?
3:30: Distinguishing stress from effort
7:25: Circles of concern and what we can actually influence
10:15: Zebras and the different levels of allostatic load
15:30: How the Endocrine system and Nervous system respond to stress
21:45: The Amygdala response
23:20: What is the cost of stress?
36:25: How do we positively adapt to stress?
41:35: The influence of basic lifestyle factors
43:50: Questions to ask yourself
45:30: Claiming agency while accepting limitations and uncertainty
51:05: What we can do to repair from the effects of our stress
57:40: Recap
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