-: All right.
So when we look at stress, I think a good way to start
dissecting this into smaller pieces is to break stress
up into psychological and physiological.
Now psychological stress is gonna be more correlated
to neurotransmitter balances and stuff like that.
But it's also gonna incorporate a lot
of emotional things and stuff like that.
But, and you know, if we're looking
at just the biochemistry side,
we're looking at like neuro-transmitter basis
is more psychological.
Obviously if we have emotional stuff
and neurotransmitter things going combined,
they can kind of compound each other.
So psychological stress will manifest
into a physiological stress,
but the source is considered to be non physiological.
So for example, if you go into work
and you're late, or, you know,
you get a framing from your boss, or whatever it may be.
You've got a project and you flopped it.
That was not a biochemical cause, right?
So there was something happened,
and so the cause of that stress is psychological
but you might increase your cortisol levels
in response to that.
You might lose your appetite,
you might binge, you might introduce a lot
of other stresses into your system
in response to that initial psychological stress.
But the source, the root cause
was a non biological or biochemical source.
Now, when we look at the physiological,
this is the stress where the source has more
of a biochemical origin,
meaning that it directly impacts the physiology.
So this would be something like, you know, well
maybe somebody has a genetic issue
or something like that, but,
and that would include dietary stuff
in the physiological side, right?
So it's like eat too many donuts,
that's a physiological stress.
Now, there could be a psychological reason
you ate those too many donuts.
And this is where it's like, well, okay,
chicken or the egg kind of thing, or maybe not.
Maybe just ate too many donuts
and it's not really a big psychological issue.
It just happened to be like
I just felt like eating donuts today.
You know, you'd have to dissect the why the donuts
to determine whether this is worth labeling
a psychological issue.
But training too much, you know, medications,
all sorts of those things where it's like we're
getting a direct biochemical input into the system.
Those are the things that would cause call physiological,
and there are a better way of kind of looking
at their impact is it's going to be more metabolic
and in nature in terms of its cause.
So if we dissect those down a little bit more,
so psychological stress,
we break that down into emotional or environmental.
So emotional sourced psychological stress
is gonna be things that are gonna come
from an internal perspective.
So that could be like poor self image,
a huge one is unresolved issues.
Like that could be old relationships, family issues,
like you know, like any form of things that are typically,
you know, called PTSD.
Those types of things, you know,
those are the things that come to people
at night when the lights go off
and they close their eyes.
That stuff that people think about
when there's no other distractions.
If you have unresolved issues,
that's one of those things.
Like for me, I know for me personally,
my biggest source of stress,
the thing that like disrupts my sleep the most
is when I have unresolved issues
in the form of pending decisions.
Like it's like, okay, there's a decision I need to make,
or there's something that I need to take
to a conclusion, you know,
or there's a problem that didn't get resolved,
and there's a point that like there's a date
that it needs to be resolved at.
Maybe it's like, it's on the schedule,
but I will still reap, like I will play out,
like enact that in my brain over and over and over again
until it actually gets resolved.
That is the thing that just absolutely crushes me.
And I, for some people,
they're very conscious of what that thing is,
and for other people,
they may be very unconscious of what those things are.
But when you have a person that just seems like,
man we've tried all of the lifestyle things,
and we've tried all the nutritional things,
and the training things.
And we just can't seem to reduce
the stress burden on this person,
likely there's some sort of unresolved issues in there.
And if they can't introspectively deal with that,
then that's where they need to be referred out
and actually talk to a professional, talk to a psychologist,
preferably a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, right?
So very oversimplification psychologists give, you know,
they listen and psychiatrists, they write prescriptions.
So I mean, they both listen.
That's, I mean, there's good and bad in both sides
but I would say, you know, when somebody's trying to deal
with an unresolved trauma, they're gonna better to do that
with a psychologist and talk therapy than a Prozac.
Now, I'm not anti medication
but I don't like medication as a long-term solution.
Sometimes people will need medication
to give them the resilience to deal with that issue
emotionally and introspectively.
But, the goal should not be that
the solution is the medication.
It's just that this is the medication may allow you
to get to the mindset
to where you can overcome the emotional stress.
And then imaginary situations and stress.
You know thinking about problems that don't exist,
haven't happened, you know, et cetera, right?
Environmental, that's gonna be psychological stress.
So things that don't impact our physiology
but they impact our state of being, are mentally.
So, you know, being stuck in traffic.
Problems with your relationship, stress at your job,
mainly humans and the massive, massive, massive source
is everything in social media, what you see on the news.
So the negative psychological stresses
tend to drive our behaviors more than positive ones.
Because by nature, we will work harder to avoid discomfort,
then we will to pursue happiness.
So almost all of our mediums,
like everything on this phone, you know,
everything on TV or whatnot, if their goal is to get likes
and views and shares and like all that stuff,
unfortunately, technology and all these algorithms
have now figured out that like, you know,
anger and outrage and fear are much better ways
of continuing to drive traffic on those platforms
and producing more revenue and producing more views.
So basically this is a negative psychological driver.
By nature, everything on there is slowly,
well I shouldn't say slowly,
but quickly and learning to take advantage
of the negative psychological aspects of our brains
and how we respond and the behaviors that come about
from those things, to drive their businesses.
You know, I'm not saying that that is purely malicious,
because the reality is is that like
the way everything works right now
from a financial model for, you know, a Google
or a Facebook or an Instagram or Twitter incentivizes
like that type of activity and those types of reactions.
So that is a huge source of environmental stress
that can lead to a lot of deep rooted emotional issues
if people have a poor time dealing with social media.
And I don't think there's a human on the planet
that is immune to that if you spend enough time on it.
So now let's look at the physiological stress
and how we kind of break that up.
So there's not an emotional component to this.
So I'm referring to the more internal aspect
is inter biological.
And by that meaning like it's stuff that's, you know,
happening within our internal physiology
rather than a external cause
that is affecting our physiology.
So we got genetic health conditions, infections,
if you're taking medications, those would be things.
Also internal things like,
it really doesn't matter where you categorize these things,
is mostly just like to kind of help you
organize things in your mind palace
because you could say like, well, training performance,
like exercise, you could classify that as either.
It really doesn't matter
as long as you understand whether
if you're exercising too much or not.
Cause we're not really gonna be able
to separate these things out.
Really what it comes down to with these things.
So if we look at environmental, looking at poor diet,
physical stress, exposure to toxins, chrono stress.
Where I really draw the line with these things,
like when we say like, well, physical stress
of like exercise could be classified under either
is the ease of which you can intervene and affect it.
And we tend to have a easier time controlling
our environment,
sometimes when we do our internal conditions
like how much control do you have over infections
or genetic health conditions?
Even medication?
Sometimes you have very little control over things,
things like poor diet, training volume, exposure to toxins,
you know, if that's not a work-related thing,
if that's, you know, you're using really toxic
cosmetic products or whatever it may be at home.
Like those things are relatively simple.
I mean, sometimes, you know, they're tedious,
they are expensive, but they're not like,
it's not a huge puzzle to figure out like all right.
You know, if you're eating crap, then stop eating crap.
I mean, that may be hard to do logistically
or willpower wise, but like the solution is pretty apparent
whereas it's like, okay, you know, if you got to, you know,
did some type of infection,
the solution may be quite complex.
Now, we look at assessing stress.
Because it's easier, I always recommend
that you start with the environmental first.
One, it's the least intrusive.
So when we're looking at assessing stress,
people will be more, we'll say closed off.
People are more likely to talk about their poop
than they are to talk about their psychological issues
and weaknesses or things that they, you know,
they view negatively about themselves or their behaviors.
Or admitting that they're not handling things well.
Right?
Like somebody, because people don't take it
as personal when they have like, yeah,
I got diarrhea, you know, like okay.
I mean, some people will be embarrassed about that
but another person is likely to be like,
oh yeah, it's because my gut.
It's like their gut is this third party that they can blame.
Like yeah, it's my gut.
Like yeah, it's my book, it's my this or my that
or whatever.
Like it's almost like they have found a way
to blame individual parts of their body or physiology.
And therefore it's excusable that they have these issues.
When it comes to stress, people take it more personal
because it comes with like
almost a little bit more responsibility
and a little bit more like, well, you know,
they feel like, man, if I don't handle stress well,
is that because I'm a weak individual, you know,
poor character, like you know, what is that?
So if you start with the environmental stuff first,
one, you're working with stuff that's easy to change
and figure out.
It's like it's easier to ask questions
about environmental stuff.
You know, you can ask people like, well, you know,
what type of things do you put on your skin?
You know, what's your diet look like?
You know, how much training are you doing?
Those are all very easy things to, you know, to look at.
So we can get an idea of things that are very easy to change
without being too personally invasive.
And that can give us a little bit
of rapport to then dig a little bit deeper.
The other thing is the perception of environmental stress
by a client can be a valuable way
for assessing a person's psychological stress
because you will have people that over
and under report on things.
So when you're looking at stress,
if they act like everything in their environment
is this big deal, you know, then you know like this person
from a psychological aspect is making a bigger deal
out of all of these environmental things.
Now the environmental things may be a factor.
They may be things that you can work on.
But if psychologically
they make a bigger deal out a little things,
removing those little things might just leave you
in a position where they're just gonna get replaced
by other little things.
And the thing that you actually need to do
is deal with the psychological issue of making a bigger deal
out of things than they really are
because that is what's negatively impacting the most.
And that's gonna be the thing to continue to carry
and to every new environment that you put them in
regardless of how clean and sterile you make it.
When we look at the physiological side,
which is where I suggest you go next.
So you start with environmental
and then we dig deeper into the, you know,
into biological physiological side.
Now we're gonna look at, you know,
the physical stress of training,
nutrition, supplementation, medications,
basic health markers,
lifestyle interventions here are very cause
and effect based and easier to implement
because a lot of times
it's like we have like, you know, this is the problem,
there's a clear solution to that.
Eating too many calories, eat less.
Eating too many carbs, eating too many fats,
not taking your multivitamin,
not getting sunshine, not take getting vitamin D.
Like all of these things, training too much,
training too little, training the wrong stimulus.
All of these things are like, hey, here's a problem,
there is a solution for that, there is a change
there's an intervention that we can make,
that is, you know, it may not be easy to perform,
but the knowing the intervention is easier.
And then basically all the topics before this one,
that we've covered.
Sleep, digestion, the cardiovascular ANS thing,
you know, all of the metabolic stuff
from course to asking them.
Figuring all that stuff out ahead of time
is gonna be ideal for this.
Now, when we get to the, I dunno why I keep calling
for some reason, this should say psychological,
and I see that it, for some reason
psychological has ended up in this thing several times.
I can't spell, that is my Achilles heel.
But I blame keynote for, you know,
putting psychological in here.
So psychological stress.
It's the least in your wheelhouse as a trainer coach,
but that doesn't mean that you can't as a trainer or coach
have a profound impact on somebody else psychologically.
Because even though you're a coach or a trainer
or whatever, and as a trainer or coach
you are not a psychologist, you are a human being.
And as a human being, you have the ability to communicate
with another human being.
You have the ability to be empathetic,
you have ability to listen,
and you have an ability to encourage people
to be introspective.
You have an ability to encourage people
to reach out, have conversations, take action.
So you have the ability to give,
like not direct like psychologically
but you have the ability to motivate and nudge.
And a lot of times, because, I mean,
when you think about it,
if somebody goes to a psychologist,
they don't show up, fill out a questionnaire
and then the psychologist gives them the answers
to all of their problems, right?
Somebody develops that model.
That'd be great.
But unfortunately, most psychological issues
are things that you have to deal with yourself.
And so well you may not be a professional psychologist
if you are just a, you know, a conscious aware
and empathetic human and you pay attention
and you communicate with your client,
and you listened to them.
Just that simple human interaction,
and you just, you know, having with them
and you know, maybe nudging them towards like,
well, hey, you know,
have you thought about reading this book,
or have you thought about talking to your spouse
or your boss.
Or you know, like these things.
Cause a lot of times people,
the solution is they just need to take action
on acting on resolving that problem themselves.
So, I mean, I'm not saying that don't go beyond that
if somebody has psychological issues.
But don't underestimate the power
of being a caring human being
when it comes to helping people with stress management.
There's a reason that there is, you know,
the phrase a shoulder to cry on, right?
A shoulder is not this magical thing
that fixes the problems.
And if you cry on the shoulder,
then it makes all the sadness, you know, go away.
But simply just that human connection right there
allows a person to process on their own.
That's your role from a psychological perspective,
is do whatever you can to encourage them to do introspection
and process things on their own.
So your tools for impacting a client's psychological stress
are gonna to be one, limit the other stuff, right?
It's much more easier to overcome a psychological stress
if you're not also under the burden
of a ton of environmental and physiological stress as well.
So a lot of times we become more psychologically fragile
because we are physiologically fragile,
which could be because we are exposed
to a ton of environmental stresses.
So it's like we don't all of a sudden become,
like it's not just like one day
we're this strong resilient creature.
And then the next day, we're just this weak, you know,
fragile little thing where everything, you know,
it triggers us, offends us, or you know,
you know, shuts us down.
It happens over time through a series
of insults and stresses on both the mind and the body.
So as a trainer, as a coach, we're gonna try
and create anti fragile physiology with good training,
good nutrition, good lifestyle practices.
We're gonna try and eliminate unnecessary stresses
in somebody's environment, and unnecessary stresses
in their training routine, unnecessary stresses
in anything that they're doing to reach their, you know,
health and fitness goals.
And then that's going to make them more capable
of dealing with any of the psychological things
if they're just nudged
into the introspective side of things
of having that conversation with themselves or the people
that they need to, to resolve unresolved issues, et cetera.
Right?
So we want to basically promote resiliency
and internal strength to somebody with our tool set.
And then once we've helped somebody build up a little bit,
you know, more resiliency and be a little bit
more anti-fragile, you know,
then encourage them to take on the root causes
of their stress.
And then obviously refer people with deep emotional issues,
toxic perceptions, unresolved issues
that they cannot resolve their own introspection,
suggest that they talk to somebody and get help.
You know, this is becoming more common in our society.
And it's, you know,
you could argue that like right now,
like I mean, I've probably said this a few times,
like right now, if you were just to just
like compare apples to apples
you'd be like, wow, you look at it and say like, man,
these are the weakest humans that have ever
you know, walked the planet earth.
You know, like from a variety of aspects
you could just look at that, right?
In terms of, you know, like you see the memes of like,
you know, the person that grew up during
the greatest depression or whatever.
And then the person now is like,
I can't connect to the WiFi, oh my God.
Like it is ridiculous, right?
It is ridiculous how fragile we are.
But that didn't happen like this, right?
That has happened over years of change in our environment,
and people marinating in that environment until they're
25 years old and they can't deal with
not having a cell phone connection,
or not getting enough likes on a photo
or something like that.
Whereas in a different environment before,
the same genetic material living being,
was able to deal with things that right now
would be considered like devastating hardships,
like people who now they can't even fathom it.
Right?
But the little things today that are beyond
like, I mean, they're even jokes
at first were problems, those tiny little insults
because people are just marinating in these things
and they're not dealing with any of them.
They're having any introspection,
and maybe they're not cleaning up their environment,
they're not taking care of their physiology or whatnot.
Their current condition is because
they'd been marinated against stuff
that has created a fragile physiology and psychology.
And so once somebody gets to a point
where they can't deal with that
on their own, they might need somebody
to help them turn the corner,
Right?
They're free falling at that point in time,
and you can't, like if you're free falling
flapping your arms is not going to save you.
You need somebody to reach out with the hand,
grab it, take it.
And then once you stopped, you can climb back up.
And that's where you need to figure out
if somebody is at, right?
But if somebody, there's, you know,
if we're on a metaphorical ledge here,
but somebody got a firm grip,
they may be able to climb up on their own.
But if somebody is free calling,
they need somebody to reach out
and help them so that then they can begin to climb
once they have, you know, recovered from the free fall
and regained their strength.
And so we should be promoting people to build inner strength
through the tools in our toolbox.
Okay.
Leaving that soap box,
let's get into some more nerdy applicable stuff.
So one of the things that you can do
with looking at stress is you can do stress types.
So the assessment tool that I've used in the past
for that is called the identity stress assessment.
I got that through Metagenics
and I will have Cody put
one of the videos are uploaded here.
I will have Cody put a copy of the PDF
for the identity stress assessment,
as well as the answer key.
If you were from Metagenics on there,
with all of these things,
I use them but I take them into my own interpretation.
I don't say like, well, the test says this, so you get that.
And that's kind of what this test was is,
you take it and it breaks you up into stress types,
And it has them under kind of like two sections
which is either an over-reactive HPA response,
or a inadequate or underactive HPA response.
And then within each of those, there are then two segments.
So, many of you have probably heard the phrase
of tired and wired, so where you could be
like physically tired, but like mentally anxious.
And then there's also the, you know,
the chronically worried, or there's just energetic.
So, you can have like a mix of some of these things
and kind of understanding
everything that's going on will help
because my goal is not necessarily to say like,
oh, you're a wired person.
So I'm going to just give you the calming thing
because wired maybe inappropriate response
to your environment at that time,
or wired maybe being caused by something we're doing
with your nutrition or your training, or whatever it may be.
So I don't wanna just say like,
well here's the pill for anti wired and there you go.
So keep that in mind when you go through this
that if we're going to use an intervention
that is like supplementary based,
it's an herbal based or whatnot,
that may be effective at correcting the symptoms here,
but did it resolve the issue?
And that's where you can't just skip over the other stuff,
the lifestyle stuff, the nutrition, and the training stuff.
And so, we have basically when we're overactive,
we have wired or worried.
So you're gonna present just one of those two archetypes.
Right?
And wired tends to be like the more like, you know,
anxious you know, busy, you'll see the questions.
And then there's mentally fatigued
versus physically fatigued, right?
So you can be, I have physical energy
but I just like mentally I'm potato.
Depressed would be one where
somebody might be physically fine but mentally fatigued.
Or you can be physically fatigued but mentally fine.
You have all the mental clarity in the world,
like you are just physically exhausted.
Right?
So it kind of breaks up into those four categories.