From Stress to Stillness With Dr. Seth J. Gillihan

0:03Thank you for joining us for episode 541 of Live Happy Now. What if you had an easy way to instantly reset your emotions whenever you're feeling stressed and anxious? Well, this week's guest is here to tell us how to do that. I'm your host, Paula Felps, and this week I'm talking with Dr. Seth J. Gillihan about his latest book, Your Daily Reset, 366 Practical Exercises to Reduce Anxiety and Manage Stress Using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Seth, a licensed psychologist in private practice, has created this book to be a daily companion to help stop the negative spirals of thoughts and emotions. From everyday worries to peak anxiety moments, his book offers the tools you need to break free from those familiar patterns.

0:50Let's have a listen. Seth, thank you so much for joining me here today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to talk. You have written a great book and it offers a fantastic collection that really helps us get through an entire year. So before we dive into talking about how this came about, could you tell Tell us what your daily reset is all about. Yes. So this is 365 or 366, depending on the year, daily practices that a person can do that will help them to manage anxiety and stress. The exercises are all very brief. They're intended to be done in the limited time that most of us seem to have for managing our mental health.

1:34It's meant to come back to every day for a little, as we say, a little reset. And that's what really impressed me about it. I've received books throughout the years where it's like one page a day or sometimes one chapter a day, and I end up starting that, and then it just becomes too much. It's like I don't have that amount of time. Yours, we're talking a paragraph or sometimes just a couple of sentences. Tell us how simple that is. Yeah, yeah. Really, I mean, I kept track of it as I was writing. I don't remember exactly, but on average, it's maybe 35 words or so, so two or three sentences. I sort of evolved into this, I guess, from my work as a therapist, where I would work with people in a session and then work with them on things that they could do between sessions.

2:22I think of it as the other 167 hours out of the week. It would have some kind of continuity. so the insights that a person is having within that hour then get carried through to where it really matters in a person's moment-to-moment life. So that evolved into I was making card decks for a while that's the same kind of idea, one a day. I think those can be really helpful, and there was a really good response to those. And so I wanted to see if I could maybe abbreviate the exercises even a little bit more, make them more. What I'm always aiming for is to make the practices portable so they come right into a person's life.

3:07Again, like in that moment when you actually need a mental adjustment or some kind of reminder of something that you probably already know. And so what I really love about the calendar aspect of it, syncing up the exercises to the days, is that I can think about it in terms of what a person is doing from one day to the next. There can be a variety of exercises built in. In a way, the card deck doesn't have quite that same structure because the cards can be shuffled around and used all different ways. So that's really kind of how this evolved. And I can really see it as being something you keep by your bedside.

3:46So when you wake up, that can be that first thought that you put into your head for the day. I thought that's an incredible way to wake up and just get things started. Yeah, I think morning is a great time to have that little reset. And, you know, a person can, if they wanted to, maybe take a picture with their smartphone and bring it with them throughout the day. The exercises are brief enough that I think it wouldn't be a bad thing to repeat them multiple times throughout the day. And some of them have explicit reminders about come back to this exercise as often as you need to today. These are all rooted in cognitive behavioral therapy.

4:26So for those who aren't familiar with that, will you tell us what CBT is? Yes. Yeah, it's a way of linking together your thoughts, your feelings, and your actions. So when we understand how our thoughts, feelings, and actions all fit together, then things kind of make a lot more sense. because we recognize like, oh, I was feeling some kind of way. That had a lot to do with the thoughts that I was thinking. Those thoughts in turn were affecting my actions. Our actions, as I'm sure listeners know, feedback into our thoughts. If there's something that scares me and I don't do it, if I shy away from it, that's probably going to strengthen a thought I have about myself as maybe I can't face that or it's overwhelming.

5:14So when we understand all those connections, then the real strength in CBT is in having kind of a structured approach for addressing those things. So I can work more systematically and effectively with my thoughts. I can choose actions that lead me toward my goals instead of away from my goals. And this is such an effective roadmap, really, to kind of walk through. And even though it's done for a full year, you don't have to wait till January and start it then. And tell us a little bit about how that's set up. Like you can really jump in at any time. You can miss a day or two. Talk about how that is all designed.

5:57Yeah, yeah. That's something we thought a lot about because there's something nice about making a book progressive and systematic so that it builds on itself. at the same time that does create the demand that we have to start at you know point a so you have to start january 1st or if not you've missed out you have to you have to catch up at that point or as you're suggesting if you miss a couple days then you have to kind of review those days that you're current so what i decided is to just make it the kind of thing you can pick up at any point And one thing I should add that's an important component of the CBT approach that I use and that is really embodied in the book is that it incorporates what's come to be known as the third wave of CBT, which is mindfulness and acceptance-based approaches.

6:47So there's a lot of that in there because there's a lot we can do in working with our thoughts and our actions in constructive ways. And as everyone knows, there's some stuff in life that we can't think our way through. We don't have ultimate control over the things that happen to us. And some things we can't really change. And so that's a lot of where mindfulness can be most effective, is in helping us to be in our lives exactly as they are, as messy as they might be, which life can be a lot. Yeah, yeah, it definitely can. And right now, a lot of people are feeling that. As you designed it, did you take into account the different seasons of the year or anything like that?

7:34Say like with the holidays. Yes. Yeah. As much as possible, we tried to match up some of the exercises to specific, you know, holidays that they fall on. On Valentine's Day, for example, we might do one around, you know, some kind of love theme, probably self-love. because obviously if it's something about your significant other, like not everybody has a significant other. So those kinds of things I think, you know, I kind of like going with the meeting a person where they already are, I guess is a way of thinking about it. Another one that comes to mind in a broader sense is there's an exercise I'll encourage people to do sometimes where it's, and it's grounded in mindfulness, of just paying attention and tuning in to what the seasons are doing.

8:21you know what's the there's a certain feel in the air you know like like this season that we're in right now as we're recording this there's a kind of there's a way that the air feels and smells there's a progression of the light that's different this time of year than others you know leaves and foliage look different animals are doing different things so with a card that's not linked to a day I can just say pay attention to the seasons but if I'm doing it this time of year in the northern hemisphere, I can say, you know, this, on this late summer day, you know, this, you know, or specifically this, this September 4th, you know, year, you know, day of this year, that's the only day that will ever be exactly this day in, in the history of, of time.

9:07Like, what do you notice? Like what stands out on this day? So, yeah, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I think that the syncing of activities and exercises with, with seasons and days, I think is, is a nice feature of it. And one thing that I thought about is we do get busy. We do put aside our practices and our habits sometimes, but for them to know, even if they've put this down for a while and they can come back and say, it is, oh, it's fall. And I have a little bit more time in this schedule of mine. And now I'm going to resume this and get it through. I think that it's very accommodating to that, to our human tendency to just get too busy to follow through on what we want to do.

9:48Yeah, and there is such a tendency once we fall off to not get back on. And I think not just out of habit, we fall out of the habit, but I think there can be a sense of, I've failed, I can't go back to it now, I'm not allowed to, or I don't know, I don't deserve to, or some kind of story gets in the way of getting back on when it's right there. Like we could just get right back to it. Speaking of getting back to things, I picked up banjo again recently. Oh, wow. I was a beginner banjo player for many years, and now I'm a beginner banjo player again. After not playing for a while, and I definitely had that feeling of like, I haven't played for a while, so I'm not going to get back to it, even though I would have an impulse to.

10:36Then one of the videos that I was watching recently with the instructor that I follow was saying that something like restarts are always free. something about that yeah yeah i love that too that it's like oh okay even if i miss a day or you know a week or whatever you can always pick it up there's no penalty you don't have to earn it or claw your way back you just pick it up just pick up where you are i love that approach i love that mindset because there is no judgment there's no you know you haven't lost anything maybe a little bit of time but you can just restart wherever you were why do you like that yeah Yeah, I've often thought of it as like train tracks that are, there's always a parallel track.

11:18And the mental model that I have implicitly is if I've sort of gone in the wrong direction for too long, then I can't just hop back on. I have to like, again, that idea of like clawing my way back to where I was to pick up again. And oh, it's like so much work, I have to get back there and whether it's, you know, exercise or meditation or playing the banjo. But the train track idea for me says you don't have to work your way back anywhere. It's just right there. Just step on the other track. Like it's always right next to you. The flip side is that you can always jump tracks and, you know, go in the wrong direction, but we can always get back on.

12:01I love that. So you talked about you've tried different things. You did the cards and And why was this the right time to do the book? Really where this, how this developed is I have a Substack newsletter and I was offering subscribers these month-long plans that were, you know, simple exercises, very similar actually to what ended up in the book. And there was a really nice response to that, I think, to the regularity of it and the continuity of it. And I was using a lot of them in my own life. and I thought, you know what, why a week or a month or two weeks? Like, why not a full year? Like, why not have it be something that's available for every day?

12:43That's where it came from. I talked to my agent about it and we pitched it to publishers and they said, yeah, sounds like a nice idea. We'll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.

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13:51and now let's hear more from Seth J. Gillihan so there's several takeaways from your book that really jumped out at me. And one of the things was like how your book teaches us to embrace anxiety rather than fight it. And this is a time of tremendous anxiety for so many people out there. So can you tell us, Cliff Note version, of how we're supposed to learn to embrace our anxiety rather than running from it or fighting it? Yeah, such an important question. there are there's so many ways to address anxiety now therapy medications tiktok people are describing all kinds of things on social media and there can be this idea of like oh if i just get this right then i won't feel anxious unfortunately that that's not true and that belief then can lead to unnecessary tension and resistance and self-criticism and a sense of, if I'm feeling anxious, I must be doing something wrong.

14:59And so, I have to make myself stop feeling anxious. But that just leads to this false expectation and a sense of responsibility that really shouldn't be ours. Like we don't, it's not our responsibility to completely control our emotions, which tend to have a mind of their own. What I try to focus on, and I think what a lot of people in CBT emphasize is you're going to feel anxious. You can't perfectly manage your anxiety. What can you do that's going to give you the best chance of having the life that you want, regardless of what anxiety might be doing? That's really what I emphasize in this book.

15:39And for people who are really struggling with it from a standpoint of all the things that are going on around us in the world, I know a lot of people who are in turmoil over just the state of our world right now. And obviously that is something we can't change. So what's a practice or technique that they can use to kind of step back and work with that? Yeah, a couple of things come to mind, Paula. One is that so much of what we see in the world has to do with what we're attending to. And if we're filling our minds with the divisiveness and the outrage, so much of what social media feeds on, then that's going to give us a, not a completely inaccurate view of the world, but a pretty biased view.

16:27So, one thing I think we can do is be careful about what the diets that we're feeding our minds. The other thing I think is to not discount the good that we can do. Like I can't, God knows I can't control what happens in Washington. Right. Right. But I can choose whether or not I become one more voice that's feeding into that cycle. And that's not nothing. What about self-compassion? You say that plays a pretty significant role in this too. Can you dive into that? Yes. Yes, that's such a big one. I see it as something that even the practices in the book that don't specifically address self-compassion, it's a big part of what motivates what I'm doing and what I really want people to take from the resources I create, from the therapy that I do, is that we just tend to be so hard on ourselves in ways that I think are really out of line with reality.

17:27You know, I think we tend to see ourselves more harshly than we see others. Not because, I don't think it's because we're seeing ourselves more clearly than we see other people. I think it's just that we, for various reasons, it's easy for us to fall into the opposite of self-compassion, self-criticism. Very judgmental, very, very fast. Yes. Yes. So quickly, so effortlessly, automatically. And yet, this is where mindfulness, I think, can be so helpful. There's this deep well of love and goodwill that's available to us, whether it comes from people or from our faith tradition or just from connecting to what, thankfully, what seems to emerge from meditative practices is this awareness that there's something fundamental about love and that we are fully accepted exactly as we are.

18:23when we have that awareness i think it's not one data point among many i think it can really be a foundational shift to recognize like oh i don't have to earn my place in this universe that in fact the universe or god or whatever like wanted me to be here to occupy this space so much like it made room for me and it called me forth into being oh my god like that's that's that's such a that's a big shift from assuming that everything I do is sort of tainted with my wrongness. So is there an exercise that you recommend for developing self-compassion? Well, one of the exercises is designed around the explicit kind of step-by-step process of self-compassion, which involves making room for our experience instead of saying, I shouldn't be feeling this way or I shouldn't have thought that.

19:22And connecting to the realization that what we're experiencing is common to humanity. Like if, oh, I'm really lonely right now. Like, yes. Who in all of time that humans have been here has not experienced loneliness at some point? So connecting with that sense of shared humanity is a crucial part of self-compassion. And then not fully identifying or equating myself with the way that I'm feeling is the third part. So having some perspective on, like, I'll give you an example. This was a few months ago. I was having a rough day. May have been one of these days where, like, I wasn't feeling great and had some, probably some conflict in my relationships.

20:09And then ended up with a migraine at the end of the day. Like all of a sudden, like I get the visual aura, you know, I can't see things. I'm like, oh, I just have to get in bed. And I felt so defeated. So I'm lying there in bed, just like feeling defeated and really like identifying with that sense of like, oh, like this day was so rough and poor me. And then I had this feeling of like, I think probably all of us can relate to this at some point, kind of like being able to step back and see myself and kind of like talk myself through it. Yeah. And it was like the wiser part of me was saying like, you had a tough day, didn't you?

20:45And I broke down crying at that point. I was like, yeah, it's been a hard day. And like that was it. Like it had been a hard day. It wasn't any better than that. And it wasn't any worse than that. And just that little bit of perspective on it and of really a moment of what felt like very compassionate, like this compassionate part of me was like, yeah, you had a tough time, huh? Yeah. Really, like, it didn't make it, like, a nice day, but it really provided a moment of, like, solace in that pain. Right. That makes perfect sense. And so, you know, as we mentioned, this book is packed with exercises and practices that people can use.

21:25Is there one that you have as a go-to in your life? Yes. Yeah, the one that comes to mind, because I do use it so often, is I call it just this. Just this. So, our minds are really good at imagining all of our problems all at once, kind of stacking them up. You know, so we've got this huge stack of things like, oh my God, it's too much. It's overwhelming. I can't control all this. I don't know how everything's going to turn out. But reality is much simpler than that. Only one thing ever happens at a time. Maybe there's a lot going on, but we can only deal with one thing at a time. And we're great at dealing with that one thing.

22:08And so, when my mind starts to multiply all the problems it's imagining, when I remember to, I narrow my focus down to whatever I'm doing in that moment. Just this. Like, all I have to do is this. like for example today i had a busy morning in my clinical practice and then you and i are speaking after lunch then i have several uh activities for our kids with back to school stuff that we have to be a part of making dinner and none of that is happening right now the clinical stuff is was this morning the kid stuff is this afternoon all i need to do right now is just this. It's talk to you. It's this moment with you.

22:51It's not even the next question, right? It's just what's happening right now. And I know that I can do that. And in fact, there's something like wonderful about what's happening right now. Like I get to talk to you. I've never met you before. I can tell in a few minutes we've had, you're a lovely person. I have this opportunity to speak about these things. So rather than feeling stressed out about all that stuff, we might actually find something wonderful in the moment. Or at least it'll be just a difficult moment and not more than that. I love that. Now I want to make a little card that says just this and like put it up on my wall so I remember that.

23:27Yeah, because I know you can do that. You can do just this. Yeah, that is fantastic. I love it. You've been generous enough to give us a free download that we're going to offer our listeners. So they'll have like a 30-day stress management program. Excellent. And we'll tell them how they can find the book? What is it that you most hope that readers gain from reading this book? It's comfort. And I don't mean in the sense of like, not so much like a cushy, easy chair kind of comfort, but the comfort is in solace. Like finding, like life is hard in both senses of the word, or it can be. It can be difficult and it can have those rough edges or like sitting on a, Well, I guess maybe it is that kind of comfort, like sitting on a hard bench or something.

24:15You know, it's uncomfortable. And finding some kind of comfort and solace and peace in a world that often doesn't make that easy. That's really what I hope for people. This book does that. It is a great tool. It does give us some guidelines for getting through the day in a very quick way. And I'm really excited to share it with our listeners. And I really appreciate you sitting down with me today and talking about it because I think it's something that everyone can benefit from. Thank you, Paul. I really appreciate the work that you're doing and thank you for this opportunity.

24:53That was Dr. Seth J. Gillihan talking about his new book, Your Daily Reset, 366 Practical Exercises to Reduce Anxiety and Manage Stress Using Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. If you'd like to learn more about Seth, follow him on Substack or get his free 30-day stress reduction plan. Just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode. That is all we have time for today. We'll meet you back here again next week for an all new episode. And until then, this is Paula Phelps reminding you to make every day a happy one.

25:35Thank you.