Stress: What’s the Solve? with Dr. Aditi Nerurkar

23:53And that way I'm scrolling for, you know, 30 minutes and then I'm kind of bored and thinking, what am I doing? I should just go to sleep. And then at night, what I always do is I keep my phone off my nightstand. And that's really great. Some of the pushback I get from these suggestions is like, well, I'm a doctor and I'm on call or I have ailing relatives that I'm taking care of. Great. Then I'm not saying, you know, put it out of your bedroom. Just keep it off your nightstand. So right as you're going to bed, you're not checking. And again, because none of this is mindless, right? It actively changes your brain.

24:20It primes your brain from more stress. The data shows that 80 percent of people first thing in that morning before your second eye is even open, they are scanning. They're scrolling for danger. It primes your brain for the rest of the day. With all of the headlines, especially this week, I have had to put my phone not even off my nightstand on the other side on the carpet, but in my closet. I have a little bed that I make for my phone, and I put it to bed, and I go to bed. Otherwise, even in the middle of the night, if I were to wake up, I do reach for my phone. It might be on the other side of my nightstand, but I will get out of bed and check because of that primal urtia scroll.

24:54So I have to physically create even greater distance. Like a Disney scene from Beauty and the Beast. You make a little bed for your phone, and you put it away. Yeah, it's a step stool in my closet, but I have a designated area where I put it. You know, when you have a good day, you have good nights. And so if you're not having good days, you're not going to have good nights. And the reason you say this week is because the week that we're taping, that there's been a number of tragedies that have unfolded. Yeah, and I think one of the things that's really important to remember, and I mentioned this right now, is that none of this is mindless.

25:21So we feel like, what are we doing? We're not doing anything. We're just scrolling, right? Like, there's nothing. You do this. But in fact, data shows that this is so disturbing. But I interviewed a woman named Dr. Silver, a psychologist in California for my book, The Five Resets. And what she told me has stayed with me for years. You know, she started her work with Columbine way back and has said that she studies these calamities in the world. And what happens to the human brain when we engage in graphic imagery or videos? And especially now, more than ever, there is this burgeoning of videos, right?

25:59That you can see things that happen on the scene in real life. And your amygdala doesn't know the difference, by the way, of something happening thousands of miles away or in your backyard. It feels that same stress response. And so her data has found that when you engage in scrolling and, you know, your amygdala gets primed and you keep going down that rabbit hole, that rabbit hole phenomenon is all fight or flight. It increases your personal risk of PTSD. Even if you weren't physically there and present, just engaging in that visual graphic content can increase your personal risk of PTSD years later.

26:34And so I take this very seriously in my own life and I recommend it as well. Keep your phone off your nightstand as often as possible. If you can this week or any, you know, periods of time when you feel like the world is so heavy and there's so much happening, scroll less. Do other things. When I advocate for digital boundaries, digital boundaries, you want to be an informed citizen. This is not about censorship. If you just like turn off all the tigers that are on your screen, you might have real tigers in real life that are dangerous. Like you don't want to be a tuned out citizen from the world.

27:04Yes, more than ever, right? Yeah. Like, we have to be informed citizens, but not at the expense of your mental health. Hang tight for a second. We'll be right back. Eczema is unpredictable, but you can flare less with EpGliss, a once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four in 10 people taking EpGliss achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. EbGliss, Librikizumab, LBKZ, a 250 milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

27:44Also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EbGliss can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you're allergic to EbGliss. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBCLIS. Before starting EBCLIS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Ask your doctor about EBCLIS and visit ebglis.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979.

28:18So I want to take a break now from digital and talk more broadly about stress in life because I kind of think there are people in my life who I feel like, oh, that person is just like so immune to stress. and there are other people, my producers, actually, both Desta and Mel asked me, can you be addicted to stress? So first of all, I should ask you, should I be worried about my producers? And two, can they be addicted to stress? Or like about whatever is inviting. I think they're good. No, but should I be worried that people are working with me and they're addicted to stress? You're like, what does that say about me?

28:54Exactly. But it's not about me. Can people be addicted to stress? Yes. Addicted is a word that I don't really throw around, right? Because that means a whole host of things in the medical lexicon. When you say that there's an addiction, that's like a real thing. But you can certainly have stress in your life and want it and kind of move towards it because of lots of reasons. People say they thrive in stress. Like, I think I thrive in uncertainty, which is maybe a step away from thriving from stress. Everyone has a different threshold when it goes from healthy stress to unhealthy stress. And so you might really do well in uncertainty because you shore up those internal reserves.

29:34You know, you're a journalist by training. These pressure cooker situations is where you really come alive. And that's wonderful. But over time, when you continually put yourself in pressure cooker situations or periods of uncertainty without coming back down to baseline, that is really the problem. Yes. And I think probably for me, it's like growing up in different countries that that's actually like the familiarity of uncertainty is natural for me. A lot of it is like nature versus nurture. Yeah. And that's the thing with neuroplasticity, too, that you might have had certain experiences in your childhood that might have been difficult or challenging, but you have the power to rewire your brain for less stress and more resilience.

30:11So we'll get to the rewiring. I know I can tell you want to get there because you keep saying rewiring. But how are some people immune to stress in the other direction? Like there's some people who are just so chill. We all have different personalities and different thresholds for stress. So I can say that, you know, for me, I've had to do a lot of inner work. I was a stress patient before I became an expert in stress as a doctor because I went through a really difficult time and my doctor told me, it's just stress, try to relax. And so I put on my scientist hat and found my own way out of stress so that I, when I found my way out then i vowed to become the doctor i needed at that time and so my level of stress i've figured out how to manage it and i walk the talk now but i have to do an awful lot of things to keep even keeled my husband a bodhisattva is just rolls with it so mellow anything happen you know and so it's like is it yin and yang who knows do you think that like people who are high stress should date people who are not i have this theory a friend of mine told me in dating which is like a stock should date a bond.

31:15Somebody who has like a really variable career, goes up and down and volatile, should date somebody who's just like in a really stable ladder of life. Do you think that My father gives me that advice. Oh, really? Yeah. My dad has always said, you know, if you're interested in doing this creative work and writing and you need to be with someone who's really stable. Can two high stress people work well in a relationship? It depends on their relationship. I'm not a relationship expert, but I have set up, I think I told you offline, I've set up 10 couples and nine have all 10 have dated seriously and nine have gotten married to this day.

31:47They are still married Do you think I'm gonna be lucky number 10? Smart girl smart question Opportunistic question. No, but do you feel as a doctor who's treating patients? Who are stressed it does that stress you out? You know, there are moments early in my training where I had to really learn To create boundaries So I used to take home all of these stories with me, and it really would affect me. I remember once I was a medical trainee, either a medical student or early in my career, and I had a patient with end-stage AIDS. And I was taking care of this patient, and they had candida, so thrush, all the way down their esophagus.

32:25A yeast infection. Yeast infection. Esophageal, meaning like all the way down their food pipe. And they were having difficulty eating and drinking and had lost lots of weight, were on lots of medications. And I, you know, felt early morning they had a scheduled procedure called an EGD. It's like when they put a camera down the throat to really confirm, is this really what's happening? And I was up all night at home. I wasn't in the hospital on call, but I was up all night thinking about this patient. So worried, worried, sick that something was going to happen. And I went in the next morning, 4.30 or 5 in the morning, to check in on this patient.

32:59Fast asleep. I was like, Doc, I had the best sleep of my life. I felt great. It made me laugh. I thought, wow, I really need better boundaries. I need to do a little bit of self-care. And so we in medicine, we have to learn how to create that because, you know, I went into medicine because I really care about the human being. But you have to be able to do good work and show up every day. You do need to create some boundaries. And so, yes, stress, you know, is it contagious? There's different things that I do. I used to pretend when I would wear that white coat that it would be like a shield. I'm that person who when I'm on a train or I'm on the bus, someone will turn to me.

33:33I don't even say I'm a doctor. I'll say, you know, I've never told anyone this before, but Oh my gosh. So I'm always that person. So you definitely don't have resting bitch face. People with resting bitch face do not get that kind of next door neighbor. And so I always get those. And so then I have to do lots of things, but there, there is this, I've never been able to corroborate this, but someone told me early in my medical training that the human heart has an electromagnetic field that extends 15 feet. and I loved that when I heard that I thought wow what a nice thing so you feel those vibes from people like I feel your your vibes you know um and there's something really good about that could imagine it going both ways I could imagine like spending time with a lot of people who are really stressed like it's like sometimes when I'm with people that are really stressed I'm like wow I'm so chill and then I convince myself that like I'm a type b person I'm so like you know whatever and then when I'm people with people who are really unstressed I'm like what's wrong with me or like what is it about them?

34:28Stress can, I think, manifest relatively. There's some people, they never have any mental manifestations of stress or like I feel great, but they might have chronic abdominal pain or, you know, the first thing is if you're having any like physical symptoms, I didn't have any mental manifestations. My stress struggle was I felt a stampede of wild horses across my chest. Then I finally went to go see a doctor and that doctor did the full medical workup. I was convinced it was my heart. It ended up not being my heart. And the doctor said it's just stress. And in fact, 60 to 80 % of all primary care visits in the US have a stress-related component.

35:02So you might have abdominal pain, back pain, headaches, fatigue. Oh, the list of symptoms is endless. You go to your doctor, you get the full workup, nothing's wrong, all good. And then they say, it's probably just stress and you go home. And so stress can show up mentally and it also can show up physically. There's a huge amount of conversation right now about millennial work culture. And there's also the sense that hustle culture is dead. But how does work and this hustle culture and like the peer pressure professionally of stress manifest, particularly in the data when you look at things like burnout?

35:39Ooh, what a good question. There's so many ways that we could take this. So first is that, you know, we can talk about multitasking and hustle culture. Toxic resilience. Don't take my multitasking away from me. Okay. Toxic resilience. Okay. Toxic resilience and this new kind of burnout. So we'll start with talking about this new kind of burnout. When you think about someone with burnout, you probably imagine someone who is really disillusioned, not very motivated, bored, not really engaged. Classic features of burnout. But increasingly, we are seeing a new face of burnout. And this modern day burnout, in one study, 60 % of people had an inability to disconnect from work as their main feature of burnout.

36:20And so if you are someone who is constantly engaged, unable to unplug. Everyone in the room is looking at each other right now. Okay. In addition to being unable to unplug, if you have some other features, like you are feeling fatigued, you're really feeling that sense of burnout. And you're saying, I'm not burned out because I'm completely engaged and I can't shut off work. You might have that new kind of burnout. But what if you love what you do? It's like so charging for you. How can you tell the difference between just loving what you do or being burnt out and not addicted? Great question.

36:55So, you know, you can think of yourself, think about how you were maybe in 2018, right? So we're not really going to talk about the pandemic because people are over it. But the effects of the pandemic, particularly the mental health effects, have stayed with us because your brain is a dam. I like to think of my brain as a castle, but it's okay. It's a dam. Yes. Your brain is a castle. You are the exception. No, no. I'm teasing. You know, so in 2018, think about how you felt about your work. Did it light you up and it motivated you? And now it might be a little bit different, you know. So you might feel like, yeah, my work really motivates me.

37:33But I also have this like lingering feeling of just feeling really fatigued. And I'm just really not that into it. But I can't shut off. That is the kind of experience I'm talking about. If you are motivated with your work and you can shut off, you can, you know, sleep well and you wake up and you're feeling good again. that's okay. There's like a really fine line between hustle culture and then saying, oh, I don't need to sleep. I'm good. I can just keep working because your brain is a muscle. And just like any part of your body that's a muscle, it needs a little bit of rest and recovery, right?

38:03Just to get back to going again. And so I think that kind of idea of this new kind of burnout, you're thinking, could this be me? Based on the data, 70 % of people are struggling with at least one feature of stress and burnout. And so if you're wondering, like, could this be me? Do I, am I burned out? Do I have stress? It's most likely that you are the rule and not the exception. And this is not your fault. Again, it is not a personal failing. You're not weak. Your brain is not broken. It is truly just how your brain is designed. You know, as you're talking about, like, I love what I do, and I don't really want to take a break.

38:39And you didn't say those exact words. But for those people who are thinking that, or saying to yourself, I can't be burned out I'm resilient I used to also say that until I learned what toxic resilience was and so if you think about pre-pandemic if someone said to you you're resilient Naima or if someone said to me I would feel like really proud and say like thanks because it had a positive connotation right and now we bristle at the word it's totally cringeworthy I have a visceral response when someone's like oh be more resilient it's like a prophylactic to be to become stressed or to allow yourself to have bad things happen to you because you can just absorb them and move on yeah and And it's more like what's happened now, that healthy, true resilience.

39:17What is true resilience? The scientific definition, it's your innate biological ability to adapt, recover, and grow in the face of life's challenges. And true resilience needs a little bit of healthy stress. It's like the relationship between swimming, when you first learned to swim, and the coach. The coach would say, like, keep going, keep going. That was your healthy stress. And then resilience is your ability to keep your head above water while your arms are flailing. And over time, you kind of learn to swim and glide through the water, right? Similar concept. And so true resilience honors your human limitations.

39:51We've talked a lot about needing breaks and how your body and your brain, this is not a luxury but a necessity. It really celebrates your ability to say no. It leans into this idea of self-compassion because self-compassion, in fact, dials down the volume of your amygdala. but toxic resilience is something altogether different that's when you have that cringeworthy when you're like oh resilience because that word has morphed it's no longer true resilience it's toxic resilience what is toxic resilience it's like mind over matter mindset productivity at all costs all systems go all the time it's in the u.s the energizer bunny in the uk keep calm and carry on so that is toxic resilience and so a lot of hustle it's a manifestation of hustle culture.

40:35And then the third thing, you want to take away my multitasking. So what is this? Because I feel like can't women multitask and men can? Is that a myth? That's a myth. Okay. Nobody can or nobody should? Only, even though 100 % of us think we're excellent multitaskers, only 2 % of human brains can effectively multitask. You might be one of the 2%. How do you find out? I don't know how you find out. I don't think there's a scientific test for it, but there really should be. I'd rather be in this 2 % than in the other 1 % that I keep talking about. I want to be in this 2%. But sometimes I don't know if I can do it, but I do do it.

41:14We all do it. And I think sometimes it's to the detriment of relationship. I think it's really like, Esther Perel and I talk about this a lot, and she has this great thing where she says, when you're on the phone with somebody and then somebody says, uh-huh and you just know that they're up to something else and I'm guilty of that I've definitely done that to people I love and I hate that I always think of that so that's definitely one thing but the second is I actually worry that by multitasking and like this multi-screen on my phone I'll be like listening to an audiobook figuring out the directions somewhere walking somewhere going to get something and I feel like I'm I'm like wow I might be like mentally 100 years old because I'm cramming in like multiples of my life into one day.

41:58So well said, and you're not alone. Multitasking is actually a myth. I hate to rake it to you, but the word is a scientific misnomer. In fact, there is no such thing because your brain is wired to do one thing at a time. When you are multitasking, right, air quotes, what you are effectively doing is doing two separate tasks in rapid succession. So one right after the other. But because your brain is really only wired to do one thing at a time, multitasking, in fact, the way we think of it, it's called task switching in science. But multitasking weakens that prefrontal cortex. So it weakens your cognition, your memory, your attention.

42:43Ironically, it makes you less productive, you know, even though we do it to be more productive, it also decreases your ability to solve complex problems. And the world right now is filled. It's filled with complex problems that need to be solved. So we really can't afford to multitask, though all of us do it. And so I'm a recovering multitasker. I am fully a monotasker. Multitasker is anonymous. Only one meeting at a time. You are just so quick and clever. Obsessed with you. Thank you. Okay. My New Year's resolution is going to be to try and stop multitasking. Oh, I love it. We're going to check in.

43:21Three days a week. Great. You can just stop doing multitasking in the mornings or say, Oh yeah. After, you know, until noon, I'm not going to multitask. I wake up late, so that's a bit cheap. Yes. Okay. Maybe you start small. So I want to talk about New Year's resolutions because we are in January when people are listening to this. I feel like there's so much in this word resolution. And I was comparing it to the word you use in the title of your book, The Five Resets. What is, to you, the difference between a reset, a habit, a resolution, and a revolution in one's own life? Amazing. Amazing question.

43:58I would say that, first off, a reset is the spark or the catalyst for how you want to live your life. And then the habit is when you continue the reset again and again and again, it becomes a habit. Your brain needs about eight weeks for a habit to form. That's how habit formation happens in the brain for a new brain pathway to be created. And falling off, getting back up and falling off and getting back up is part of the habit formation process. Part of the eight weeks. Part of the eight weeks. It's kind of like you can think about building a new habit like a dirt road. And then with time, it becomes, you know, a two-lane road.

44:34And over eight weeks, it becomes a highway. It's fascinating. The science of New Year's resolutions and why so many people fail. And so when I talk to my patients or even before I knew about the science, you know, I would have a list of like 10 or 15 things, like all the things I'm going to achieve this year. And by February, there's a particular date. I think it's February 8th, if I'm not mistaken. And there's a date that like by this time, most people have said, forget it. I can't do it. Because your brain, even positive change, right? So what are New Year's resolutions? This is very bad for people's Valentine's Day, I have to say.

45:06This explains why there are so many breakups around Valentine's Day. Because you couldn't keep your New Year's resolutions. Exactly. I loved him, but he couldn't keep up his fitness habit. I don't know why. But okay, so February 8th, what happened? I don't know if it's, I need to go back and look at the science of like, what day is it? Because some say it's January, some say it's February. But you know, the thing about NeuroStress Solutions, the reason they fail is because we take on too much all at once. Because your brain, when you are bringing something new in your life, like what is a NeuroStress Solution?

45:41It's a positive change that you're trying to make in your life, right? But even positive change is a stress on your brain. And so you can only manage two changes at a time if you want those changes to stick. Anything more in your system gets overloaded. So pick two things. You can make a list of 10 or 15 things you want to achieve. Pick two of those. Do them for eight weeks. When it becomes a habit and becomes automatic in your life, then add two more. And that is how I would approach New Year's resolutions. So instead of having eight New Year's resolutions, should I have two quarterly resolutions every quarter?

46:16Amazing. Yes. like a corporation and be like an earnings report. Q1, yes. Donald Trump's trying to take it from three months to six months, which I think is not necessarily a bad idea, but yes. Okay, so every quarter set, and that actually gives me enough time because then I'll have the eight to 12 weeks to really instill that habit. Love it. But even when I've had one year's resolution, I don't know that I've kept it up eight weeks in. Habit formation is really difficult. And also knowing that you fall off and get back up, that should ideally keep you going because so often when you're trying something new and you're like, oh, I've lost motivation.

46:49Forget it. I'm not going to do it. Instead, telling yourself, okay, this is part of the process. I'm going to get back up and back on the horse and try again. That's really reassuring to know that lapsing is part of the muscle building. It's like taking a rest or repair day. But I also wonder if something is like, we set these New Year's resolutions in this lull of the busy times of our years. And so we're like, oh, I have all this time. I always think I made so much space in the pandemic for new habits. But then when the world came back, I didn't have like the time of my day or the space in my apartment to keep like the trampoline that every between every meeting I'm going to do 10 minutes on a trampoline like a crazy person.

47:26I did that. Like I just didn't have the space for that in my life after. That's right. And I kind of feel that that's also a dangerous thing about making a resolution in this window. A framework that I use is called a most goal. When you are feeling a sense of stress, you may say to yourself, what is the matter with me? Why can't I achieve this? Or why can't I do that? Instead of asking yourself, what is the matter with me? Ask yourself, what matters most to me? And most is an acronym. So M, is it motivating? O, is it objective? S, is your goal small enough to virtually guarantee success? And T, is it timely?

48:03Is it something that you can achieve in about eight weeks knowing the science of brain and habit formation? And so a most goal. Objective. Objective. Small. And timely. And timely. What do I need to do in the next couple of months that will help me with my stress? The next step is to operationalize it. So how do you do that? You create a backwards plan. We didn't get to revolution, but the revolution is like instead of having your eight New Year's resolutions for January 1st that you're going to drop the ball on, then instead have two most goals every quarter. And maybe we set them like at the end of January instead of the beginning of January.

48:41So we don't have this Delulu sense of how much time and space and energy we have to actually commit to these things. Yeah, it's arbitrary, right? Like January 1st, who decided that? But data shows that about 80 % of people by February are no longer doing their New Year's resolutions. It's D-Day. It's quitting time. Okay. So I want to do a lightning round before you get out of here, which is some of the bad habits that people might be trying to break. around New Year's or maybe, I don't know, a particular host of a particular podcast is trying to break. Okay. There's some cycles that I think are really unhealthy.

49:14One is a cycle I get into snacking, feeling guilty about snacking, swearing I'll never do that again, cutting sugar out, snacking again, finding myself back in a cycle. What is this loop? That is your amygdala. When you are feeling a sense of stress, it's called emotional eating. You crave high fat, high sugar foods because your brain thinks, oh my gosh, we're entering a famine. So you eat calorically dense food. So it's not you. It's just, it's the donut or the donut phenomenon. And so you have to ask yourself, what am I hungry for? Is it more certainty, more rest, more connection? And give yourself that instead.

49:51Okay. So that's the escape valve. The escape hatch is ask yourself a question. What do I actually hungry for? We talked about doom scrolling and the scrolling habit already. But what about shopping? There's something that happens to me. The revenge bedtime procrastination for me involves Zara and a basket of goods that I don't need. And I often am like shopping at like 1.30 in the morning. Yes. Again, it's that brain break. You're like, oh, let me just rest and relax and do online shopping. There's also a real gamification element to this, right? Like, so when you switch your phone, I did this.

50:22I switched my phone to grayscale and I went shopping and I lost all interest because I couldn't see the clothes. I couldn't see the colors. Add to card. Did I add it? Did I not? Check out. Again, there's a whole gamification process. Like when you're on Amazon and you're ordering something from Amazon Prime, you feel that, right? That buzz. It's like there's a game element to all of this. And then you get it and you get it at home. You get your Zara package. You try things on. You're like, I don't like it. You return it. And then the next day. You feel so icky. Like you're like going to, you're like, I hate carrying this box to the store to return it.

50:51It's such a cycle. And then you get it again. And you're like, what am I doing? It's like a game. I know. Sometimes I've ordered the same thing and I'm like, I returned that thing. You didn't even remember you ordered it. Yeah. I don't know if that black, that grayscale thing is going to work for like the millennial, the minimal Gen Z millennial girlies on the internet who are like only wearing black, white neutrals. They're still in danger. They need something else. You'd be amazed. Like that grayscale, you, you, you know, people are like, I'm going to do it all day. You can't because you in fact need it.

51:18Grayscale is a solve. Grayscale is a solve and Turning it on like a triple click is good. Yeah, I have it auto on my whatever that's called. The side button. Action button. What about the procrastination cycle? Procrastinating, feeling panic, doing the work, swearing you'll never do it again, doing it again. What's the escape hatch on that? So procrastination is a coping mechanism. It's a stress response. It's like you save it and then right when your stress is at a boiling point, you do the thing. And then you, ideally, there's this expression, which I love. It's eat the frog first. Have you heard of that?

51:55It's like, do the difficult thing first. So ideally in a day, instead of like keeping it for the end of the week or the end of the day, just like try to do the difficult thing first. What will happen is that often you will increase your sense of personal agency. I think we started our conversation talking about agency, which is like this ability to feel like, oh, I can do that. I can do it again. Same. Okay. Okay, great. Right. And then final thing, like if I have good habits, am I going to be happier? Yes. This is the thing. Your brain, because of neuroplasticity, it always goes back to the brain, right?

52:28When you do better, you feel better. And so even the process, while the process might not be very sexy or cool and kind of boring, like to say, okay, I'm going to go to bed early. I'm going to try to do a little bit of movement every day. I'm going to stay off my phone as much as possible. your brain responds through the process of neuroplasticity. So you will notice that you will feel happier, calmer, less reactive. You probably sleep better, which then has a whole host of things that happen, right? So it's a ripple effect. The one thing I want to ask you about, like, as we talk about stress, like one thing I find is like stress has become an excuse for bad behavior sometimes or self-boundaries.

53:10Oprah just did this whole thing about how people or having no contact with their own mothers or daughters or whatever. And there can be reasons for that, to be sure. But I do think that there's probably in this crowd listening to me right now, like some CEOs, founders, directors, or other people who just rely on people in their lives, partners, mothers, whatever, who say, you know, people use stress as an excuse out of obligation. People use stress as an excuse out of work. People tell me they're burned out. And that's just weak or that's just not committing to me or whatever it is. What is your response?

53:45Do you think that we have erred too much on the side of like, oh, we are giving a lot of grace to stress and burnout? Or are you like, no, we're moving in the right direction as a society? Some people would say like stress is woke. Burnout is woke. Because of the line of work that I'm in as a doctor, I think we're not giving enough compassion to ourselves. We're also not giving compassion to others. You know, there's that famous quote, be kinder than necessary, because everyone is facing a battle you know so little about. I don't know who said it. But I think about that all the time. When I was in my own stress struggle as a doctor early days, one of the teachers that I had, his name is Michael Bame, he said to me, look around the room and every patient that you meet.

54:29And on the street, I was living in Philadelphia at the time when I was in my medical training. And he said, every single person you meet is having as intense of an experience of life as you are. And so I think about that a lot. As a doctor, I have seen stress and burnout in people that you would never even think would have stress and burnout. They are in the waiting room. They are, you know, big shots and the door closes and they have that private moment with their doctor and they break down. And I see that again and again and again. And so for me, I think that while we have made headway, if there's one silver lining that has come out the last few years, it is that mental health, stress, burnout are finally out of the shadows and people are talking about it.

55:10But we have so much more way to go to really dismantle the taboo and the shame around these issues. Do you think that because you're a stress expert and a physician who's really focused in this area, both in your practice and in your teaching, that you see stress everywhere like more than most of us? Or is stress just the like most primitive experience of the brain? I think it's a little bit of both. And I think what is, you know, for me, it's like I see stress everywhere and I think we don't have to live this way. and other people might be like well this is just life this is how it is and you just you know my my dad went through this i'm going through it i'm teaching my kid to do it too like that kind of attitude and i would say that you don't have to live this way there is a better way and it takes very small increments of time you don't need to move to bali you don't need like you know a sabbatical surf i mean sign me up for that life plan it's not in my reality but elizabeth gilbert Yeah, I'm like a closeted surfer who's like a Harvard doctor.

56:10I love that. Okay, Harvard doctor. We end every episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions asking our guests who know a lot about a lot of things what they're dumb about. What is the one thing you don't know? One thing that I – it just like vexes me is when I have a dinner party or have friends over or even leftover takeout, and I want to take those items and put them into a Tupperware, I can never figure out. Like I always get it wrong. Can't size it. I'm always like messing up. I put it into like the Tupperware, the thing that I want to put into the fridge to eat later. And then like half of it doesn't go in.

56:44And then I have to get another container. My husband is like a pro. He's like, that it's not going to fit there. I'm like, yes, it will. See, because I would think that you would think it was stress related. Because your husband is less stressed, he's better with the Tupperware. I think some people are just really good at like the 3D spatial. Yes. Like even, you know, I'm an excellent packer. So good at packing. But I can't like do the transfer. I don't know. Okay. You're good at it. I'm actually good at this because I have to, I mean, I don't want to flex, but I was so good at Tetris when I was a kid that like, I actually got to 32 ,800 points and the points started going down and I kept making lines.

57:17And I had the person who was like taking care of me at the time, like take a, um, write an affidavit for my sister. Cause I knew she wouldn't believe me. I had to let myself die because the score wouldn't stay that high. I just, I don't want to show off too much, but I'm just saying. Like, I was always jealous of people who were good at Tetris. I would put that shape in the middle and all the gaps on the bottom. Yeah. I might be Brooklyn instead of the Upper East Side, but I can put those sweet potatoes into a Tupperware no matter where I am. Thank you so much for making the time. Tell people where they can find you.

57:46You can find me all over social media. You can also subscribe to my new newsletter, Mental Health-ish on Substack. And the book is called The Five Resets. And you have a new book about how AI and technology are shifting. This is going to be a juicy conversation part two. My new book is coming out called Bot Brain, When High Touch Meets High Tech in 2026 with HarperCollins. And it is about AI chatbots, mental health, and the human connection. How AI is rewiring our brains and our sense of human connection. I love it. I hope me and my AI boyfriend, who you will set me up with, would love to have you back on our show for, you know, 2026 when the book's out.

58:23And, you know, 85 ,000 people on ChatGPT is my boyfriend on Reddit.

58:31Wow, I feel so much less stressed about my stress. After that conversation with Dr. Aditi Nurkar, it is clearly ubiquitous. It's good to know that certain kinds of stress are good stress. It's good to know that 2 % of people are great at multitasking and OMG, I'm probably part of the 98%. I entered that conversation a little bit dumb about the physiology of our brains. I actually didn't know where the prefrontal cortex is, but it makes sense that it's in front and stuff. But I also had a lot of doubts about why is everything about stress? Is everything really about stress or is this just a stress doctor telling me things are about stress?

59:01But actually, I left the conversation so much smarter about our physiology and about my great, great, great, great cave daddy's physiology and this role of the amygdala and fight or flight and how that experience is similar or different in a digital world. One of the things that happened right after we taped this interview, my team and I were talking to Dr. Aditi about supplements and various things around stress. And she actually said that she only likes to recommend things that are free, solutions that are free, which I thought was so refreshing in a world that we are like constantly packaged and sold all kinds of medical products and every podcast, etc.

59:36Maybe even, I don't know what ads are running on this one, maybe on this one, I hope not, but it does happen. And I really appreciate that she is taking such an accessibility approach to helping people think about their stress. I also laughed a lot smarter about how to make my New Year's resolutions. I want to know if it helped you with yours. You can drop me a line, naima raza101 at gmail.com. Or better yet, leave me a voicemail, 1-855-MY-DUM-Q. You can call in. You can leave us your dumb questions that you want us to tackle with new guests. You can leave questions for Dr. DT Nurkar as well. I'm sure she'd love to hear them.

1:00:09and that's it for this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions. I'm Naima Raza. This show was produced with Desta Wunderad of Wunder Studios and Melissa Lee Gibson. It was edited by Darlena Chiem and mixed and engineered by Johnny Simon. Our theme music is by David Kahn. Special thanks to Healy Cruz and to Claudia Riccardi and that's it for this week. See you next week on Smart Girl Dumb Questions.

1:01:03This episode is brought to you by Athletic Brewing Company. No matter how you do game day, on the couch, in the crowd, or manning the snack table, Athletic Brewing fits right in. With a full lineup of non-alcoholic beer styles, you can enjoy bold flavors all game long. No hangovers, no buzz, no subbing out for water in the second half. Stock the fridge for tip-off with a variety of non-alcoholic craft styles available at your local grocery store or online at athleticbrewing.com. Your beer, fit for all times.