with flu season right around the corner and the growing number of covet cases we're often concerned about catching these illnesses from others through contagions but really do we stop and think about catching social contagions like stress from other people so today we have Dr Michael Walker here to talk about how to navigate second-hand stress Dr Walker thanks for being with us today yeah thanks for having me yeah why don't we start with how do you Define secondhand stress what are we talking ab
out yeah it can be looked at a couple different ways one way that we can look at it is it's really like emotional distress that results from um hearing about somebody else uh stress or traumatic experience that's not really ours another way you can look at it is really picking up stress and negativity that someone else is exuding so it's just like being in the space with them and now you may pick that up based on your interactions with that person or seeing their the way they're um showing up th
at can be kind of tough to navigate for example I'm not but if you're working with someone in close proximity and you're hearing from them all the time you may be getting some of that second interest and you don't even realize it that is correct right and so that's the part where we have to be mindful of our bodies and and what's going on with our with our health um because it may show up in many different ways right so I mean there's research that shows that our cortisol levels increase when we
are observing someone else's stress and especially if we're thinking about um it being one of our romantic Partners or someone that we're in close proximity with um 40 of us can pick up that secondhand stress around those people that we're connected to and it may show up in different ways it may show up as like fatigue or feelings of inadequacy sometimes it's disorganization which may just be my natural way of being but sometimes disorder difference between empathy for somebody who may be strug
gling with something and second hand stress well I think you're you're hitting on a really good point is that we have these mirror neurons in our bodies that help us empathize better with with people right so that we can build those connections and so when we think about that that's why we have to be really mindful of how we take in other people's information or what they're doing because it will work sometimes against us right um when we think about it like uh the the amygdala the fear sin of o
ur brain is our fight flight and freeze mode right that really can't decipher between whether something is real or fake right so just for instance when we go to a movie or Scary Movie um are we getting a reaction when we even know that there's about to be a scary part that's coming up um but that's because our brain can't our amygdala doesn't decipher between whether that's real or fake right but then we can calm it down by saying oh we're at a movie this is something that's on screen and it's n
ot really going to be connected to me directly and so that's how we can kind of reduce some of that and we can do that in our everyday lives when we are watching others who may be exuding some of these stressful being behaviors well we don't have to worry about the movie part because we're not going to scary movies so we could just kill them yeah we need to kill that right now so let's say you are in one of these situations you recognize wait a second I feel something I'm feeling this person's s
tress the next step is to what well first is kind of what I did around the movie thing is to create the or change The Narrative of what that is right so someone may be stressful that doesn't mean I have to take that on what I can start to tell myself is that is that person's situation the situation can be fixed I can be a helpful partner in that but I don't have to take that stress on to me right so that's one way about doing this kind of changing the narrative in your brain uh the other piece i
s creating boundaries right um we all may work with people who are just high intensity high stress and so we have to be able to find spaces where we can separate ourselves from those folks to make sure we protect our energy and our mental mode right because that's something that we need to do in order for us to stay healthy um the other thing we can do is take breaks right so just take a break you know take a walk a five minute walk around the block um I do that quite often uh where I work at I'
ll take um mental break so that I can really calm and and make sure I'm not taking on other people's stress mindfulness help here here as well yeah well that's something that we can do to kind of just calm our body right so that meditation um type moments that you can have I think in a couple of segments ago I talked about how um one thing that I do before I enter meetings I take a five minute pause to decompress from The Medium I just left so that I don't bring that energy into the new meeting
that I'm going into so we can take moments of just who how do I just take some deep breaths allow myself to process what I just went through so that I don't bring and carry that into someone else so that's a way to kind of protect our body in a moment that stress may be showing up good stuff Dr Walker as always we appreciate it stay away from those scary movies you too
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